Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T03:44:31.877Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Motherhood Is Beautiful”: Maternalism in the West German New Women's Movement between Eroticization and Ecological Protest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2021

Yanara Schmacks Open the ORCID record for Yanara Schmacks [Opens in a new window]
Yanara Schmacks*
Affiliation:
CUNY Graduate Center
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article traces changing conceptions of maternalism in the West German New Women's Movement from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. I argue that there were two moments in which the concept of motherhood was heatedly discussed and transformed. First, from the mid-1970s onward and within the broader cultural currents of “New Inwardness” (Neue Innerlichkeit) and “New Sensuality” (Neue Sinnlichkeit)—both of which permeated the New Left—motherhood became sensualized, eroticized, and sexualized. Second, these trends were intensified and at the same time drawn into new directions after the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. For while the focus on female corporeality was consolidated, a growing ecofeminist strand successfully reimagined motherhood as tightly bound to nature and life itself. Serving also as a means to deal with the Nazi past, this late 1980s conception of motherhood was marked by a more pessimistic, even apocalyptic outlook.

Type
Article
Information
Central European History , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 811 - 834
Copyright
Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association, 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I am deeply thankful to Dagmar Herzog for her invaluable help in researching and writing this paper, to Jonas Knatz for his unrelenting intellectual and emotional support, and to Anne Schult, my colleagues at the CUNY Graduate Center, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on draft versions of this article.

References

1 Lenz, Ilse, ed., “Müttermanifest. Leben mit Kindern—Mütter werden laut (1987),” in Die Neue Frauenbewegung in Deutschland: Abschied vom kleinen Unterschied. Eine Quellensammlung, 1. Aufl. (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2008), 624Google Scholar, original in English.

2 Lenz, “Müttermanifest,” 625.

3 Lenz, “Müttermanifest,” 625.

4 “Selbstverständnis des Aktionsrat zur Befreiung der Frauen” cited in Freeland, Jane, “Women's Bodies and Feminist Subjectivities in West Germany,” in The Politics of Authenticity: Counter-Cultures and Radical Movements across the Iron Curtain (1968–1989), ed. C., Joachim Häberlen, Mark Keck-Szajbel, and Kate Mahoney (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018), 132Google Scholar.

5 Anonymously cited in Meier, Marion, “Mütter—die besseren Frauen? Neue Frauenbewegung und Mutterschaft/Ein Resümee,” Sexualpädagogik und Familienplanung 1 (1983): 7Google Scholar.

6 Meike Sophia Baader, “Von der Normalisierung zur De-Zentrierung nach 1968. Mütterlichkeit, Weiblichkeit und Care in der Alten und in der Neuen Frauenbewegung,” in Weiblichkeit—Ansätze zur Theoretisierung, ed. Antje Langer, Claudia Mahs, and Barbara Rendtorff (Opladen: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2018), 28. For the complex negotiation processes concerning the primary purpose of the Kinderläden as, on the one hand, strongly tied to feminist demands, and on the other, as arising from a general left-wing questioning of the bourgeois family emerging from the anti-authoritarian movement and the idea of a cultural revolutionary struggle that was to educate children according to a socialist ideal, see Till van Rahden, Demokratie. Eine gefährdete Lebensform (Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 2019), 103–27; Kristina Schulz, Der lange Atem der Provokation. Die Frauenbewegung in der Bundesrepublik und in Frankreich 1968–1976, PDF version, Reihe Geschichte und Geschlechter 40 (Frankfurt/Main: Campus-Verl, 2002), 73–95.

7 For the strong aversion to the continuing involvement of the churches in childcare, education, and medicine, see the widely circulated and highly influential Women's Handbook 1 (Frauenhandbuch 1), edited and written by Bread and Roses: Brot und Rosen, Frauenhandbuch Nr. 1, 2nd ed. (West Berlin, 1974[1972]), 21–23.

8 Sander's position on motherhood also changed in the course of the 1970s and 1980s. As Kristina Schulz notes, Sander, in 1988, had adopted a rather maternalist perspective, tying her understanding of womanhood closely to the experience of motherhood that, for Sander, endowed women with a unique form of knowledge. Schulz, Der lange Atem der Provokation, 193–94.

9 Andrea Trumann, Feministische Theorie: Frauenbewegung und weibliche Subjektbildung im Spätkapitalismus, 3. Aufl. Reihe Theorie.org (Stuttgart: Schmetterling-Verl, 2002), 60–77.

10 Alice Schwarzer and Simone de Beauvoir, “Das Ewig Weibliche ist eine Lüge,” Spiegel, 1976, 195.

11 See, for example, Marie Reusch, Emanzipation undenkbar? Mutterschaft und Feminismus, 1. Auflage, Arbeit-Demokratie-Geschlecht, Band 25 (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2018). And most recently Sophie Anne Lewis, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family (New York: Verso, 2019).

12 Frevert, Ute, Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation (Oxford, and Washington: Berg, 1990)Google Scholar; Nave-Herz, Rosemarie, Die Geschichte der Frauenbewegung in Deutschland, 5th ed. (Hannover: Niedersäschsische Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1997)Google Scholar; Gerhard, Ute, Atempause: Feminismus als Demokratisches Projekt (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1999)Google Scholar; Young, Brigitte, Triumph of the Fatherland: German Unification and the Marginalization of Women (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

13 Schulz, Kristina, Der lange Atem der Provokation; Myra Marx Ferree, Varieties of Feminism: German Gender Politics in Global Perspective (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

14 Schulz, Der lange Atem der Provokation, 185–220.

15 Ilse Lenz, “Einleitung,” in Die Neue Frauenbewegung in Deutschland, 21.

16 Lenz, “Einleitung,” 44.

17 Sven Reichardt, Authentizität und Gemeinschaft. Linksalternatives Leben in den siebziger und frühen achtziger Jahren (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014), 121.

18 Reichardt, Authentizität und Gemeinschaft, 149.

19 Alice Schwarzer, So fing es an! Die neue Frauenbewegung (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1983); Gerhard Amendt, Die bestrafte Abtreibung: Argumente zum Tötungsvorwurf, 1. Aufl. (Bremen: Ikaru, 1988). In 1976, the West German Parliament eventually introduced a compromise law that allowed for abortions in the first trimester upon medical indication, social distress, or when the pregnancy was the result of a sexual crime. This solution required women to not only get the approval of doctors but also obliged them to undergo mandatory counseling.

20 Ferree, Varieties of Feminism, chap. 3; Freeland, “Women's Bodies and Feminist Subjectivities in West Germany,” 132–33.

21 Schwarzer and de Beauvoir, “Das Ewig Weibliche ist eine Lüge,” 200.

22 Eine Frau aus Göttingen, “Schwangerschaft ist tödlicher als der Tod,” in Frauenjahrbuch 1 (Frankfurt: Roter Stern Verlag, 1975), 94–107.

23 Eine Frau aus Göttingen, “Schwangerschaft ist tödlicher als der Tod,” 100.

24 Eine Frau aus Göttingen, “Schwangerschaft ist tödlicher als der Tod,” 94.

25 Eine Frau aus Berlin, “Ich will Kind, Mann und Frauensolidarität,” in Frauenjahrbuch 1 (Frankfurt: Roter Stern Verlag, 1975), 81.

26 Eine Frau aus Berlin, “Ich will Kind, Mann und Frauensolidarität,” 84–88.

27 Kathrin Mosler, “Mit Kindern,” in Frauenjahrbuch ’77 (Munich: Verlag Frauenoffensive, 1977), 40.

28 Andrea Trumann, Feministische Theorie, 119.

29 Eva-Maria Stark, “Feministinnen und Kinder,” in Frauenjahrbuch ’77 (Munich: Verlag Frauenoffensive, 1977), 55.

30 Eva-Maria Stark, Geboren werden und gebären (Munich: Verlag Frauenoffensive, 1976), 95.

31 Stark, Geboren werden und gebären, 174.

32 Stark, Geboren werden und gebären, 177, emphasis in original.

33 Stark here cited the Italian author Elena Belotti, with whom she agreed on this issue. Stark, Geboren werden und gebären, 176.

34 Stillgruppe, “Stillen als Kampfmittel,” Courage 3, no. 02/78 (1978): 25.

35 Marianne Wiedenmann, “So oft wie der Vogel über's Haus fliegt?,” Courage 3, no. 02/78 (1978): 13.

36 Chrys Laukut-Rogowik, “Werbung bei Babynahrungsmilch. So fein wie Muttermilch,” Courage 3, no. 02/78 (1978): 23.

37 Mutterfrust, Mutterlust: Handbuch für Schwangere und Mütter (Frankfurt/Main: Frauenliteraturvertrieb, 1979).

38 I thank Sibylla Flügge for drawing my attention to this geographical dimension.

39 Barbara Sichtermann, “Über die verloren gegangene Erotik der Brüste,” Ästhetik und Kommunikation, no. 47 (1982): 109, emphasis in original.

40 Sichtermann, “Über die verloren gegangene Erotik der Brüste,” 110, emphasis in original.

41 Leboyer heavily promoted the idea of “faire l'amour” with a newborn in his 1975 book Der sanfte Weg ins Leben. Geburt ohne Gewalt. As the title suggests, Leboyer was an influential proponent of “gentle birthing” and postbirth bonding, always emphasizing the bodily and sensual dimension of the mother-child relationship. The widespread popularity of his approach in the late 1970s is also illustrated by its discussion in Mutterfrust, Mutterlust: Handbuch für Schwangere und Mütter, 37–38, 99.

42 Sichtermann, “Über die verloren gegangene Erotik der Brüste,” 111.

43 Sichtermann, “Über die verloren gegangene Erotik der Brüste,” 111, emphasis in original.

44 Sichtermann, “Über die verloren gegangene Erotik der Brüste,” 113.

45 At the same time, utopian ideas about a similarly male-free world were heatedly discussed within the lesbian movement. The relationship between those espousing the joys of motherhood and the lesbian movement was complicated. They partly overlapped in their aversion to men, but, of course, those wanting to be mothers could not do completely without them. Some lesbian and mother feminists would try to form a coalition, emphasizing their common aversion to the male world and highlighting the similarities between intimate relationships among women and among mothers and children. See, for example, Monika Jaeckel, “Mütter und Amazonen. Was die Lesbenfrage mit der Mütterfrage zu tun hat,” in Mütter an die Macht. Die neue Frauen-Bewegung, ed. Dorothee Pass-Weingartz and Gisela Erler (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989), 173–86. The fact that some mothers turned lesbian in the course of their “awakening” concerning the alleged destructive nature of men, however, also led to conflicts with those lesbians who regarded mothers per se as inconsequential in their rejection of men. For an example of the heated discussions going on between childless lesbians and mothers see, for example, “Leserinnenbriefe,” Münchener Frauenzeitung, December 1978, 9–10.

46 Ulrike Heider, ed., Sadomasochisten, Keusche und Romantiker. Vom Mythos neuer Sinnlichkeit (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1986).

47 Ulrike Heider, “Freie Liebe und Liebesreligion. Zum Sexualitätsbegriff der 60er und 80er Jahre,” in Heider, Sadomasochisten, Keusche und Romantiker, 101.

48 Heider, “Freie Liebe und Liebesreligion. Zum Sexualitätsbegriff der 60er und 80er Jahre,”128. For the translation of Adorno quote, I relied on the translation of the Minima Moralia by Dennis Redmond. The quote in the German original: “Wie schon so oft kommt die Gewalt der Herrschenden nun wieder im schillernden Gewand der menschlichen Natur einhergeschritten, jener Natur, von der Adorno sagte, daß sie im ‘bürgerlichen Verblendungszusammenhang … bloß das Wundmal gesellschaftlicher Verstümmelung’ sei.”

49 Hannelore Rath, “Hinab zu den Müttern? Die ‘neue Weiblichkeit’ als Theorie und Mythos,” in Sadomasochisten, Keusche und Romantiker. Vom Mythos neuer Sinnlichkeit, ed. Ulrike Heider (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1986), 190–209.

50 Schulz, Der lange Atem der Provokation.

51 Angelika Wetterer, “Die Neue Mütterlichkeit: Über Brüste, Lüste und andere Stil(l)blüten aus der Frauenbewegung,” in Bauchlandungen. Abtreibung—Sexualität—Kinderwunsch, ed. Monika Häußler et al. (Munich: Frauenbuchverlag, 1983), 131.

52 Wetterer, “Die Neue Mütterlichkeit,” 118–19.

53 Ursula Pasero, “Die produzierte Mütterlichkeit,” in Neue Mütterlichkeit: Ortsbestimmungen, ed. Ursula Pasero and Ursula Riedel-Pfäfflin (Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1986), 27; Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, “Der neue Kinderwunsch,” in Neue Mütterlichkeit: Ortsbestimmungen, 54.

54 Andrei S. Markovits and Philip S. Gorski, The German Left: Red, Green and Beyond (Europe and the International Order) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 93.

55 Belinda Davis, “‘Women's Strength Against Their Crazy Male Power’: Gendered Language in the West German Peace Movement of the 1980s,” in Frieden—Gewalt—Geschlecht: Friedens- und Konfliktforschung als Geschlechterforschung, ed. Jennifer A. Davy, Karen Hagemann, and Ute Kätzel (Essen: Klartext, 2005), 244.

56 Found in Reinhild Kreis, “‘Men Build Rockets’: The Women's Peace Movement,” in The Nuclear Crisis: The Arms Race, Cold War Anxiety, and the German Peace Movement of the 1980s, ed. Christoph Becker-Schaum, et al. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2016), 293; Sander's speech “Love and Medium Range Missiles” was published in Courage 5, no. 4 (1980): 16–29.

57 Katharina Karcher, Sisters in Arms: Militant Feminisms in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1968, Monographs in German History, vol. 38 (New York: Berghahn, 2017).

58 Courage appeared from 1976 to 1984 and emerged out of a more decidedly left-wing, autonomous context. (The notion of “autonomy” was very important to large parts of the West German movement and referred to its organization as independent and separate from both men and state institutions. It also meant the relatively un-hierarchical internal organization of the movement. See Kirsten Achtelik, Selbstbestimmte Norm: Feminismus, Pränataldiagnostik, Abtreibung. Berlin: Verbrecher Verlag, 2015, p. 18.) Less professionalized than Emma and targeting an audience from the alternative milieu, some Courage editors and writers were affiliated with environmental politics (a topic on which the rising star of the Greens Petra Kelly often reported for Courage) and many were active in the lesbian strand of the movement. Two Courage editors represented the spiritual strand of the women's movement, joining the Baghwan sect in the mid-1980s (a move eliciting widespread ciriticsm among the other editors). Beate Schneegass, “Feminismus Im Brennpunkt: Die Frauenzeitung COURAGE und ihre Mütter; Geschichte—Entwicklung—Wirkung,” in Gebraucht—Gebremst—Gefördert. Frauen und Politik in Charlottenburg nach 1945, ed. Angelika Oettinger and Beate Schneegass (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1993), esp. 79, 81, 98; Gisela Notz, “Feminist Media 1960–1990 (Germany),” in Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media, ed. John Downing (Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications, 2011), esp. 188–89.

59 Sander, “Love and Medium Range Missiles,”29.

60 Regina Michalik and Elke A. Richardsen, ed., “Statt eines Vorworts. Ein Gesprächsprotokoll von den Herausgeberinnen,” in Die Quotierte Hälfte. Frauenpolitik in den grün-alternativen Parteien (Berlin: LitPol Verlagsgesellschaft, 1985), 6; Regina Michalik, “Ohne uns läuft nichts,” in Die Quotierte Hälfte, 68–69. As illustrated in an interview with Agnes Hansen (a member of the working group “Women” in Munich and Bavaria), women of the movement indeed exerted considerable influence, at least on a local level, on the new party's programmatic choices: “The municipal women's program [of the Munich Green Party] is actually a program of the autonomous women.” See “Grüne Politik ist den Frauen nicht grün (Interview mit Agnes Hansen, München),” in Die Quotierte Hälfte, 41. However, Joachim Raschke remarks that the feminist movement's influence on Green Party politics peaked between 1983 and 1986, with the idea of the party acting as a “mouthpiece” for the movement soon losing practicality as feminists became more integrated into the party's inner struggles. Joachim Raschke, Die Grünen. Wie sie wurden, was sie sind (Cologne: Bund-Verlag, 1993), 443, 502. As Claudia Pinl points out, active participation in the Green Party did not require official party membership. The women of the feminist movement could thus engage with and shape the party's politics without becoming formal members. Claudia Pinl, “Green Feminism in Parliamentary Politics,” in The German Greens: Paradox Beteen Movement and Party, ed. Margit Mayer and John Ely (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 128–40.

61 Barbara Holland-Cunz, “Die Frauenbewegung, ihre Naturbilder und die Entstehung des Ökofeminismus,” in Die Natur der Neuzeit (Opladen and Berlin and Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2014), 113.

62 Embodying the simultaneity and interconnectedness of these developments was leading Green politician Petra Kelly. Having been politicized within the Christian strand of the peace movement, Kelly became known as the leading female politician in the Green Party of the early 1980s. In an idiosyncratic combination of feminism, pacifism, environmentalism, and religiosity, Kelly agitated against the power of technology—perceived as threatening—and advocated for a vision of life in tune with nature, God, and the cosmos. See Belinda Davis, “The Personal Is Political: Gender, Politics and Political Activism in Modern German History,” in Gendering Modern German History, ed. Karen Hagemann and Jean H. Quataert (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 108–27. Yet, despite Kelly's prominent position in the early Green Party, her spiritual line was effectively challenged by other feminists, such as Verena Krieger, who saw themselves more in the tradition of de Beauvoirian equality feminism and were thus in stark disagreement with the gender notions often implied in ecofeminist rhetoric.

63 Holland-Cunz, “Die Frauenbewegung, ihre Naturbilder und die Entstehung des Ökofeminismus,” 121–23.

64 See Loveland, Kristen, “Feminism Against Neoliberalism: Theorising Biopolitics in Germany, 1978–1993: Feminism Against Neoliberalism,” Gender & History 29, no. 1 (April 2017): 67–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Loveland, “Feminism Against Neoliberalism,” 70.

66 Mies, M., al., et, “Kongreß ‘Frauen gegen Gentechnik und Reproduktionstechnik’ Resolution,” Beiträge zur feministischen Theorie und Praxis 8, no. 15/16 (1985): 190Google Scholar.

67 Wichterich, Christa, “Von der Mutter-Natur zur Maschine-Natur. Zu Carolyn Merchants ‘The Death of Nature,’” Beiträge zur feministischen Theorie und Praxis 12 (1984): 11–17Google Scholar.

68 Roth, Claudia and Mies, Maria, “Konferenz Des Internationalen Feministischen Netzwerks Gegen Reproduktionstechniken (FINNRET),” Beiträge zur feministischen Theorie und Praxis 8, no. 15/16 (1985): 196Google Scholar.

69 Roth and Mies, “Konferenz des Internationalen Feministischen Netzwerks gegen Reproduktionstechniken (FINNRET),” 196.

70 Leena Schmitter, “Female Bodies—Fetal Subjects? New Reproductive Technologies, Feminist Claims and Political Change in Switzerland in the 1970/80s,” in The Women's Liberation Movement: Impacts and Outcomes, ed. Kristina Schulz (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017), 57.

71 Barile, Maria, “New Reproductive Technology: My Personal and Political Dichotomy,” Canadian Women's Studies Quarterly 13, no. 4 (1993): 61–62Google Scholar.

72 Loveland, “Feminism Against Neoliberalism,” 78.

73 Mies, “Kongreß ‘Frauen gegen Gentechnik und Reproduktionstechnik’ Resolution,” 189–91.

74 Discussed in Kimba Allie Tichenor, Religious Crisis and Civic Transformation: How Conflicts over Gender and Sexuality Changed the West German Catholic Church (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2016), 202. Original quote from Maria Mies, “Reproduktionstechnik als sexistische und rassistische Bevölkerungspolitik,” in Frauen gegen Gentechnik und Reproduktionstechnik. Dokumentation zum Kongreß vom 19.–21.4.1985 in Bonn, ed. Die Grünen im Bundestag, AK Frauenpolitik & Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung und Praxis für Frauen (Cologne: Kölner Volksblatt, 1986), 45.

75 Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Diane Labrosse, ed., “H-Diplo Roundtable on Unlearning Eugenics: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Disability in Post-Nazi Europe,” H-Diplo Roundtable Review XX, no. 47 (2019).

76 Annegret Stopczyk, “Politik nach Tschernobyl,” Tarantel, April 1987, 11.

77 Article originally published in Stern and reprinted in Marina Gambaroff et al., eds., Tschernobyl hat unser Leben verändert. Vom Ausstieg der Frauen (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1986), 27.

78 See Gambaroff et al., Tschernobyl hat unser Leben verändert.

79 For an impression of what Chernobyl meant to many people active in the ecology movement and in the ecofeminist movement in particular, see, for example, Maria Mies, “Tschernobyl—Wer machte uns die Natur zur Feindin,” Die Tageszeitung, May 21, 1986.

80 Annegret Stopczyk, “Von der ‘autonomen emanzipierten’ zur ‘mütterbewegten’ Frau. Eine Geschichte vor und nach Tschernobyl,” in Mütter an die Macht. Die neue Frauen-Bewegung, ed. Dorothee Pass-Weingartz and Gisela Erler (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989), 101–04.

81 Claudia von Wehrlhof, “Wir werden das Leben unserer Kinder nicht dem Fortschritt opfern,” in Tschernobyl hat unser Leben verändert. Vom Ausstieg der Frauen, ed. Marina Gambaroff (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1986), 14.

82 Von Wehrlhof, “Wir werden das Leben unserer Kinder nicht dem Fortschritt opfern,” 15.

83 Von Wehrlhof, “Wir werden das Leben unserer Kinder nicht dem Fortschritt opfern,” 17.

84 Heider, “Freie Liebe und Liebesreligion,” 101.

85 Von Wehrlhof, “Wir werden das Leben unserer Kinder nicht dem Fortschritt opfern,” 23.

86 Annegret Stopczyk, “Vom Ausstieg aus der männlichen Zivilisation,” in Gambaroff, Tschernobyl hat unser Leben verändert, 202.

87 Maria Mies, “Aus der Traum—Technik und Wissenschaft,” Frankfurter Frauenblatt, April 1987, 19.

88 FrauenMediaTurm Köln (FMT), Sammlung Mütter III: Mütter und Tschernobyl/Ökologiebewegung, Barbara Schulz and Ruth M. Friedrich, “Von unserem Umgang mit der Natur. Ereignis Geburt und atomare Bedrohung,” 1986.

89 FrauenMediaTurm Köln (FMT), Sammlung Mütter III: Mütter und Tschernobyl/Ökologiebewegung, Beratungsstelle für natürliche Geburt und Elternschaft, “Demo gegen Atomstrahlung für Eltern, Kinder, Schwangere,” 1986.

90 Gitta Mohrdieck, “Das Tschernobyle Muttertier,” Pflasterstrand, no. 244 (September 1986).

91 Maria Mies, “Im Jahre Tschernobyl. Zum Konflikt zwischen Müttern und Nichtmüttern,” emanzipation 3/87 (n.d.): 3–6.

92 See “‘…die Quelle meiner Erkenntnis ist Liebe gewesen’ Claudia von Wehrlhof zur Polemik vom ‘Tschernobylen Muttertier,’” Tarantel 17 (November 1986).

93 Esther Schapira, “‘Das Tschernobyle Muttertier’ wird zum Frauensyndrom,” Pflasterstrand, May 15, 1987.

94 Lenz, “Müttermanifest,” 625.

95 Lenz, “Müttermanifest,” 625.

96 Eva Kolinsky, The Greens in West Germany: Organisation and Policy Making (Berg Pub Ltd, 1989), 196.

97 Raschke, Die Grünen, 502; Kolinsky, The Greens in West Germany, 196.

98 See Gaby Brüssow, Frauenpolitik. Zum Verhältnis von Frauen und Politik am Beispiel von Frauenorganisationen der Parteien SPD und Die Grünen, Internationale Hochschulschriften, Bd. 220 (Münster; New York: Waxmann, 1996), 84–85.

99 I thank Verena Krieger for clarifying the relationship between the two groups for me.

100 Claudia Pinl, Vom kleinen zum großen Unterschied. “Geschlechterdifferenz” und konservative Wende im Feminismus (Frankfurt/Main: Konkret Literaturverlag, 1998), 13; Brüssow, Frauenpolitik.

101 Verena Krieger, Entscheiden: Was Frauen (und Männer) über den § 218 wissen sollten (Hamburg: Konkret-Literatur-Verl, 1987), 187.

102 I thank Verena Krieger for pointing out this catalyzing role of the Green Party to me.

103 Katja Leyrer, “Mütterdämmerung,” Emma 12, no. 86 (1986).

104 Exchange of notes between Paß-Weingartz and Filter and edited manuscript printed in Grünen, Die, “Leben mit Kindern—Mütter werden laut” Dokumentation des Kongresses vom 22./23.11.86 (Bonn, 1987), 168–71Google Scholar.

105 See also “Editorial,” Beiträge zur Feminisitschen Theorie und Praxis Mamalogie, no. 21/22 (1988): 5–8; Marita Haibach, “Schlimm, fatal. Plädoyer einer Rabenumutter aus dem Aquarium der Karrierefrau gegen die neue ‘Mütterpolitik,’” Pflasterstrand 264 (1987); Gitta Morhdieck, “Mütter! Hört die Signale, auf zum letzten …,” Pflasterstrand 262 (1987).

106 Scott, Joan Wallach, The Fantasy of Feminist (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

107 This uniqueness is confirmed when considering the relevance of debates about motherhood in other European women's liberation movements, for example the French, the Italian, and the British cases. In Italy, which constitutes an especially interesting case of comparison due to its being a postfascist society, motherhood, though in some specific strands of the movement also being elevated to a positive identity, generally “remained on the margins” of 1970s feminist debates. Andrea Hajek, “Defining Female Subjectivities in Italy: Motherhood and Abortion in the Individual and Collective Memories of the 1970s Women's Movement in Bologna,” Women's History Review 23, no. 4 (July 4, 2014): 543–59. Rather than engaging with ideas of maternalism, Italian feminist activists, according to this study, remained preoccupied with advocating for the right to abortion. Similarly, studies of the British women's movement of the 1970s and 1980s show that British feminists, mainly due to their remaining within the socialist tradition from which they emerged, “largely resisted engaging with issues which would strengthen the political categorization of women as mothers.” Amy Black, “The Politics of Motherhood in Post-War Britain: Feminism, Socialism and the Labour Party” (master's thesis, Dalhousie University, 1997), 126; See also Florence Binard, “The British Women's Liberation Movement in the 1970s: Redefining the Personal and the Political,” Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique 22, no. hors-série (December 13, 2017). The movement that was probably most similar to the West German case in terms of engaging with maternalist ideas is French feminism, where, according to sociologist Sabine Fortino, some women of the movement also started to valorize motherhood between 1976 and 1980. Considering the salience of this new conception of motherhood within the French movement, however, Fortino concludes that its impact “must thus be relativized.” Sabine Fortino, “De filles en mères. La seconde vague du féminisme et la maternité,” Clio 5 (April 1, 1997): 7. See also Lisa Greenwald, Daughters of 1968: Redefining French Feminism and the Women's Liberation Movement (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018).

108 Rabinbach, Anson, “The Jewish Question in the German Question,” New German Critique 44 (1988): 159Google Scholar; Eley, Geoff, “Nazism, Politics and the Image of the Past: Thoughts on the West German Historikerstreit 1986–1987,” Past and Present 121, no. 1 (1988): 171–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

109 See, for example, Marianne Krüll, “Nach Tschernobyl ist alles anders—Wenn wir es wollen,” in Tschernobyl hat unser Leben verändert. Vom Ausstieg der Frauen, 118.

110 Gelsenkirchener Fraueninitiative gegen Atom- und Gentechnologie, “Betroffenheit ist nicht genug,” in Tschernobyl hat unser Leben verändert, 159.

111 “Es wird kein Leben mehr geben …,” Tarantel (September 1986), 1.

112 Anke Martiny, “Das Leben und die Machbarkeit,” in Tschernobyl hat unser Leben verändert, 91.

113 “Tschernobyl: Gaskammern ohne Wände,” Hamburger Frauenzeitung, no. 13/86 (1986).

114 Von Wehrlhof, “Wir werden das Leben unserer Kinder nicht dem Fortschritt opfern,” 13.

115 I thank Jonas Knatz for coming up with this formulation.