Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Prologue: Jewish Women in Nazi Germany Before Emigration
- Part One A Global Search for Refuge
- Part Two Refuge in the United States
- 12 Women's Role in the German-Jewish Immigrant Community
- 13 “Listen sensitively and act spontaneously - but skillfully”: Selfhelp: An Eyewitness Report
- 14 “My only hope”: The National Council of Jewish Women's Rescue and Aid for German-Jewish Refugees
- 15 The Genossinen and the Khaverim: Socialist Women from the German-Speaking Lands and the American Jewish Labor Movement, 1933-1945
- 16 New Women in Exile: German Women Doctors and the Emigration
- 17 Women Emigré Psychologists and Psychoanalysts in the United States
- 18 Destination Social Work: Emigrés in a Women's Profession
- 19 Chicken Farming: Not a Dream but a Nightmare: An Eyewitness Report
- 20 The Occupation of Women Emigrés: Women Lawyers in the United States
- 21 Fashioning Fortuna's Whim: German-Speaking Women Emigrant Historians in the United States
- 22 Exile or Emigration: Social Democratic Women Members of the Reichstag in the United States
- 23 Women's Voices in American Exile
- Epilogue: The First Sex
- Index
22 - Exile or Emigration: Social Democratic Women Members of the Reichstag in the United States
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2013
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Prologue: Jewish Women in Nazi Germany Before Emigration
- Part One A Global Search for Refuge
- Part Two Refuge in the United States
- 12 Women's Role in the German-Jewish Immigrant Community
- 13 “Listen sensitively and act spontaneously - but skillfully”: Selfhelp: An Eyewitness Report
- 14 “My only hope”: The National Council of Jewish Women's Rescue and Aid for German-Jewish Refugees
- 15 The Genossinen and the Khaverim: Socialist Women from the German-Speaking Lands and the American Jewish Labor Movement, 1933-1945
- 16 New Women in Exile: German Women Doctors and the Emigration
- 17 Women Emigré Psychologists and Psychoanalysts in the United States
- 18 Destination Social Work: Emigrés in a Women's Profession
- 19 Chicken Farming: Not a Dream but a Nightmare: An Eyewitness Report
- 20 The Occupation of Women Emigrés: Women Lawyers in the United States
- 21 Fashioning Fortuna's Whim: German-Speaking Women Emigrant Historians in the United States
- 22 Exile or Emigration: Social Democratic Women Members of the Reichstag in the United States
- 23 Women's Voices in American Exile
- Epilogue: The First Sex
- Index
Summary
Mit dem Geischt nach Deutschland (My Face Turned toward Germany) was the title chosen by Erich Matthias for his 1968 report on emigration among Social Democrats. This title reflects the feeling of many politicians, both men and women, who were forced to leave the German Reich in 1933. They took with them the ideals and political aims that had contributed to the creation of a republic structured along democratic lines. But their life's work was for the time being a failure. Nevertheless, they maintained an intense involvement in German political developments, and in the 1940s they took part in the elaboration of proposals for the restoration of political order after Hitler's defeat.
My research on Social Democratic women in the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag has led me to conclude that the first generation of women members of parliament, who had broken into this male domain without role models to follow, had taken their political mandates much more seriously than did their male colleagues.2 Female members of parliament had cultivated more intense contacts with their constituencies, thus gaining a deeper understanding of the worries and needs of their constituents, particularly those of women. They had put their findings and their knowledge to appropriate use in the course of
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Between Sorrow and StrengthWomen Refugees of the Nazi Period, pp. 325 - 340Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995