September 1977 Newsletter

WOMEN IN GERMAN

Number 12                                                September 12, 1977

Subscription fee: $2.00 per year ($1.00 If unemployed)

If it's September, it must be tine for our Women in German Conference Retreat (this year once again in Oxford, Ohio). This has become a tradition with Women in German, and certainly one worth keeping alive, for our conference provides more than an opportunity to share information and ideas; while these of course are important, they are not enough. Our conference retreat allows us to put feminist theory into practice—which means that we combine the personal with the political. That we not only talk and discuss (not argue, discuss), but we dance and sing and laugh together. What we are trying to do is make the words Virginia Woolf wrote in 1938 truly obsolete: "If people are highly successful in their professions they lose their senses. Sight goes. They have no time to look at pictures. Sound goes. They have no time to listen to music. Speech goes.
They have no time for conversation. They lose their sense of proportion—the relations between one thing and another. Humanity goes. . . . And so competitive do they become that they will not share their work with others though they have more than they can do themselves, [emphasis ours] What then remains of a human being who has lost sight, sound and sense of proportion? Only a cripple in a cave. . . . How can we enter the professions and yet remain civilized human beings?" (Three Guineas: New York, 1938, pp. 131-32) We have found that our conference so nourishes us in this respect, that we take from it enough energy, and confidence, and joy in our work to sustain us the rest of the year. Our published list of Women in German subscribers was a first step in helping people find each other. The conference cements these connections. Read on for further details.

RETREAT

Basically we adhere to the program as outlined in the last newsletter. We want, however, to give you some more specific information. Christa and Viktoria have ordered Volker Schlöndorf's film "Strohfeuer" (Free Woman), which we will show and discuss on Friday evening, September 23.

For the evening after the symposium, September 24, we have planned a discussion of three pieces by Gabriele Wohmann, "Der Bruder", "Der Fall Rufus", "Die Witwen oder eine vollkommene Lösung". Please read them if you have time.

Sunday morning, September 25, is open to your suggestions. Thus far, we have been contacted by several women who want to share information:

-  Elke Fredericksen will talk about her summer research in the two Germanies

-  Pat Herminghouse and Evelyn Beck will discuss their experiences with teaching'German Women Writers".

-  Maria Ledachowski (University of Chicago), who has just returned from Austria, will talk about the women's situation there. In addition, she

has discovered a "neglected feminist", the Frenchman Poulain de la Barre from the Enlightenment.

— Sara Lennox from the University of Maseachusets at Am her ft wants to raise the following issue. She read a book review of Working it Out, which reads as follows:

From a review of Working It Out: 23 Women Writers, Artists, Scientists and Scholars Talk About Their Lives and Work in The New York Times Book Review, September 4, 1977, p. 9:           '

Working It Out is a celebration of women, each of whom discovered, at a critical point in her coming of age, that not being "one of the boys" is, after all, hardly cause for complaint. The book speaks directly to an emerging consciousness (not just among feminists) that the traditional pro­fessional provinces of men, in which women are now mixing in greater numbers than ever before, must accomodate the special rhythms and patterns of women—and not the other way around. Indeed, if these personal essays are at all representative of current thinking, it would seem that andro­gyny is no longer quite the fashion it was just a few years ago. The evi­dence is that women no longer seek to measure their own worth by traditional yardsticks. The single chapter by a professor who cheerfully admits having consciously choses to forgo marriage and family life in order to pursue her intellectual and professional interests seems strangely dated in this respect.

Do you, as well, feel that Germanistik should change to meet the demands and needs of women in the profession? Orshould we adapt ourselves to the style and customs of the "old boys"? If Germanistik is in need of change, what kinds of changes should take place? How could "Women in German" encourage this accomodation?

Again, bring your “bid" and "new" bibliographies on women for distribution and exchange. If you would like to contribute something to the Sunday morning gathering, please let Christa or Viktoria know. And be sure to bring records for the party on Saturday night.

In the last newsletter, we promised a surprise for the conference in Oxford. To he quite frank, the nature of that surprise was a mystery to us then! Now we have quite a surprise for you!

THIRD WOMEN IN GERMAN CONFERENCE

Gisela Bahr won't be at Miami next year and there is some uncertainty about whether the conference could be held at Miami again. Would YOU like to have it at your university?

Proceedings of the papers of the WOMEN IN GERMAN STUDIES CONFERENCE can be obtained for $ 2.00 (individuals) and $4.00 (institutions) from Kay Goodman, Dept. of German, Russian and East Asian Languages, Miami Unversity, Oxford, Ohio 45056

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SYMPOSIUM

WOMEN AND GERMAN STUDIES:
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY AND COMPARATIVE APPROACH

Co-chairs: 
Kay Goodman, Miami University
Ruth H. Sanders, Miami University

8:30 – 9:00 Coffee and Doughnuts

9:00 -10:00 Lucy Morros, the Lindenwood Colleges, The Impact of German Thought and Culture on Madame de Stael’s Thinking about  Women

Deborah Hertz, University of Minnesota, Madame de Stael’s  Counterparts: Literary Salons in Berlin, 1800.

Panel: Susan Cocalis, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; Deborah Hertz; Lucy Morros; Marie-Claire Vallois, Miami University

10:00 -10:30 Break

10:30 -11:30
Heidi Tewarson, State University of New York at Stony Brook, The Woman Question in the Early Work of Alfred Döblin

Renny Harrigan, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,
The Stereotype of the Emancipated Woman in the Weimar Republic

Panel: Renny Harrigan; Heidi Tewarson

11:30 -12:00 Evelyn Beck, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Songs of the Women’s Movement

12:00 - 1:30 LUNCH

1:30 – 2:30
Patricia K. Fessenden, Ohio State University, More Than a Question of Numbers: Women Deputies in the German National Constituent Assembly and the Reichstag, 1919-1933

Jacques R. Pauwels, Brantford, Ontario, Canada, German Women University Students, National Socialism and the War, 1939-1945

Panel: Patricia K. Fessenden; Jacques R. Pauwels; Leila Rupp, Ohio State University

2:30 – 3:00 BREAK

3:00 -4:00 
Christine Cosentino, Rutgers University/RUCCAS, Frau und Staatsbürger in Volker Braun’s Schauspiel ‘Tinka’

Helen Fehervary, Ohio State University, Women and the Aesthetic of the Positive Hero in the GDR

Panel:
Gisela E. Bahr, Miami University, Christine Cosentino
Helen Fehervary; Sara Lennox, University of Massachusetts
Amherst

DEPARTMENT OF GERMAN, RUSSIAN AND EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES
in cooperation with
WOMEN IN GERMAN

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MEETINGS

1. NEMLA: The women’s movement in Germany was the topic of the Women in German Caucus at the North East Modern Languages Association annual convention, held April 21-23 at the University of Pittsburgh. Co-chairpersons Sara Lennox and Irmgard Taylor reported on the current state of the women’s movement in Germany and made available sample copies of the new women’s magazine Emma and other recent pub­lications. The group also discussed women’s literature courses and research pos­sibilities, and exchanged information about the other activities of Women in German. Those present decided to announce no theme for next year’s Women in German caucus at NEMLA, but rather to have an open general discussion. Hannelore Lenning, Russell Sage College, and Ruth Sanders, Miami University, will co-chair. The meeting is to be held March 23-25, 1968 at SUNY Albany, specific time not yet an­nounced by NEMLA. Watch this space for details!

2. MLA: Section 489 will present Women and Literary Circles in the Nineteenth Century I. Program is arranged by Women in German. Presiding: Susan L. Cocalis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Helen Cafferty, Bowdoin Coll.

1. "Dem Reich der Freiheit werb‘ ich Bürgerinnen!" The Heady Rise and Fall of Louise Otto’s Frauenzeitung, Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres, University of Minnesota.

2. Frau Annekes Libertiner Kreis; Maria Wagner, Rutgers University Discussants: Elke Frederiksen, University of Maryland; Luverne Walton, University of Missouri; Katherine Goodman, Miami University, Ohio.

Section 528 will present Women and Literary Circles in the Nineteenth Century II, also arranged by Women in German. Presiding: Helen Cafferty, Bowdoin Coll, and Susan L. Cocalis, University of Massachusetts.

1. Women: The Other. Laura Marholm's Veiw and the Friedrichshagen Writers* Colony; David R. Hume, University of Louisville.

2. Lou Andreas-Salome: An Ambivalent Feminist and her Association with the "Freie Bühne"; Linda S. Pickle, Westminister Coll. Discussants: Marilyn Scott-Jones, University of North Carolina; Cynthia Walk, University of California, San Diego; Katherine Goodman, Miami University, Ohio.

Section 489 is scheduled at 1:00 to 2:15 at Room 414 in the Conrad Hilton.
Secion 528 will follow at 2:45 to 4:00 in the same room.

3. MMLA: The Marxist Forum at the MMLA will deal with the topic, Application of Marxist Feminist Criticism. Three papers will be presented: "Marxism and the Women'8 Question, An analysis of the anthology Liebe Kollegin from the Werkkreis Literatur der Arbeitswelt", presented by Christa Stutius and Viktoria Harwig.

The second paper is a criticism of Doris Lessing's Golden Notebook in an attempt to develop a feminist/Marxist literary criticism.

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The third paper presents a discussion of the class consciousness of black American women as a part of their religious background, illustrated by Bernice Regan, by Sweet Charity (rock group) and by Sara Wright’s This Child’s Gonna Live.

Sorry, but we don't know the names of the women giving the second and third papers Chairpersons are Renny Harrington, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and Renate Holub, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The exact time and locations are not yet known, but the MMLA starts on October 27, 1977 and will be in Chicago.                                  .

LETTERS

We apppreciate receiving letters like this and thought we would share it with you.

To whom it may concern:

I’ve been in Germany, specifically Hamburg, for almost the past two years and was really delighted to see your publication once I got back to the U.S. It’s really something quite different***-and admirable.

I read with interest your listing of Frauenbuchläden, Frauenverlage and so forth. I’d like to contribute one more to the list of women's bookshops: there's one in Hamburg called "Die hälfte des Himmels" and it's located very close to the Uni on SchlüterstraSe 79, 2000 Hamburg 13.

If anyone is interested in ordering the very good Frauenkalender '78, which is put out by Renate Bookhagen, Gudula Lorez, Ursula Scheu and Alice Schwarzer, it can be purchased at the following address: Frauehkalender Selbstverlag/ c/o Ursula Scheu, Breitenbachplatz 17, 1000 Berlin 33.

I think it costs between DM 6 and DM 8. It's usually available in just about every bookstore near an Uni.

Thanks again for a really interesting Women in German.

Sincerely, Hazel Blumberg

REVIEWS:

Women and the Fantastic in Recent GDR Literature:
The Case of Irmtraud Morgner

Leben and Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz with its 700 pages is the most complex and ambitious piece of writing by a woman about women to come out of the GDR thus far. It might be called a feminist's Dr. Faustus, not only because of its bold use ofmontage technique, but also because of the striking parallels between the relationship of Laura and Beatriz in this work (their secret identity) and that of Adrian Leverkühn and Serenus Zeitblom in Mann's novel. Beatriz' "Gute Botschaft der Valeska" has the same key significance at the end of the novel as does Leverkühn's final composition. The paper analyzes how Morgner has tried to respond to the historical fact of women's exclusion from history by creating a fantastic situation in which an historically verifiable woman troubador, who found life unbearable in male-dominated medieval society, returns to life during the Paris May revolution of 1968 and encounters the disappointing reality of a con­temporary woman's life in the GDR, "das gelobte Land". Morgner*s use of the fantastic is shown as her attempt to reverse the historical expropriation of women by recreating at least a legendary "history", much of it in a humorous vein. The novel contains a vast amount of commentary on questions of literary theory and women's emancipation, which is not equated with her integration into the production process. But despite technical similarities, Mbxper's novel differs from Mann's Dr. Faustus in an important and conscious way; whereas Mann's polished style and tightly integrated work was the product of carefully regulated working habits, protected by a devoted wife and the life style of the privileged class, Moaner has deliberately transformed the problems faced by a woman writer who does not nave a wife into a literary principle which frees women from having to write according to forms which men have developed through the centuries; "Frauen können diese Formen entwickeln , , , das verlangt Arbeit von Generationen. . . . Der Anfang ist notwendigerweise experimentell. Die Form muß den Proceß der Wahrheitsfindung mit zeigen können."

Patricia Herminghouse
Washington University

What distinguishes Irmtraud Morgner from GDR women writers like Kirsch, Wolf, and Reimann is the theoretical, polemical nature of her work and her attempt at such a global analysis as is her montage-Roman: Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz. Leben und Abenteuer is a wonderfully imaginative and challenging attempt to analyze literately the introduction of women as subjects of history. Both in its construction and its affect on the reader, Morgner’s work achieves precisely that dynamic relationship between concrete reality and subjective ideal so vital to the struggle of the human subject to become an agent of change. Morgner places her challenge to centuries of objectification and exploitation in an historical context and it is her historical perspective that provides the source of her humor and optimism. Her view of the relationship between the problems of women and larger developments in society is perhaps most accessible in her own words, taken from an interview with Karin Huffzky of the Federal Republic:

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"Ich glaube, daß die Menschwerdung der Frau als gesellschaftlichfc- Veränderung erst nach der sozialistischen Revolution wirklich be­ginnen kann. Und zwar nicht automatisch. Mit der Abschaffung der Ausbeutung des Menschendurch den 'Menschen‘ ist nicht automatisch die Ausbeutung der Frau durch den 'Menschen' abgeschafft. ..."

The underlying compositional element is the legend which takes shape around the life, the adventures and the death of Beatriz. Where the legendary, the mytho­logical, the utopian meet the complex conditions of change as they exist in reality, the central dialectic of the novel begins to develop. Beatrix' idealism and fanatical zeal are relativized through her Spielfrau Laura who represents the more realistic, the more historically conscious side of what will become one single character with the death of Beatriz near the end of the novel. Through Laura's modifications of Beatriz' vision, as well as through those of numerous other episodes and characters from GDR life, the social process through which change occurs becomes visible, and the fantastic, the vision that Beatriz has introduced has informed GDR reality with a refusal to accept the present as un­alterable. Therein lies the meaning of positive subjectivity for Morgner.

Morgner approaches personality and emancipation through productivity and work in the broadest sense. It is in the juxtaposition of different time periods and different economic systems that she lends the concept of work and its impact on the role of women a sense of process. Always aware of the progress made toward full equality in the GDR, Morgner establishes a context for immediate reality, presenting it as a process out of a past that must be reconstructed for women's appropriation of their own history and sexuality, and in relation to a future that will have to bring new possibilities for human relationships and productivity through technology and through what she calls the 'emancipation of the erotic.'

Leben und Abenteuer is an important work for women in the West as well as for the GDR.

Biddy Martin
University of Wisconsin

The following is a summary submitted by Susan Cocalis of her talk at the Amherst conference:

Recently the complaint has been voiced that women shouldn't criticize male authors for depicting the world "as it is/was," i.e., for representing a patriarchal society 'realistically.' By demanding such "positive models" from art, feminist critics would be in danger either of becoming "ahistorical" or of succumbing to the alleged aesthetic fallacies of "socialist realism" with its idealized "implau­sible" workers. One should not expect writers of past generations to be equipped with today's consciousness of a woman's rights. Thus the traditional postulates

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Wahrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit would seem to perpetuate the literary stero-types of “masculine” and "feminine” as something "natural.” Even socially cri­tical authors, who usually expose such natural phenomena as ideological camouflage for changeable economic relationships, allow their utopian visions to be built upon the alledgedly solid foundations of "the eternally feminine." The possibility of a relativistic view of reality in this situation does not seem to enter the discussion as relevant.

However the comparison of an author like Marie-Luise Fleifier to some of her male contemporaries like Brecht or the German Expressionist writers would seem to justify a feminist criticism of the latter. Fleißer was neither a feminist, nor did she ever question the basic premises of the patriarchal society of her native Ingolstadt. She only wanted to render that society realistically in her works, i.e., as she experienced it in terms of "relationships between men and women." Nevertheless, her version of reality differs markedly from that of her male counterparts, especially in her dramas Fegefeuer in Ingolstadt (1924) and Pionere in Ingolstadt (1927), insofar as she demonstrates how the "eternally feminine characteristics like "sensibility," "compassion," and "passivity" can be attenuated through the inhumane relationships of production. If men continue to treat women as (sex) objects, they shouldn't be surprised when women react to them in an "inhuman" or brutal manner. As such, they become incapable of comforting men and the entire premise of an Erlösung durch das Weib or a "feminine socialism" (d la Marcuse) is negated. Fleißer's reality is trostlos; men and women need relationships, but any attempt at communication between the sexes is futile. Both sexes seem to be condemned to a "purgatory" with no prospect of redemption.

Because Fleißer adheres to a strict canon of realism or probability she disappears totally behind her figures and never criticizes the patriarchal world directly. However, her dramas offer us a measuring stick with which we can evaluate analo­gous relationships in plays be male authors. By comparing Fleifiers works to dramas of German Naturalism or Expressionism, we can identify hypothetical, idealistic, or utopian plot-resolutions, even in cases where the authors purport to be rendering a given social or ontological reality. In this respect FleiBer may not present us with a feminist alternative to a patriarchal society, but at least she spares ns the usual ph/fallacious utopian illusions.

Susan Cocalis