The political role of Catholic women during the Weimar Republic, 1918--1933

In 1918, all adult citizens of Germany, women and men, were given full political rights. In the 1918 elections, women not only voted but were put up for election and won seats in the National Assembly. Of the forty-one women who served in that parliament, six represented the Catholic Center party. In subsequent elections, four of them returned to parliament. Who these women were, how they came to be chosen to run for office, and what they did with their political role are the questions considered here.;The story of these women is combined with a discussion of the history of the Weimar Republic and the development of state-sponsored social welfare. Once given the right to political participation, women were commonly relegated to domestic affairs committees. Much of social welfare and women's studies historiography downplays, this as the victory of male hegemony which kept women from the more powerful worlds of finance, diplomacy, or defense. This study contends that domestic politics, and women's role in it, were critical to the well-being of the modern state.;This dissertation focuses on the social and political nature of the women of the Center party. Hedwig Dransfeld, Agnes Neuhaus, Christine Teusch, Helene Weber, and others were solidly middle class and moderate in their political leanings but they represented an essentially conservative group: German Catholics. The concept of political Catholicism was grounded in the social mission of the Church and its perceived obligations for the working classes and the unprotected in society. The women of the Center had developed their view of social politics in social welfare and education careers before and during the war. When they gained office, they sought to balance the social mission ideal with the political goals of the party. This study questions how liberal these women might have wanted to be versus the constraints of political reality by comparing the actions of the women in parliament with how they presented that work in journal articles and election pamphlets. This study shows that, within the limits of their society and religion, these women were active, effective participants in the political process.