Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany: Maternalism, Eugenics, and Professional Identity

by Melissa Kravetz

Overview

Examining how German women physicians gained a foothold in the medical profession during the Weimar and Nazi periods, Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany reveals the continuity in rhetoric, strategy, and tactics of female doctors who worked under both regimes. Melissa Kravetz explains how and why women occupied particular fields within the medical profession, how they presented themselves in their professional writing, and how they reconciled their medical perspectives with their views of the Weimar and later the Nazi state.

Focusing primarily on those women who were members of the Bund Deutscher Ärztinnen (League of German Female Physicians or BDÄ), this study shows that female physicians used maternalist and, to a lesser extent, eugenic arguments to make a case for their presence in particular medical spaces. They emphasized gender difference to claim that they were better suited than male practitioners to care for women and children in a range of new medical spaces. During the Weimar Republic, they laid claim to marriage counselling centres, school health reform, and the movements against alcoholism, venereal disease, and prostitution. In the Nazi period, they emphasized their importance to the Bund Deutscher Mädels (League of German Girls), the Reichsmütterdienst (Reich Mothers’ Service), and breast milk collection efforts. Women doctors also tried to instil middle-class values into their working-class patients while fashioning themselves as advocates for lower-class women.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487556471
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	09/27/2023
Series:	German and European Studies
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Melissa Kravetz is an associate professor of history and co-chair of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Longwood University.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Promoting Marriage, Motherhood, Eugenics, and Comprehensive Healthcare in Marriage Counselling Centres

2. Preparing Girls for Motherhood: School Doctors, Youth Welfare, and the Reform of Girls’ Physical Education

3. Fighting the Vices That Threatened Women and Children: Sex, Alcohol, and Disease

4. Building the Volksgemeinschaft and Supporting Racial Hygiene in the Bund Deutscher Mädel and Reichsmütterdienst

5. Advocating Healthy Infant Nutrition Practices through Breast Milk Collection: Maternal Guardians on the Home Front

Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Helen Boak

"Bringing to light the ways in which women doctors in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany secured professional spaces for themselves, Melissa Kravetz has expertly mined archival resources not previously well trawled."

Editorial Reviews

“Tracing an important story of middle-class women's agency, Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany serves to further complicate our historical narratives about gender, class, and the relationships between public health and eugenics.”

Canadian Journal of History - Joanne Woiak

"Inspires the reader to consider what these women were willing to compromise in order to continue doing what they loved, felt called to do, and thought necessary for their patients and themselves. This volume deserves to be widely read and cited; it could be assigned to both upper-level undergraduate and graduate students."

Central European History - Kristen Ann Ehrenberger

“Kravetz's book marks a very significant, fresh intervention into scholarly debates over continuity and realignment in public health discourse from Weimar to National Socialism and over women's complicity in the Nazi dictatorship, respectively. It is highly relevant to the comparative study of feminism, medicine, and the welfare state, and it deserves a wide readership. Kravetz's clear and engaging style and her thoughtful presentation of intriguing archival materials make the book eminently suitable for the purposes of undergraduate and graduate instruction.”

American Historical Review - Julia Roos

“Although women came late to the study of medicine in Germany in the early twentieth century, there followed a massive influx of women into the medical profession in the inter-war period. Melissa Kravetz considers this wider process by focusing on women in paediatrics and infant welfare, one of the specialisms which was more open to women.”

English Historical Review - Paul Weindling

“Kravetz has created a well-researched narrative of female medical practitioners in Weimar and Nazi Germany, which is sure to spark more interest in the gendered experience of National Socialism in medicine. This text provides vivid and rich examples of female physicians' roles in Weimar and Nazi Germany, while also contributing to the broader debate about medicine from democracy to autocracy. It is sure to inspire more historians to weigh in on this issue, on both sides of the change and continuity debate.”

Canadian Bulletin of Medical History - Samantha L. Clarke

"Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany is an original and thoughtful study that analyses the experience of women doctors to ask fundamental questions about the opportunities and limits of women's careers and agency in two very different political systems. In doing so, she looks at the ways in which the activities of women doctors both were shaped by and transformed important aspects of German biopolitics, which Kravetz understands as the processes of controlling both individual bodies and the collective body for the purposes of the state."

Review in German History - Michael Hau

"Apart from bringing to light the history of women doctors in Germany in this period through the vivid portrayal of a number of key individuals, the book's main strength is Kravetz's exhaustive use of archival sources, making German-language material accessible for English-speaking readers. This book will be of interest to those working at the university level in the history of medicine, and especially in connection with women physicians and their role in the field of public health, as well as in the history of gender, women, the family and education in early twentieth century Germany."

Scientia Canadensis - C. Elizabeth Koester

"Inspires the reader to consider what these women were willing to compromise in order to continue doing what they loved, felt called to do, and thought necessary for their patients and themselves. This volume deserves to be widely read and cited; it could be assigned to both upper-level undergraduate and graduate students."

—Kristen Ann Ehrenberger, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Central European History

" Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany is an original and thoughtful study that analyses the experience of women doctors to ask fundamental questions about the opportunities and limits of women’s careers and agency in two very different political systems. In doing so, she looks at the ways in which the activities of women doctors both were shaped by and transformed important aspects of German biopolitics, which Kravetz understands as the processes of controlling both individual bodies and the collective body for the purposes of the state."

—Michael Hau, Monash University, Review in German History

"Apart from bringing to light the history of women doctors in Germany in this period through the vivid portrayal of a number of key individuals, the book’s main strength is Kravetz’s exhaustive use of archival sources, making German-language material accessible for English-speaking readers. This book will be of interest to those working at the university level in the history of medicine, and especially in connection with women physicians and their role in the field of public health, as well as in the history of gender, women, the family and education in early twentieth century Germany."

—C. Elizabeth Koester, University of Toronto, Scientia Canadensis
"Kravetz’s book marks a very significant, fresh intervention into scholarly debates over continuity and realignment in public health discourse from Weimar to National Socialism and over women’s complicity in the Nazi dictatorship, respectively. It is highly relevant to the comparative study of feminism, medicine, and the welfare state, and it deserves a wide readership. Kravetz’s clear and engaging style and her thoughtful presentation of intriguing archival materials make the book eminently suitable for the purposes of undergraduate and graduate instruction."—Julia Roos, Indiana University Bloomington, American Historical Review
"Although women came late to the study of medicine in Germany in the early twentieth century, there followed a massive influx of women into the medical profession in the inter-war period. Melissa Kravetz considers this wider process by focusing on women in paediatrics and infant welfare, one of the specialisms which was more open to women."—Paul Weindling, English Historical Review
"Kravetz has created a well-researched narrative of female medical practitioners in Weimar and Nazi Germany, which is sure to spark more interest in the gendered experience of National Socialism in medicine. This text provides vivid and rich examples of female physicians’ roles in Weimar and Nazi Germany, while also contributing to the broader debate about medicine from democracy to autocracy. It is sure to inspire more historians to weigh in on this issue, on both sides of the change and continuity debate."—Samantha L. Clarke, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History
"Tracing an important story of middle-class women’s agency, Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany serves to further complicate our historical narratives about gender, class, and the relationships between public health and eugenics."—Joanne Woiak, Canadian Journal of History

"Bringing to light the ways in which women doctors in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany secured professional spaces for themselves, Melissa Kravetz has expertly mined archival resources not previously well trawled."

—Helen Boak, Department of History, University of Hertfordshire

From the Publisher