Limited Understanding of Women's Sexuality during the Weimar Republic: How that affected

The New Woman and the Femme Fatale

The concept of The New Woman came into existence during the late nineteenth century,
or the late Victorian years. On the one hand, she was a result of the first blushes of the women's
movement. On the other hand, there were political and historical moments that brought her into
being. It could also be argued that a push for equality between the sexes was inevitable, along
with urbanization and the creation of a metropolis. In this essay I argue that discourses
surrounding women in the Weimar Republic were based on limited knowledge of women's
sexuality by what were considered the experts at that time. Yet the limited understanding of
women's psychology and sexuality during the Weimar Republic didn't seem to slow the
denigration of The New Woman and her attempts at autonomy. The creation of the Femme
Fatale is an example of how the oversimplification and the general misunderstanding of women's
psychology and sexuality led to problematic beliefs that permeated the republic, and in some
ways, continue to reverberate in our more modern society.
Detractors of The New Woman defined her as "a 'mannish', overeducated bore" at best,
and a "bad mother...lacking in all the attributes usually associated with the ideal Victorian
woman, [including] a penchant for self-sacrifice, a talent for home-making, and a willingness to
defer to men," at worst.1 They went so far, as in Character Note: The New Woman, written in
1894, to describe The New Woman as an imposter who puts on intellectual airs but in the end is
revealed to be the same woman she has always been on the inside--vapid, dull, and false, who

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!Sally!Ledger!and!Roger,!"The!New!Woman,"!!in!The$Fin$de$Siecle:$A$Reader$in$Cultural$History$c.$1880<1900!
(Oxford:!Oxford!University!Press,!2000),!75.!
!

simply is acting the new role--the role of The New Woman as opposed to the role of the
Victorian woman she once played. As Character Note, published in Cornhill Magazine,
purports, women's mission is no higher than having children and raising them.2 In contrast,
supporters of the development of The New Woman defined her as an "intelligent, sensitive, and
sexually healthy woman who often had ambitions beyond motherhood."3
It is worth noting that both supporters and detractors agreed on certain issues, such as
broader education and cultural access for The New Woman.4 As a result of this more-or-less
agreed-upon standard, women began to be allowed to attend universities in 1908.5 Different
factions of the women's movement, namely the bourgeoisie versus the socialists, disagreed on
issues such as sexual freedom, abortion, and women's suffrage. Issues such as can be found in
the 1889 document, 'An Appeal against Female Suffrage," written by Ms. Humphry Ward et al.
issues.6
Changing ideas about marriage accompanied the development of The New Woman.
Mona Caird, author of Marriage, published in 1888, expressed a desire to see women as
independent of men economically.7 She argued that this would make for a more equal, thus more

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!Ibid.,!83.!

!Ibid.,!76.!!
!Ibid.!

!Jay!Kaes!and!Dimendberg,!"The!Rise!of!the!New!Woman,"!in!The$Weimar$Republic$Sourcebook!(Berkeley:!
University!of!California!Press,!1994),!195.!
!
6
!Ledger,!"The!New!Woman,"!76.!
!
7
!Ledger,!"The!New!Woman,"!79.!
!

mutually satisfying marriage. Her ideal included that married women wanted to, and were
perfectly capable of, being viewed as comrades and fellow workers in a marriage bond.8
Outside of The New Woman and educated women taking a stand for themselves as
capable of being equal to men, little was known about women's nature in terms of psychology
and popular understanding.9 It is safe to say that most of the supporters of The New Woman
were women, who, merely by virtue of being women, understood what it meant to be a woman
more so than the general public or even the educated elite. Those in favor of equality of the sexes
argued that "human nature has apparently limitless adaptability," thus, although women's roles
had been limited up to this period in history, it would be unwise to argue that women were only
capable of maintaining that status quo.10
Even Georges Simmel, the noteworthy German sociologist and philosopher and author of
the well received essay The Metropolis and Mental life, illustrates one of these basic
misunderstandings of women's sexuality with his statement that "women contribute their entire
selves [to sex], whereas the man only contributes part of his personality."11 It is generalizations
of both genders like this one that contributed to so much resistance to the development of The
New Woman and the strived-for equality of the sexes. Misunderstandings such as these not only
led to resistance to The New Woman, but also to more problematic scenarios that extended all
the way to politics and public policy.12 Although, it could be expected that viewing women's
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8

!Ibid.!
Ibid.,!77.!!

10

!Ibid.!

11

!Dorothy!Rowe,!"Sexuality!and!the!City!in!Imperial!Berlin,"!in!Representing$Berlin:$Sexuality$and$the$City$in$
Imperial$and$Weimar$Germany$(Burlington:!Ashgate!Publishing!Limited,!2003),!85.!
!
12
!Kaes,!195;!Rowe,!83.!!
!

sexuality as equivalent to that of a man's, that a woman could also have sex and only contribute
only part of herself, would have been viewed as a symptom of urbanization and the
masculinization of women. Thus, this more equal view of women's sexuality would be colored
with a negative stereotype due to the simple lack of scientific understanding of women's
sexuality and psychology.13 On the other hand, if it could be interpreted that a man can also give
all of himself during sex like a woman, it would again be viewed in the oversimplified way that
narrow understandings of sexuality were viewed at that time, which characterized femininity as
a symptom of urbanization and a social ill.14 Because, as I will touch on later in this essay, many
social ills and negative symptoms of urbanization will be linked to, and affectively blamed on,
women.
Sigmund Freud was one of the most well-known and respected psychoanalysts of his
time. Yet even he purported to know little to nothing about women's psychology and sexuality.15
Given this admission, an encyclopedia such as Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis should
have been seen as a grossly oversimplified conjecture.16 Yet it was not. It was taken as an
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13

Instances!of!this!can!be!found!in!multiple!sources.!Hales!cites!Weimar!criminologist!Erich!Wulffen's!conclusion!
that!"crime!is!a!form!of!sexual!release!for!women."!!Barbara!Hales,!"Projecting!Trauma:!The!Femme!Fatale!in!
Weimar!and!Hollywood!Film!Noir,"!Women$in$German$Yearbook,$no.!23!(2007):!228,!accessed!June!17,!2015,!
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.libproxy.utdallas.edu/ehost;!Ledger,!"The!New!Woman,"!77;!Beth!Irwin!Lewis,!
"Lustmord:!Inside!the!Windows!of!the!Metropolis,!in!Berlin:$Culture$and$Metropolis!ed.!Heidrun!Suhr!(University!of!
Minnesota!Press:!1990),!115;!Mihaela!Petrescu,!!"Domesticating!the!Vamp:!Jazz!and!the!Dance!Melodrama!in!
Weimar!Cinema,"!Seminar<Journal$of$Germanic$Studies,!46:!no.!3!(2010):!285.!Accessed!June!17,!2015.!
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.libproxy.utdallas.edu/ehost/detail;!Rowe,!88.!!
!
14
!KrafftcEbings!links!"effeminacy"!to!moral!decadence,!excess,!and!undermining!the!foundation!of!society!in!Rowe,!
89.!!
!
15
!Kendra!Cherry,!"Freud!and!Women:!Freud's!Perspective!on!Women,"!About!Education,!2015,!accessed!June!17,!
2015,!http://psychology.about.com/od/sigmundfreud/p/freud_women.htm;!Peter!Gay,!"Young!Dr!Freud:!A!Film!by!
David!Grubin.!Perspectives:!Women."!PBS.org,!2002,!accessed!June!17,!2015,!
http://www.pbs.org/youngdrfreud/pages/perspectives_women.htm;!Kylie!McFatridge,!" Sigmund!Freud!(1856c
1939),"!Psychological!History!of!Women,!accessed!June!17,!2015,!
http://psychistofwomen.umwblogs.org/sexuality/preckinsey/freud/).!!!!
!
16
!!Rowe,!89.!!

authority on all variations of sexuality, including what would be considered acceptable and
unacceptable, or asocial, sexual behavior.17 These generalizations and gross misunderstandings
of women's nature and sexuality in general helped contribute to the difficulty The New Woman
encountered in trying to achieve equality of the sexes. These generalizations also led to
numerous interpretations in art and film that still find implications in today's society. And in the
case of the Weimar Republic, at times these generalizations could lead to more malicious
demonstrations in resistance to The New Woman and equality of the sexes.
To begin with the actual formation of The New Woman, the creation of a metropolis and
urbanization in general created a lot of social anxiety. Most of this anxiety pertained to changes
in the social and sexual standards that society was accustomed to living by during the Victorian
years. Not coincidentally, these social and sexual changes often had to do with women, or what
was perceived at times as the growing autonomy of women and viewed at other times as a
feminization of society. In reference to Hans Ostwald's 1905-1908 serial publication Big City
Documents, Dorothy Rowe describes "the prevalence of prostitutes in Imperial Germany coupled
with the increasingly vociferous demands of the German Women's Movement...all [served] to
establish a discourse of female sexuality during this period as one in which women in the city are
situated as both threatening and deviant."18 Thus, women are connected with urbanization right
away, and women in the city are characterized as aberrant or malformed.
Visibility of prostitution should be conceived as an urban or social problem, not one
exclusively limited to the female sex. Yet, as it was a majority of women who were involved in
the sex trade, it was characterized as a female problem. This rhetoric completely ignores the
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!

17

!Ibid.!

!!

18

!!Ibid.,!81.!!

actual criminal implications in prostitution or sex trafficking, also known as white slavery at that
time. In W.T. Stead's 1885 article The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon he goes on to
document in detail "the sale and purchase and violation of children, the procuration of virgins,
the entrapping and ruin of women, the international slave trade in girls, [and] attrocities,
brutalities, and unnatural crimes" largely perpetrated by men.19 How is prostitution classified as
characteristic of a women's problem, or a problem of The New Woman when, clearly, it is not
only the male demand that drives the prostitution industry, but largely men who are the
perpetrators of the aspect of the trade that is criminal and akin to slavery?
The threat of prostitution being associated with the problem of the working-class woman
is far off the mark. The discussions on female sexuality (and how it is dubiously related to
prostitution) are so rife with contradictions that it is a wonder any intellectual was able to take
them seriously. On the one hand, women's sexuality is described in terms of Victorian standards,
which has female sexuality characterized as partially if not wholly nonexistent, as her only drive
can be that of reproduction and child-rearing.20 The Victorian woman's sexuality was
characterized as passive, and thus absent of any appetite for sensuality or pleasure. Yet, on the
other hand, women of the urban sphere, particularly The New Woman, is capable of such
excesses of sexual appetite that she is capable of becoming a primitive criminal, driven by her
out-of-control sexuality.21 It seems obvious to a modern interpreter of these texts that the
likelihood of the truth lying within either extreme is limited. Yet these were the arguments
contemporary to the time of The New Woman in Weimar Germany. It is no wonder that an urban
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19

!Sally!Ledger!and!Roger!Luckhurst,!"Outcast!London,"!!in!The$Fin$de$Siecle:$A$Reader$in$Cultural$History$c.$1880<
1900!(Oxford:!Oxford!University!Press,!2000),!35.!
!
20
!!Ledger,!"The!New!Woman,"!76.!!
!
21
!!Hales,!228;!Petrescu,!285.!!

discourse would be parallel to discussions on sexuality, consumer capitalism, and industrial

modernity.22 Prostitution is an issue that finds itself at the intersection of all three. What makes
less logical sense is why and how these arguments were so easily linked to and blamed on
women, and how such contrasting views of women's sexuality were considered viable or
intellectually satisfying. Yet when these arguments are considered in the light of social control,
their obviously contradictory nature becomes more clearly understandable.
According to Rowe, equal rights were seen as a threat to bourgeois male cultural
authority.23 Thus, the bourgeoisie wanted to strictly control prostitution, and, though justifiably
unrelated, the sexuality of the general female population as a whole. This desperate need to
control not only the industry of prostitution, but the sexuality of the general female population
understandably led to a reckless interpretation of the psychology of sexuality to the ends of the
subjective control of a population by those already in power. In fact, the dangerous need for the
bourgeoisie to maintain control created a threatening social condition that if a woman found
herself defying those boundaries created by the male bourgeois, the consequences could be as
severe as murder.24
Not surprisingly, in the rhetoric around prostitution we find a continued
misunderstanding of women's sexuality. A physician of the Weimar Republic put it this way,
Anthropological, and especially physiological reasons have rendered man incapable of
reaching woman's high level of chastity...His physiological sexual drive is of a
completely different nature than woman's...For man, the urge towards sexual intercourse
is paramount; for woman, it is the concern for progeny...In the male, the sexual drive
temporarily transcends the sphere of consciousness to become a powerful passion

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22

23

!!Rowe,!82.!!
!Ibid.!!

24

!!Ibid.,!84.!!

dominating conscious though; in the female, it causes a persistent, vague, more or less
pronounced longing soothingly satisfied by love.25
These views on women's sexuality have more to do with the structure of Victorian society than
anything actually based on science or the study of women. With such a distorted view on
women's sexuality such as this one, it is no wonder that prostitution is so vilified in the eyes of
the general public, and that the sexual autonomy of The New Woman is considered just plainly
unacceptable.
It is important in this discussion to touch on some of the historical events that created the
male anxiety that was so eager to criminalize women and femininity in general. According to
Anthony McElligott, "Germany's defeat in 1918 resulted in a crisis of masculinity."26 And Anton
Kaes, "war had placed women in the workplace and opened doors to higher education," women
were voting, as well as becoming members of the Parliament.27 Women's assembly (which it
should be noted was still illegal in the late nineteenth century) and demand for improvements in
the lack of equality of the sexes further added to the crisis of masculinity that men, whom,
heretofore had found themselves in control of all of society as a whole, were experiencing.28
Max Brod in his document Women and the New Objectivity describes this crisis of masculinity
somewhat more delicately and forgivingly. He describes the anxiety felt by men during this time
as naturally coming from their experience at war and how that taught them to mistrust their

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25

!!Julia!Roos,!Weimar$through$the$Lens$of$Gender:$Prostitution$Reform,$Woman's$Emancipation,$and$German$
Democracy,$1919<33!(Ann!Arbor:!The!University!of!Michigan!Press,!2010),!29.!!
!
26
!Anthony!McElligott,!"Masculine!Women!and!Feminine!Men,"!in!The$German$Urban$Experience$1900<1945:$
Modernity$and!Crisis!(London:!Routledge,!2001),!197.!!
!
27
!!Kaes,!195.!!
!
28
!Rowe,!83.!!!
!

emotions.29 Barbara Hales uses psychoanalytical texts of the day to characterize it as a "male
subjectivity crisis."30 Though it is worth noting that regardless of the male anxiety surrounding
equality of the sexes, pay was (and is, even as I write this essay) still not equal, and reproductive
freedoms such as abortion were still illegal.
!

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29

30

!!Kaes,!205.!!
!Hales,!225.!!!