“Deutschland ist auch Frauensache”. NPD-Frauen im Kampf für Volk und Familie 1964–2020

Abstract

In this enlightening and carefully researched book, Valérie Dubslaff explores the history of the right-wing extremist Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschland (NPD) with a focus on its female members and officials. Dubslaff offers a unique insight into the various ways in which women of different generations have actively influenced the NPD’s political and ideological development during the last six decades. Throughout the book, the author presents a thorough analysis, based on an impressive number of primary sources, ranging from internal party documents, manuscripts and letters, through party programmes, leaflets, contributions in the NPD’s party newspaper, and records of right-wing extremist networks and actors in antifascist archives, to content published on NPD websites or posted on social media. Moreover, by continuously reflecting on the historical and socio-political context of the NPD women’s manoeuvring, Dubslaff makes a remarkably insightful contribution to the exploration of the postwar Federal Republic’s gender history. In the first section, ‘Women in the NPD’s Heyday (1964–1969)’, the author focuses on the role the NPD’s (few) female members played in the consolidation and foundation of the party in 1965 as well as during the party’s most successful years in the late 1960s. The NPD’s founding mothers are presented as women from the ‘Experience Generation’ (Erlebnisgeneration), who had actively supported the National Socialist regime, refused to accept the FRG’s postwar order and continued their ideological and political engagement in the NPD. Here, Dubslaff explores how the three most prominent female members strove for more influence and actively contributed to the elaboration of ideological standpoints. Among other examples, in the field of family and social policy, they promoted an ideal of the German family strongly reminiscent of the Nazi regime’s ideology. Overall, however, Dubslaff describes the political status of women in the male-dominated NPD as characterized by a double marginalization. On the one hand, they were relegated to a subordinate role in the patriarchally structured NPD, while on the other, due to their Nazi past, NPD women could not escape the party’s overall pariah status in the FRG’s political system, despite the attempt to present themselves as a constructive and constitutional opposition.