Abstract
This article analyses the portrayal of the impact of capitalism on the working-class family and the promotion of the communist movement as a form of surrogate family in Maria Leitner’s Mädchen mit drei Namen (1932) and Hermynia Zur Mühlen’s Lina: Erzählung aus dem Leben eines Dienstmädchens (1924). Reading these two Weimar-era texts as works of Gebrauchsliteratur, which seek to promote communism to a young female readership, I argue that, despite urging greater female participation in the male-dominated sphere of left-wing political action, Leitner and Zur Mühlen rely on normative ideas about gender to advocate political engagement to a demographic assumed to be politically naïve or disinterested. With reference to Weimar-era cultural discourses and strategies of the communist movement, I contest that both novellas are contradictory in their claim to represent a radically progressive political position while simultaneously failing to challenge fundamentally conservative gender norms.
Highlights
Which books should we give our children? This question was posed in the communist daily newspaper Berlin am Morgen in 1931 and exemplifies attempts by the far left in Weimar Germany to create and promote a cultural output that would stimulate support for its political message
While young women were not typically the target readership of communist fiction during the Weimar era, and both texts should be viewed as attempting a novel strategy, their reliance on normative ideas of gender locates these novellas within a wider body of propaganda from across the political spectrum that appealed to women to help save the family unit
As examples of Gebrauchsliteratur aimed at a young female readership, Leitner’s Mädchen mit drei Namen and Zur Mühlen’s Lina: Erzählung aus dem Leben eines Dienstmädchens seek to present relatable characters and events, which would be recognizable to their readers, and promote women’s political engagement in terms which are understandable and appealing
Summary
Which books should we give our children? This question was posed in the communist daily newspaper Berlin am Morgen in 1931 and exemplifies attempts by the far left in Weimar Germany to create and promote a cultural output that would stimulate support for its political message. Situating the novellas in the context of Weimar-era political writing, I analyse the strategies adopted to encourage female left-wing political engagement, foregrounding the portrayal of the threat posed to working-class families by capitalist social structures and the presentation of the communist movement as a form of surrogate family.
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