How Long Did ‘Women’s Finest Hour’ Last?

Abstract

Germans apparently need fixed anniversaries to make them aware of their own history. Fifty years after the end of the war we experienced an unprecedented media culture of memory. During 1995 scarcely a day went by on which newspapers and illustrated magazines, fiction and documentary films, talk shows and interviews did not present the public with ‘authentic’ reports on the final days of the war and first days of peace. This approach to history favours snapshots of individual feelings and experiences; there is an eagerness to grasp, perhaps for the last time, the opportunity to capture the immediate experience of those days. The commentaries on this great chorus of eyewitness accounts also speak often of ‘women’s finest hour’ (Stunde der Frauen), which had supposedly dawned. One searches in vain, however, for reflections on the possible long-term consequences of this exceptional situation. Why is this so? Are people reluctant to see them, or are they so marginal as to be invisible? Should we take the phrase ‘women’s finest hour’ literally, and thus view women’s ‘leading role’ as a merely temporary one that left no traces because the brief inversion of traditional role patterns was quickly reversed again?KeywordsLabour MarketMale OccupationEmployment OfficeGerman WomanExceptional SituationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.