Motherhood and the "New Woman": Vicki Baum's stud. chem. Helene Willfüer and Irmgard Keun's Gilgi-eine von uns

Abstract

The article situates Vicki Baum's stud. chem. Helene Willfüer (1926) and Irmgard Keun's Gilgi—eine von uns (1931) in the gendered political and cultural discourses of the inter-war years. The protagonists of both texts embody a new idealized female type: the rationalized, desexualized, yet compassionate worker of the modern age. By advocating this reconfiguration of the "New Woman" into the "New Mother," both texts participate in the adaption of an essentialist femininity to a cult of rationalization that supported patriarchal and capitalist structures, preparing the ground for the backlash against women in 1933. (KvA)