Raps Across The Knuckles: The Extension Of War Culture By Radical Nationalist Women Journalists In Post-1918 Germany

Abstract

[ Beginning in April 1920, various German citizens' organisations, encouraged by their government, launched a campaign against France's stationing of colonial African soldiers in its zone of the German Rhineland. The goal of the drive – known as the or Black campaign – appeared to be to rid the area of African soldiers, the crusaders clearly wanted bolder outcomes. The Rhineland Horror campaign played upon existing discourses of occupation that used the trope of roving, hyper-sexualised soldiers raping vulnerable women to protest military occupations raising the stakes even higher because of whites' fears of African men's supposed overpowering lust. The most trenchant critique of the Rhineland Horror campaign came from a German feminist, Lilli Jannasch, who during the war had acted as secretary of the most radical bourgeois pacifist organisation in Germany, the Bund Neues Vaterland. Keywords:Germany; Rhineland Horror campaign , This chapter gives an account of the role played by organised women and female activists in the aftermath of war, and addresses the question identified by Joan Scott in her essay for the seminal volume Behind the Lines (1987), asking not simply what impact the war had on these individuals and groups and how they themselves influenced events, but what our knowledge and understanding of these women's aims and strategies tell us about the politics of war and the transition to peace. The author identifies four key themes which run through the essays: commemoration of the war; the renegotiation of gender roles in the war's immediate aftermath; women's suffrage and political rights; and women's contribution to rebuilding shattered communities and creating new visions of peace in the years 1918 to 1923. Keywords:female activists; Joan Scott; political rights; women's contribution ]