The ‘New Woman’ of Weimar Germany in the imaginations of young Iranian intellectuals

ABSTRACT

By examining the writings of young Iranian students in Berlin, this paper argues that the ‘New Woman’ of Weimar Germany was a transnational creation, imagined as the personification of modernity, and who served as a discursive trope for the aspirations and anxieties of interwar intellectuals in a rapidly changing global order. A key aim of this article is to highlight the simultaneity of changing perspectives toward women among both European and Middle Eastern intellectuals during the interwar period, and to frame their understanding of modernity within discourses of youth and generational conflict. In their push for reform in Iranian society, Iranian intellectuals transformed the Weimar ‘New Woman’ into a symbol for European modernity as a whole. This constructed, archetypal personification of modernity was decontextualized from the contested and politically charged debates in Germany on the rights and roles of women in society.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth
• New Woman
• Germany
• gender
• modernity
• Iran

Introduction

Dazzling lights lit the dance floor. Young men and women mingled, laughed, flirted and danced. The band played boisterously to a spirited crowd. The dance hall was energetic, vibrant and youthful. Berlin, in all its glamour and jubilation was on full display that evening. It was spring 1924. Morteza Moshfeq Kazemi (1902–77), an Iranian political economy student at Friedrich Wilhelm University, had gone out to discover the sights and sounds of Berlin. As he strolled one night through the bustling streets, the fresh spring air waking his senses, he came by a dance hall, one of many that attracted the young, adventure-seeking residents of the Weimar capital. Here, women socialized at ease as they enjoyed the lively atmosphere. Their nails were painted red. Their blonde, black and auburn hair was ‘uncovered, cut short, and styled like men’. Everyone was dressed exquisitely. ‘Beauty and elegance’, was how he described it. The men also had their heads uncovered, their beards were shaven and their clothing was ‘practical’.¹ Suddenly, the orchestra began to play a different tune. Whispers slowly turned to screams as the crowd began to shout, ‘It’s the Shimmy! It’s the Shimmy!’² The music beckoned one to dance. Men jumped out of their seats and without any inhibition took part in the revelry. ‘They are absorbed. Restraint is not possible,’ was how Moshfeq phrased it. A man rushed to a nearby table and tried to nervously ask a lady to dance. Before he could finish his proposal, the young woman put down her glass and grabbed his hand. She placed her hand on his shoulder and they moved to the drumming rhythm. In that moment their chests pulled closer. Their connection was ‘magnetic’. The crowd moved as one. Then suddenly the band exclaimed ‘Yes, we have no bananas!’ Moshfeq knew the phrase, writing that it was a reference to a popular 1923 song written by Frank Silver. American music had sparked a craze in post-war Europe, especially in Germany where the sounds of jazz filled the trendiest dance halls.³ As Moshfeq observed the crowd, the music began to play for a second round. The men, he noted, became more ‘audacious’ and the women less ‘bashful … Love was now truly born’.⁴ In the midst of this gaiety which Moshfeq wondered to be ‘paradise’, he could not help but think if such a state of existence was possible in his homeland of Iran. If a fellow Iranian was seen in a place of dancing, singing and mixed social gathering, would he be excommunicated by the Muslim clerics? No, this was not heaven, Moshfeq thought. It was simply a ‘space of freedom’ where ‘life’ and ‘happiness’ co-existed.⁵

For young Iranian intellectuals, Berlin embodied modernity and the young woman of the Weimar Republic was its symbol.⁶ The passage above was a description by Moshfeq Kazemi on his observations of German life in the post-war years of the Weimar Republic printed in the journal Nameh-ye Farangestan (Letters from Europe) published by a group of Iranian students studying in Berlin.⁷ The capital offered Iranian students a space to be youthful, to observe the lifestyles of German women, and to reflect on questions of Iranian and German modernity. In examining their writings, this article asks, how were questions of German modernity and gender relations viewed by non-European visitors? What do their observations and reflections tell us about the ways in which the German woman became the subject of transnational imaginations and projects of political and social reform beyond the European theatre? What role did discourses of youth play in the ushering of the ‘New Woman’ and projects of national rejuvenation during the interwar period? Through the examination of the student journal Nameh-ye Farangestan (henceforth Farangestan), and the experiences of Iranian students in interwar Germany, this article seeks to understand the contributions of non-Europeans to the construction of the Weimar ‘New Woman’.⁸ It argues that the ‘New Woman’ of the Weimar Republic was the product of male-centric transnational imaginations, one whose body was the site of interwar anxieties and aspirations toward modernity and competing national projects in the post-First World War global order. This study contextualizes Iranian discourses on gender relations within similar discussions taking place in Germany, displaying the simultaneity of encounters, exchanges and understandings of modernity and gender during the interwar period.

Moshfeq Kazemi’s political awakening, prior to his arrival in Berlin, was informed by global events and their impact on Iran. He recounts in his memoirs the witnessing of famine and poverty during his teenage years as a result of the world war, of foreign armies invading Iran and seeing British and Indian colonial troops in the streets of Qazvin, of reading and hearing about the collapse of Tsarist Russia to the Bolshevik Revolution, of the defeats of the Ottoman Empire, the fall of the German Empire, and the expansion of the British Empire through the establishment of the mandate system.⁹ The Anglo-Iranian agreement of 1919, which would have effectively given Britain control over Iran’s finances, came under heavy popular opposition in the streets, with Moshfeq a participant in these protests.¹⁰ It was these experiences, shared between Moshfeq and his generation, that reinforced the necessities of reform for the preservation of national sovereignty, and awakened a younger generation to the importance of political activity. Young reformers such as Moshfeq became convinced that in order to attain national sovereignty, social and political relations needed to be transformed and old customs and traditions eliminated to make way for new ideas and new social relations.

It is important to differentiate between that which Iranian intellectuals held to be modern and what this paper contends to be modernity. Iranian intellectual understanding of modernity encompassed the rapidly developing technologies, political practices, ideologies and cultural mores taking shape in the early twentieth century, particularly in Western Europe. But they also believed that this modernity was not fixed to the West, and it could be attained through the marriage of Eastern and Western practices.¹¹ Yet, more than a set of practices, institutions and technologies constituting the modern, the young Iranian intellectuals examined here also understood modernity as an individual and societal quality, one that was characterized by an openness to new ideas, to innovation and an ability to pivot and change when political, economic or social circumstances demanded. This article’s use of modernity takes this latter definition as its point of departure, understanding modernity as an ‘ethos’ that provoked the continuous ‘refashioning’ of the self in response to global developments, and encounters and exchanges with foreign cultures.¹² Viewed in this way, modernity constituted a process and way of seeing that took place simultaneously across the world, and instilled ‘a mode of vital experience’, in which individuals believed in the transformative potential of the self and the world.¹³ It is this simultaneity of experience toward the rapid political, social, technological and cultural changes which took place during the early twentieth century, especially during the interwar period, that informs this article’s examination of the ‘New Woman’ as envisioned by both Iranian and German intellectuals. Moreover, this ‘simultaneous’ and ‘lateral’ approach to modernity is crucial to understanding the proliferation of images and discourses on the ‘New Woman’ around the world, one that was not fixed to the West, during the interwar period.¹⁴

The first section of this paper will provide a background on the writers of Farangestan, and their composition as a student group. It will also provide an overview of the Persianate networks and publications that contributed to the cosmopolitanism of Weimar Berlin. Farangestan was only one among a myriad of publications produced by Asian, African and Middle Eastern intellectual sojourners to the German capital in the early twentieth century. The second section will contextualize Farangestan’s discussions of youth and gender within Germany’s own discourses about the ‘New Woman’, anxieties about German modernity and the emergence of the American and Soviet ‘New Woman’ as models for the aspirations of German reformers and political groups. The third section will focus on Iranian student encounters with German women and their observations of gender relations in the Weimar Republic. Through personal and cultural contacts, Iranian students fashioned the woman of 1920s Germany as a symbol of European modernity and a model for young Iranian women. The fourth section examines the discursive and conceptual link in Farangestan between youth and modernity, with the former a necessary factor in attaining the latter. Furthermore, it analyses the erasure of women-led projects of reform and national renewal by Farangestan’s male writers. Together, the four sections demonstrate the simultaneity and centrality of discourses on youth and gender reform in projects of nation-building among both Europeans and non-Europeans during the interwar period.

Nameh-ye Farangestan and Persianate cosmopolitanism in Weimar

Farangestan was the organ of an Iranian student association called Hope of Iran (Omid-e Iran). The journal began publication in May 1924 and ran for a total of 12 issues until April 1925. The editor of the journal, Moshfeq Kazemi, was joined by Ali Ardalan, Ahmad Farhad, Hassan Nafisi, Gholam-Hossein Forouhar, Ebrahim Mahdavi, Morteza Yazdi and Parviz Kazemi. Their travel to Germany for education was part of a broader Iranian intellectual gravitation toward Western knowledge as ‘cultural capital’ and as a reference point for legitimizing demands for societal reform.¹⁵ Calls for capitulation to European scientific methods as a counter to ‘religious knowledge’ pervaded Iranian intellectual discourse during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Proponents of such reform became the chief architects of Iranian state-led projects during the interwar period following a coup d’état by the head of the Iranian Cossack Brigade, Reza Khan, later Shah (king) in 1925.¹⁶ With European nations serving as models of modern states and societies, the new regime, during the 1920s and 1930s, accelerated industrial and infrastructural development projects, expanded the educational system, improved health and sanitation services, and strengthened its standing army.¹⁷ Of course, these projects were not without opposition by intellectuals for whom reform along European lines had to adhere to Iranian and Islamic values.¹⁸ Muslim clergy opposed a radical alteration in sociopolitical relations and distributions of power, whether through the secularization of education or the institution of a republic in place of a constitutional monarchy. Recent events in the new Turkish Republic and the elimination of the office of the caliphate by Atatürk in 1924 were viewed with alarm by Iranian clergy for whom sociopolitical reforms augured their potential marginalization in society.¹⁹

The students’ fields of study and their future careers reflected the Iranian government’s increasing need for a technocratic elite to man an expanding bureaucratic apparatus, academic institutions and industrial development projects. Among the students who focused on discussions of women in their articles, Moshfeq entered the Foreign Ministry service upon his return to Iran and would go on to hold positions in a number of government ministries, including a successful career serving as the Iranian ambassador to Sweden and Syria. Ahmad Farhad, meanwhile, studied medicine in Berlin before transferring to Heidelberg for the continuation of his studies. He returned to Iran in 1933, bringing with him the latest radiographic machinery to be used in Iran’s expanding medical industry. In 1940, he obtained the position of professor of physics, medicine and radiology in the Faculty of Medicine in the newly founded University of Tehran. Between 1957–63, Farhad served as the chancellor of the university.²⁰ Unfortunately, there is not much information on Parviz Kazemi beyond his contributions to the student journal. Other than his articles on women’s emancipation, Kazemi focused on the importance of sports to national health, the growing importance of oil in the international economy, and new technological developments in the twentieth century. The other main contributor to questions of gender was Hassan Nafisi. Unlike the other students in the group, he resided in Grenoble, France, studying law and political science and sending his articles to be published in Farangestan.

The Berlin that these students entered had a vibrant recent history of publications by non-European travellers and residents. During the First World War, the German Foreign Office had promoted the ‘program of revolution’.²¹ This programme was designed to incite rebellion in territories under the control or influence of the Entente powers. As such, it invited Asian, African and Middle Eastern activists, intellectuals and politicians residing abroad to Berlin in order to undertake revolutionary activity.²²

Iranian intellectuals led by the constitutional revolutionary Hassan Taqizadeh came to Berlin during the First World War to participate in this programme. They formed the Persian Committee and published pro-German and pro-Ottoman propaganda in their organ, Kaveh (1916–22). The articles of Kaveh praised German culture, its technological development, its virtuous militarism, and nationalism. Such praise, however, was not solely intended to benefit Germany, but concomitant with Iranian nation-building efforts and to incite rebellion against Britain and Russia, two countries that had dominated Iranian affairs since the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Articles on cultural reform, secularism, nationalism and women’s emancipation were published in the journal with contributions also made by leading European orientalists.²³ The successor to this journal was another Berlin-based publication called Iranshahr (1922–27). Its founder, Hossein Kazemzadeh, called for the ethical and moral development of the individual and the nation, and for greater importance to be placed on the role of women as mothers and educators of future generations.²⁴ According to the historian Afshin Marashi, Iranshahr was an important forum for the discussion of reformist and nationalist projects that became central to the state-led projects of the Pahlavi regime.²⁵ Beyond these two influential journals were a couple of other Iranian publications based in Berlin that were founded by Abdulrahman Saif Azad. These were Azadi-ye Sharq (Freedom of the East) (1921), and the illustrated magazine Sanaye ‘Alman va Sharq (German Industry and the East) (1923). In Azadi-ye Sharq, published in several European and Asian languages, images of new women’s fashion populated a number of pages alongside articles on anti-imperialism (Figure 1).²⁶ A Persian publishing house called the Kaviani Press was also founded in Berlin by the Iranian nationalist Mirza Abdul Shakur.²⁷ Along with publishing Farangestan, the Kaviani Press produced works in Arabic, Urdu and European languages during the interwar period.²⁸ Students and travellers from Asia, such as the South Asian Muslim, Abid Husain, and his Urdu-based play Parda-ye Ghaflat (The Veil of Ignorance), used the press to prescribe reform, especially in regard to the role of women in society.²⁹

Figure 1. ‘Das Complet’, Azadi-ye Sharq no. 2 (April 16, 1925), Berlin.

These publications and the arrival of students from Asia, Africa and the Middle East was largely due to the collapse of Germany’s post-war economy and the rapid decline of the Reichsmark. Foreign students travelled to Germany’s metropoles for their affordable housing and the low tuition fees of their academic institutions. Students from the emerging nations of the broken-up Ottoman Empire such as Iraq, Jordan and Syria were joined by Iranian, Egyptian, Turkish, Indian and Chinese students, among others, in using Berlin as a site for the expression of their national aspirations through the formation of political associations and publications.³⁰ But Berlin was not simply a background to these efforts. The contested political debates in the Weimar Republic, especially on questions of women’s roles in post-war Germany, acted as a mirror for the national aspirations of young Iranian intellectuals.

Weimar and the ‘New Woman’

While Europe served as a mirror and model for many Asian, African and Middle Eastern reformers, the United States and the Soviet Union played a similar role for their post-war German counterparts. According to the historian Rüdiger Graf ‘“New Women” were conceptualized as anticipations of the future and thus need to be situated and understood in front of the broader horizon of expectation, in the words of Reinhart Koselleck, of Weimar Germany’.³¹ In this formulation, the ‘New Woman’ came to stand for a ‘new time’, an era ushered by Germany’s defeat in the First World War which opened the possibility of vastly different political, social and economic systems.³² Women’s increased visibility, their increased self-reliance as a result of independent income, and their adoption of new fashion styles emanating from New York and Paris was a lightning rod for post-war anxieties and aspirations over German culture, political structure and international status.

The view taken toward the ‘New Woman’ largely depended on the political orientation of the observer.³³ For conservatives, the ‘New Woman’ represented an attack on traditional values and gender roles in German society. While it has been argued that female employment had already been on the rise during the pre-war period and thus not vastly different during the post-war, the ‘presence of women’ in the public realm, according to Dorothy Rowe, gave the ‘illusion’ that women had gained significantly more economic power and were thus threatening to overturn gender hierarchies.³⁴ Such fears were especially exacerbated by feelings of defeat and emasculation experienced by returning soldiers. According to Birthe Kundrus, ‘popular and political attitudes largely conceived of such transformations as a challenge, even an attack, on male power and male identity’.³⁵ Young women threatened the health of the nation by their unwillingness to settle down, be mothers and procure and educate the future generation of Germany.³⁶

In this atmosphere of social transformation, ‘youth’ (Jugend) became synonymous with the ‘breakdown of traditional ties and social controls’.³⁷ German conservatives largely looked to the United States as the source of modern values and thus the degeneration of German culture. The newfound ability of women to accrue an income of their own during the post-war period provided them with the independence to wear newer fashion styles and attend hot ticket shows in trendy dance halls.³⁸ It also meant they were not dependent on family ties and male relatives to provide for their livelihood or influence how they spent their money. The consumption of American culture was largely blamed on the activities of the young woman, referred to as the ‘vamp’, who flirted in public, flaunted her short hair and danced the night away much like the ones Moshfeq conversely lauded as independent-minded during his late-night urban outings.³⁹ The popularization of movies exported from Hollywood to ever expanding theatres in Europe meant that images of the twentieth-century woman were largely disseminated from the United States. Indeed, movies produced by Hollywood accounted for more than 90% of films shown worldwide. European conservative circles and even musicians condemned the spread of American Jazz as well as the growing popularity of American expats like Josephine Baker who exuded the ‘black primitivism’ and immoral effects of an American modernity.⁴⁰ On the other hand, some intellectuals and economists saw in America a model of efficiency in which women could balance their duties at home and in public in a ‘rationalized’ manner reminiscent of Frederic Taylor and Henry Ford’s assembly line factories.⁴¹ As Atina Grossmann has argued, this dual role that women carried in both the home and the public ensured that they, even more so than men, experienced modernity as a ‘double burden’, both in their domestic duties and as part of the work force.⁴²

German communists and leftists held similar sentiments as conservatives toward the potential threat of a consumerist Americanized German woman. For German communists it was the Soviet Union that provided a model for the ideal woman of the twentieth century. In this imagination, the USSR was a state of the future but located in the present where men and women worked on equal terms.⁴³ For the German feminist and activist Helene Stöcker, the Soviet Union was the closest thing to a ‘sexual “new land” (neuland)’. Sexual liberation and women’s emancipation thus rested on a proletarian revolution.⁴⁴ Such German views were an exaggeration of realities in the Soviet Union. Soviet women’s magazines illustrated both traditional and progressive images of women, promoting both domestic duties as a key part of their societal role and the ‘New Soviet Woman’ as an active member in the workforce and politics alongside her male comrades.⁴⁵ Such magazines also sought to counteract the growing popularity of the ‘flapper’ and her ‘bourgeois’ taste in music, dance, dress and cosmetic products.⁴⁶ With the USSR as a model, German reformers and communists called for legislation that would provide financial security to mothers and their children, as well as decriminalize abortion. The discourse of sexual liberation with the Soviet Union as a model was fodder for conservative circles anxious about Germany’s moral order and the possibility of the ‘communalization of women’.⁴⁷

The United States and the Soviet Union were thus seen as two possible futures for Germany. According to Rüdiger Graf, through the attribution of desired fashion, behaviour and values of women to these two societies, German reformers and political activists grounded their aspirations as possibilities already in existence in the contemporary world.⁴⁸ But as seen above, the two states were also viewed as dystopias, as states whose cultural influence threatened the harmony of gender relations in post-war Germany. In this sense, the reformist, revolutionary and conservative reactions to the ‘New Woman’ were themselves constitutive of twentieth-century modernity, reminiscent of Marshall Berman’s claim that to be modern is to be both ‘revolutionary and conservative: alive to new possibilities for experience and adventure, frightened by the nihilistic depths to which so many modern adventures lead … . We might even say that to be fully modern is to be anti-modern.’⁴⁹

Young Iranian intellectuals and the ‘New Woman’

As an alternative to the concept of utopias – which are places that do not exist in the real world – Michel Foucault proposed the concept of heterotopias. These are ‘real sites’ which can act as a mirror to our own place of existence. They are ‘counter-sites’ which represent ‘perfect other places’ to our own imperfect locale.⁵⁰ Utilizing this concept, Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi has argued that modernity was the product of reciprocal seeing and imaginings between European, Asian and African observers and travellers. In this formulation, modernity was the ‘product of a globalizing network of power and knowledge that informed the heterotopic experiences of crisscrossing peoples and cultures and thus provided multiple scenarios of self-refashioning’.⁵¹ Heterotopias existed everywhere and did not only serve for the acculturation of Western values by non-Europeans. The United States and the Soviet Union served as heterotopias for German intellectuals, reformers, activists and artists. Even the extreme nationalist Nazi Party, during the 1920s and 1930s, continuously looked to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s ‘New Turkey’ for inspiration in politics and projects of reform.⁵² Weimar Germany in turn served as a heterotopia and a mirror for both the reformist aspirations of Iranian students and fears of overt Westernization by Iranian intellectuals.

For Iranian intellectuals, discussions of youth, gender and modernity intersected, for some foreboding a potential dystopic future awaiting a modernized Iran. Much in the same vein as German conservatives, articles in Hossein Kazemzadeh’s Iranshahr viewed women’s virtues as key to Iranian nation-building projects. One article titled ‘Jahan-e Zanan: Zan va ‘Efat’ (‘Women’s World: Woman and Honour’) vested women with the power to rejuvenate or ruin a nation through their virtue. If women, for instance, shunned their duties and undertook immoral acts such as prostitution, they could ‘ruin the lives of youth and poison their spirits’.⁵³ The writer also pointed out that while ‘Europe’ (Farang) is seen as the land of progress, Europeans lagged in the virtue of honour.⁵⁴ Kazemzadeh, the editor of the journal, similarly believed in an inherent female category of virtue which for him was largely limited to a woman’s domestic and reproductive duties. He deplored the possible masculinization of the feminine as a result of an equal division of labour brought on by the wartime necessities of the First World War.⁵⁵ While ‘Western civilization’ (Tamaddon-e Gharb) should be applauded for making education available to women, Kazemzadeh criticized the burden of employment placed on them as a result. The moral and economic destitution of the Weimar Republic’s early years, visible on the streets of Berlin and vividly captured by artists such as Otto Dix and his ghastly Dadaist paintings, surely informed Kazemzadeh’s dystopic perceptions of Western civilization with Weimar Berlin serving as the archetype. Western women, he lamented, were tossed into the rat race of obtaining and maintaining jobs in ‘offices, government ministries, retail shops, and companies’ and to ‘work like animals in factories’ that removed them from their ‘natural duties’ while others who failed to secure employment were forced into homelessness and prostitution.⁵⁶

Kazemzadeh’s subsequent exclamation that ‘women must remain women’ paralleled the push by Weimar politicians for women to remain true to their ‘natural’ duties as mothers and wives by restricting married women’s abilities to find employment in the public sector.⁵⁷ The early Weimar Republic’s affliction with economic collapse, political turmoil and expansion of urban culture, had elicited a sense of disillusionment toward post-war modernity among a section of Weimar politicians and women workers. Numerous newspaper articles and novels by women writers captured their growing dissatisfaction toward the ‘hustle and bustle’ of a working life and disenchantment with independence in the urban space, and instead imagined wishfully for a return to a bucolic world far away from the city.⁵⁸

For Iranian students, however, Berlin was not a dystopia foreboding potential calamities caused by reformed gender relations. Rather, Berlin was seen as a modern European metropolis that allowed for the emergence of the ‘New Woman’ who in turn affirmed the arrival of modernity by her mere existence. Modernity in gender and space were mutually constitutive.

Understandings of gender as experienced in Berlin reinforced already changing perceptions in Iran toward the public and private lives of women. Prior to his departure for Berlin, Moshfeq Kazemi wrote what is considered to be Iran’s first social novel at the age of 18. The 1922 novel, Tehran-e Makhuf (Terrible Tehran), told the story of two women. Mahin, who belonged to an upper-class family and was independent-minded, and ‘Effat, who was brought up in a traditional household, followed the orders of her parents and husband without question but was eventually abandoned to work in a brothel.⁵⁹ Moshfeq utilized the format of the modern novel to portray the marginalization of female agency in Iranian society and the exploitation of women’s bodies in a patriarchal system. By providing a vivid account of the socioeconomic position of women in traditional society, as well as highlighting themes of poverty and the lack of governmental initiatives for improvements in sanitation, health and education, Moshfeq urged his readers to become active initiators of social reform.⁶⁰ Without such sweeping changes in social structures, even characters such as the upper-class Mahin who was educated and independent-minded stood no chance of survival. Moshfeq emphasized this by having Mahin banished from her family due to her pre-marital pregnancy and her eventual death during childbirth as a result of poor sanitation and the outmoded birthing techniques of midwives.⁶¹ Moshfeq’s novel captured what the historian Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet has termed a ‘maternalist ideology’ by early twentieth-century modernists in which the reproductive roles of women became of central concern for the health of the national polity. Such discourses, Kashani-Sabet contends, furthered the cause of women’s emancipation by bringing the subject of sexuality into the realm of public discussion.⁶²

Moshfeq’s subsequent travel to the Weimar Republic and encounters with German women enabled him to convey Weimar Germany as a heterotopia where modernity, symbolized by the ‘New Woman’, had actualized. His memoirs emphasize one relationship as being particularly impactful during his stay in Berlin. Shortly after his arrival in the capital in the autmn of 1922, Moshfeq was persuaded by his friends to switch from studying chemistry to political economy. The change in fields necessitated the improvement of his German language skills. One day, when Moshfeq was meeting a friend near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on the fashionable Kurfürstendamm boulevard, a young woman, who remained nameless in Moshfeq’s memoirs, came up and greeted his friend. When it became obvious that Moshfeq was unable to keep up with the conversation, she insisted on helping him learn German through regular lessons. Lessons began the very next day and continued for months. During this time she also invited Moshfeq and a few of his Iranian friends to her place for the celebration of Christmas and New Year’s Eve.⁶³ When such gatherings ran late into the night, and the visitors missed the last tram to their homes, she allowed them to spend the night.⁶⁴ It was platonic experiences such as these, and the lack of social repercussions for these foreign students or the young woman in question, as well as her independence in having a place of her own, that shaped Moshfeq’s perception of differing attitudes toward women in Iran and Germany. Contrasting the social restrictions facing Mahin and ‘Effat in his novel, Moshfeq in turn viewed Weimar social mores and structures as allowing this young woman to practise her independence. Such experiences, gained through travel, enabled a heterotopic imagining of Germany in the present as a reference point for the possibilities for Iran in the future.

In describing his relationship as one of companionship and mutual affection, Moshfeq’s romance exemplified the call by early twentieth-century Iranian intellectuals for heterosexual ‘romantic love’ rather than temporary marriages, polygamy or pre-arranged marriages.⁶⁵ Such reciprocal companionship depended on the qualities of independence, self-reliance and expression of one’s feelings toward the opposite sex that Moshfeq’s companion exemplified. Importantly, Moshfeq’s descriptions of the relationship were not of sexualized fantasy and erotic encounter. Rather, they showed his admiration for the ability and willingness of German women to voluntarily enter intimate relationships and friendships with men on equal terms.⁶⁶ Such admiration, stood in contrast to the characters of Mahin and ‘Effat in Moshfeq’s novel whose lives depended on and were shaped by the male characters in the book and whose eventual destitution were a result of their lack of independence in making their own decisions.

However, Moshfeq’s perception of the ‘New Woman’ was largely shaped by the benefits of coming from an affluent family. Before the Iranian state began funding scholarships to Europe on a large scale in the late 1920s, students during the early 1920s were largely supported by their families.⁶⁷ The ability of Iranian students to spend money on travel, hotels and expensive restaurants was a privilege of foreign visitors to the Weimar Republic and not the reality for the general German population.⁶⁸ Weimar’s worsening inflation during the early 1920s meant that foreign students were able to exchange currencies at favourable rates. It was this financial security that allowed Iranian students to experience the luxuries that Germany had to offer, such as Moshfeq renting a hotel room for him and his companion at the upscale Hotel Adlon on Unter den Linden. His companion was also of an affluent background given the location of her apartment in the wealthy Grunewald district on the western edges of Berlin.⁶⁹ Experiencing Germany and the ‘New Woman’ from a place of affluence – by staying in seaside resorts together, renting motorboats, sharing expensive meals – undoubtedly informed a narrow perspective on gender realities in the Weimar Republic.⁷⁰

Yet, given Terrible Tehran’s commentary on the socioeconomic disparities faced by Iranian women from different backgrounds, it’s unlikely that Moshfeq was oblivious to similar challenges faced by German women. Rather, the reformist goals of Farangestan necessitated the use of Germany as a heterotopic site and the discursive employment of the German woman as the symbol of a broader European modernity that existed in the present which could act as a model for a progressive future Iran. Farangestan’s depiction of the social power of German women contrasted with Moshfeq’s portrayal of Iranian customs of arranged and temporary marriage as the ‘trafficking of women for sexual pleasure’.⁷¹ Women’s emancipation for Moshfeq, thus, entailed freedom of choice in one’s social circle, and both physical and social mobility. It also entailed that relationships between men and women could be forged by reciprocal feelings of love and companionship. This was perhaps a key reason why the ‘New Woman’ proved so attractive to young Iranian men.

Modernity through Youth

Gender equality was perceived by Iranian students to be a key signifier of modernity. The attainment of modernity was believed in turn to aid in the securement of sovereignty in a tumultuous post-war period that saw the expansion of European, especially British, power in the Middle East. Just as the United States and the Soviet Union acted as heterotopias for German reformers, Europe served as a model for Iranian students. In a joint statement published in their first issue, they stated: ‘We want to Europeanize Iran; we want to direct the flood of new civilization to Iran.’ Yet, this must be done while ‘maintaining the benefits of Iran’s ethics’.⁷² Afshin Matin-Asgari has pointed out that for early twentieth-century Iranian intellectuals, ‘the West’ was not yet readily associated with ‘imperialism, materialism, and moral decadence’, as it became in the latter half of the century.⁷³ These pro-European sentiments remained rather consistent over the life of the journal. In the last issue of Farangestan, they wrote:

From the moment that Farangestan was established … it was continuously stressed that we must become European. By becoming European we do not mean to dress like Europeans or greet each other in a European manner. We mean that we must become European in thought, that is, we must understand their behaviour. We must alter our temperament, our way of thinking, persistence in one’s work, a sense for innovation and invention, so that we can perhaps strengthen ourselves against the intentions of the Europeans.⁷⁴

However, the writers of Farangestan were not advocating for a blind imitation of Europe. In Terrible Tehran, Moshfeq had negatively presented characters who imitated European tastes and used European words as a sign of their worldliness and class.⁷⁵ Farangestan also published the recent satirical play, Ja’far Khan az Farang Amadeh (Ja’far Khan has Returned from Europe) by 27-year-old, European-educated, Hassan Moqaddam, which criticized the increasing adulation of European parlance and Western academic degrees by Iranian society.⁷⁶ In the play, it is the young Ja’far who is finally exacerbated by the inordinate adoration for his education and an overestimation of his capabilities by his would-be government employers.⁷⁷

Key to Farangestan’s mission statement was the emphasis on the capabilities of young individuals to bring about a shift in societal mentality and overcome traditional values by embodying the new time which was discursively associated with a heterotopic Europe. The perceived connection between Europe as embodying newness and youth as carriers of modernity served as the impetus for the formation of the Young Iran Society (Jam’iyat-e Iran-e Javan) in Iran in 1921 by returning European-educated students keen to partake in the nation-building projects under Reza Shah.⁷⁸ Moshfeq, upon his return to Iran, also became a member of this association in 1926 and contributed to its eponymous organ Young Iran (Iran-e Javan).⁷⁹ The Society’s aim was to act as a forum for young intellectuals whereby a ‘youthful spirit’ (Ruh-e Javan) would bring about a ‘progressive’ (Taraqi) age in Iran.⁸⁰ It’s no surprise that Moshfeq joined the Society given that many of their goals – such as the attainment of women’s rights and education, the removal of foreign capitulations, expansion of the schooling system, physical education, and the abrogation of foreign capitulations – overlapped with goals espoused in Farangestan.⁸¹ Apparently, the Society’s writings became well known enough that they reached an impressed Reza Shah.⁸²

Mirroring such politics of youth taking place in Iran, Farangestan established a discursive link between ‘youth’ and ‘modernity’. This link was illustrated in two ways in the journal. Firstly, the attainment of modernity was conceived as a possibility only when individuals were open to ‘new’ and ‘young’ ideas. Only then were technological innovation, infrastructural development and the reinvention of social conduct deemed possible.⁸³ This understanding of youth connoted an openness to all new ideas, flexibility in one’s thinking, and the readiness to pivot when previous customs, norms or state policies became outdated and in need of rejuvenation. Secondly, the concept of youth was used to invoke a generational shift. Their generation, that is the students in Berlin as well as those in Iran, and even those still in their adolescence, were designated as the natural inheritors of the nation. It was they who could usher modernity in the nation. Hassan Nafisi, writing from France, considered it inevitable and a matter of natural law that ‘elderly lovers of all things old’ were condemned to be eliminated and replaced by ‘modern, healthy youth’. This youth, he believed, would ‘take the reins of Iran’s destiny’ and impose their ideas through sheer will.⁸⁴

The transformation of youth into a political category and shared identity was certainly not unique to young Iranian intellectuals but concomitant with global interwar political movements. As David M. Pomfret has shown, for Vietnamese students travelling from French Indochina to France for education, the process of migration broke down class barriers and enabled a common ‘youthful identity’ that sought to challenge the colonial regime with a self-described ‘ardor of youth’.⁸⁵ In expanding the category of youth to include anyone who considered themselves ‘young’, Heather Ellis has shown how leftist British scientists in their late 20s and 30s grappled with and thought about ‘youthfulness, communism, and science’ as ‘quintessential ideologies of [a] young, future-oriented modernity’.⁸⁶ Michael Goebel, moreover, has demonstrated the centrality of student travellers to Paris to post-First World War anti-imperial movements and their self-identification as movements of youth.⁸⁷

Participating in this interwar global movement of youth, Iranian students identified gender equality as a key task for youth politics in their ultimate goal of attaining modernity. While some articles continued to emphasize the importance of women as mothers of future generations, others attacked traditional attitudes toward the restrictive roles of women outside of the home. Hassan Nafisi’s belief in the inevitability of youth in wiping away older practices was made in two articles titled, ‘Nesvan Navazi’, which he translated as ‘Feminism’.⁸⁸ In these articles, Nafisi called for an end to polygamy, the removal of the veil, and gender equality before the law, in the economy, in occupation, and in politics. Nafisi hoped that such reforms would lay the foundation for a true Iranian ‘nationalism’, and fulfil the ‘dreams of the youth’, and the ‘message of youth’, who wished to establish equality between men and women.⁸⁹ The connection between projects of gender reform, nation-building, modernization and the impact of the encounter with Europe in these projects has received much attention in Iranian historiography.⁹⁰ Further attention needs to be given to Iranian modernist discourse on women’s emancipation within the framework of youth politics and the inevitability of change as a result of generational turnover.

Youth/modernity was contrasted with old/tradition, which were chiefly represented in Farangestan by the sexual appetite of the clergy and their support for the preservation of polygamous marriage and the public veiling of women.⁹¹ Indeed, the anti-clericalism of Farangestan led to its ban in Iran after the release of its third issue, and the journal had to be smuggled in thereafter.⁹² Images in Farangestan, such as Figure 2, depicted a dying (aging) Iran overcome by outmoded religious values and the corruption of the clerical order. Old customs and the ‘licentious’ habits of traditional members of society, represented chiefly by the clergy and the aristocracy in Nafisi’s articles, were deemed to be on the verge of extinction as a new generation would eventually come to power in Iran.⁹³ Nafisi ended his second and final article on ‘Feminism’ with the following statement:

According to natural laws, the worshippers of all things old are condemned to be eliminated. The healthy and progressive youth will take their place. The day when we take over the reins of Iran’s destiny, and through our sheer will impose our ideas on society, is not too far away. That day, the young daughters of Iran, through the refinement of their character and the enlightenment of their thoughts, will work with us to accomplish freedom for themselves.⁹⁴

Figure 2. The cartoon on the left depicts the past, present and future of Iran. Iran is transformed from its symbol as the lion and the sun, to a cleric, and lastly into a dying lion being attacked by a vulture. See: Nameh-ye Farangestan 7–8 (November/December 1924).

Cameron Michael Amin has shown that the project of gender reform in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iran was a male-led project, one that was shared by its proponents across the political spectrum. It was men who were to ‘chaperone’ women toward modernity.⁹⁵ No mention was made by Nafisi of the domestic activism by Iranian women to expand their rights. Associations organized by women had already existed for more than a decade in Iran. Anjoman-e Nesvan (The Women’s Society) was created during the Constitutional Revolution in 1910 in support of a parliamentary system of government. Three years later in 1913, another organization, Anjoman Khavatin-e Irani (The Iranian Women’s Society), was founded with 5000 members and had its own publication titled Shokufeh (Blossom), and in 1919 the leftist Jam’iyat-e Nesvan-e Vatankhah (The Patriotic Women’s League) was founded to stake women’s claims in projects of Iranian nationhood.⁹⁶

In thinking of the different ways he could translate ‘feminism’ into Persian, Nafisi proposed ‘Alam-e Nesvan and Jahan-e Zanan (both translating as World of Women), and his preferred term Nesvan Navazi, which could either be translated as respecting women or condescendingly bestowing rights on them.⁹⁷ However, the first two definitions that Nafisi gave, that is ‘Alam-e Nesvan and Jahan-e Zanan, were the names of two publications founded by women journalists in Iran just a few years before the start of Farangestan.⁹⁸ Thus, while Nafisi’s own thoughts on feminism were probably influenced by these two journals, he makes no mention of them and gives no credit to the role played by women in modernist projects. Rather, only when the younger generation of men take over the ‘reins of Iran’s destiny’, would women be able to participate in this new society. The erasure of women’s agency by Iranian reformist intellectuals served the purpose of depicting a dystopic and backward present in the hopes of a future utopic salvation. The implication of such projects of erasure and historical amnesia is that until recently the participation of women in the formation of the modern Iranian state has been overlooked.

The ‘New Woman’ who would join men in a modern Iran also had to be physically fit. Images of German women partaking in sports and physical activities filled the pages of Farangestan. The journal highlighted the rigorous activities of women training in sports such as tennis and javelin throwing and accompanied them with photos of organized athletic groups for girls who took to running from Potsdam to Berlin, or simply returning from swimming practice. The ‘New Woman’ of the twentieth century thus had to be fit and confident in all her capabilities. Importantly, this training had to begin at an early age to ensure that confidence and physical strength grew through years of activity. Contrasting the fear of German conservatives toward an Americanized, ‘neutered’ and ‘asexual’ ‘New Woman’ robbed of her ‘natural’ feminine sexuality, for Iranian students the ‘New Woman’ of Weimar Germany was a model of health and beauty, not an asexual person corrupted by modernity.⁹⁹ Figure 3 of a woman throwing a javelin exuded strength though her posture, steady gaze on the horizon, coiling her body in preparation to spring forth and cast the javelin with all her might. She was joined by another image of a woman (Figure 4), blazing her way on the track on a ‘flaming cycle’ and winning first place in a motorcycle race.¹⁰⁰ The woman of the twentieth century, from the perspective of young Iranian intellectuals, was fully adapted to speed and the rapid pace of change in technology and new expressions of femininity.¹⁰¹ This perspective contrasted sharply with the often negative reference to women motorcyclists in the Weimar Republic as ‘motoring amazons’.¹⁰²

Figure 3. Photo of a Ms Wittmann participating in a top-ranked javelin-throwing contest. Her spear was thrown 23.15 metres. See: Nameh-ye Farangestan 3 (July 1, 1924).

Figure 4. ‘Woman receives first prize in a one hundred kilometre flaming cycle race’. See Nameh-ye Farangestan 4 (August 1, 1924).

Ahmad Farhad and Parviz Kazemi took up the task of illustrating to readers that a Muslim country could become modern and emancipate women. Both countered charges of Europeanization by pointing to recent developments in neighbouring Muslim Turkey, which had in March 1924 eliminated the caliphate and moved to shut down Muslim seminaries and close the Ministry of Islamic Law.¹⁰³ Indeed, the Turkish Republic figured prominently in Iranian modernist discourse, especially in Kaveh, Iranshahr and Farangestan, as an aspirational source of modernity particularly for women’s rights.¹⁰⁴ In Farangestan, Parviz Kazemi highlighted the existence of sport clubs and foreign language schools for Turkish women, as well as their ability to attend university and give speeches in public. Kazemi believed this had been achieved through the joint effort of young Turkish women and men.¹⁰⁵ Young women were shown to be contributors to the progress of the nation and not simply passive recipients and beneficiaries of emancipatory laws. Kazemi urged young Iranian women to join the fight and rid Iran of traditional habits holding back similar progress.

For Iranian students, how a society treated women determined its position in civilizational hierarchy and the presence or absence of modernity. Ahmad Farhad agreed with Parviz Kazemi. Turkey had achieved a ‘moral revolution’, at least in terms of women’s rights, for which Iranian students had been calling.¹⁰⁶ He highlighted the increasing presence of women in public and private posts as signs that the ‘ideas of youth’ were transforming Turkey away from its Ottoman past. Turkey thus served as a model to be emulated. Farhad compared his own views toward Turkey with German views of Iran. He recalled a recent lecture at the University of Berlin where the instructor in front of ‘five hundred students’ stated that in ‘partly civilized countries such as Iran, it is common for women to be beaten’. Along with this statement, the instructor shared a picture, printed in a German newspaper, that showed the beating of women in Tehran.¹⁰⁷

Women’s bodies were sites where modernity/civility or primitivity/tradition were made visible in civilizational discourse. Like Hassan Nafisi, Farhad demanded that ‘the ideas of the youth must also spread in Iran. The youth must start a revolution.’¹⁰⁸ Thus, although Turkish gender reforms were in themselves greatly inspired by European lifestyles in Atatürk’s drive toward ‘Turkification’ – which even saw the changing of the so-called ‘foreign’ Islamic alphabet in favour of the Latin script – the reference to Turkey by Kazemi and Farhad simply served as a rhetorical device and another heterotopia of modernity to show the compatibility of Western-style reforms with a Muslim culture. In reality, women in Turkey continued to be treated as second-class citizens, with the legal codes banning polygamy, providing limited voting rights, and full constitutional rights only promulgated in the late 1920s and 1930s, and thus much after Kazemi and Farhad wrote their articles.¹⁰⁹

The liberties associated with the lives of European women served a discursive purpose aimed at readers back home, made up chiefly of Iranian government officials and other modernist intellectuals.¹¹⁰ Just as the ‘New Woman’ of the Soviet Union served as a model of sexual liberation and women’s emancipation for German communists, Germany as a stand-in for Europe was presented as a utopia for gender equality for Iranians. In his article ‘The Path to Rescue: The Welfare of Women Leads to the Welfare of the Country’, Parviz Kazemi asked his readers, why does the word ‘justice’ come to mind when one speaks of Europe in the twentieth century and how could a just society be attained in Iran? The answer for him lay in the supposed absolute equality between men and women in European society, in which ‘tasks from the most menial to the most important have been divided between men and women’. Moreover, ‘men and women partake equally in the running of the state and participate as members of parliament. Women participate in all facets of European society.’ He added further that in Europe ‘to disrespect women is one of the worst things one can do’.¹¹¹ Such assertions were, of course, far from the true realities of interwar Europe, especially the Germany in which Kazemi resided.¹¹² However, by locating Iran’s future in the Europe of the present, Kazemi sold aspirations of gender equality and women’s emancipation as an attainable goal since they already existed somewhere in the world. An imagined ‘New Woman’ was extracted out of the contested realities of gender relations in interwar Germany and transfigured into the symbol of modernity.

Conclusion

The Iranian state eventually co-opted the project of gender reform and women’s emancipation which had been heavily debated by Iranian intellectuals during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Women’s Awakening of 1936–41, what Cameron Michael Amin has referred to as a ‘state feminist project’, sought to bring to fruition much of the prescriptions by male Iranian intellectuals for women’s emancipation such as equal education, participation in the workforce and civic duties.¹¹³ The centrepiece of this project was the forced de-veiling of women. As Amin has also pointed out, the main goal was less for the removal of the veil than to demonstrate the ’progress’ being made by Iran under the Pahlavi government.¹¹⁴ As this article has shown, notions of tradition, progress, modernity, youth and national sovereignty were heavily debated during the interwar period by both Iranian and German intellectuals. The ‘New Woman’ of the Weimar Republic was a transnational creation and the personification of modernity encompassing both its ills and virtues. She became the site for grappling with the meanings of modernity in an interwar world marked by anxieties and aspirations toward increasing ideological rifts, the development of new technologies, and rapidly changing cultural tastes and mores. Images and imaginations of the Weimar ‘New Woman’ were not confined to German post-war nation-building efforts but reflected upon and constructed by Iranian students. While some German and Iranian intellectuals criticized and worried about the potential immorality of new gender relations, for young Iranians in Germany, the ‘New Woman’ became a symbol for national rejuvenation, but whose actualization was dependent upon the adaptive, innovative and transformative qualities of youth.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Katharina Seibert and Barnabás Bálint for organizing the ‘Rallying Europe: Intersectional Approaches to Youth in the Mid-Twentieth Century’ workshop. The proceedings of this workshop led to the collection of articles in this special volume of European Review of History. Furthermore, I’m grateful for the Princeton University Library Open Access Fund for supporting the publication of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sheragim Jenabzadeh

Sheragim Jenabzadeh is a postdoctoral fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center in Princeton University, having received his PhD in History from the University of Toronto. His research brings together the histories of Asian, African and Middle Eastern activists, students and intellectuals in transforming interwar Germany into a hub for global revolutionary activity. His article, ‘Is Hindenburg a Sultan? The Trial of the Communist Journal Peykar’ has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Iran Namag. He has been the recipient of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Research Scholarship and served in 2016–17 as an associate scholar at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, Germany.

Notes

1. Kazemi, “Cha’i-ye Sa’at-e Panj,” 37. Moshfeq hints at the difference between the modern clothing of Europe based on practicality versus the religiously inspired long robes and turbans of Iran.

2. Ibid., 38.

3. Wipplinger, The Jazz Republic.

4. Kazemi, “Cha’i-ye Sa’at-e Panj,” 38–9.

5. Ibid., 41.

6. Petro, Joyless Streets. Petro highlights that artists, journalists, intellectuals and cultural critics during the Weimar Republic represented Berlin and modernity as a woman. See specifically chapter two.

7. Such sentiments were also shared by Germans. The novelist Vicki Baum, for instance, wrote ‘Berlin was so marvellously alive, so enlivened with an unusual electricity.’ She noted that the youth preferred the trendy cocktail than the drab glass of wine, since ‘for our taste it was extraordinarily free, and we turned up our noses at the doddering old men’. See: Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland, 43.

8. Graf, “Anticipating the Future,” 663.

9. Kazemi, Ruzegar va Andisheh-ha, 84–6.

10. Ibid., 91–4; Makki, Tarikh-e Bist Saleh-ye Iran, 39–41; Katouzian, State and Society, 101–3; Ramazani, The Foreign Policy of Iran, 164–6; Stebbins, British Imperialism in Qajar Iran, 220; and Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 114–15. For a look at the regional implications of the agreement and foreign opposition see: Zürrer, Persien, specifically 141–69.

11. Matin-Asgari, Both Eastern and Western.

12. Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran, 4.

13. Berman, All That is Solid, 15.

14. See the chapters in the edited volume, The Modern Girl, Weinbaum et al., eds., Quotes from pages 3, 4. The volume incisively uses the term ‘multidirectional citation’ to refer to the crisscrossing of references and influences from multiple locals in shaping the ‘Modern Girl’.

15. Schayegh, Who is Knowledgeable is Strong, 2. Alongside Europe, Japan also served as a reference point for modernity by Iranian travellers. See: Boroujerdi, “The West,” 391–401.

16. Mirsepassi, Intellectual Discourse, 54–64; See also Khasto, “Nasl-e Avval Rowshanfekran-e Irani,” 67–102; and Khasto, “Nasl-e Dovvom-e Rowshanfekran-e Irani,” 129–53.

17. For more information on Iran’s social and economic transformation during the interwar period see: Werner and Devos, eds., Culture and Cultural; and Cronin, ed., The Making of Modern Iran; Cronin, Soldiers, Shahs and Subalterns in Iran. For a comparative view of the modernizing policies of Reza Shah and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk see: Atabaki and Zürcher, eds., Men of Order.

18. Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century, 40–4.

19. Vanessa Martin does show, however, that the clergy were not unified in their opposition to a republic. Their position largely varied according to their socioeconomic background. See: Martin, “Mudarris,” 71. For the period of transition from the caliphate and Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic see: Özoglu, From Caliphate to Secular State.

20. Behnam, Berlini-ha, 132; Ardakani-Mahbubi, Tarikh-e taḥavvol-e Daneshgah-e Tehran, 84, 267, 319; and “Nakhostin-ha,” Ravabet-e Omum.

21. Fischer, Griff Nach Der Weltmacht. See specifically chapter four on this topic.

22. Jenkins, “Fritz Fischer’s ‘Programme for Revolution,’” 398–9. See also Jenkins, “Jihad or National Uprising?” 357–76; and Jenkins et al., “Transnationalism and Insurrection,” 61–79. For more on the participation of non-Europeans in the First World War see the essays in Höpp and Reinwald, eds., Fremdeinsätze.

23. Ghahari, Nationalismus und Modernismus, 59–63.

24. For more on the life of Hossein Kazemzadeh see: Anzali, “From Ethnic Nationalism,” 61–112.

25. Marashi, Nationalizing Iran, 90.

26. PA AA, RZ 207, R 78177: Reich Migration Office, June 25, 1923, Berlin; Höpp, Arabische und islamische Periodika; and Mehraji, “Saif Azad,” 9–13; For Figure 1 see: “Das Complet,” Azadi-ye Sharq, no. 2 (April 16, 1925).

27. Arjomand, “Die Buch- und Kunstdruckerei Kaviani,” 171, 176.

28. Theilhaber, Friedrich Rosen, 473–4.

29. Khan, “Entanglements of Translation,” 298. For more on publications by Muslim travellers see: Motadel, “The Making of Muslim Communities,” 27.

30. For an overview of such publications and groups see: Höpp, Arabische und islamische Periodika; Yü-Dembski, “Chinesische Intellektuelle in Deutschland,” 239–63; Levy, Deutsch-chinesische Beziehungen; and Oesterheld, “Zum Spektrum,” 331–46; See also essays in Agai et al., eds., Muslims in Interwar Europe.

31. Graf, “Anticipating the Future,” 647.

32. Ibid., 649–51, 662; See also Graf, Die Zukunft der Weimarer Republik.

33. Graf, “Anticipating the Future,” 662–3.

34. Rowe, “Desiring Berlin,” 152. For an examination of female employment in the pre-war and wartime period see Frevert, Women in German History.

35. Kundrus, “Gender Wars,” 169.

36. Boak, Women in the Weimar Republic, 4.

37. Peukert, The Weimar Republic, 89.

38. Nolan, The Transatlantic Century, 90. Sigrid Follman has analysed the connections between fashion and the transformation of women’s identities in 1920s Germany. See: Wenn Frauen sich entblössen. For an examination of fashion and women’s experience of Weimar modernity see: Ganeva, Women in Weimar Fashion.

39. Peukert, The Weimar Republic, 99.

40. Nolan, The Transatlantic Century, 91.

41. Grossmann, “Girlkultur,” 63; Petersen, Women and Modernity, 44–6; Graf, “Anticipating the Future,” 664; and Nolan, Visions of Modernity. For a further look into Taylor’s theories on ‘scientific management’ and its relation to women’s employment in the United States see: Kessler-Harris, Out to Work.

42. Grossmann, “Girlkultur,” 63.

43. Graf, “Anticipating the Future,” 666–7.

44. Ibid.

45. Attwood, Creating the New Soviet Woman, 23–65.

46. Gorsuch, “The Dance Class,” 174–93.

47. Rowe, “Desiring Berlin,” 152; and Graf, “Anticipating the Future,” 667.

48. Graf, “Anticipating the Future,” 664.

49. Berman, All That is Solid, 13–14.

50. Foucault and Miskowiec, “Of Other Spaces,” 24–7.

51. Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran, 1–17, quote on page 4.

52. See Ihrig, Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination.

53. Mehrdad, “Jahan-e Zanan,” 88.

54. Ibid., 89.

55. Kazemzadeh, “Zan va Zanashuy,” 723.

56. Ibid., 725–6.

57. Ibid., 723; von Ankum, introduction to Women in the Metropolis, 4.

58. von Ankum, introduction to Women in the Metropolis, 1–3; and von Ankum, “Gendered Urban Spaces,” 162–84.

59. The novel was translated into several other languages including Russian by the Academy of the Soviet Union. See: Mirabedini, “Moshfeq-e Kazemi, Sayyed Mortaza”; and Kazemi, Tehran-e Makhuf.

60. Yaghoobi, Temporary Marriage in Iran, 77–80; and Behnam, Berlini-ha, 108–9.

61. Yaghoobi, Temporary Marriage in Iran, 87–8, 94.

62. Kashani-Sabet, “The Politics of Reproduction,” 1–29.

63. Unfortunately, Moshfeq does not state who these friends were. However, given that he spoke in his memoirs of regularly meeting members of the Hope of Iran, it is likely that these friends were from this group and, perhaps, even Parviz Kazemi and Ahmad Farhad. Kazemi, Ruzegar va Andisheh-ha, 171–3.

64. Ibid., 173.

65. Ibid., 172–3; and Najmabadi, Women with Moustaches, 157.

66. Kazemi, Ruzegar va Andisheh-ha, 173.

67. Behnam, Berlini-ha, 60.

68. Weitz, Weimar Germany, 133.

69. Kazemi, Ruzegar va Andisheh-ha, 172.

70. Ibid., 181.

71. Kazemi, “Nehzat,” 51.

72. Joint Statement by the Hope of Iran, “Ma Cheh Mikhavahim?!” 2; Tamadon, meaning civilization, did not simply have cultural and developmentalist connotations but entailed self-education and the cultivation of the individual. Civilization entailed ‘rules of socialization’. Civilization for Iranian intellectuals was equated with the existence of civic culture. See Tavakoli-Targhi, “Inventing Modernity, Borrowing Modernity,” 221.

73. Matin-Asgari, “The Berlin Circle,” 57, 59–60.

74. Kazemi, “Siyasat-e Este’mari-ye Mamalek-e Urupa,” 460–1. The quoted passage is very much reminiscent of Hassan Taqizadeh’s call in the January 1920 issue of Kaveh for Iranians to become wholly European in their mode of thought, ethics, sciences and technology. See: Ghahari, Nationalismus und Modernismus, 174–5. Ali Ansari has argued that Taqizadeh was referring to the Enlightenment and its emphasis on reason as the essential component of European civilization that had to be adopted, which in itself was a universal concept and not a European product. See: Ansari, The Politics of Nationalism, 64.

75. Elling, “Urbanizing the Iranian Public,” 308.

76. Ghanoonparvar, “Persian Plays,” 92–3; and Talajooy, “A History of Iranian Drama,” 397.

77. Moqaddam, “Irani Bazi,” 146–52.

78. Ghahari, Nationalismus und Modernismus, 80.

79. Matin-Asgari, Both Eastern and Western, 77, 83–5.

80. Zahedi, “Barresi-ye Ahdaf-e Anjoman-e Iran Javan,” 121. As Zahedi also mentions, it was the Young Iran Society that first organized the performance of Hassan Moqaddam’s play in Tehran. This was also the first time in Iran that Muslim men and women sat together for a theatrical performance.

81. Ibid., 115–19.

82. Ansari, The Politics of Nationalism, 65 ft. 104.

83. Joint Statement by the Hope of Iran, “Ma Cheh Mikhavahim?!” 2–3.

84. For the purposes of this article, I have maintained Nafisi’s own ‘Nesvan Navazi’ as feminism. Nafisi, “Nesvan Navazi: Part II,” 445.

85. Pomfret, “‘Colonial Circulations,’” 128.

86. Ellis, “‘These Heroic Days,’” 71.

87. Goebel, Anti-Imperial, 117.

88. Nafisi, “Nesvan Navazi: Part I,” 287–8; and Nafisi, “Nesvan Navazi: Part II,” 439.

89. Nafisi, “Nesvan Navazi: Part II,” 440.

90. Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi has shown that depictions of unveiled women, and the ‘apparent freedom’ (azadi-ye zaheri) of European women, figured in the travelogues of Iranian visitors to nineteenth-century Europe. Unveiling was connected to political, economic and social freedoms. The hijab thus became a symbol of the behavioural and habitual patterns that prevented the emergence of a progressive Iran. See: Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran, 63. See also Tavakoli-Targhi, “Negaran-e zan-e Farang,” 3–71; Furthermore, Afsaneh Najmabadi has shown that nineteenth- and twentieth-century modernists viewed the ‘heteronormalization’ of public spaces as a precondition for ‘achieving modernity’. The removal of the veil and the custom of ‘romantic marriages’ instead of contractual marriages for procreation were viewed as key to reforming and modernizing gender relations. See: Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches, 146–55, 156–80; As well, Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet locates Iranian debates on women’s education, reproductive politics and sexuality at the centre of concepts of nationhood and state formation. Kashani-Sabet, Conceiving Citizens. Importantly, Parvin Paidar traces the centrality of women’s roles to national and Islamic projects in Iran from the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. See: Paidar, Women and the Political.

91. Nafisi, “Nesvan: Navazi: Part I,” 286–9; and Nafisi, “Nesvan Navazi: Part II,” 439–40.

92. Behnam, Berlini-ha, 99.

93. Nafisi, “Nesvan Navazi: Part I,” 289; For Figure 2 see Nameh-ye Farangestan, 7–8, November/December 1924.

94. Nafisi, “Nesvan Navazi: Part II,” 440.

95. Amin, The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman, 16–47, 73–8.

96. Amin, “Globalizing Iranian Feminism,” 17–18; and Moghissi, Populism and Feminism in Iran, 34.

97. Nafisi, “Nesvan Navazi: Part I,” 284.

98. Handelman-Baavur, Creating the Modern Iranian Woman, 45–7.

99. For an in-depth look into female masculinities in the Weimar Republic see: Sutton, The Masculine Woman.

100. Unfortunately, the source of these images is not provided in Farangestan. It is likely that they originated in German magazines found in Berlin. Their use reflects the ways images were interpreted and reinterpreted by Germans and non-Germans alike for their own particular political goals. For Figure 3 see Nameh-ye Farangestan 3, July 1, 1924; For Figure 4 see Nameh-ye Farangestan 4, August 1, 1924.

101. Nolan, Visions of Modernity, 126.

102. Disko, The Devil’s Wheels, 252–85.

103. Ter-Matevosyan, Turkey, 43. For more on the formation post-Ottoman Turkey see: Gingeras, Sorrowful Shores.

104. Alizadeh, “Ibrat, Hasrat, or Tahdid,” 558–86.

105. Kazemi, “Rah-e Nejat,” 61–2.

106. Farhad, “Zan Dar Jame’eh,” 13.

107. Ibid., 14.

108. Ibid.

109. Biçer-Deveci, Die osmanisch-türkische Frauenbewegung, 59–60.

110. Kazemi, Ruzegar va Andisheh-ha, 181.

111. Kazemi, “Rah-e Nejat,” 60.

112. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz have shown that the Weimar constitution did not alter the traditional roles of and views toward German women despite its promise of providing legal equality. Furthermore, Atina Grossmann has stated that while the Weimar constitution guaranteed equal rights between men and women, the loss of population due to the First World War diminished true women’s emancipation by prohibiting ‘any abortions that were not strictly medically indicated’ and banning ‘the advertising, display, and publicizing of contraceptives’. See: Bridenthal and Koonz, “Beyond Kinder, Küche, Kirche”; Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland, 45; Peukert, The Weimar Republic, 97; and Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 8.

113. Amin, The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman, 1.

114. Ibid., 80.