Love as Moral Imperative and Gendered Anti-war Strategy in the International Women’s Movement 1914-1919

ABSTRACT

Some pacifist women active during and after the First World War consciously chose a rhetoric of love and shared humanity. Used to counteract the discourse of hate that dominated belligerent nations at this time, it was central to the vision of a feminist peace developed by women’s groups working to oppose the war, such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom [WILPF]. Using the insights gained by scholarship on the history of emotions, this analysis explores the gendered ways in which members of the WILPF performed and evoked emotions of friendship, love, and sisterhood to create, consolidate and reflect emotional communities during and in the aftermath of the First World War within and beyond their own national contexts. In the majority of belligerent nations, the majority of the women’s organisations engaged in patriotic war service and rejected WILPF members’ anti-war activism as sentimental and naive. This analysis argues that they deployed articulations of love at all stages of the war and its aftermath as both a moral imperative and a powerful, gendered strategy of resistance that was central to their claim to greater political influence at home and abroad.

Notes

¹ See Michael Roper, “Slipping out of View: Subjectivity and Emotion in Gender History,” History Workshop Journal 59, no. 1 (2005): 57–72; idem., The Secret Battle. Emotional Survival in the Great War (Manchester, NY, 2009); Christopher M. Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (London, 2012), particularly 356–58.

² On managing grief in the German context, see for example Claudia Siebrecht, “Imagining the absent dead: rituals of bereavement and the place of the war dead in German women’s art during the First World War,” German History 29, no. 2 (2010): 202–23; idem., “The Female Mourner: Gender and the Moral Economy of Grief during the First World War,” in Gender and the First World War, eds. Christa Hämmerle, Oswald Überegger, and Birgitta Bader-Zaa (Basingstoke, 2014), 144–62.

³ Friendship is discussed in Mineke Bosch with Annemarie Klostermann, Politics and Friendship: Letters from the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance 1902–1942 (Columbus, OH, 1990); Eva Schöck-Quinteros, Anja Schüler, Annika Wilmers, and Kerstin Wolff, eds., Politische Netzwerkerinnen. Internationale Zusammenarbeit von Frauen 1830–1960 (Berlin, 2007); Kathryn Kish Sklar, Anja Schüler, and Susan Strasser, eds., Social Justice Feminists in the United States and Germany (Ithaca, NY, London, 1998). Emotions in politics are discussed in Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago, IL, London, 2001).

⁴ Verta Taylor and Leila J Rupp, “Loving Internationalism: The Emotion Culture of Transnational Women’s Organisations, 1888–1945,” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 7, no. 2 (2002): 141–58.

⁵ Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women. The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton, NJ, 1997), 107–29.

Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women. The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton, NJ, 1997), 107–29.

⁶ Ute Frevert, Emotions in History – Lost and Found (Budapest, 2011); Jan Plamper, The History of Emotions. An Introduction (Oxford, 2012); William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge, 2001); Monique Scheer, “Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and is that what makes them have a History)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion,” History and Theory 51, no. 2 (2012): 193–220; Jan Plamper, William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns, “The History of Emotions: An Interview with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns,” History and Theory 49, no. 2 (2010): 237–65.

⁷ For histories of WILPF, see Gertrude Bussey, and Margaret Tims, Pioneers for Peace: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915–1965 (London, 1965); Anne Wiltsher, Most Dangerous Women: Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War (London, 1985); Catia Confortini, Intelligent Compassion: Feminist Clinical Methodology in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (NY, Oxford, 2012).

⁸ For an account of the Congress, see Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch, and Alice Hamilton, Women at The Hague. The International Congress of Women and Its Results (Urbana, IL, Chicago, IL, 2003 [1915]); Annika Wilmers, Pazifismus in der internationalen Frauenbewegung (1914–1920): Handlungsspielräume, politische Konzeptionen und gesellschaftliche Auseinandersetzungen (Essen, 2008). See also WILPF, Report of the International Congress of Women, The Hague – the Netherlands. April 28^th to May 1^st 1915 (no place of publication, 1915), 20: https://archive.org/details/internatcongrewom00interich/page/n1.

⁹ See WILPF, Rapport du Congrès International de Femmes Zurich Mai 12–17, 1919 (Geneva, 1919), 154–56.

¹⁰ See Sybil Oldfield, “Mary Sheepshanks edits an Internationalist Suffrage Monthly in Wartime,” Women’s History Review 12, no. 1 (2003): 119–31.

¹¹ See for example, Jane Addams, Peace and Bread in Time of War (Memphis, TN, 2010 [1922]); Addams, Balch, and Hamilton, Women at The Hague; Lida Gustava Heymann and Anita Augspurg, Erlebtes Erschautes. Deutsche Frauen kämpfen für Freiheit, Recht und Frieden 1850–1940 (Frankfurt am Main, 1992 [1972]); Aletta Jacobs Memories. My Life as an International Leader in Health, Suffrage and Peace (NY, 1996) – published in Dutch in 1924.

¹² Scheer, “Practice”; Rosenwein, “Worrying”.

¹³ Scheer, “Practice,” 206.

¹⁴ Ibid., 207.

¹⁵ Ibid., 211.

¹⁶ Ibid., 209.

¹⁷ Rosenwein, “Worrying,” 842.

¹⁸ Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia, PA, 2013); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (NY, 2006).

¹⁹ Leonhard Frank, Der Mensch ist gut (Zürich, 1918).

²⁰ Ibid., 1.

²¹ See John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT, 2001).

²² L. Schetter, In Gottes Namen Durch (Leipzig, 1915), quoted in Edlef Köppen, Heeresbericht (Berlin, 1930), Chapter 8 Section 4 [Project Gutenberg]: http://gutenberg.speigel.de/buch/%20heeresbericht-6321/8.

²³ Joseph Dawson, Christ and the Sword: Words for the War-Perplexed (London, 1916) quoted in Arlie J. Hoover, God, Germany, and Great Britain in the Great War. A Study in Clerical Nationalism (NY, 1989), 112.

²⁴ Jane Misme, La Française (no place of publication, 19 December 1914).

²⁵ Gertud Bäumer, “Vaterlandsliebe und Völkerhass,” Die Frauenfrage (1 January 1915), 1.

²⁶ Christabel Pankhurst, “No Compromise Peace,” Britannia (3 August 1917).

²⁷ See for example, Rupp, Worlds of Women; Wilmers, Pazifismus; A.S. Fell and I.E. Sharp, eds., The Women’s Movement in Wartime. International Perspectives 1914–1919 (Basingstoke, 2007).

²⁸ Gertrud Bäumer, Heimatchronik während des Weltkrieges Dritter, Teil 1: Oktober 1918–23 Juni 1919 (Berlin, 1927), 62.

²⁹ Idem., “Die Frauen und der Krieg,” Kriegsjahrbuch des BDF (Leipzig; Berlin:, 1915), 6.

³⁰ Angelika Tramitz, “Vom Umgang mit Helden. Kriegs(vor)schriften und Benimmregeln für deutsche Frauen im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Kriegsalltag. Die Rekonstrukton des Kriegsalltags als Aufgabe der historischen Forschung und der Friedenserziehung, ed. Peter Knoch (Stuttgart, 1989), 87.

³¹ Heymann and Augspurg, Erlebtes Erschautes, 137.

³² Gertrud Bäumer, ‘Der Bund deutscher Frauenvereine und der Haager Frauenkongreß’, Die Frauenfrage (1 September 1915), 83.

³³ Bäumer, ‘Vaterlandsliebe und Völkerhass’, 1.

³⁴ Sophocles [E.F. Watling, translator], The Theban Plays (London, 1947), 140.

³⁵ Helene Stöcker, “Lieben oder Hassen,” Die Neue Generation (10 December 1914), 20.

³⁶ Sophocles, Theban Plays, 161.

³⁷ Addams, Balch, and Hamilton, Women at The Hague, 55.

³⁸ Quoted in Linda Knight, Jane Addams: Spirit in Action (NY, 2010), 215.

³⁹ Taylor and Rupp, “Loving Internationalism,” 142.

⁴⁰ See Oldfield ‘Sheepshanks’.

⁴¹ Jus, 9/4(1 January 1915), 228–29, quoted in Ibid., 123.

⁴² Quoted in Oldfield, “Sheepshanks,” 123.

⁴³ Anita Augspurg, “Call for Attendance at the Women’s International Congress” (February/March 1915), Lange [Helene Lange Papers, Landesarchiv, Berlin] Microfiche 2754.

⁴⁴ Clark Sleepwalkers, 359.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 359.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 360.

⁴⁷ WILPF, Report of the International Congress of Women, 5.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 174.

⁴⁹ See Irene Stoehr, “‘Organisierte Mütterlichkeit’. Zur Politik der deutschen Frauenbewegung um 1900,” in Frauen suchen ihre Geschichte, ed. Karin Hausen (Munich. 1987), 221–49.

⁵⁰ See Ann Taylor Allen, “Feminism and Motherhood in Germany and in International Perspective 1800–1914,” in Gender and Germanness. Cultural Productions of Nation, eds. Patricia Herminghouse and Magda Mueller (Providence, RI, Oxford, 1997); Ann Taylor Allen, Women in Twentieth-Century Europe (Basingstoke, 2008).

⁵¹ Allen, “Feminism and Motherhood,” 113.

⁵² Bertha Von Suttner, Empörung des Verstands und unserer Herzen [1914], in Gisela Brinker Gabler, ed., Frauen gegen den Krieg (Frankfurt am Main, 1980), 54.

⁵³ WILPF, Resolutions of the First Congress, 9; ‘racial’ here refers to the human race.

⁵⁴ See Jane Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace (Urbana, IL, 2007 [1907]); idem., Peace and Bread; Addams, Balch, and Hamilton, Women at The Hague.

⁵⁵ See Regina Braker, “Helene Stöcker’s Pacifism in the Weimar Republic: Between Ideal and Reality,” Journal of Women’s History 13, no. 3 (2001): 70–97; Regina Braker, “Helene Stöcker’s Pacifism: International Intersections,” Peace & Change 23, no. 4 (1998): 455–65.

⁵⁶ Addams, Balch, and Hamilton, Women at The Hague, 61.

⁵⁷ WILPF, Resolutions of the First Congress (The Hague, 1915): http://wilpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WILPF_triennial_congress_1915.pdf.

⁵⁸ WILPF, Report of the International Congress of Women, 20.

⁵⁹ ‘Report of the International Council of Women 1920’, cited in ICW, Women in a Changing World: The Dynamic Story of the International Council of Women since 1888 (London, 1966), 44.

⁶⁰ Jo Vellacott, “Feminism as If All People Mattered: Working to Remove the Causes of War, 1919–1929,” Contemporary European History 10, no. 3 (2001): 384; idem., “Putting a Network to Use,” in Politische Netzwerkerinnen: internationale Zusammenarbeit von Frauen, 1830–1960, ed. Eva Schöck-Quinteros (Berlin, 2007), 149.

⁶¹ WILPF, Rapport du Congrès, 154–56.

⁶² Dr. Jur L. van Dorp, ‘Eindrücke von dem Internationalen Frauenkongress zu Kristiania’, Die Frau (October 1920), 21.

⁶³ Scheer, “Practice,” 203.

⁶⁴ Gertrud Bäumer Lebensweg durch eine Zeitenwende (Tübingen, 1933), 440.

⁶⁵ Olive Schreiner, Woman and Labour (NY, 1911), 176.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 170.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 178.

⁶⁸ The phrase ‘maternal thinking’ comes from the seminal Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (London, 1990).

⁶⁹ Lida Gustava Heymann, Weiblicher Pazifismus in Frauen gegen den Krieg (1917/1922), in Gabler, Frauen gegen den Krieg, 65.

⁷⁰ Lida Gustava Heymann, “Nach dem Weltkrieg. Schriften zur Neuorientierung der auswärtigen Politik,” in idem., Frauenstimmrecht und Völkerverständigung, Heft 9 (Leipzig, 1917), 1.

⁷¹ Carl von Ossietsky, ‘Die Pazifisten’, Das Tagebuch (8 November 1924).

⁷² Roper, Secret Battle, 120.

⁷³ Leonard Frank, “Der Vater,” in idem., Der Mensch ist gut, 1.

⁷⁴ WILPF Rapport du Congrès, 232.

⁷⁵ Reddy, Navigation of Feeling, 129.

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Ingrid Sharp

Ingrid Sharp is Professor of German Cultural and Gender History in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds and is currently researching German opposition to the First World War and women’s role in the Revolutions of 1918. Her co-edited volume with Matthew Stibbe Women Activists between War and Peace. Europe 1918-1923 was published by Bloomsbury in 2017. She edited volume 5, 1815-1920, of A Cultural History of Peace, published by Bloomsbury in 2020.