Discourses of gender and nationalism in early twentieth-century Germany and Ireland: an analysis of four nationalist women's texts

ABSTRACT

Horan presents a linguistic analysis of four texts by leading women nationalists in Germany and Ireland in the early twentieth century, and argues that women instrumentalize gender to construct their own nationalist narratives and establish their legitimacy within dominant discourses. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, particularly the discourse historical approach devised by Ruth Wodak and her colleagues, she identifies discursive strategies common to all four texts, including constructive strategies, strategies of justification, and dismantling or destructive strategies. In particular, the analysis focuses on the way in which German and Irish women nationalists both drew on and challenged dominant gendered stereotypes and symbols, creating positive ‘in-groups’ and stigmatized ‘out-groups’ around which concepts of nationhood and national identity cohered.

Keywords:

• body politic
• constructive strategy
• destructive strategy
• dismantling
• gender
• in-group
• narrative
• national identity
• nationalism
• out-group
• strategy of justification
• topoi
• Volk

Notes

¹Jackie Hogan, Gender, Race and National Identity: Nations of Flesh and Blood (London and New York: Routledge 2009), 12. Hogan uses the phrase ‘imagined community’, coined by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso 1983).

²Peter Walkenhorst, Nation, Volk, Rasse: Radikaler Nationalismus im deutschen Kaiserreich 1890–1914 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht 2007), 131; Alan Finlayson, ‘Sexuality and nationality: gendered discourses of Ireland’, in Terrell Carver and Véronique Mottier (eds), Politics of Sexuality: Identity, Gender, Citizenship (London and New York: Routledge 2006), 91–101 (91).

³Lynn Abrams, The Making of Modern Woman (London and New York: Longman 2002), 232, 238.

⁴Michael Hughes, Nationalism and Society: Germany 1800–1945 (London: Arnold 1988), 142–5.

⁵Depicting Ireland as a woman was a practice shared by the English colonial rulers and Irish nationalists, albeit with differing points of view: ‘The greatest differences between English and Irish portrayals come, of course, in their perception of the nature of the enemy and would-be rescuers . . . Irish portrayals of their country fall into two categories: those that depict Ireland as maiden, and those that depict her as mother’; C. L. Innes, Women and Nation in Irish Literature and Society, 1880–1935 (Hemel Hempstead and New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1993), 15–16.

⁶Abrams, The Making of Modern Woman, 228.

⁷Finlayson, ‘Sexuality and nationality’, 92. See also Bettina Brandt, ‘Germania in armor: the female representation of an endangered German nation’, in Sarah Colvin and Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly (eds), Women and Death 2. Warlike Women in the German Literary and Cultural Imagination since 1500 (Rochester, NY: Camden House ouse 2009), 86–126, and Ute Frevert, ‘German conceptions of war, masculinity, and femininity in the long nineteenth century’, in Colvin and Watanabe-O'Kelly (eds), Women and Death 2, 169–85.

⁸Throughout Western Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there existed in political discourse the trope of the woman as being ‘beyond’ nationalism, which could be used both negatively, to deny women's political capabilities and accuse them of internationalist sympathies, and positively, to portray them as a new and refreshing force in politics, as seen in Helene Lange's text discussed below.

⁹See Ute Planert, Antifeminismus im Kaiserreich: Diskurs, soziale Formation und politische Mentalität (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1998), 12–14; Ute Planert (ed.), Nation, Politik und Geschlecht: Frauenbewegungen und Nationalismus in der Moderne (Frankfurt on Main and New York: Campus 2000), 121, 272; Richard J. Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany, 1894–1933 (London and Beverly Hills, CA: Sage 1976), 176.

¹⁰Eithne Ní Chumhaill, ‘The history of Cumann na mBan’, An Phoblacht, 8 April 1933, quoted in Sinéad McCoole, No Ordinary Women: Irish Female Activists in the Revolutionary Years, 1900–1923 (Dublin: O'Brien Press 2003), 23, 170. Women's political activities had met with criticism for several decades before 1900. As early as 1881, in response to the activities of the Ladies’ Land League, which organized and aided activities of the Land League, including non-payment of rent to landowners and the prevention of evictions, Archbishop McCabe of Dublin accused the women of forgetting ‘the modesty of their sex and the high dignity of their womanhood’; similarly, the Belfast News-Letter criticized the women's activities, claiming that ‘at no time is a woman further from her natural position than when she appears upon a political platform’ (quoted in Margaret Ward, Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism (London: Pluto Press 1983), 23).

¹¹Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany, 209; Irene Stöhr, ‘Frauenbewegte Nationalgefühle und Staatsbewußtheiten vor 1933’, Ariadne: Almanach des Archivs der deutschen Frauenbewegung, vol. 24, 1993, 26.

¹²Anke Walzer, Käthe Schirmacher: Eine deutsche Frauenrechtlerin auf dem Wege vom Liberalismus zum konservativen Nationalismus (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus 1991), 76.

¹³Walzer, Käthe Schirmacher, 77 (this and all other translations from the German, unless otherwise stated, are by the author). Schirmacher's continuing feminist stance can be seen, for example, in her response to a letter she received from a right-wing publicist in November 1925, in which he countered her claim that the ‘male state’ was to blame for the failure of nationalism with the charge that it was the ‘feminization’ of men in the Wilhelmine era that had proved so damaging. Schirmacher scribbled ‘Blödsinn’ (‘nonsense’) in the margin of the letter (Walzer, Käthe Schirmacher, 91).

¹⁴Ward suggests that Karen Offen's models of ‘relational feminism’ and ‘individualist feminism’ can be used to explain how women adhering to different and conflicting political ideologies can nonetheless be regarded as being feminist; Margaret Ward, ‘The Ladies’ Land League and the Irish land war 1881/1882: defining the relationship between women and nation’, in Ida Blom, Karen Hagemann and Catherine Hall (eds), Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford and New York: Berg 2000), 231. How this is reflected in women's political discourse is worthy of further investigation, as is the combination of apparently conflicting feminist and nationalist viewpoints held by the same person, as in the case of Schirmacher, for example.

¹⁵Abrams observes how women's visibility in politics in the first two decades of the twentieth century was at odds with their later exclusion in the Irish Free State in 1922; Abrams, The Making of Modern Woman, 238–9.

¹⁶Ward, Unmanageable Revolutionaries, 42–54.

¹⁷Robert Kee, The Green Flag. Volume II: The Bold Fenian Men (London: Penguin 1972), 160–1, and Robert Kee, The Green Flag. Volume III: Ourselves Alone (London: Penguin 1972), 5, 57. Kee states: ‘Many lone wolves with a romantic or dogmatic or otherwise obsessional love of Ireland that had been born of Irish history, but frustrated in the present, gravitated towards Sinn Fein. And as with every movement that attracts rebels there were those who put into their love of Ireland obscure psychological motivations of their own. Among the more extreme of such figures were some drawn from the Protestant ascendancy. Maud Gonne was one of these. Another women from the same upper-class background was Constance Gore-Booth’ (II, 60). Gore-Booth acquired the surname ‘Markievicz’ through her marriage to a Polish count. Karen Steele, in Women, Press, and Politics during the Irish Revival (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press 2007), 62–3, describes the largely negative representation of Markievicz by writers, commentators and historians. Markievicz was unable to take up her political appointment due to her incarceration, and several years later refused to take her seat in the Dáil because of the oath of allegiance to the British Crown; Anne Marreco, The Rebel Countess: The Life and Times of Constance Markievicz (London: Phoenix Press 2000), 245, 298.

¹⁸Walkenhorst, Nation, Volk, Rasse, 80. Although the German ‘Nation’ is equivalent to the English ‘nation’, an English translation of ‘Volk’ is more problematic: it has no synonym, and is often translated as ‘people’ or ‘nation’, the latter lacking the ideological, symbolic significance of the German ‘Volk’.

¹⁹Walkenhorst, Nation, Volk, Rasse, 80. Although the German ‘Nation’ is equivalent to the English ‘nation’, an English translation of ‘Volk’ is more problematic: it has no synonym, and is often translated as ‘people’ or ‘nation’, the latter lacking the ideological, symbolic significance of the German ‘Volk’. 81–2.

²⁰Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann, ‘Sprache und Rasse bei Houston Stewart Chamberlain’, in Dietrich Busse, Thomas Niehr and Martin Wengeler (eds), Brisante Semantik: Neuere Konzepte und Forschungsergebnisse einer kulturwissenschaftlichen Linguistik (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer 2005), 199.

²¹Hughes, Nationalism and Society, 131–47. Peter von Polenz outlined how this discourse extended beyond the political sphere to institutions, evidence of which can be found in school pupils’ essays from 1914, which contain a combination of key expressions from conservative, middle-class discourse with militaristic vocabulary; Peter von Polenz, Deutsche Sprachgeschichte vom Spätmittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Band III: 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter 1999), 538–41.

²²Existing studies of Irish nationalist discourse approach the topic from a socio-historical rather than linguistic perspective; see Lawrence J. Taylor, ‘Peter's pence: official Catholic discourse and Irish nationalism in the nineteenth century’, History of European Ideas, vol. 16, nos. 1–3, 1993, 103–7, and Finlayson, ‘Sexuality and nationality’.

²³Steele, Women, Press, and Politics during the Irish Revival, 1–5.

²⁵Ruth Wodak, Rudolf de Cillia, Martin Reisigl and Karin Liebhart, The Discursive Construction of National Identity, trans. from the German by Angelika Hirsch, Richard Mitten and J. W. Unger, 2nd edn (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2009)., 33–5.

²⁴Ruth Wodak, Rudolf de Cillia, Martin Reisigl and Karin Liebhart, The Discursive Construction of National Identity, trans. from the German by Angelika Hirsch, Richard Mitten and J. W. Unger, 2nd edn (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2009).

²⁶Helene Lange, ‘National oder international? Ein Fragezeichen zur Frauenbewegung’ [Die Frau, October 1900], in Helene Lange, Kampfzeiten: Aufsätze und Reden aus vier Jahrzehnten (Berlin: F. A. Herbig 1928), 267–71.

²⁷Maud Gonne, ‘The famine queen’ [United Irishman, 7 April 1900], in Margaret Ward (ed.), In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism (Dublin: Attic Press 1995), 10–13.

²⁸Constance Markievicz, ‘Women, ideals and the nation’, a lecture delivered to the Students's National Literary Society, Dublin, 1909, in Mary. S Pierse (ed.), Irish Feminisms, 1810–1930, 5 vols (Abingdon and New York: Routledge 2010), I, 283–98.

²⁹Käthe Schirmacher, Was ist national? Vortrag gehalten auf dem 5. Ostdeutschen Frauentage in Culm W.Pr. 1911 (Posen: Oskar Eulitz’ Verlag 1912).

³⁰Lange, ‘National oder international?’, 270. As the four texts cannot, for reasons of space, be reproduced to accompany the article, I have included longer quotations at the beginning of the analysis of each text to provide the reader with an example of the style and expression used by the women in their nationalist arguments.

³¹Angelika Schaser, ‘Women in a nation of men: the politics of the League of German Women's Associations (BDF) in imperial Germany, 1894–1914’, trans. from the German by Pamela Selwyn, in Blom, Hagemann and Hall (eds), Gendered Nations, 249–68.

³²Lange, ‘National oder international?’, 269.

³³Lange, ‘National oder international?’, 267.

³⁴Lange, ‘National oder international?’, 271. The references to Boden in the two quotations play on the multiple, related meanings of the word in German, which include ‘soil’, ‘earth’, ‘ground’ and ‘territory’.

³⁵Lange, ‘National oder international?’, 271.

³⁶Anderson, Imagined Communities, 108.

³⁷Lange, ‘National oder international?’, 267.

³⁸See Reinhart Koselleck's discussion of the semantic relationship between patriotism and nationalism in his Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache (Frankfurt on Main: Suhrkamp 2006), 218–26.

³⁹Lange, ‘National oder international?’, 269.

⁴¹Lange, ‘National oder international?’, 268.

⁴⁰Lange, ‘National oder international?’, 268.

⁴²Lange, ‘National oder international?’, 270.

⁴³Lange, ‘National oder international?’, 268.

⁴⁴Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 11. Karen Steele notes: ‘The Government confiscated all available copies on grounds of libel’; Karen Steele (ed.),Maud Gonne's Irish Nationalist Writings 1895–1946 (Dublin, London and Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press 2004), 54.

⁴⁵Ward, Unmanageable Revolutionaries, 47–53; Steele, Women, Press, and Politics during the Irish Revival, 135.

⁴⁶Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 11.

⁴⁷Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 12.

⁴⁸Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 12.

⁴⁹Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 12.

⁵⁰Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 11.

⁵¹Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 11.

⁵²Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 12.

⁵³Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 12.

⁵⁴Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 11.

⁵⁵Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 12.

⁵⁶Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 12.

⁵⁷Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 12.

⁵⁸Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 11.

⁵⁹Markievicz, ‘Women, ideals and the nation’, 298.

⁶⁰Ward (ed.), In Their Own Voice, 30.

⁶¹Markievicz, ‘Women, ideals and the nation’, 283–4, 288.

⁶²Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 285.

⁶³Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 289–92.

⁶⁴Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 293.

⁶⁵Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 283.

⁶⁶Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 283.

⁶⁷Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 286.

⁶⁸Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 285.

⁶⁹Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 285.

⁷⁰Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 286.

⁷¹Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 283.

⁷²Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 298.

⁷³Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 298.

⁷⁴Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 287.

⁷⁵Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 286.

⁷⁶Gonne, ‘The famine queen’, 293.

⁷⁷Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 8.

⁷⁸Walkenhorst, Nation, Volk, Rasse, 139.

⁷⁹Walzer, Käthe Schirmacher, 65.

⁸⁰Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 3.

⁸¹Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 5.

⁸²Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 8.

⁸³Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl and Liebhart, The Discursive Construction of National Identity, 85–6.

⁸⁴Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 3.

⁸⁵Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 4.

⁸⁶Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 7.

⁸⁷Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 4.

⁸⁸Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 5.

⁸⁹Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 3.

⁹⁰Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 7.

⁹¹Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 8.

⁹²Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 4.

⁹⁴Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 8.

⁹³Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 8.

⁹⁵Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 8.

⁹⁶Schirmacher, Was ist national?, 4.

⁹⁷Walkenhorst, Nation, Volk, Rasse, 25.