Nazi Bride School Sounds a Lot Like Fundiedom

[happy atheist]

Except for the part about getting married in a neo-pagan ceremony, this sounds a lot like being a SAHD. The Nazis even gave bonuses for having a bunch of kids.

“Take hold of the frying pan, dust pan, and broom, and marry a man!” was one of Hermann Goering’s “Nine Commandments for the Workers’ Struggle.”

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/20 ... aking.html

As Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, leader of the NS-Frauenschaft and the highest-ranking woman in the Third Reich, said in a speech to the party Congress in 1935, “Women must be the spiritual caregivers and the secret queens of our people, called upon by fate for this special task!” To become those queens, the future hearth goddesses of the Rhine were to spend “preferably two months before their wedding day” in bridal boot camp: “to recuperate spiritually and physically, to forget the daily worries associated with their previous professions, to find the way and to feel the joy for their new lives as wives.”

[Anny Nym]

A family member, who collects old books, has one of this "schooling books" (I don´t know why one of the articles states this is "just discovered" - this courses were aimed to a broad audience, to speak, and this books are circulating around on flea markets, book fairs etc. in a big number) .

I read it a bit a time ago for a paper... maybe I dig it again, but it´s too weird to bear it. Like a Pearl book submerged with Lori Alexander and Zsu (Suprise, suprise!).

For infant care, they suggested feeding your baby at a strict plan every 4 hours, to no let you "emotionally manipulate" by crying and to to make girls care for their little brothers to get them accostumated to be "die Stütze des Mannes" <- which could be translated pretty much into "helpmeet" too.

I wouldn´t be all too much suprised if a couple of fundie grandes own and copied from Nazi books.

[MamaJunebug]

They were big on headcoverings, too, if a Google search I did long ago means anything.

"Women's headcoverings" brought up a page showing the ideal Nazi helpmeet. All the ladies wore scarves.

Decided me against headcovering as a sign of my devotion to God! Btw, this was years ago.

[Cran]

Nah, I don't think it has anything to do with headcovering, if you look at many of the propaganda posters, they show young women with bare heads, doing sports. But wearing a headscarve was a usual part of the outfit women working in agriculture wore, and the Nazis did idealize this, so I guess it comes from there. You mean things like this, no? http://www.bytwerk.com/gpa/posters/tolz41.gif

At least one poster even shows a nursing mother - Guess it would provoke a scandal in the US these days!

That's the one: http://www.bytwerk.com/gpa/posters/mutterkind.jpg

Btw, there was some internal conflict in the NSDAP concerning the stance on women. While the male leaders strongly pushed for the women as bearer of children (and future soldiers), a subset (Himmler and his acolytes) even went so far as to proclaim unwed motherhood as acceptable as long as it served the German race (but no, they DID NOT BREED racial "pure" children at the Lebensborn!), a sizeable part of the "Frauenschaft" itself was against such an usurpation of womanhood, and especially criticized this happening too early in the girls lifes and trying to preserve a certain freedom. Actually, for young girls, the "Bund Deutscher Maedel" and its activities were not so different from the boy's organisation until adulthood.

The "ideal Nazi woman" was also somewhat in conflict with the role women took in the early days of the movement, often being very active politically or even involved in street fights, which was downplayed later on. Many leading men of the NSDAP were brought in contact with the party through their wives, who conveniently forgot about their political opinions after the war. Just housewives, you now!

We tend to talk about "the Nazis", but historically, it's more difficult, as there were many different currents united under the flag of the NSDAP.

[Sobeknofret]

Nah, I don't think it has anything to do with headcovering, if you look at many of the propaganda posters, they show young women with bare heads, doing sports. But wearing a headscarve was a usual part of the outfit women working in agriculture wore, and the Nazis did idealize this, so I guess it comes from there. You mean things like this, no? http://www.bytwerk.com/gpa/posters/tolz41.gif

At least one poster even shows a nursing mother - Guess it would provoke a scandal in the US these days!

That's the one: http://www.bytwerk.com/gpa/posters/mutterkind.jpg

Randall Bytwerk's site is really really good. I'm currently doing some research on daily life in Nazi Germany for a paper I'm trying to write, and his site has been a source of really good and really interesting information.

I'm not sure why this is such a sudden discovery; the book Mothers in the Fatherland by Claudia Koontz talks about the bride schools and the women's training curriculum in depth, and it was published in 1988.

[anjulibai]

They were big on headcoverings, too, if a Google search I did long ago means anything.

"Women's headcoverings" brought up a page showing the ideal Nazi helpmeet. All the ladies wore scarves.

Decided me against headcovering as a sign of my devotion to God! Btw, this was years ago.

I think that was just when doing a lot of physical labor. From the pictures linked in the article, the women wore head coverings when out in the fields or working the garden or feeding livestock. They didn't have head coverings, though, when in doors doing spinning or caring for children. That's pretty typical of the era, I think, as it allowed hair to be kept out of the face while working.

[Cleopatra7]

As a rule, Western women tended to wear hats much more in the early and mid-20th centuries than they do now. For much of history, this was because of the Biblical admonishment to wear a head covering. By the 19th century, head coverings were more about fashion and what was and was not appropriate to wear at such and such occasion than it was about theology. The Nazis idealized rural life, where women wore headscarves for practical reasons. I don't think that Nazis had any particular ideology about head coverings, although they did believe in a militarized family unit, which would not be unfamiliar to many of the families we follow here. FJers may be interested in Magda Goebbels ([link=]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magda_Goebbels[/link]), wife of Josef Goebbels, who exemplified the "ideal German woman" to the outside world.

[Conuly]

I think that was just when doing a lot of physical labor. From the pictures linked in the article, the women wore head coverings when out in the fields or working the garden or feeding livestock. They didn't have head coverings, though, when in doors doing spinning or caring for children. That's pretty typical of the era, I think, as it allowed hair to be kept out of the face while working.

Out of the face and *clean*, and it helps keep braids neat, which in turn keeps the hair untangled.

I will point out one huge difference between this bride school idea and certain fundie ideas - even the Nazis figured a few weeks was enough to learn housework, not an entire childhood!

[Mama Mia]

As a rule, Western women tended to wear hats much more in the early and mid-20th centuries than they do now. For much of history, this was because of the Biblical admonishment to wear a head covering. By the 19th century, head coverings were more about fashion and what was and was not appropriate to wear at such and such occasion than it was about theology. The Nazis idealized rural life, where women wore headscarves for practical reasons. I don't think that Nazis had any particular ideology about head coverings, although they did believe in a militarized family unit, which would not be unfamiliar to many of the families we follow here. FJers may be interested in Magda Goebbels ([link=]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magda_Goebbels[/link]), wife of Josef Goebbels, who exemplified the "ideal German woman" to the outside world.

Not at all related to Nazis, but to hats.

I remember my grandma bemoaning how no one dressed up like a real lady when they went to the city like they did in her day, when ladies would always wear proper hats and gloves for a trip into the city. The city was San Francisco, the time was the late 60's, and shed say this while giving my mom a disapproving look. Mom would be in a mini skirt and on her way to an anti-war demonstration :D

[thoughtful]

Not at all related to Nazis, but to hats.

I remember my grandma bemoaning how no one dressed up like a real lady when they went to the city like they did in her day, when ladies would always wear proper hats and gloves for a trip into the city. The city was San Francisco, the time was the late 60's, and shed say this while giving my mom a disapproving look. Mom would be in a mini skirt and on her way to an anti-war demonstration :D

Does anyone still wear a hat?

(sorry, everything's a song cue to me)

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