Competing Visions of Motherhood at the Welfare Office: Communist Women and the German State, 1929-1933

The Weimar Republic (1919-1933) marked a watershed moment for the rights of women and families. From educating children to promulgating pro-family legislation, the state assumed a large number of new social responsibilities. Indeed, welfare proved to be an essential component of the Weimar political compromise, as it was designed to ensure social stability after an era of war and revolution. Consequently, Germany’s welfare system expanded considerably in the 1920s, but as the Republic entered the Depression in 1930, the government drastically reduced welfare assistance just at the moment when the need for it mushroomed.

This paper examines the ways that working-class women, particularly those affiliated with the German Communist Party (KPD), interacted with the state at the local welfare office. It argues that communist women believed that Weimar’s social system never lived up to the promises articulated by its political framers. Their criticisms focused not only on the inadequacy of welfare support, but also on welfare officials, whom they believed unfairly scrutinized working-class mothers. At the center of much of the conflict at the welfare office were competing visions of motherhood, as discord, rooted in class conflict, pervaded a system that advocated a middle-class conception of motherhood, seemingly insensitive to the plight of working-class families. Angered by a system that failed to deliver support in the midst of a severe economic crisis and rebuked for their deficient maternal skills, proletarian women lashed out at the state, becoming radicalized as a result of their experiences with the welfare system.