Marital Status and the Rhetoric of the Women's Movement in World War I Germany

The rhetoric of the German women's movement regarding female marital status changed during World War I. Female marital status had been a central concern of the leadership of the women's movement prior to the war. Yet as female marital prospects diminished in the wake of the Great War, leading voices in the imperial German women's movement shifted their focus away from the problematic "surplus woman" and adopted a platform that emphasized female unity and patriotism. This rhetorical shift advanced a vision of a "maternal citizen" that would figure prominently in the divisive gender politics of the Weimar era.