German American Women’s Organizations

German American women created a wide spectrum of organizations during the nine­teenth and early twentieth centuries. Just like their male family members, many first- generation immigrant women started or joined organizations soon after their arrival in the United States.

First to appear in most German com­munities in the United States were women’s church groups. They formed an important part of both Catholic and Lutheran congregational life. Catholic women could join Christian mothers’ soci­eties or courts of the Women’s Catholic Order of Foresters or become members of mutual support groups. The Christian mothers’ societies, which were often the largest groups with up to several hundred members and were designed to organize all married women in a congregation, con­cerned themselves mostly with religious ed­ucation.

Women’s church groups also engaged in charitable work. They shared their con­cern for the poor, sick, and underprivileged with the many secular women’s charity or­ganizations that could be found in almost any German American community. De­pending on the cause they had chosen, these organizations existed for only a short span of time or were long-lasting ventures. Different groups profited from their en­deavors. The women who were affiliated with the Deutsche Gesellschaften (German Societies) exclusively provided aid to mem­bers of their own ethnic group. They dis­tributed food and fuel to new arrivals and helped them find housing and employ­ment. Other organizations ignored the eth­nic background of their clientele and pro­vided financial and material support to poor families, widows, orphans, veterans and sick people, or the institutions that sheltered them (orphanages, hospitals, sol­diers’ homes, etc.). In some instances, Ger­man American women’s charitable activism was triggered by events in Germany: dur­ing the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) and World War I, women organized na­tionwide to support victims of the war both on the home front and the battlefield.

Besides helping others, German Amer­ican women expressed an interest in self­improvement and leisure activities. The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw the start of reading circles and debating soci­eties, which served as arenas to discuss women’s concerns and reform issues. Few, however, evolved into women’s clubs simi­lar to those that formed the General Feder­ation of Women’s Clubs. At the same time, the numbers of organizations that focused on leisure and sociability increased dramat­ically, especially in cities that had big Ger­man communities like New York, Chicago, and Milwaukee. Women started groups that engaged in playing games—card and board games especially—dancing, and travel; they became interested in physical education; and they joined musical soci­eties, singing clubs, and choirs, often in co­operation with German American men.

In many American cities, those women who were affiliated with the group of polit­ical refugees who left Germany after the revolution of 1848-1849 became active in a network of organizations that included support groups of schools and kinder­gartens, freethinkers’ women’s clubs, and ladies’ auxiliaries of Turner associations. The school and kindergarten groups sought to popularize the idea of bilingual education in German and English, not only among German immigrants but also throughout American society. Highly criti­cal of American teaching methods, they helped establish schools in which German curricula—including physical education— were taught and hoped that Anglo-Ameri­can schools would copy their example. Many members of these groups believed that as mothers of a generation of children that was born in the United States, they should work for the cause of education and serve as custodians of German educational traditions and as mediators between two different cultures.

The freethinkers’ women’s clubs shared this conviction. As part of the reli­gious and political opposition in prerevo­lutionary Germany, they had fought for women’s emancipation, which they in­cluded in a larger reform agenda. In the United States they continued their strug­gle, focusing on the issue of suffrage, just as the Anglo-American women’s rights movement did after the Civil War. Free- thinking women, in fact, established close ties to the movement. The most promi­nent German American suffragist, Mathilde Anneke, who was a member of the women’s club of the Freie Gemeinde of Milwaukee, served as vice president of the National Woman Suffrage Association and as the organization’s link to the German American community in the country. Largely ignored in the past, German American freethinking women have to be considered as the spearheads of women’s rights activism in that community and as the core of a German American women’s movement in the United States.

The Turner movement had originally shared much of the radicalism so charac­teristic of the freethinkers—their motto called for a sound mind and a sound body as prerequisites of democratic citizenship. However, after their migration to the United States, the Turners became increas­ingly conservative, both intellectually and politically. Turner women seemed to share this conservatism, which expressed itself most visibly in their reading of gender re­lations. They did not seek involvement in the movement as men’s equals but ac­cepted the role of men’s supporters. Ex­cluded from full membership in the Turn- vereine (Turner societies) well into the twentieth century and seldom encouraged to physically exercise, Turner women or­ganized themselves into ladies’ auxiliaries.

Their ethnic background as Germans induced other women to join the Socialist movement. Socialism had made its way to the United States in the cultural baggage of German immigrants, and German Ameri­cans were among its supporters as early as the 1850s. Parties like the Workingmen’s Association of the United States granted full membership rights to women and in­cluded the call for the equality of men and women in their platform. Women were en­couraged to join the party and organize ei­ther in branches that included both sexes or establish separate women’s sections (Frauensektionen). Either way, they were able to make their voices heard in matters of party policy and in political decision­making processes. Like members of the freethinking women’s clubs, women who joined the Workingmen’s Association were eager to fight for women’s equality. First on their agenda of demands was women’s full political emancipation: women’s right to vote and hold office. Other demands in­cluded the call for women’s economic emancipation, which the social revolution was supposed to bring about eventually. The Socialist Party, which was founded in 1901, was less enthusiastic about the con­tributions women could and should make to party politics. The party relegated women mostly to its auxiliary organization (Frauenclubs), where in many cities Ger­man American women were segregated from women of other ethnic backgrounds. Auxiliaries mainly offered political educa­tion. Their female members were not en­couraged to join other women’s organiza­tions in the fight for women’s rights and suffrage. The class struggle was to have pri­ority over matters of gender equality. Ger­man American women therefore shied away from coalitions with suffragists and restricted themselves mostly to the more traditional role of faithful supporters and fundraisers for the party.

Last to appear in the spectrum of Ger­man American women’s organizations were trade unions as well as lodges of secret so­cieties and fraternal orders. The first of these organizations sprang up during the 1880s. Inspired by the example set by Anglo-American women, mainly German American women with second- or third- generation immigrant backgrounds began to explore forms of activism that their mothers had been unfamiliar with in Ger­many. It was their status as members of American society and not so much their ethnic background as Germans that in­duced them to do so.

German American women who joined or founded trade unions were concerned about their rights as members of the work­ing population in general and their status as women wage earners in particular. Rapid industrialization and access to formerly male jobs not only exposed them to the capitalist market economy but also fre­quently put them at odds with their male colleagues. Unionization promised group support and enabled women to bargain for their rights collectively. At stake were womens economic independence, equal pay for equal work, a reduction of working hours, and an increase in pay. During years of heavy strike activity, women’s union membership rose. In 1886, for instance, Milwaukee’s German American seam­stresses organized, asking for the eight- hour workday at ten hours’ pay and com­plete equality with their male colleagues. They chose to affiliate themselves with the Knights of Labor and the Central Labor Union, both of which accepted female members. Women also organized in many other American cities like New York and Chicago, in part encouraged by the Women’s Trade Union League, which strove for women’s unionization and coop­eration among laboring women of different ethnic backgrounds.

Those German American women who joined lodges of secret societies and frater­nal orders were part of a larger national trend. At the beginning of the twentieth century, more than 6 million Americans held memberships in organizations like the Freemasons, the Odd Fellows, the Ancient Order of Foresters, or the Knights of Pythias, to name but a few. Even before German Americans flocked to these orders, they had created their own ethnic organi­zations: the Sons of Hermann (1840) and the Order of Harugari (1847), both of which followed a secret ritual and excluded women. Just like Anglo-American women had done before the Freemasons and Odd Fellows opened to women’s participation, German American women started to press for the right to organize as female members of the orders during the early 1880s. Gen­der roles were slowly changing toward a more equal relationship between the sexes, they argued, and called on the orders to ac­commodate to these changes. Both eventu­ally gave way and granted membership rights to women in women’s lodges. Un­married, widowed, and gainfully employed women with working-class backgrounds made up the majority of those who joined for, besides encouraging sociability, the Daughters of Hermann and the Hertha Degree provided for the mutual support of their members. Their services included health, work, and life insurance. These were crucial benefits that provided for women’s social security and economic in­dependence at a time when the American welfare state was still in its infancy.

Like their male relatives, German American women were fond of organizing. At a time when German communities in the United States reached their greatest ex­tension and complexity, these women were

involved in a wide variety of activities, ap­propriating for themselves all types of or­ganizational forms. By building their own organizations, German American women proved their ability to create their own spaces in which they could come together outside the home and invest their energies in projects beyond the immediate concern of the family. Even though some areas of activity, like the different reform move­ments, were almost completely ignored, it can safely be argued that by organizing and becoming involved, German Ameri­can women were able to realize their po­tential as social agents and to make crucial contributions to community-building processes. At the same time they were able to move beyond the gender role of wife and mother that had restricted them for so long.

Anke Ortlepp

See also Anneke, Mathilde Franziska; Forty-Eighters; Kindergartners; Milwaukee; Sons of Hermann; Turner Societies; Vrein

References and Further Reading

Blascke, Monika, and Christiane Harzig.

Frauen wandern aus: Deutsche Migrantinnen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Bremen: Universitat, 1990.

Haderle, Irene. Deutsche kirchliche Frauenvereine in Ann Arbor, 1870—1930. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1997.

Harzig, Christiane. Familie, Arbeit und weibliche Offentlichkeit in einer Einwanderungsstadt: Deutschamerikanerinnen in Chicago um die Jahrhundertwende. St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae, 1991.

Herminghouse, Patricia. “‘Sisters, Arise!’ The Intersections of Nineteenth­Century German and American Feminist Movements.” The German- American Encounter: Conflict and Cooperation between Two Cultures, 1800—2000. Ed. Frank Trommler and Elliott Shore. New York: Berghahn Books, 2001, 49-60.

Ortlepp, Anke. “Auf denn, Ihr Schwestern!” Deutschamerikanische Frauenvereine in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1844—1914. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2003.

Scott, Anne F. Natural Allies: Womens Associations in American History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.