The Surplus Woman Unmarried in Imperial Germany, 1871-1918 [Paperback]

The first German womens movement embraced the belief in a demographic surplus of unwed women, known as theFrauen?berschu?, as a central leitmotif in the campaign for reform. Proponents of the female surplus held that the advances of industry and urbanization had upset traditional marriage patterns and left too many bourgeois women without a husband. This book explores the ways in which the realms of literature, sexology, demography, socialism, and female activism addressed the perceived plight of unwed women. Case studies of reformers, including Lily Braun, Ruth Br?, Elisabeth Gnauck-K?hne, Helene Lange, Alice Salomon, Helene St?cker, and Clara Zetkin, demonstrate the expansive influence of the discourse surrounding a female surfeit. By combining the approaches of cultural, social, and gender history, The Surplus Woman provides the first sustained analysis of the ways in which imperial Germans conceptualized anxiety about female marital status as both a product and a reflection of changing times.

Catherine L. Dollardreceived her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and currently is Associate Professor of History at Denison University. She is the recipient ofBundeskanzlerand Renewal Fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and also has received fellowships from DAAD, the Mellon Foundation, and the Lilly Foundation.

Dollards work makes important contributions to German cultural history, social history, and gender history, focusing attention on the construction of the stereotype of single women as abnormal, a problem to be solved, in Imperial Germany, and the way that the German womens movement co-opted this icon for its own purposes of reform. She also brings to attention several lesser-known German female activists who have often been overlooked.? ??German Studies Review

[This book] is a considerable achievement.The Surplus Woman