Aftermaths of War: Women's Movements and Female Activists, 1918-1923(63 History of Warfare)

Much of the recent literature on cultural demobilisation or remobilisation after the First World War has focused on men and masculinity. By contrast, this interdisciplinary volume of essays sets out to examine the importance of women’s movements and individual female activists to the shaping of post-war Europe at the private, communal, national and transnational levels. Key themes include the commemoration of the war dead; the renegotiation of gender roles; suffrage and political rights; and women’s contribution to the establishment of new visions of peace or national revenge and regeneration in the years 1918 to 1923. The eighteen chapters cover countries in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Western Europe, and defeated as well as victorious nations, thus allowing for a more nuanced understanding of the deep impact of the war and its aftermath on the continent as a whole. Contributors are Nikolai Vukov, Emma Schiavon, Christiane Streubel, Erika Kuhlman, Ann Rea, Ingrid Sharp, Olga Shnyrova, Fatmira Musaj and Beryl Nicholson, Christine Bard, Gabriella Hauch, Judith Szapor, Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska, Virginija Jurėnienė, Judit Acsády, Matthew Stibbe, Bruce Berglund, David Hudson and Jill Liddington.

Table of Contents:
CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix List of Abbreviations xi List of Illustrations xv List of Contributors xvii Introduction: Women’s Movements and Female Activists in the Aftermath of War: International Perspectives 1918-1923 Ingrid Sharp and Matthew Stibbe 1 PART ONE COMMEMORATION, REMEMBERING,REMOBILISATION The aftermaths of defeat: the fallen, the catastrophe, and the public response of women to the end of the First World War in Bulgaria Nikolai Vukov 29 The women’s suffrage campaign in Italy in 1919 and Voce nuova (“New Voice”): Corporatism, nationalism and the struggle for political rights Emma Schiavon 49 Raps across the knuckles: The extension of war culture by radical nationalist women journalists in post-1918 Germany Christiane Streubel 69 The Rhineland Horror campaign and the aftermath of war Erika Kuhlman 89 PART TWO THE RENEGOTIATION OF GENDER ROLES From “Free Love” to Married Love: Gender politics, Marie Stopes, and middlebrow fiction by women in the early nineteen twenties Ann Rea 113 The disappearing surplus: the spinster in the post-war debate in Weimar Germany, 1918-1920 Ingrid Sharp 135 After the vote was won. The fate of the women’s suffrage movement in Russia after the October Revolution: individuals, ideas and deeds Olga Shnyrova 159 Women activists in Albania following independence and World War I Fatmira Musaj and Beryl Nicholson 179 PART THREE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE AND POLITICAL RIGHTS A bitter-sweet victory: Feminisms in France (1918-1923) Christine Bard 199 Sisters and Comrades. Women’s movements and the “Austrian Revolution”: Gender in insurrection, the Rate movement, parties and parliament Gabriella Hauch 221 Who represents Hungarian women? The demise of the liberal bourgeois women’s rights movement and the rise of the rightwing women’s movement in the aftermath of World War I Judith Szapor 245 Soldiers, members of parliament, social activists: the Polish women’s movement after World War I Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska 265 Political and public aspects of the activity of the Lithuanian women’s movement, 1918-1923 Virginija Jurėnienė 287 PART FOUR RECONSTRUCTING COMMUNITIES/VISIONS OF PEACE Diverse constructions: Feminist and conservative women’s movements and their contribution to the (re-)construction of gender relations in Hungary after the First World War Judit Acsady 309 Elsa Brandstrom and the reintegration of returning prisoners of war and their families in post-war Germany and Austria Matthew Stibbe 333 “We stand on the threshold of a new age”: Alice Masarykova, the Czechoslovak Red Cross, and the building of a new Europe Bruce R. Berglund 355 “Having Seen Enough”: Eleanor Franklin Egan and the journalism of Great War displacement David Hudson 375 Britain in the Balkans: the response of the Scottish Women’s Hospital Units Jill Liddington 395 Index 419

About the Author :
Ingrid Sharp MA (1989) in German and Philosophy, University of Oxford, is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Leeds and Head of the Department of German, Russian and Slavonic Studies. She has published on aspects of the women's movement in Germany in international perspective and is co-editor with Alison Fell of The Women’s Movement in Wartime: International Perspectives, 1914-1919 (Palgrave April 2007). Matthew Stibbe, D.Phil (1997) in History, University of Sussex, is Reader in History at Sheffield Hallam University. He has published widely in the field of First World War studies and twentieth-century Germany, including Germany, 1914-1933: Politics, Society and Culture (Pearson, 2010).