German Women in the Nineteenth Century

This penetrating collection of essays represents the most sophisticated research undertaken in an important and long-neglected area of scholarship. Bringing together for the first time contributions by American and European specialists, German Women in the Nineteenth Century not only helps us understand more fully how German women of all classes, religions, and shades of political opinion lived, but challenges long-held assumptions about the political and social fabric of their age and culture.

Divided into two parts—the first focuses on middle- and upper-class women and the second on women of the working class—the volume addresses a range of important topics, including growing up female in nineteenth century Germany, the woman's role in the German working-class family in the 1890s, women's education and reading habits, and Jewish women and assimilation.