The twelve friends’ original intention in launching the Rundbrief had been to keep in touch as they progressed through their careers as “social educators and caretakers” specializing in Early Childhood Care and Education, Gymnastics and Dance, Home Economics and Social Hygiene, Practical Nursing or Design. In the Spring of 1927, they had dispersed, each embarking on an internship, practicum or course of further training. They expected to be permanently placed in the careers of their choice within a year or two. In reality, jobs were scarce, and became increasingly so. This was due to the cumulative effect of a deteriorating economy and changing images of social work, involving both greater professionalization and greater politization. Internships led to more internships, to volunteering or at best temporary/adjunct positions, leading to discouragement, a sense of wasted qualifications, and the gradual channeling into the private spheres of marriage, motherhood and consumerhood of energies which their teachers had originally trained for the larger vision of social motherhood, social hygiene and social design.

The permanent jobs came together with the establishment of the Nazi regime. This meant that employment was now overcast by the question of allegiance to the regime, participation or non-participation in the “voluntary” Arbeitsdienst institutions, class-conflict on top of the perennial frustration with bureaucratic ineptitude.

Originally translated for the private use of one woman’s English-speaking daughter and grandchildren, these letters seemed at first purely ‘personal’ in tone and content. Disappointingly, the Rundbrief contained little in the way of explicit political or sociological commentary. References to a larger context are for the most part in the nature of allusions, and seen through the filter of the writers’ professional activity. True to their middle-class origins, they remained close to their families ; also true to their middle-class origins they hiked and traveled, by themselves or with male and female friends; and true to their German middle-class origins, they were intensely involved in the various aspects of what has become the worldwide culture of the body.

The nature of their work meant that there was often little distinction between the private and the professional: internships for the most part were done in institutional settings in the countryside, the gymnastics students lived in boarding-school on a Baltic Sea island. And their far-flung travels to visit exhibits, to attend performances or perform themselves, their avid interest in modern dance, new technology and design and the Bauhaus movement reflected the nature of their training.

Gradually, our disappointment about the apolitical quality of these ‘letters’ gave way to excitement about a vivid, often surprising, image of the world of this group of middle-class, Frauenschule-educated women. There was something infectious about their vitality, their appetite for experience, the multifaceted quality of their training, the way it reflected the vitality and diversity of German culture in the 1920s and 30s, and the paradoxes of the transition from Weimar politics and culture to the Nazi politics and culture. As our interest in these young women grew, so did our questions about this document.

How representative were these young women of aspiring social workers of their time, evolving from charity workers, ‘motherly caretakers of the nation’ to professionals and on to ‘mothers of the nation —or in the case of these women to ‘mothers (not necessarily) for the nation’ ?

How did others experience the tensions between these various conceptions of motherhood ?

How would these experiences parallel those of women in other parts of the world during the latter part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century?

What were the continuities between the Weimar period and the Nazi period? how was the latter prepared by the former?

What was the relationship between the school they attended and other Frauenschulen? and with the rest of German education? and for that matter, how did the school evolve during the Nazi period?

As for this Rundbrief, for all its apolitical quality, how personal was it really? what does it say about the Rundbrief as literary form?

These and other questions will be examined in a series of extended footnotes to the Rundbrief, which we hope will serve as launching pads for a wider discussion.

The editor’s intension is to have categories of interest which registered users can click on, read the relevant parts of the Rundbrief, and then comment if they choose to. When the Rundbrief is uploaded, this activity will be possible. We are working on making the Rundbrief available. mvp