Towards Equality for Women and Men from One Race. Sophie Rogge-Börner’s Racial-Feminist Philosophy of Education.

From the immediate after-World War II period to the Historikerinnenstreit, feminist interpretations of the Third Reich portrayed German women mainly as victims of the most extreme form of patriarchy. In the past decades, this ideal-typical representation has been abandoned in favour of more nuanced and complex descriptions of the variety of women’s experiences, shaped principally by their “racial” origin, and the women’s support for right-wing parties during the Weimar Republic, a regime generally associated with numerous feminist victories. Nowadays, the question is not whether but to what extent, for what reasons, and at what levels women were involved in the radical right. It is to be asked whether their presence had an impact on its defence of traditional gender roles and patriarchal values. 

Driven by these questions, this paper takes a look at the constitution of the völkisch women’s movement, focusing on the journalist and writer Sophie Rogge-Börner (1878-1955) who occupied a central place in the articulation of a specifically gender- and racially-oriented narrative of renewal in the 1920s and 1930s. By challenging the general distinction between difference feminism and equality feminism, I bring to light a particular articulation of feminism and anti-Semitism. After examining the interlocking of the categories race, class, and gender in her writings, her philosophy of education will be discussed to compare it with concurrent right-wing conceptions. In conclusion, the paper addresses the issue of women’s engagement, agency, and autonomy in the radical right and underlines the necessity to question the racial preconceptions of feminist discourses.