Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

is un doubtedly of current significance and which can be followed using many
further examples, given among others by Kathrin Kish Sklar, Anja Schüler and
Susan Strasser in their documentation Social Justice Feminists in the United States and
Germany: A Dialogue in Documents 1885-1933 (1998) and by Adriane Feustel
in her article “The Significance of International Relations and Cooperation in
the Works of Alice Salomon” (2006), available at http://www.uni-kassel.de. 15
The comment on the photo “Das Arbeiterinnenheim” (see note 7) sends
us in another direction. It raises awareness of the gulf existing between classes
at the turn of the century and of attempts to bridge this gulf. This situation
can be envisioned in close connection with the album, for example by reading
the memoirs of Alice Salomon, Jane Addams and Beatrice Webb 16 or through
accounts of young female workers’ living conditions, as in the depictions of
Despina Stratigakos in her study A Women’s Berlin: Building the Modern City
(2008) and of Andrew Lees in his book Cities, Sin and Social Reform in Imperial
Germany (2004). 17
Finally, a third thread can be brought to life and made concrete based on
the photo and using the above mentioned reading material and source texts. At
the time of the founding of the Female Workers’ Club, one of the biggest sociopolitical
debates of the era was taking place. It was a debate that cut across
fractions within the women’s movement and the political parties and which
was held across national frontiers: the debate on female workers’ protection as
set against women’s liberation. This debate comes to life in the arguments at
the second International Congress of Women in London in 1899, where Alice
15
Kathrin Kish Sklar, Anja Schüler and Susan Strasser, ed., Social Justice Feminists in the United States and Germany:
A Dialogue in Documents 1885-1933 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); Adriane Feustel, “The
Significance of International Relations and Cooperation in the Works of Alice Salomon”. Translated by Swantje
Siepmann, http://www.uni-kassel.de/frau-bib/publikationen/ariadne_alt_inhalt_49_text_feustel_en.htm (accessed
February 22, 2009); Original German version: Adriane Feustel, “Die Bedeutung internationaler Beziehungen
und Zusammenarbeit im Werk Alice Salomons.” Ariadne. Forum für Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte, no. 49
(2006): pp. 24-29.
16
Jane Addams, Twenty years at Hull House: with autobiographical notes (New York: Macmillan 1911. Reprint:
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990). German translation: Jane Addams, Zwanzig Jahre sozialer Frauenarbeit
in Chicago. Übersetzt von Else Münsterberg, mit einem Geleitwort von Alice Salomon (München: Beck 1913),
Beatrice Webb, My Apprecnticeship (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1929), German translation: Beatrice Webb,
Meine Lehrjahre. Eine Autobiographie, aus dem Englischen von Christa Krüger (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag,
1988).
17
Stratigakos, 2008; Andrew Lees, Cities, Sin and Social Reform in Imperial Germany (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2002).
186