"For Mothers Only": Mothers' Convalescent Homes And Modernizing Maternal Ideology In 1950s West Germany

Journal of Social History, Summer, 2001 by K.M.N. Carpenter

In the mid 1950s, a little boy wrote to the headquarters of the Muttergenesungswerk, the "convalescent home for mothers," located in Stein bei Nurnburg, West Germany. His ill mother had recently completed a four-week cure, and he wrote his appreciation in the following letter:

We were very skeptical that the recovery time would really help my mother and really make her better ... [Now] I believe it [the Muttergenesungswerk] has strengthened some mothers more than the very best and most beautiful Schnitzel. [1]

It was perhaps a bit of an exaggeration that a mother's cure home was "even better than Schnitzel" as this grateful son enthused, but the Muttergenesungswerk did serve as an important institutional response to the Frauenfrage, or "women question," that framed West Germany's postwar reorganization.

Since the late 1940s, this reorganization was characterized by efforts to "validate the nuclear, patriarchal family as the foundation of West German society." [2] The social upheavals of war, occupation, and reconstruction fostered a desire to return to a traditional gendered "normalcy" in which women remained home to care for husbands and children while men provided for their families financially. [3]

Founded in 1950, the Muttergenesungswerk initially reflected the state's dominant conservative ideology that the family--and women's role in that family--should serve as the basis for a new German social order. [4] Werk publicity materials warned that if widows, refugees, and women who had become exhausted from intense physical labor during the war and its aftermath did not recover their health, they would be unable to fulfill their primary responsibilities as mothers. [5] Once treated, these same women would retake their positions as "the rallying points of the family" and "participate more joyfully in their marriages and raise their children with understanding and love." [6]

By the mid 1950s, the cure homes began to depart from this predominant conservative stance. Motivated by what it termed an increase in "degenerative neurological conditions," the Muttergenesungswerk argued that life had not substantially improved for women. This observation disputed the validity of the Federal Republic's newly created economic and social stability. Even as the government touted the widespread benefits of the Wirtschaftswunder (Economic Miracle) for West German citizens, sustained high illness rates among the nation's mothers suggested that many women continued to face urgent social problems.

The ravages of war and reconstruction, however, no longer provided convincing reasons for mothers to participate in cures away from their families. For the convalescent homes to remain a viable institution, administrators needed to reshape the Werk's mission. They accomplished this by picking up on widespread debates among politicians and the public regarding the intersection of motherhood and women's employment. [7] Cure home literature now stated that "the monstrous stress of our time... the constant work and mothers' employment" were bringing many West German women to their breaking points. Only extended time away from family and the workplace would enable "the burdened mother of today [to] achieve a real recovery." [8]

This redirection worked. The number of cure homes increased from 42 in 1950 to 167 in 1960. Over the span of ten years, half a million mothers had partaken in convalescent programs. President Heuss himself reflected at the end of the decade that "what had begun as a provisionary response, [had] become a foregone conclusion." [9]

Despite the Muttergenesungswerk's success, it has received surprisingly scant scholarly attention. In general, the convalescent homes of the 1950s have been viewed as little more than a conservative organization that fulfilled the state's agenda. Supposedly, cure programs offered no counseling other than that women should be submissive to their husbands for the ultimate good of their families. [10] Even in moderate interpretations, the Genesungswerk has been cited as a prime example of the determination on the part of women's associations to save the West German family during a time of political and social uncertainty. [11]

This assessment fits neatly into mainstream interpretations regarding the Federal Republic's postwar gender relations. Historians generally concur that the continuity of traditional gender roles was "the predominant tendency in the post-war era." [12] Although women acted with remarkable autonomy during the closing years of the war and its aftermath, many West Germans dismissed this period as a time of "forced emancipation," and "'normal' gender hierarchies were restored with remarkable speed." [13] Men returned to their roles as breadwinners and heads of families, while women resumed--at least theoretically--their positions within the "housewife marriage." The historical consensus agrees that this conservative form of domesticity remained "solid until the late 1960s." [14]

The Muttergenesungswerk, however, did more than just exhort women to follow their true callings as mothers. Dismissing it as a pawn for the government's conservative maternal ideology accordingly underestimates its significance in the Federal Republic's postwar gender debates. To be sure, the cure homes began with a relatively simple view of women's roles and remained committed to cultivating patients' maternal instincts. Cure directors, though, also recognized that women's health problems arose in large part because changing social realities were inconsistent with traditional expectations. [15]