The Paradox of German Feminism: Allies Without Power

Unlike their French counterparts, German feminists did not face outright hostility from their natural political allies—the progressive liberals. However, these allies lacked both the numerical strength of British liberals and the political influence of French republicans. This precarious position shaped German feminism’s unique trajectory. The 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago became an unlikely catalyst when German delegates at the International Feminist Congress agreed to form a unified national organization. By 1894, the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (Federation of German Women’s Associations) emerged, swelling to 250,000 members by 1914. Yet beneath this impressive facade, ideological fractures were already forming.

Radical Voices and the Limits of Protest

At the federation’s radical fringe stood Marie Stritt, daughter of a Reichstag deputy, who led campaigns against state-regulated prostitution and organized provocative public demonstrations. These actions forced the first serious Reichstag debates on women’s suffrage—a watershed moment. But police crackdowns stifled progress. The 1902 founding of the German Women’s Suffrage Association in Hamburg (where women could legally attend political meetings) marked another turning point. Lawyers Anita Augspurg and Lida Gustava Heymann spearheaded this effort, while philosopher Helene Stöcker championed even more controversial causes: legal equality for unwed mothers, free contraception, and abortion rights.

The 1908 Watershed and Conservative Backlash

When Germany legalized women’s political participation in 1908, moderates seized control of the federation, purging radicals like Stöcker and allying with conservative Protestant groups. The new leader, novelist Gertrud Bäumer, symbolized this rightward shift. Meanwhile, infighting consumed the movement: accusations of sexual impropriety among leaders, bitter disputes over whether to ally with socialists for universal suffrage, and nationalist attacks portraying feminists as family-wreckers. By 1914, German feminism—though numerically strong—stood ideologically adrift and organizationally fractured.

Russia: Feminism Amid Revolution

While German feminists navigated legal constraints, Russian activists faced near-total prohibition. The 1905 Revolution’s October Manifesto ignored women’s rights, spurring the creation of the All-Russian Union for Women’s Equality (12,000 members by 1907). Allied with liberal Constitutional Democrats, they pioneered mass petition drives—one gathering 26,000 signatures. The 1908 All-Russian Women’s Congress, chaired by veteran activist Anna Filosofova, became a battleground when socialist women denounced “bourgeois” feminism. Tsarist repression soon crushed the movement; by 1914, only a few thousand professional women (mostly doctors) kept the cause alive.

Nationalism’s Double-Edged Sword

Across Europe, nationalism both empowered and undermined feminism. In Germany, the German League Against Women’s Emancipation peddled antisemitic conspiracy theories, while Hungary’s movement—led by Jewish activists like Vilma Glücklich and Rosika Schwimmer—faced similar smears. Yet in Bohemia, feminists successfully tied their cause to Czech language revival, winning nationalist support. Scandinavia offered the clearest success: Norway’s 1913 universal suffrage victory followed its 1905 independence from Sweden, proving nationalism and feminism could align.

The Finnish Exception

Finland’s 1906 grant of full suffrage (predating most European nations) revealed feminism’s potential when combined with anti-colonial resistance. Teacher-activist Lucina Hagman—who once taught composer Sibelius—leveraged the “mother tongue” argument, positioning women as guardians of Finnish culture against Russian imperialism. Though Tsarist backlash temporarily nullified these gains, the precedent was set.

The Prewar Impasse

By 1914, suffrage had become feminism’s defining goal across Europe. Yet progress stalled: Denmark’s 1912 lower-house suffrage vote died in the upper chamber; Sweden’s 1912 reform met the same fate. The movements’ bourgeois leadership often prioritized propertied women’s rights over universal suffrage, alienating working-class allies. As war loomed, feminists faced a cruel paradox—their international solidarity networks, so carefully built, would soon be shattered by the very nationalist forces they’d tried to harness.

Legacy: The Unfinished Revolution

World War I would dramatically reshape feminist trajectories, but the prewar era’s lessons endure: the fragility of cross-class alliances, the seductive danger of nationalist co-option, and the persistent tension between incremental reform and radical change. These early 20th-century debates—on abortion, workplace equality, and the very meaning of emancipation—still echo in today’s gender politics, reminding us that rights once gained can never be taken for granted.