Deborah Barton. Writing and Rewriting the Reich: Women Journalists in the Nazi and Post-War Press. (University of Toronto)
Writing and Rewriting the Reich tells the complex story of women journalists as both outsiders and insiders in the German press of the National Socialist and post-war years.
From 1933 onward, Nazi press authorities valued female journalists as a means to influence the public through charm and subtlety rather than intimidation or militant language. Deborah Barton reveals that despite the deep sexism inherent in the Nazi press, some women were able to capitalize on the gaps between gender rhetoric and reality to establish prominent careers in both soft and hard news.
Based on data collected on over 1,500 women journalists, Writing and Rewriting the Reich describes the professional opportunities open to women during the Nazi era, their gendered contribution to Nazi press and propaganda goals, and the ways in which their Third Reich experiences proved useful in post-war divided Germany. It draws on a range of sources including editorial proceedings, press association membership records, personal correspondence, newspapers, diaries, and memoirs. It also sheds light on both unknown journalists and famous figures including Margret Boveri, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, and Ursula von Kardorff.
Addressing the long-term influence of women journalists, Writing and Rewriting the Reich illuminates some of the most salient issues in the nature of Nazi propaganda, the depiction of wartime violence, and historical memory. (Description from University of Toronto Press).
Q&A with Deborah Barton
If your readers take away only one idea from your book, what would you want that idea to be?
I hope that the book helps readers to think about the role of the media in buttressing and maintaining different political systems, including criminal regimes, in ways that go beyond the dissemination of what we typically consider “hard” or “political” news. In Nazi Germany, for instance, women worked in soft news, and this meant a subtle but important role in normalizing a repressive system. If we think beyond the media, I hope that readers take away an understanding of how authoritarian regimes sustain themselves by demanding everyday moral compromises of “ordinary” individuals, men and women alike. This is true both historically and contemporarily.
What work or idea or thinker influenced you the most in the writing of this book?
Elizabeth Harvey and her pioneering work on the role of women in Nazi Germany’s imperialistic goals, in this case to Germanize occupied Poland, had an enormous impact on how I approached my topic. Harvey analyzed the role and importance of women in the public sphere, which got me thinking about women in the professions. Her more recent work on private life in Nazi Germany also helped me to consider the role of media in crafting and contributing to the reality and the illusion of a private life under a dictatorship. Germans sought refuge in their everyday life as a way to “look away” or distance themselves from the persecution of their fellow citizens, and later those under German occupation, taking place in their midst.
Books answer questions, but they also raise new questions. What questions does your book raise?
I think first and foremost the book raises a larger question about intersecting identities and power relations whether in the cultural, social or political realm. How do those on the margins of power negotiate and claim space for themselves? How do their identities help them to do so? I believe it also raises questions about the interplay between gender, the media and memory. It asks about the role of the media in crafting and disseminating various versions of the past, including those that distort and sanitize individuals, institutions and nations. This phenomenon takes place in democracies as well as dictatorships as we continue to witness today and is an issue that warrants more attention. Who really has the power to craft narratives about our collective past? What is it that gives certain individuals, whether male or female, a “legitimate” voice when it comes to creating a particular version of our past(s)? How do we understand issues of reception? With social media, its targeted algorithms and its vast reach, this question is all the more pressing.
What got you interested in the topic of your book?
I have always been interested in journalism and had considered majoring in it at university. But my interest in history won out. I worked in media relations between my bachelor’s and my graduate studies and had a lot of interaction with journalists in that role. I saw the importance of their work as well as the challenges and restrictions even in a free press such as we have in Canada. When I began my PhD, the topic of women journalists in Nazi and postwar Germany connected my three primary areas of interest: Germany, media and gender. I was often asked “were there even female journalists in Nazi Germany?” I realized that there really was a gap in the historiography with regard to women in the media in 20th century Germany and I wanted to contribute to this area of study.
For those interested in learning more about your topic, what should they turn to next (after having read your book, of course)?
I would point readers to Katharina Friege’s work on media, gender and identity. Friege looks at German women journalists and their pursuit of adventure, which is a fascinating approach to the topic. I would also suggest the memoirs and diaries I use as sources in my own book, which offer insights into the relationship between women journalists’ lived experiences—or how they viewed and presented these experiences—and the political, social, and cultural contexts in which they lived and worked. Women’s roles as war correspondents in the Second World War also makes for compelling reading, although most books focus on a handful of British or American women. Regardless of the national or temporal focus, however, it is exciting to see a growing number of books about women in the media that challenge our understanding of gender roles and recover stories of women’s experiences and impact in this domain.