The women’s movement and goals and activities at the beginning of the 20th century as depicted in a local housewives’ weekly

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, the women’s movement in Germany was already well-organized, with its postulates winning increasing public support. Long years of work by multiple organizations led to a wide debate on those postulates and they appeared on the pages of commercial magazines. The article presents an analysis of materials from the periodical „Breslauer Hausfrau” [„The Wrocław Housewife”], which started to operate in autumn 1903 and was successful on a demanding publishing market. The women’s movement, its goals and activities are presented to readers from a local and a regional perspective, one very close to them. Due to the effort and involvement of the editorial office in Wrocław, besides interesting recaps of the large conventions and congresses of women’s organizations held in Wrocław at the beginning of the 20th century, the discussed women’s weekly also included more exclusive information on the hard, day-to-day work of Silesian women’s organizations.