In the Shadow of Noble Conservatives: Agrarian Women Movement in Eastern Provinces of Prussia in 1912–1914. The Case of the Province of Pomerania
In the Shadow of Noble Conservatives: Agrarian Women Movement in Eastern Provinces of Prussia in 1912–1914. The Case of the Province of Pomerania

Summary/Abstract: The article describes the circumstances in which a part of the nobility from the Prussian Province of Pomerania agreed to support Agricultural Housewives’ Associations. That new type of women’s organisations propagated a moderate version of emancipation of women in rural areas and was initiated in East Prussia in the 1890s by Elisabet Boehm. The organisations were first established in Pomerania in 1912. They received support from some influential agrarians led by Conrad von Wangenheim. Nobility wanted to use Agricultural Housewives’ Associations to strengthen their influences in rural areas and renew the old patriarchal hierarchies. Noblewomen were meant to lead the associations and promote scientific and technical progress in rural households. This was the way nobility wanted to use to include women in the program of improving living conditions in the countryside. They agreed to broaden the scope of women’s independent activities. However, supporting emancipation of women was not their true objective. In reality, they aimed at using associations to slow down the migration of people from the countryside to the cities (Landflucht) since depopulation of the countryside was a serious issue in the eastern provinces of Prussia from the end of the nineteenth century, which caused a permanent shortage of labor in land estates.

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