“Junge Mädchen” and “Daughters of the Sky”: Transatlantic Changes in the Construction of Femininity after 1930

Abstract

The difference between the representation of German femininity in the 1920s and the 1930s is striking: while glamorous flappers with bob haircuts ruled the beginning of the interwar period, its end is characterized by serious and earnest—and often longhaired—young women. Rather than taking the obvious route of relating this change to the political changes in Germany, most importantly the rise of the Nazis, this article argues that the changing representation of interwar femininity in Germany was always embedded in a transnational, transatlantic process. The transformation of flappers into humble girls started well before the Nazis came to power and was fueled by a wide variety of voices, from communist to bourgeois actors.