page_title: Women in Nazi Germany
section_title: Prohibitions and obligations
hierarchical_section_title: Women in Nazi Germany / Nazi feminine ideal / Prohibitions and obligations
caption_attribution_description: Olympics in Berlin 1936 author: Josef Jindřich Šechtl http://sechtl-vosecek.ucw.cz/cml/dir/berlin_1936_35mm.html Uploaded with approval of inheritors of the copyright
context_page_description: Women in Nazi Germany were subject to doctrines of Nazism by the Nazi Party, promoting exclusion of women from political life of Germany along with its executive body as well as its executive committees. Although the Nazi party decreed that "women could be admitted to neither the Party executive nor to the Administrative Committee", due to numerous cases and extreme lack or organisation and skill this did not prevent numerous women from becoming party members. The Nazi doctrine elevated the role of German men, emphasizing their combat skills and the brotherhood among male compatriots.
  Women lived within a regime characterized by a policy of allowing and encouraging them to fill the roles of mother and wife and excluding them from all positions of responsibility, notably in the political and academic spheres. The policies of Nazism contrasted starkly with the evolution of women's rights and gender equality under the Weimar Republic, and is equally distinguishable from the mostly male-dominated and conservative attitude under the German Empire.
context_section_description: The wearing of makeup was generally prohibited, and a certain modesty was demanded of women, contrasting with the Weimar Republic period, which experienced more freedom on a moral level. In 1933, meetings of the NSBO (National Sozialistischer Betriebs Obman, the women's section of the German Workers' Front) proclaimed that women "painted and powdered were forbidden at all meetings of the NSBO. Women who smoked in public – in hotels, cafés, in the street and so on – will be excluded from NSBO". Activities considered more or less traditional were limited to recommended places: music, manual labour, gymnastics. Sexuality was banned, unless for a reproductive goal; liberated young women were considered "depraved" and "antisocial". Mothers were encouraged to have children: thus was created the "Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter" (in English: Cross of Honour of the German Mother) for mothers having brought into the world more than four children. A "German Mothers' Day" was also created; during that of 1939, three million mothers were decorated. Concerning abortion, access to services was quickly prohibited, until in 1935, the medical profession became obliged to report stillbirths to the Regional Office for State Health, who would further investigate the natural loss of a child; in 1943 the ministers of the Interior and Justice enacted the law "Protection of Marriage, Family and Motherhood", which made provisions for the death penalty for mothers convicted of infanticide.
caption: Statues of the ideal female body in the streets of Berlin, raised on the occasion of the 1936 Summer Olympics.
exif: {}