The Not-So-Neue Frau: Weimar Berlin's Modern Women and Generational Identity After 1945

Abstract

This article studies the post-1945 literary careers of Gabriele Tergit and Ilse Langner, two ageing German writers. Both had enjoyed promising careers as young women in Weimar Berlin, but Nazism and war disrupted their professional trajectories in varying ways. After 1945, they tried and failed to recapture their Weimar-era success, eventually realising they were no longer ‘modern’. Only then did they retrospectively identify with a wider generation of Weimar women; previously, their sense of individuality had dominated. This article argues for investigating generations beyond their original formative periods and adds a new chapter to the history of Weimar's ‘Neue Frau’.