Girlkultur and Kulturfeminismus: Gender and Americanism in Weimar Germany, 1918--1933

During the interwar period, Germans encountered American culture primarily through images and representations of American women. This dissertation thus argues that the debates about Americanism and Americanization in Weimar Germany cannot be understood without paying attention to gender as a category of analysis. Looking at a diverse group of sources, from popular magazines to the writings of critics, writers, and scholars, this study examines Weimar Germans' preoccupation with American women in a variety of cultural arenas. Whether as icons of mass culture in the guise of the (revue) Girls, as negative symbols of the feminization of culture, when seen from the perspective of cultural traditionalists, or as emancipatory role models and collaborators for German women activists---American women were ubiquitous discursive figures in a Germany that was trying to come to terms with the influx of American culture after the First World War.;The dissertation explores how and to what end the "American woman" and the "American Girl" came to assume such a prominent place in Weimar German cultural discourse. Since Germans had traditionally thought of their Kultur as a "manly" and print-based high culture, the gender ideals and images projected by and associated with American culture were frequently perceived as foreign and as a threat to German Kultur. From Girikultur to Kulturfeminismus , Weimar German commentators invented a variety of terms for American culture, all of them designed to mark the distance of the latter from manly German Kultur. The interwar years witnessed a Kulturkampf , in which the battle of the sexes was inextricably linked to the culture wars between German Kultur and American civilization. The dissertation argues that the gender underpinnings and implications of the Americanism debates account for the ambivalence and hostility that many Germans exhibited towards American culture during the 1920s and 1930s.;By drawing upon gender, historical, German Studies, and American Studies scholarship from both sides of the Atlantic, this dissertation hopes to contribute to the internationalization of American Studies in ways that will foster further research on gender and transnational history.