Lily Braun, 1865-1916

de Ute Lischke

"Lily Braun, born to a prominent aristocratic family in 1865, was one of the leading German feminists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She also became a very successful writer, both of feminist political tracts and of novelistic works. She played a leadership role in German feminism with such groups as the Verein Frauenwohl and the Social Democratic Party; her efforts included lobbying for the establishment of maternity insurance and better education and housing for women. Despite her energetic activism, she came into increasing conflict with other leading socialist women - most notably Clara Zetkin - who were suspect of her aristocratic origins and her relatively bourgeois brand of socialism. This led her to retreat from politics and pursue a longtime interest in writing with works such as the fictionalized account of her grandmother's life in Goethe's Weimar, Im Schatten der Titanen, and the later, thinly fictionalized Memoiren einer Sozialistin, based on her own life.". "Startlingly, by 1914 Braun was espousing nationalistic ideas similar to those that would later be taken up by the National Socialists, and had repudiated many of her long-held feminist stances. She was no longer a pacifist, and her "feminism" now encompassed racial hygiene. Lischke provides a view of both the political and the literary sides of this enigmatic figure, as well as views of the German feminism and literary trends of the period."--BOOK JACKET.