German Women Leaders For United States

Wanganui Chronicle, 17 February 1949, Page 6

German Women Leaders For United States

(By Jack Smyth, Reuters Correspondent in Berlin). An attempt to channel more of Germany’s surplus womanpower into political action for Democracy began in January with a carefully planned visit of top-flight German women leaders to hall a dozen American cities. The women include teachers, writers, politicians and anti-Nazi workers and their three months’ tour is designed to provide them with techniques for enlarging the feminine share in Government and politics in Germany where women now outnumber men by more than 6,000,000. Tentative visits are planned to Washing, ton, D.C., Syracuse and Ithaca in New York State; Boston, Massachusetts; Hartford, Connecticut; Chicago. Illinois; and Ann Arbor Michigan. German and foreign experts on population have frequently said that the excess proportion of women in Germany today can become a sociological problem unless their talents are directed into channels either closed or never fully opened to them. "Women can become an important force for Democracy in Postwar Germany only if they are shown how to apply their collective energies to public affairs,” says Doctor Edward Litchfield, Director of U.S. Military Government’s Civil Administration Division. “Germany’s tragic history of the past three or four decades might have been different if an informed body of women had understood the connection between politics and their homes. Today, many German women find themselves without homes and families. Others wonder how to safeguard those families left to them by the War. More and more women in both groups are beginning to realise that political action steers the course of Government, that Government in turn can turn a Nation’s destiny towards peace or war, and that war destroys all that women hold valuable. The cycle begins with political action; no one expects Germany’s womanhood to become a race of Politicians; but it is the hope oi far-sighted German leaders that German women will interest themselves in public affairs far more than in their country’s unhappy past.” Germany already has some women’s political groups and many women leaders have expressed interest in acquiring new ideas from abroad. Doctor Litchfield said. “We hope," he continued “that the leaders now going to the U.S. will evaluate the advanced status of women in the new world. Beyond that, we hope that they will come upon specific down-to-earth techniques of women’s organisations—techniques and tools for women’s action which they will consider worth bringing back with them to Germany.”

The women will be “briefed" here in advance on U.S. life by Mrs. Elizabeth G. Holt, of Georgetown, Maine, a member of the women’s affairs section of U.S. Military Government’s education and cultural relations division, and by Miss Pauline Mandigo of New York City and Westport, Connecticut, a visiting consultant of the Educational and Cultural Relations Division. The German women leaders include Lisa Albrecht second chairman of the Social Democrat Party in Bavaria; Maria Probst, member of the Bavarian Provisional Parliament and of the Christian Social Union Party; Juliana Von Kampenhausen, a member of the Christian Democrat Party elected to the Wuerttemberg-Baden Landtag in 1945; Bartha Krause, an organiser of women’s welfare groups anrf member of the Christian Democrat Party; Anna Haag, members of the Wuerttemberg-Baden Landtag, novelist and political writer; Elisabeth Ley, member of the Democrat Party in the Bremen Parliament; Doctor Agnes Maxsein, Christian Democrat Party Member of the Beilin City Assembly; and More Ideile ’Free Democrat Party member of the Berlin City Assembly. Most of the women speak and understand ‘English well and were chosen for their ability to grasp new ideas quickly. None of them was affected by denazification proceedings. Several were imprisoned for opposing the Nazis and have had long experience in German public lifxx