Anti-Semitism and the crisis of gender relations

Abstract

The essay deals with the anti-Sernitic image of a ,Jewish attack' on the ,German girl' which appeared so frequently in the ideological discourse of Nazi youth groups in the 1920s. This image assumed different versions; its different usage by young men on the one hand and young women on the other is significant. According to the thesis, not only individual problems of the author in regard to the other sex were mentioned in the reversal of gender differences into an imaginary picture of ,race' drawn by male and female authors, but also a crisis of gender relations was expressed. This crisis was due to the contradictory dynamics of bourgeois gender ideology on the one hand and to the loss of the economic basis of this ideology on the other. Young members of the middle classes were the most important producers and consumers of the image discussed here. The images' tendency to raise mutually contradictory questions allowed for the ,solution' of the crisis of gender relations by means of a projection of cognitive elements on the imaginary figure of ,the Jew'.