and uncertainties that characterized an era of great social transformation.
Unlike her counterpart in France and Britain, the German single woman of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries has not been the independent focus of historical analysis. This void is especially curious since the female majority is often cited in both contemporary and secondary discussions of the era. Some historians of German women have considered the Frauenüberschuß as a peripheral concern or as background material; others have ignored it completely. Richard Evans' The Feminist Movement in Germany, 1894–1933, the first major English-language work on the early German women's movement, did not address the female surplus at all.37 While Evans recognized the emphasis placed by women's rights advocates on opportunities for middle-class single women, he did not relate those reform activities to demography or to concerns about an excess of females.
Of those historical works that have addressed the German female surplus in the Kaiserreich, three sorts of assessments have emerged. The first model is found in the work of German historian Ute Frevert, who regards the female surplus as a simple consequence of change. She suggests that marital status played a role in the discussion of the ‘woman question’ due to a greater number of women exhibiting a “willingness to take fate into their own hands.”38 Frevert argues that there is little connection between the woman question and the Frauenüberschuß because the eighteenth century demonstrated similar demographic conditions without creating debate about women's roles in the greater society. But Frevert does not explore the peculiar emphasis on the female surplus in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nor does she detail the demographic analysis behind her assertions.
The second type of historical assessment of the female surplus concludes that the Frauenüberschuß is interesting but ultimately inconsequential. The works of Herrad-Ulrike Bussemer and Amy Hackett fall into this category. After looking at aggregate marriage rates, Bussemer maintains that no perceptible change occurs in the nineteenth century and that discussion of the surplus woman phenomenon resulted from exaggeration.39 Hackett provides a more thorough consideration of the Frauenüberschuß. She begins her analysis by observing how frequently discussion of the female surfeit emerged in contemporary commentary of the Frauenfrage. 40 Hackett demonstrates regional variation of marriage patterns and links anxiety regarding marital status to social class. But Hackett concludes her discussion of the female surplus by noting that, “Demography alone, however important its contributions, cannot explain the women's movement.”41
The works of Frevert, Bussemer, and Hackett recognize the omnipresence of the belief in a female surplus, but omit important questions: why were unmarried women considered to be a noteworthy cohort? Why were they constructed as a problem to be solved? These histories of German single women do not explore the rhetorical resonance of the idea for both advocates and opponents of the women's movement. In contrast, the third and most predominant mode of interpreting the female surplus of Imperial Germany can be found in the historical works of James Albisetti, Marion Kaplan, Patricia Mazón, Elisabeth Meyer-Renschhausen, Barbara Greven-Aschoff, Nancy Reagin, Lora Wildenthal, and Bärbel Kuhn. Each of these scholars acknowledge that the female surplus played a powerful role in creating the vision, practical work, and bourgeois orientation of the early organized German women's movement.
In his study of teaching as a female profession, Albisetti notes “the perception that Germany had rather suddenly acquired a large number of unmarried women who had to provide for themselves. Open to question is the accuracy of the numbers cited at the time, but not the fact that most contemporary commentators believed that a new situation had arisen and required a response.”42 While Albisetti confirms that many Germans believed in a female surplus of recent advent, his project does not require an investigation into the numbers or nuances of the concept. Marion Kaplan offers a similar reading in her examination of Jewish middle-class women in Imperial Germany. Discussing Jewish marriage, Kaplan recognizes the importance of the fear of spinsterhood in nuptial negotiations and notes that extra women could become superfluous in the bourgeois household economy.43 Kaplan maintains that “the much vaunted Frauenüberschuß. meant that not every woman could marry. In fact, the situation was worse for Jewish women.”44 Kaplan's work identifies the surplus as a fact of life in the Jewish middle-class milieu but does not delve into its foundations.
In Gender and the Modern Research University, Patricia Mazón asserts that the German women's movement saw female university study “in terms of the woman question and as a partial solution to it.”45 Significantly informing the woman question were “several concrete areas of social anxiety,” among the most pressing of which were “changes in the family structure brought about by industrialization. Overall marriage rates were thought to be declining, leading to a group of ‘surplus' women. The consequences were considered to be especially disastrous for the middle class.”46 The concern over what to do with daughters of the middle-class displaced by the changing economy helped to promote the discussion of female university study.
Elisabeth Meyer-Renschhausen's study of Bremen cites the dual shame associated with single status; not only had the Alleinstehenden failed to find a husband, but injury met with insult when they found themselves forced to look for work. The woman question was both an economic and moral question: “Although unmarried aunts and daughters could no longer be supported, within the urban middle-class it was still considered a dishonor to send them outside of the home to earn money. Paid female work harmed the reputation of the family.”47 Meyer-Renschhausen adds that among the middle-class, “a further cause of the Frauenfrage was the constantly extending training period of the sons, so that many could not think of marrying before the thirtieth or fortieth year of life.”48 The increased professional training required of bourgeois men left many prospective brides to ruminate over what they were to do as they waited for a good man to come along—and to begin to wonder whether the wait was worth it. Meyer-Renschhausen emphasizes that class status informed the Kaiserreich debate about the female surplus. The long-acknowledged link between bourgeois interests and the mainstream German women's movement cannot simply be explained on the basis of sympathy with the “doctrine of liberal individualism”—and its success or failure cannot be haphazardly linked to the fate of German liberalism.49 It would be superficial as well to suggest that the middle-class women's movement evolved purely out of the reformers' self-interest. The Frauenüberschuß adds an important element to discussions of middle-class bias in the German women's movement: the belief that bourgeois women faced exceptional and singular challenges as a result of changing economic circumstances.
In a study of the middle-class women's movement, Barbara Greven-Aschoff further elucidates the plight of unwed women. She notes the “problem of the alte Jungfer [old maid] as family calamity,” and contends that the Frauenüberschuß manifested itself as a socio-psychological issue as well as a demographic event.50 Among the middle and upper classes, the time a young woman spent waiting for “a possible marriage could hardly be filled with productive activity. In the course of industrialization and urbanization, numerous functions otherwise necessary for housekeeping had become unnecessary, leaving for the maturing female generation only a type of ‘parasitic’ existence.”51 Shifting economic conditions necessitated vocational change: “In view of marriage chances becoming more uncertain, the necessity of enabling young women an existence outside of the family of origin emerged. In pre-industrial societies, convents or ladies' institutes offered such possibilities to women of class. In the modern, secularized society, it is the arena of work.”52 Greven-Aschoff expands upon the argument of those nineteenth-century middle-class women's rights advocates who asserted that demography was not the defining element of the female surplus. It was instead a question of Beruf (vocation, calling). To what were single women called? The industrial age made this question all the more urgent. Middle-class women waiting to marry had the leisure to know that they were, indeed, waiting. Nancy Reagin makes a similar point in A German Women's Movement. In her history of class and gender in Hanover at the turn of the century, Reagin's examination of women's work grapples
