Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt leads the West German Ministry of Health
Women remained unrepresented in West German politics during the 20th century. The November Revolution of 1918 granted women the right to vote in and stand for elections, and more than 8% of deputies elected to the Weimar National Assembly were women. This level of representation in various German parliaments fell to 6% during the Weimar Republic. The Third Reich organized no democratic elections and appointed no women to high office. After the Second World War, the proportion of woman Bundestag deputies first reached 10% in the early 1980s. Despite this level of representation, Conservatives often considered it offensive for women to feature on election posters.
Serving as the People’s Commissar for Education in the Socialist Republic of Brunswick for three months during 1918/19, Minna Faßhauer was the first and – for the duration of the Weimar Republic – only woman to assume the responsibilities of a government minister. However, Hilde Benjamin’s appointment as Minister of Justice in the DDR in 1953 meant that Faßhauer was not the last. As a hardliner, Benjamin used her position to consolidate the SED dictatorship. In West Germany, Chancellor Adenauer was not really a fan of women ministers, and it was only when CDU women staged a sit-in in front of the cabinet room in Bonn that he ordered the creation of a new ministry so he could appoint a token woman and thereby prove that he was not too much of a sexist fuddy-duddy. 14 November 1961 saw Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt take up responsibility in the new Federal Ministry of Health. Many commentators considered this to be a superfluous post, and even Schwarzhaupt believed that she was just there for show. The proportion of women in parliament and those climbing the career ladder increased only slowly. In 1972, Annemarie Renger was appointed the first President of the Bundestag in 1972; Sabine Bergmann-Pohl went one better in 1990 by becoming President of the East German People’s Chamber and thus the first woman head of state of the DDR. Heide Simonis was the first woman to be sworn in as Minister-President of a federal state in Schleswig-Holstein in 1993. Germany had to wait until 2005 for Angela Merkel to make history as the first woman Chancellor of Germany.
About the Deutschlandmuseum
An immersive and innovative experience museum about 2000 years of German history
The whole year at a glance
