Preliminary Programme

On May 13th 1917, one thousand workers of the Roth Factory in Vienna, which produced bullet casings, laid down their work and demanded higher loans. The overwhelming majority of the strikers were women – and women were also in the majority in the crowds which took to the streets in cities across the Habsburg Monarchy in protest at food shortages. Although the striking women in the Roth Factory were part of the strike delegations which were engaged in negotiations with the management of the factory and the war ministry, they were soon pushed out by the male leading functionaries of the metal workers’ union and sent home during subsequent strike meetings.
This episode sheds light on the relevance of gender in the strike movements in the First World War and on the institutional exclusion of the mobilized women. The exclusion of women can be traced throughout the revolutionary events of 1918 to 1920 and the Austrian Council’s Movement. This paper will explore the tension between the professed equality of men and women in the socialist organizations and the actual place of women activists in the revolutionary movements in Austria. It will analyse the impact of the configuration of a revolutionary masculinity and the (political) category of the (male) worker in framing revolutionary activism. (Show less)

Although Switzerland was not a belligerent nation and did not undergo a revolution during or in the aftermath of the First World War, it never was a peaceful island. The war had diverse impacts on the state and its people. As a neutral country in the centre of Europe, it attracted pacifists and socialists from all over Europe. Inflation and food shortage led to demonstrations, strikes and market riots. The general strike in November 1918 is today regarded as the greatest crisis in the history of the Swiss Confederation. However, only scant research is currently available on these topics, especially when it comes to women and gender history.
With a closer look at the strikes and demonstrations in Switzerland, women and militant activities come into sight: The market riots in 1916 and the women’s hunger demonstration in the summer of 1918 are two examples of the ways in which women actively participated in the political activities in the streets. Women standing on the rails in Bienne to stop the trains during the general strike, the story of the young socialist Anny Morf, who in 1919 decided to engage in the revolutionary movement in Bavaria, and the importance of the category of nationality in the reactions to strikes and demonstrations, inspire the question of gender, nationality and militancy.
In my paper, I will explore the intersections of gender, class and nationality in radical political actions in Switzerland. How did gender relations influence militant political actions? How can militancy be theorized in the specific context of Switzerland? How does nationality influence the perception of (certain) women as militant? (Show less)

This paper explores, and critiques, the current historiography on the role of violence in the making of – and imagining of – socialist revolution in Germany and Austria in the last two years of the First World War and the first two years of post-war turmoil. It will argue that socialist women who aligned themselves with the cause of revolution after 1916 were – in no lesser sense than men – forced to confront the question of whether and in what circumstances violence might be justified as a means of radically restructuring the existing political order and ending the barbarous social conditions caused by authoritarian ‘war dictatorships’ at home and the conscription of men to fight abroad. In particular the paper will focus on socialist women’s responses to three key events: the murder by Friedrich Adler of the Austrian Minister-President Count Karl von Stürgkh in October 1916; the January 1918 industrial strikes in Germany and Austria; and the Bolshevik victory in Russia in 1917–20. (Show less)

In the aftermath of the First World War the liberal and radical socialist revolutions of Hungary created a fertile ground for women’s political mobilization. In the dying days of the liberal democratic revolution, with women’s suffrage introduced and an election planned, women entered political parties and movements in increasing number, developed their own formal or informal organizations, and debated their political and gender interests. For many of these women, the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg represented a turning point, pushing them to the extreme left or the extreme right. A close analysis of the Hungarian newspapers’ coverage of the Berlin murders reveals the ways in which daily political agendas reinforced gender and racial stereotypes. At the same time, a reading of memoirs and diaries of militant women points to responses to the murder of Luxemburg resulting in revolutionary or counter-revolutionary militancy. (Show less)