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Catherine McTavish
Philosophy Department, The University of Queensland
'From Rubblewoman to Icon: The Trümmerfrau of Postwar Germany and Her Place in National Identity'
At the close of the Second World War, much of Germany was in ruins due to the prolonged war campaign. The Allied bombing attacks, which began in 1942 and continued until just days before the surrender, had been so successful in their aims that the major cities of Germany had been badly destroyed. The basic infrastructure of the country - water, electricity, gas, transportation - was in ruins, and the people of the country were starving. In their occupation of Germany, the American, French, British and Soviet armies focused upon quashing any latent Nazism and preparing the German citizens for a democratic future; due to this concentration of troops, the physical rehabilitation of the country could not take place without the assistance of the local population, and one of the most important tasks was to clear away the rubble left behind by the Allied air raids. The vast majority of the thousands of Germans who were employed in this task were women. Due to the great number of men killed in the war, women were forced to provide for their families alone, and working as a 'Woman of the Rubble', or Trümmerfrau, was one source of income.
This paper will illustrate how these Trümmerfrauen not only paved the way for the rehabilitation of Germany, but also became an icon of postwar German national identity, a symbol of a country trying to rebuild after a war which was not only devastating physically, but psychologically as well. Forced to deal with the defeat of their army, which had been venerated by the Nazi regime, the citizens of Germany were also exposed to the horrific truths of the extermination camps. The population needed a symbol of their nation that they could glorify without fear of reprisal, and quite obviously the 'heroic soldier' - honoured in so many other countries - was not appropriate. The Trümmerfrau, the icon of a worker labouring hard towards the reconstruction of the nation, fulfilled this role.
Bio: Catherine McTavish completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Queensland, graduating in 2000 with a Bachelor of Business Management and a Bachelor of Arts. Within her Arts degree, she did a double major in History, concentrating on the history of modern Europe. In 2001 she undertook her Honours year in History, and in May was awarded the Joan Allsop Prize for the History Honours student with the best results in undergraduate History. Her honours thesis was an analysis of how women remembered their lives during the Nazi regime in autobiographies and oral interviews. She graduated with first class honours and was awarded an APA to study towards a Master of Philosophy, which she commenced in February 2002. Her thesis is a study of the survival strategies adopted by women in post-World War Two Germany and the impact that the American military government had upon them.
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