41st Greifswald Speech by Professor Dr Christina von Hodenberg (German Historical Institute London)

In historiography, women over 60 are largely invisible. Stereotypical depictions of the generation of women who retired from 1950 onwards are widespread: just think of the "rubble woman" and the "war widow". Old women are not thought of as historical subjects, but primarily as apolitical, traditional and suffering victims. My project reconstructs the social situation and political spheres of action of older women born between 1880 and 1950. It is based on a re-analysis of quantitative and qualitative social science sources (so-called social data) in order to understand the historical role of different groups of older women in West and East Germany as well as in unified Germany. Women over 60 navigated the gender regimes of their time in strategic ways. Some challenged the political consensus. Which groups of them did so, when and why, is the subject of this lecture.

Christina von Hodenberg is Director of the German Historical Institute London (GHIL) and Professor of European History at Queen Mary University of London. She studied in Bonn, Munich and Bielefeld and has taught and researched in Freiburg, Berkeley, Harvard and London. She has written five monographs on the history of politics, protest, gender and media in the 19th and 20th centuries. These include a revisionist account of the protest movements of the late 1960s ("Das andere Achtundsechzig", German: C.H. Beck 2018; English: Oxford University Press, 2024) and a book on television reception and social change ("Television's Moment", Berghahn, 2015). New is an anthology on the 1970s ("An Era of Value Change", Oxford University Press, 2024) and a special issue of "Geschichte und Gesellschaft" on the concept of "gender regimes" (issue 3/2025).

Welcome: Marcus Hoffmann M. A.
Moderation: Professor Dr Annelie Ramsbrock