“’Women of Peace’ We Are Not”: Feminist Militants in the West German Autonomen - Patricia Melzer

Abstract

In the 1980s, the Left scene of the Autonomen was highly visible in West Germany, in particular because of their militancy that was a central part of their activism. Meanwhile, the autonomous women’s movement had forged relationships to the peace movement and overall denounced political violence and militancy. This article examines the politics of Frauen gegen imperialistischen Krieg, a small group of militant feminists in Hamburg whose activism connected the politics of the Autonomen to those of the autonomous women’s movement. Feminist militants are rarely discussed in scholarship on German political movements — I argue that they in fact constituted an important entity in West German political activism.

PDF taken from the author's website at https://sites.temple.edu/patriciamelzer/