Keywords

In April 1896, an international congress on the situation of women took place in Paris. Delegates and visitors from neighbouring countries, from Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and North America had travelled to the French capital for the four-day event.1 The wide coverage of the Congrès féministe in the French and international press illustrates the growing public interest in the various social and legal issues raised by the European women’s movements. Although the response to the event was mixed, the unanimous praise for one young German woman’s speech at the convention stands out in many reports. Several Parisian dailies, otherwise often notorious for their harsh critiques, highly lauded the performance of thirty-year-old Danzig-born Käthe Schirmacher (1865–1930). German papers also highlighted the German delegate’s communicative competence, her entertaining presentation, and her charming character. These paeans, however, were tinged with nationalist and gender stereotypes, thus pointing to the complex situation in which a mediator between cultures and languages often finds herself (Fig. 1.1).2

Fig. 1.1
A photograph of a meeting at the congress feminist in Paris.

Meeting at the congrès féministe in Paris 1896. L'Univers illustré. Journal hebdomadaire, 18 April 1896, cover Illustration (Bibliothèque nationale de France)

Full size image

In the following, I use these comments and the constellation in which they emerged as a starting point to lay out the contexts, concepts, theoretical framework, and central questions of this book, which explores the practices of connecting and intertwining women’s movements across national and other borders around 1900.

Praises, Noises, and the Mediator’s Choices

Reporting on the conference, the daily Parisian literary newspaper Gil Blas called on French women to learn a lesson from the ‘charming German girl’ who spoke ‘wisely’ and with ‘ingenuity’. Without mentioning the topic of her speech, the author used Schirmacher’s example to criticise other participants of the congress. Some speakers, he held, had bored the audience with confusing and lengthy lectures read from manuscript and a group of socialist students had threatened to derail the whole event with an uproar over the minutes. Schirmacher, however, ‘woke up the audience when she took the podium’ and spoke ‘words of peace’:

The charming German girl, pleasant, harmonious, speaks wisely, and we take pleasure in this comforting music, in these words of peace that the modest and collected little student pronounces without pose and with ingenuity. It was a dream to remember. (La mignonne Allemande, agréable, harmonieuse, parle sagement, et l’on prend plaisir à cette musique reconfortante, à ces paroles de paix que la petite ètudiante modeste et recueillie prononce sans pose avec ingènuité. Ce fut un rève dont on se souviendra.)3

The patronising emphasis on Schirmacher’s feminine charm while devaluing her intellectually as a ‘little student’, even though she was one of very few women of her time to hold a doctorate, illustrates the prevalence of prejudice against learned women in even a supposedly supportive statement.4 The ambivalent characterisation points to the irritation that university-educated women caused to the nineteenth-century European gender order.5 How the growing number of learned European women around 1900 dealt with such dismissive statements and responded to institutional exclusions, and what individual and collective strategies they developed to carve out a place for themselves in public and professional life are some of the larger questions that form the background for this study.

But the comments on Schirmacher’s speech were not only about gender. They were also about the national construction of social and political life. Against a backdrop of German–French rivalry, it was certainly a provocation to describe a German as a role model for French women in a French newspaper. Clearly, however, Schirmacher’s linguistic competence and her French ‘esprit’, mentioned in several reports, facilitated the precarious manoeuvre. The conservative Gazette de France, to quote just one newspaper, applauded the young German delegate for ‘expressing herself in such a French way’ and her clear rhetoric that would ‘win over everybody if words were capable of producing such a miracle’ (Mlle Schirmacher s’exprime de façon si française […] si particulierement claire et pénétrante, qu’elle opérerait la conquète des tous si les mots étaient capables de produire un tel miracle).6 German journals also placed language competence above argument when they held that Schirmacher’s free and witty speech in excellent French had won her enthusiastic applause from the entire audience.7 Explicitly nationalist sentiments became evident when in the widely read French paper Le Figaro Jules Bois praised Schirmacher for not being tainted by any ‘physical or moral trait of the typical German woman’ (aucun trait physique ou moral de la classique Allemande).8

A couple of days later, probably to contradict the nationalist framing of the report in Le Figaro, a long article in the German Kölnische Zeitung emphasised the excellent French of all foreign delegates but particularly lauded Schirmacher for having made ‘propaganda for the hated German fatherland’ (Propaganda für das verhaßte deutsche Vaterland) with her speech.9 The anonymous author of the Sunday lead story presented the advance of the different women’s movements as a national competition in which France was ‘by several horse lengths’ behind other nations—which obviously implied: behind Germany.

The comments in Le Figaro and the Kölnische Zeitung epitomise the difficult choices a mediator between two countries and cultures often has to face. By deliberately pointing to anti-German sentiment in France, the Kölnische Zeitung interpreted Schirmacher’s intervention as a patriotic act whether she had intended it as such or not. The article in Le Figaro confronted her with a similarly unpleasant dilemma: if she accepted the praise she tacitly also accepted the anti-German sentiment it entailed, but rejecting it would mean implicitly also questioning her competence as an efficient intermediary between the two countries, the very thing that she was being lauded for. I will come back to Schirmacher’s ambivalent (and changing) reactions to these choices at the end of this chapter. They exemplify to what extent transnational communication requires not only linguistic but also cultural competence, involving decisions that go far beyond the translator’s choice of words.10

For a brief moment, in these reports on an international event of the transnationally developing women’s movements, issues of cultural mediation across national boundaries took centre stage. Research on transnational movements such as the women’s movement, which began to flourish in the 1890s, has often brushed aside such supposedly peripheral noises or analysed them as what they of course also were: disruptions of the progress of the women’s movement, which is usually described via its programmes, messages, and campaigns—by political content and activism rather than by circumstances and interferences. In contrast to this, I argue that transfers and mediation practices, and the cultural conditions that facilitate or complicate them, play an important, if often overlooked, role in the emergence and development of social and political movements on local, national, and international levels.

Translated texts, travelling lecturers, and reports about developments and achievements elsewhere often play a decisive part in fomenting debates about otherwise unquestioned social and political conditions, thereby creating spaces of civil engagement and activism.11 However, since the genuinely local origin of a movement is often part of its legitimising discourse, foreign models are frequently appropriated in a nationalising way, thus veiling the transfers behind them.12

This study argues that an in-depth analysis of flows and hierarchies of knowledge, concepts, and strategies can thus contribute new and relevant perspectives on the history of the growing transnational civil sphere around 1900. In this book, women’s movements serve as an exemplary case to examine and better understand the transnational dynamics of many of the movements that thrived in this period. To this end, I examine practices of translation, travel, and transnational journalistic correspondence that enabled various transnational circulations between women’s movements and feminist activisms before the First World War. In doing so, I also consider how power relations between states as well as the entangled hierarchies of languages and cultures shape and determine the evolving spaces of social and political engagement.

Approaches to Transnational Practices of Communication in and among Social Movements

To better understand the dynamics between national and inter/transnational movements, we need to analyse translation as one of the various practices of communication across languages and national borders. However, examining these dynamics and logics that kept the transfers of knowledge and strategies going and the networks growing is challenging, so is the analysis of the precarious transnational cultures they produced. The work of mediators—the journeys they make, the linguistic and cultural knowledge they use—is perhaps most effective when their mediating role (the ‘in-between’) remains almost unnoticed and communication flows seemingly effortlessly across linguistic or cultural boundaries.13 The most efficient transfers are therefore often the ones most likely to be forgotten. I thus argue that the translator’s ‘invisibility’, as described in Lawrence Venuti’s influential book, is not necessarily due solely to a certain style of translation, but can also be linked to a certain kind of transnational political practice.14

Although the inconspicuous nature of many transfer and mediation processes poses a heuristic problem for the historian, we can turn the shortcomings of an often barely visible subject into an advantage if we systematically search for the limits of communicative processes and describe them. The importance of overcoming differences in language and customs and of providing information across borders is felt most vividly when this essential work for some reason cannot be done, when it is suspended or is inadequate.15 Interpreting communicative fractures—such as translation conflicts or cultural misunderstandings—as symptomatic instances serves to render visible what otherwise remains hidden, namely the work of mediators. Looking out for peripheral noises (such as the ambiguous praise for the young Käthe Schirmacher in Paris), complications, and disturbances of political communication in national and transnational movements is therefore not necessarily a deviation from more relevant issues, but can be a particularly useful starting point for further investigations on how transnational communication works.16

This study focuses on widespread activist practices of transfer before the First World War which were highly relevant for the development of transnational movements: travel, translation, transnational journalistic correspondence, and the particular texts and paratexts they produced.17 I examine the routines and economies associated with them, their multiple functions in national and transnational movements, and their sometimes unintended effects. Based on the history of women’s movements and feminisms, this study also adopts concepts and perspectives from transnational history and descriptive translation studies18 and incorporates interdisciplinary strands of theory such as travel studies,19 persona studies,20 and auto/biography studies.21

Using the concept of the transnational civil society22 to describe the activism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I want to demonstrate the relevance of those transfer practices and networks that thrived in transnational spaces and were practised in parallel to international relations between states. Examining the commitment and agency of those active in transnational networks, I also discuss the cultural hierarchies by which these networks were shaped. Imperial travel practices, colonial and postcolonial politics of domination, as well as the supremacy of (some) European languages need to be reflected upon.23 Orientalising discourses are often part of global perspectives. Overviews of developments in different countries and comparisons between them thus often result in hierarchising assessments. I address these questions at various points of this study and focus on them in Chapter 6 by analysing an example of an orientalising overview of women’s movements.

Taking up recent research on women and gender relations in transnational history24 and on the transnational character of women’s movements, I use the concept of transnationality to stress the efforts of these movements to build connections across national and cultural borders but also their connections with national movements (and with nationalisms, too).25 Tying in with this research I use the term ‘transnational activism’ to mark the difference between, on the one hand, international relations between states and their governments, and non-governmental movements that co-operated across national borders on the other.26 However, when discussing sources that describe this activism as ‘international’, I apply the term accordingly. In addition, I use the concept of transnationality in contrast to the term ‘global’ to signal a partial perspective and to reflect on how imperial perspectives and racist hierarchisations are also part of transnational relations.27

However, the openness and vagueness of the concept of transnationality and the privileging of certain languages associated with the concept, especially English, require critical reflection.28 I try to address these problems by concentrating on discrete topics (practices of mediation, particularly travelling, translating, and transnational media correspondence). Given the worldwide dynamics of women’s movements and feminisms around 1900 and the conceptual openness of these transformative and transgressive practices, however, this task can only be approached through a focus on specific examples.29 In this book, I have chosen as a case study the life of Käthe Schirmacher, the much-praised speaker at the international feminist conference in Paris in 1896. Discussing the transcultural and transnational dynamics of various transfers in this particular biographical case, I examine how multilingualism and mobility (often entangled with each other) enabled transnational communication in women’s movements around 1900 and highlight the importance and the agency of those who were engaged in this exchange.30

Serving as a methodological bridge between disciplines, the case study approach helps to illustrate major issues of transfer practice, communication, and exchange.31 It offers a way of testing theoretical concepts such as transnationality, as well as visibility, trust, engagement, and activism in translation history, which will be discussed later in this chapter. To explore the possibilities and limits of the concept of cultural translation in the history of social and political movements, this study chooses an exemplary perspective on a particular type of protagonist (a transnational writer, translator, and mediator) in European middle-class feminist movements building transnational networks around 1900.32

Käthe Schirmacher, a Travelling Writer, Translator, Mediator—and Nationalist

Käthe Schirmacher (1865–1930) was a German transnational writer and lecturer. Around 1900, she played an important role as a transnational journalist, mediator, interpreter, and translator in radical women’s movements in several European countries. However, already during this period, she was also becoming an ever more ardent nationalist, which changed her ideas of transcultural mediation.

Growing up in the Prussian port city of Danzig (now Gdansk), Schirmacher lived in Paris for many years of her life. She travelled widely in the decades before the First World War, building and using the transnational networks of women’s movements.33 Born to a family of transnational traders, she received a liberal Protestant education, open to other languages and cultures. After the decline of her father’s business, however, like many middle-class daughters, she could not count on receiving a dowry that would have opened up marriage opportunities in her social class, or on being financially supported by her family throughout her life. While her family hoped for a good marriage for her, Schirmacher, contrary to the norms and expectations of her milieu, aspired to a higher education that promised to earn her a living.

Describing herself and other female representatives of her time and class as transitional personalities (Übergangstypen), she developed an individual way of life that was characterised by professional work, transnational mobility, and mutual support among women. For most of her adult life she lived with female partners. Her desire to study led her abroad at an early age, to France, the UK, and Switzerland. However, her chosen field of study, modern languages, can also be seen as a compromise between her aspirations for an academic career and her family’s more conventional ideas of a young woman’s education that among the German middle classes often included learning French. How the prospect of her becoming a translator was negotiated when she was a teenager as part of this compromise is discussed in Chapter 2, while her first steps and later work as a literary translator are discussed in Chapter 3.

Schirmacher’s fight for an education brought her into contact with the German women’s movement of the late 1880s. After studying German language and literature in Paris, she first taught at a high school in Liverpool before turning to writing literary and political texts. After a three-year stay in her hometown of Danzig due to illness, she continued her studies in Zurich where she earned a doctorate in Romance Studies. Striving to become a professor for many years, she earned her living in numerous ways—as a translator and as a travelling lecturer, as a journalist working for French, German, and Austrian papers, and as a writer of fiction and non-fiction.

Writing and travelling with and for the women’s movement, Schirmacher was active in associations of the radical wing in Germany and in international organisations as well as in the International Abolitionist Federation (IAF). She wrote influential books comparing and connecting women’s movements transnationally and reporting on activism in different countries. In doing so, she shaped the view of particular movements and the translation of key terms of the movement. A founding member of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) in 1904, she interpreted between French, German, and English at many of the Alliance’s international meetings. Her transnational reports and overviews of women’s movements as well as other textual transfers between languages and cultures are discussed in Chapters 5, 6, and 9. Chapter 8 focuses particularly on her experiences as an interpreter at women’s movement congresses, the influence she enjoyed, and the conflicts her mediating position involved. Her travel practices in the context of the women’s movement are discussed in Chapters 4 and 7.

Schirmacher was a prolific author in many fields, publishing in different languages, translating, and being translated. While she became known for her feminist writings and transnational correspondence in journals and newspapers, she also published scholarly works and literary critiques of French writers and translated French and English literature. Also, she wrote German nationalist propaganda later in her life. However, in this study, I focus on writings that represent different forms of written transfers (transnational journalistic correspondence, translation, self-translation, excerpting and summarising) of feminist activism between languages and across borders. Her writings on literature as well as her German nationalist texts have been discussed elsewhere.34

In the years leading up to the First World War, Schirmacher turned to German nationalism and became a member of right-wing organisations and an ever more extreme anti-Semite. After the war, she was a delegate to the constitutional assembly of the German Reichstag for the German Nationalist Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP). She continued travelling, lecturing, and writing in this nationalist milieu. However, the loss of her transnational networks and her marginalisation as a feminist in an anti-feminist party meant a severe loss of work and income. Chapter 10 concludes with an account of Schirmacher’s split from the women’s movement. I take the analysis of this process as a vantage point from which I re-examine the transnational practices of communication described in the earlier chapters of this study and assess their significance for social and political movements as well as their time-bound and precarious character.

A Case Study of a Transnational Life

Using a biographical case study to explore transnational milieus, networks, and transfers has been proposed as a fruitful strategy by several researchers.35 Such a study can serve as a way of formulating research questions that methodological nationalism otherwise obscures.36 Reconstructing networks, economies, and passages of exemplary transnational lives and examining the opportunities and the difficulties encountered by these protagonists, for example, allow us to outline the gendered structures of specific transnational milieus and gauge the possibilities for transgressing norms and limitation of gender, race, and class. At the same time, tracing a particular life path and exploring the different stations of that trajectory provide a stable focus in the otherwise often vague field of transnational history.

A biographical case study that serves a particular research agenda does not aim to provide a conventional biography of the protagonist. The choice of sources analysed and of topics discussed reflect neither the protagonist’s self-image, nor the perception of this person by her contemporaries or followers in later times. Rather, the particular focus of a biographical case study reflects the issues the researcher associates with the protagonist’s case. Adapting this genre (which gained importance in the late nineteenth century in new disciplines such as sexology or psychoanalysis) for historical research requires a critical reflection on its immanent truth claims.37 In this study, I use it not to create a type but to explore new ways of thinking about transnational feminist movements.

In contrast to the concept of the example, which merely illustrates a theoretical point of view, the concept of the case is based on a complex relationship between singularity and generalisation: it is not a singular event but also does not merely represent a general rule. As Lauren Berlant has convincingly argued, to discuss a case means ‘to query the adequacy of an object to bear the weight of an explanation worthy of attending to and taking a lesson from’ and thus can test and even change a theoretical position.38 Using the case of Käthe Schirmacher, I therefore hope to question approaches that either focus on movements in one country or conceptualise transnational networks mainly as relations between national movements.

However, a biographical approach to transnational history also poses particular challenges pertaining to genre and sources. The biographical genre is closely linked to European nation-building discourses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which resulted in the formation of national biographical canons (exemplified in national biographical dictionaries) that both nationalised transnational lives and obscured many lives that did not fit the specific concept of a contribution to the nation. Thus, a few exceptions notwithstanding, national biographical dictionaries tend to focus on the achievements of white, elite men with unambiguous national identities.39 Investigating past lives that do not fit this norm is in many cases impossible and often much more challenging than continuing to work on already canonised historical figures. Even basic information such as life data often remains untraceable.

Exploring the lives of migrants and travellers also often means searching for fragments in archives around the world; it confronts the researcher with the hierarchies and asymmetries of national, imperial, and colonial archives. Multilingualism is also an issue, as transnational personalities live in different cultural contexts and languages; a scholar’s linguistic capacities open up certain perspectives but exclude others.40 Both the archival situation and the language question very often reinforce Eurocentrism in research. It is, therefore, important to me to make clear my own situatedness and the partiality of my perspective.41 I am a white middle-class female European historian working on European history whose first language is German. Educated in Central Europe in the late twentieth century, speaking English as fluently as possible was an important prerequisite for me to survive in the academic world. I understand enough French to read the French sources with which my case confronts me and have some rudimentary knowledge of Italian and Latin. But otherwise, I do not know any other language well enough to research a case using original sources.

My own research experience, therefore, exemplifies the effects of national historiographical traditions. I came across the works of Käthe Schirmacher because of my interest in German nationalism and gender and therefore started by analysing her anti-Semitic and ultra-nationalist writings from the last two decades of her life. Only gradually did I become aware of how transnational her life was until 1914 and how she contributed to transnational exchanges among women’s movements.42

If it is, therefore, partly for pragmatic reasons (my knowledge of the material and of the languages used in the sources) that I chose Schirmacher for my study, I argue that the kind of limitations I have to face are relevant in some way or other to anyone researching transnational history. Even those who speak and read a number of languages extremely well are still restricted in their analysis of untranslated sources to exchanges in and between these languages. If these limitations are not acknowledged, the hierarchies between powerful and marginalised languages are maintained; addressing them opens up possibilities for exchange. Hence translation can never just be an object of research, it must necessarily also be considered as a part of the methodological approach.

Given the transnational life Schirmacher led for several decades, it is an extraordinary stroke of luck that this rich material, which allows for a variety of research projects on different topics, has been preserved. We must, however, consider how Schirmacher’s particular form of legacy awareness, her autobiographical interest, and the archiving context define the composition of the material.43 During the last years of her life, Schirmacher was a venerated figure among a group of younger German women of the far right. This may well have reinforced the University Library of Rostock’s decision to accept and store her voluminous estate in 1930, where it survived the Second World War unscathed. Schirmacher’s papers are now one of the very few comprehensive legacies of a European women’s rights activist in the German-speaking countries. Other renowned radicals, like Lida-Gustava Heymann (1868–1943), Anita Augspurg (1857–1943), or Helene Stöcker (1869–1943), had to flee from National Socialism and most of their material is therefore lost.

From her youth onwards, Schirmacher continuously collected and archived tens of thousands of documents from her life. Among other things, we have her diaries from several decades, extensive private and political correspondence (often from both sides), manuscripts, publications, and reviews of her lectures and publications. In the last years of her life, Schirmacher reassessed her papers and reinterpreted her transnational engagement as a German mission abroad.44 The extant material is mostly in German or French, but there are some smaller holdings in English. As I have argued elsewhere, we can discuss Käthe Schirmacher as a ‘case’ because she herself already saw many aspects of her life (such as her lack of professional opportunities) as political and therefore publicly narrated and re-narrated her life in various ways.45

The sources on women’s movements and feminisms of the time are full of references to transnational activists similar to Schirmacher, many of whom are little known. Their contributions to women’s movements and feminisms, which go far beyond organisational links or linguistic translation, have not yet been studied in their full dimensions.46 One of the aims of this case study is to call for broader research on the transnational feminist milieu before the outbreak of the First World War, and motivate the development of a research programme on the informal networks, the professional and political practices, and the biographies of these activists who constantly crossed borders and switched languages.47

Travelling, Living Transnationally, and Connecting Women’s Movements in the West

The development of women’s movements in the late nineteenth century had a strong transnational dynamic and was driven in particular by exchanges between the USA and European countries. The two major transnational women’s organisations (the International Council of Women (ICW)—which connected a growing number of national umbrella organisations meeting for regular conferences from 1888—and the single-issue movement of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), founded in Berlin in 1904) both had their roots in similar national US associations. Still existing today, they both claim to be open to women’s organisations from the whole world, striving to represent women’s rights globally from the very beginning. It has to be stated, however, that in their first decades they mainly represented white middle-class women in industrialised countries. Moreover, their concept of feminism was closely linked to the idea that European civilisations and societies were the only ones that promised a path to emancipation and equal rights for women. This had particular problematic effects in the European empires, where white middle and upper-class women associated their ideas of womanhood and women’s rights with the colonising policies of their countries.48

However, in the context of European and North American societies, the movement had a considerable dynamic and included a large number of women in many countries. Transnational exchanges and cooperation not only helped mobilise movements at the national level, but also created a shared agenda for changing cultures, social systems, and legal norms, and for the demand for political participation in many countries. To provide this exchange, multilingual mediators were in high demand in the developing movement. The Paris congress of 1896 discussed at the beginning of this chapter is a good case in point.

The media coverage of the Congrès féministe illustrates the agency of a multilingual personality familiar with different cultural contexts. Digging deeper into the material that Käthe Schirmacher kept about the congress, we learn that her agency as a mediator was not just the result of her linguistic and cultural skills. Rather, her role was also supported by a more formal authorisation. She was a delegate of not just one but four German associations at the conference.49 As the journey was exhausting and costly, several German societies that did not want to miss the event took advantage of the fact that they had a fellow campaigner and compatriot living in Paris. They trusted Schirmacher, who at the time was based in France writing a German book on the French philosopher Voltaire, to represent them at the Congrès féministe. Hence, Schirmacher’s leverage in the event can be explained, at least in part, by her transnational mobility which linked her to both the French and the German movements.

Among other things, it was Schirmacher’s task to promote the upcoming International Congress of Women (Internationaler Kongress für Frauenwerke und Frauenbestrebungen) that was to take place in Berlin later in the same year and to attract participants and speakers for the event.50 This was a delicate mission even twenty-five years after the Franco-Prussian War. An American visitor to the Paris congress reported open anti-German resentment at the mention of the forthcoming Berlin event at the closing banquet: ‘S’il faut aller à Berlin, il faut y aller pour autre chose!’, and translated for her readers in Boston: ‘If we have to go to Berlin, we’ll be going for another reason!’51 Despite these adverse conditions, Schirmacher was quite successful in her task. The French Revue Féministe not only published her lecture on the German women’s movement but also published a three-page preview of the upcoming event in Berlin.52

Some interesting questions arise here. What, for instance, was the division of labour between those who travelled, translated, and kept the exchange going between women in different countries and those who worked more locally? There are several answers to this question. Certainly, linguistic competences and different national approaches to languages played a role. In Paris, not only was the French language a necessity, but also a certain style of speech to prevail over the rude audience.53 A few months later in Berlin, speeches in various languages were accepted and as the Boston-based Woman’s Journal reported ‘with one exception, all the English and American delegates addressed the Congress in their own language’ and were understood well by the Germans.54

Schirmacher’s case opens up perspectives on some more general questions of transnational communication and mediation. To deal with the complex situations in the growing transnational civil society of women’s movements, experts were needed who were not only free and willing to travel but also knew the languages involved as well as the habits and the prejudices of the various milieus. How did associations react to this growing demand? Who took on these tasks? What was their background and training? Did they see themselves as members of a distinct group? In her various positions as a board member and translator in transnational organisations, Schirmacher could bring her transnational expertise of travel and transnational communication to bear. But she had no funds of her own and needed the support of transnationally active associations if she wanted to travel.

As the German associations’ letters to Schirmacher in the spring of 1896 show, financial questions mattered. She received an allowance for her expenses during the conference in Paris, but it was also obvious that those who sent her were happy to avoid having to pay a delegate to travel from Germany.55 Schirmacher, on the other hand, made a living as a multilingual writer and saw her conference participation also from an economic point of view. If she was successful, she would also gain new commissions as a journalist, she told her parents.56 She had been actively seeking to be a delegate to Paris, but she must also have made clear that she could not work without at least some compensation.57

Mobility is a resource for a movement, as well as for an individual who wants to make a living from being mobile. Both perspectives can be analysed in the context of a critical travel history that reflects travelling as a set of practices with various aims and political meanings.58 The implicit and explicit power hierarchies of travel and travel writing were reflected in research from early on.59 Central questions of this critique must, however, constantly be kept in mind. Who travels, under what conditions, to which places, with what intentions? Who can and who cannot travel? Who must travel? How is travel linked to power and domination as well as to migration and inequality? What do travellers expect and how do they use their impressions to change or confirm their identities? What is the meaning of race, class, and colonial power in these practices? Gendered perspectives on travel and travel writing are particularly relevant here. They demonstrate women’s mobility in spite of the bourgeois ideology that a woman’s place is in the home.60 They have, however, also demonstrated the links between gender hierarchies, orientalising discourses, and the Western ideology of European civilisation as a precondition of women’s emancipation.61

Mobility played a role in the life plans and careers of many European middle-class women of the nineteenth century. They often migrated temporarily for work or education (or a combination of the two), to find a husband, or to earn a living.62 These young middle-class women played an important role in the spawning of women’s movements in the late nineteenth century, which recruited many of its travelling activists from this group—Schirmacher’s career illustrates this connection.63 Having studied in Paris for several years before living there as a writer, Schirmacher was well equipped to address critical French audiences at the 1896 congress in Paris.

Later in the same year, due to her emotional attachment to Germany, Paris-based Schirmacher was anxious to make the journey to the International Congress of Women in Berlin in autumn for political and personal reasons. Despite anti-German sentiment at the congress in Paris, she had managed to invite a French delegate to Germany. A report by Eugénie Pontonié-Pierre (1844–1898) on the French women’s movement was indeed presented at the Berlin congress. It turns out, however, that Pontonié-Pierre never went to Berlin herself. Rather, it was Schirmacher who presented her paper there.64 Again, Schirmacher’s willingness to travel and her mastery of French and German made her a mediator in a literal sense of the word. How she financed the expensive journey to Berlin remains unclear.65 Most probably, she could afford it in the end by selling several reports on both congresses to journals and newspapers and by going on a lecture tour in the autumn of 1896.66

Translating, Activism, and Trust

Translation took place in various forms in activist milieus around 1900. Again, the Paris feminist congress of 1896 illustrates this. Since all foreign delegates presented their papers in French, their speeches must have been translated into that language, either by the authors themselves or by someone else. Schirmacher’s text, on the other hand, was translated into English and Swedish for publication in Swedish and American journals.67 This points to a strong interest in transnational information in different languages and media. Many journal editors kept up to date with newest developments in other countries through exchange subscriptions, reporting on them in extracts and translations.68 Multilingual activists reported on major events like international conventions for different audiences in their languages. At the Paris congress, Schirmacher translated in both directions between French and German, as the German associations she represented had asked her to communicate their point of view on the declaration of the congress. We are fortunate to find both versions—her letter to the president of the convention in French and her German translation of this intervention on behalf of the German associations—in her papers.69 However, these documents of an exchange that would otherwise have taken place orally also point to interpreting as another type of translation relevant at international meetings.

Feminist research on how translations transfer and transform concepts of gender emerged in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Reflections on feminist translation, and more particularly on translations relevant in and for women’s movements, were already developed in the 1980s by Susan Bassnett.70 Luise von Flotow, Sherry Simon, and others discussed feminist translation practices and argued for the forging of transdisciplinary connections between gender studies and translation studies.71 Interventions in colonial and postcolonial contexts both through translation and reflections on translation, such as those undertaken by Gayatri Spivak or Marilyn Booth, pointed to the power relations and hierarchies associated with all translation processes, while also highlighting the diversity of powerful female voices and feminisms around the world that have so often been ignored by Western feminists.72 Recently, Stefania Arcara, Maude Bracke, and others have initiated research on translating feminism in the second half of the twentieth century and on the transfers, transgressions, and transformations involved.73 However, broader research on the role of translation in the earlier women’s movements is still lacking.74 This pertains both to how particular feminist concepts have been translated and circulated and to the various translation practices in historical women’s movements.

Recent approaches to translation history also provide helpful concepts for analysing the relationship between feminist activism and translation. In her work, Maria Tymoczko points to the centrality of translation to revolutionary movements and investigates translation as an important way of creating images that incited resistance in colonised societies.75 Using the case of the Irish translation movement, which inspired the Irish national movement and thus became a model for other anti-colonial activists, she develops a theoretical perspective on translation, engagement, and activism.76 Based on a critical reading of Venuti’s use of the term ‘resistance’, she problematises mere attitudinal shifts through engaged translations. Tymoczko argues for activism as a concept that should be reserved for translation movements that have actually been involved in the transformation of societies.77

Following on from this idea, in this study I explore the links between women’s activism and translation. I argue that to include issues of translation, as an essential part of their history, broadens and significantly changes the perspective on social and political movements. However, two modifications are necessary from a historical perspective. First, as convincing as I find the differentiation between activism and mere engagement, from a historian’s point of view this distinction also causes conceptual problems. Tying a central analytical concept to a historical impact (here, of an activism) that can only be assessed in retrospect does not only leave important but unsuccessful activisms out of the picture, but also prevents us from finding out why some movements were more effective than others. I use the term activism for all forms of political engagement that aim to change societies (and not just attitudes) regardless of their subsequent success or failure. Second, I argue that translation is only one among several strategies of transnational mediation that interact with each other in social and political movements. From a historical perspective, we therefore need to examine how practices of translation are linked with other forms of mediation and communication such as speaking tours, conference travel, journalistic correspondence, and reporting, all of which are part of political activism.

Considering the multiplicity of translation practices (translating various textual genres, self-translations and re-translations, interpreting, excerpts from foreign texts) in national and transnational social and political movements, I argue that these practices are a necessary element not only of communication but also of high practical and symbolic value for a movement. Thus, it is important to know what was rendered into another language and what remained untranslated, who decided on what was transmitted, and what was changed. We need to ask who in a movement takes care of translations and who supports these efforts, for example with space for publications in journals, with patronage, or with money. We need to ask about the economic and practical conditions of the work of translators in activist milieus as well as about their formal and informal training.

In answering these and other related questions, the humanising approach in translation history introduced by Anthony Pym and the concept of trust as developed and explained by Andrea Rizzi, Birgit Lang, and Anthony Pym are particularly helpful.78 First of all, it is only from a process-based perspective that we can develop an analytical perspective on translators and see them as agents in complex social milieus. The focus on who mediates and how, as well as on flows of translation in different directions, allows us to explore transnational milieus that cannot always be separated into ‘sending’ and ‘target’ cultures. What is more, the concept of trust unfolds a particular relevance when engaged translations and mediation in political activism are discussed. While translations are always potentially controversial, they are particularly so in political contexts where translators also have to make political choices.79 It is thus important to understand the dynamics of political trust networks and the particular claims to trustworthiness of translations made in transnational movements.80 When discussing what kind of trust translators aspired to when working in transnational political contexts, gender-specific aspects must also be considered.81 Women were long denied institutional training on which they could have built the ‘thin trust’ created by professionalism. We should, therefore, ask whether practices based on personal relations (creating ‘thick trust’) were more important for women.

Last but not least, I argue that the dynamics of trust networks of political movements are characterised by a specific temporality. On the one hand, they are supported by specific cultures of mediation that include both personal and institutional aspects and provide a certain stability even in moments of conflict. On the other, the transformations and developments of movements also influence these stabilising cultures. The more debate there is about the goals and values of a movement, the greater the risk that mediators and translators will become involved in conflicts.82 Phases of change in movements hence entail both opportunities and risks for the mediators and translators involved in them. A particular loss of trust therefore needs to be examined from the perspective of the translator’s choice, but also in consideration of the changes that made a particular choice unacceptable that had not been problematic before. Understanding the specific cultures of mediation created by transnational movements has a high explanatory value in these cases. It should, however, be contextualised within the broader cultural history of trust, a sentiment that gained particular relevance as social cohesive with the rise of middle-class values and national identities.83

Following on from the questions above, I argue that apart from language skills and cultural competence, a specific personality was necessary to become a trusted mediator and translator in a transnational political movement in the period under discussion. Assuming that mediators around 1900 participated with a certain social capital and interest in women’s movements, one can now ask how they invented a particular self that accorded with particular necessities and how they tried to meet the expectations prevailing in the movement. A number of questions follow from this. Were there models one could aspire to? How did mediators like Käthe Schirmacher appropriate and possibly change these models? Did the political movements of the second half of the nineteenth century develop a specific type of a transnational mediator that differed from other translators and mediators of the time? What part did multilingual, translating, and mediating individuals like Schirmacher have in developing specific practices and social norms for mediators and translators in social movements?

The Language of Translation and the Risk the Transnational Mediator Takes…

The case of Schirmacher’s transnational mediation practices is particularly rewarding for several reasons. First, Schirmacher’s meticulous archiving and self-documentation provide differentiated insights into the conditions and decisions of her transnational life. Second, her complete break with both the German and the international women’s movement meant that she never really became part of a movement’s official memory. Thus, there are many references to tensions and rifts that would otherwise have remained hidden. Third, her turning to extreme nationalist views after more than two decades of a transnational life points to some intricate linkages between these seemingly opposing attitudes. Her case therefore also promises to bring questions about processes of nationalising appropriation and exoticising othering in the context of transnational exchange more sharply into focus.

With this in mind, let us now return to Käthe Schirmacher at the 1896 Paris congress and examine her changing reactions to the praise she received from the press. After her success at the conference, she wrote to her parents telling them how glad she was to have found a way to meet the expectations of the heterogeneous audience without hurting the feelings of the socialists present at the event or stirring up French nationalism. She consequently hoped that her clever tactical behaviour would be rewarded by new assignments from the French and German press.84 We can deduce from this that Schirmacher, who depended on the income from her various commissions as a translator, journalist, and writer, wanted to control her public image and, to this end, closely monitored the media response to her appearances. Hence, she did not archive all the articles and newspaper clippings about her performances merely out of vanity. Rather, they were collected partly to enable her to control the process by which she negotiated her position as a public figure.

As Schirmacher’s archiving practice became a lifelong professional habit, we can trace how her assessment of public descriptions of her personality changed. In the case of the problematic choice between two nationalist appropriations of her personality mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, this change is significant. In 1896, she felt extraordinarily honoured by the appreciation of her French appearance in French papers. Referring to the mentions in Gil Blas and Le Figaro, she explained to her parents that the way she was respected in France could show them why she felt so much more comfortable there: ‘This might explain to you why I love Paris so much. I am très française in many respects’ (Das wird euch vielleicht erklären, warum ich Paris so liebe. Ich bin in vielen Dingen très française).85

Twenty-five years later, in her autobiography published for a nationalist German audience in 1921, Schirmacher came back to the laudatory article that had credited her with not appearing like a ‘typical German woman’.86 She now presented it as an example of how her feelings as a German had been repeatedly hurt during her two-decade stay in Paris.87 Even decades later, talking about her transnational past life still meant having to decide whether she felt more French or more German and risking alienating her friends and contemporaries in one of the two countries. From this, we can conclude that those who have once lived between cultures always have to make choices—be it between the cultures they have lived in, or between belonging to a particular community (or imagined noncommunity) or remaining in that border space ‘outside’ the ‘language forest’ in which Walter Benjamin places the translator.88

This book on transnational practices in women’s movements has been written over the last three years in London, Florence, and Vienna and was thus itself developed in a transnational context. It has been written in English by a foreigner who is not a native speaker. In her impassioned plea to live with many languages and never to give up the ‘Language of Translation’, Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy powerfully characterises the status of English as a colonial legacy on the Indian subcontinent as a language both of privilege and exclusion and of emancipation. While this, albeit differently, is also true for other regions of the world, we should not overlook the fact that there are also other ambivalent languages, such as Mandarin or Spanish, which have their own potential for oppression and liberation. Roy’s detailed but firm answer to Pablo Neruda’s question ‘In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?’—‘in the Language of Translation’—has always encouraged me when I was despairing at the effort of writing in a language that is not my mother tongue.89 Although I received invaluable help from various sides and would not have been able to complete this book without the advice from my copy editor, Emily Richards, writing in the Language of Translation remains a precarious endeavour. However, it also gives me insight into one of the central questions of my study. Writing in a foreign language constantly reminds me of what every translator, every traveller in foreign countries knows: that words do not come of their own accord but have to be coaxed into meaningful sentences again and again.

In this book, I approach the practices of transnational communication from different angles and examine various forms of translation, correspondence, and travel in order to gauge their respective possibilities and limitations. Each chapter focuses on a particular (group of) source(s), describes the historical and biographical constellation of the processes of translation and mediation, and discusses theoretical concepts related to the interpretation of the source(s) in question. In this, I hope to contribute to a better understanding of how, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the transnational mobility and communication of citizens contributed to the emergence of social and political movements and a transnational sphere where these movements could thrive.

Based on the case of Käthe Schirmacher, I also show that the ability to navigate between languages and cultures and to mediate between different groups in a transnational space of communication does not necessarily prevent nationalist appropriation by others or preclude the possibility of the mediator becoming a nationalist. Rather, I argue, the interstitial space the mediator inhabits and the Language of Translation spoken there are vulnerable tools. The richness of multiple meanings can collapse into foreignising or nationalising attitudes. Equally, the contact zones that enable communication and exchange can turn into spaces of domination and violence. Differentiated knowledge about the practices that keep spaces of exchange and ambivalence open is an important investment in creating and maintaining a transnational civil society, which we need now more than ever.

Notes

  1. 1.

    University Library Rostock: Schirmacher Papers (in the following: Nl Sch) 905/106, Congrès Feministe International de 1896 [conference programme].

  2. 2.

    Nl Sch 905/107–108; Nl Sch 905/112–118, Nl Sch 905/125, Congrès Feministe International de 1896 [Collection of newspaper clippings].

  3. 3.

    Louis Gaillard, ‘Un Congrès fuministe [sic]’, Gil Blas, 11 April 1896; All translations in this book by the author unless stated otherwise.

  4. 4.

    It remains unclear if the article’s title ‘Un Congrès Fuministe’ was a typo or an antifeminist joke. For an antifeminist use of the term ‘fuministe’ referring to the habit of smoking see Helen Chenut, ‘Anti-feminist Caricature in France: Politics, Satire and Public Opinion, 1890–1914’, Modern & Contemporary France 20 (2012), 437–52, at 450.

  5. 5.

    Edith Glaser, ‘“Sind Frauen studierfähig?” Vorurteile gegen das Frauenstudium’, in Geschichte der Mädchen- und Frauenbildung. vol 2: Vom Vormärz bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Claudia Opitz Elke Kleinau (Frankfurt/Main and New York: Campus, 1996), 299–309.

  6. 6.

    V. Taunay, ‘Séductions féminines (Chronique)’, La Gazette de France, 11 April 1896.

  7. 7.

    Nl Sch 905/107, 905/108, 905/109, 905/113—newspaper clippings.

  8. 8.

    Jules Bois, ‘Quelques silhouettes de féministes’, Le Figaro, 8 April 1896.

  9. 9.

    Anon., ‘Aus Paris. Der internationale Frauenkongress’, Kölnische Zeitung, 19 April 1896; Nl Sch 105/002, ‘Frl. Dr. Käthe Schirmacher (aus Danzig)’ (newspaper clipping 1896). At that time, the German term ‘Propaganda’ did not yet have the negative connotation it later acquired.

  10. 10.

    On the political implications of a translator’s choice of words: Maria Tymoczko, ‘Translation and Political Engagement’, The Translator 6, no. 1 (2000), 23–47, https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2000.10799054.

  11. 11.

    Tymoczko, ‘Translation and Political Engagement’, 26.

  12. 12.

    On co-operations and entanglements between nationalism and translation: Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 99–147; on the connection between feminism and imperialism see Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill, NC et al.: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Antoinette Burton, ‘Some Trajectories of “Feminism” and “Imperalism”’, in Feminisms and Internationalism, ed. Mrinalini Sinha, Donna Guy, and Angela Woollacott (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 214–24.

  13. 13.

    Maria Tymoczko, ed. Translation, Resistance, Activism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010); Edwin Gentzler and Maria Tymoczko, Translation and Power (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002).

  14. 14.

    Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility; criticising Venuti’s generalising statements, Lang, Rizzi and Pym point to the concept’s limited relevance from a historical perspective. See Andrea Rizzi, Birgit Lang, and Anthony Pym, What Is Translation History? A Trust-Based Approach (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2019). For critical revision of Venuti’s call for visible (resistant) translation: Tymoczko, ‘Translation and Political Engagement’, 35–40.

  15. 15.

    Simone Lässig, ‘Übersetzungen in der Geschichte—Geschichte als Übersetzung? Überlegungen zu einem analytischen Konzept und Forschungsgegenstand für die Geschichtswissenschaft’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft (Göttingen) 38, no. 2 (2012), 189–216, at 190.

  16. 16.

    Doris Bachmann-Medick, ‘The Transnational Study of Culture: A Plea for Translation’, in The Humanities Between Global Integration and Cultural Diversity, eds. Birgit Mersmann and Hans G. Kippenberg (Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2016), 29–49.

  17. 17.

    On the concept of practices in transnational contexts Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot, ‘International Practices’, International Theory 3, no. 1 (2011), 1–36; on historical approaches see Thomas Welskopp, Unternehmen Praxisgeschichte. Historische Perspektiven auf Kapitalismus, Arbeit und Klassengesellschaft. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014); on the concept of paratexts see Gérard Genette, Paratexts. Thresholds of interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin, Literature, culture, theory (Cambridge and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

  18. 18.

    Basic to transnational history: Pierre-Yves Saunier, Transnational History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan); fundamental to descriptive translation studies: Gideon Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies—And Beyond, Rev. ed. (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishers, 2012).

  19. 19.

    Basic to travel writing: Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York Routledge, 1992); see also Johanna Gehmacher and Elizabeth Harvey, eds., Politisch Reisen, vol. 22, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften (OeZG) (2011).

  20. 20.

    Lorraine Daston and H. Otto Sibum, ‘Introduction: Scientific Personae and their Histories’, Science in Context 16 (2003), 1–8, https://doi.org/10.1017/S026988970300067X.

  21. 21.

    Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, second edition (Minneapolis, Minn. and London: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2010); Bernhard Fetz and Hannes Schweiger, eds., Die Biographie – zur Grundlegung ihrer Theorie (Berlin et al.: de Gruyter, 2009); Desley Deacon, Penny Russell, and Angela Woollacott, eds., Transnational Lives. Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700—Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Johanna Gehmacher, ‘Leben schreiben. Stichworte zur biografischen Thematisierung als historiografisches Format’, in Bananen, Cola, Zeitgeschichte: Oliver Rathkolb und das lange 20. Jahrhundert, eds. Lucile Dreidemy et al. (Vienna et al.: Böhlau, 2015), 1013–26.

  22. 22.

    Hagemann, Karen. ‘Civil Society Gendered: Rethinking Theories and Practices’, in Civil Society and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, eds. Karen Hagemann, Sonya Michel, and Gunilla Budde (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2008), 17–42.; Henrike Knappe, Doing Democracy Differently: Political Practices and Transnational Civil Society (Opladen et al.: Budrich, 2017).

  23. 23.

    On the entanglement of women’s movements with post/colonial politics: Francisca de Haan, ‘Writing Inter/Transnational History: The Case of Women’s Movements and Feminisms’, in Internationale Geschichte in Theorie und Praxis/International History in Theory and Practice Bd. 4, eds. Barbara Haider-Wilson, William D. Godsey, and Wolfgang Mueller (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2017), 510–13. Basic on this topic: Burton, Burdens; Kumari Jayawardena, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1994); Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, NC et al.: Univ. Press, 2004).

  24. 24.

    Jane Haggis, Clare Midgley, Margaret Allen, and Fiona Paisley, Cosmopolitan Lives on the Cusp of Empire: Interfaith, Cross-Cultural and Transnational Networks, 1860–1950 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Oliver Janz and Daniel Schönpflug, eds., Gender History in a Transnational Perspective. Networks, Biographies, Gender Orders (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2014); Clare Midgley, Alison Twells, and Julie Carlier, eds., Women in Transnational History. Connecting the Local and the Global (London and New York: Routlegde, 2016); Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, ‘Crossing Borders in Transnational Gender History’, Journal of Global History 6, no. 3 (2011), 357–79; Ruth Roach Pierson and Nupur Chaudhuri, eds., Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race (Bloomington, Ind. et al.: Indiana Univ. Press, 1998).

  25. 25.

    de Haan, ‘Writing’; Corinna Oesch, ‘Internationale Frauenbewegungen. Perspektiven einer Begriffsgeschichte und einer transnationalen Geschichte’, Traverse. Zeitschrift für Geschichte 22, no. 2 (2016), 25–37; Karen Offen, ‘Understanding international Feminisms as “Transnational”—An Anachronism? May Wright Sewall and the Creation of the International council of Women, 1889–1904’ in Gender History in a Transnational Perspective. Networks, Biographies, Gender Orders, eds. Oliver Janz and Daniel Schönpflug (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2014), 25–45; Leila J. Rupp, ‘Transnational Women’s Movements’, EGO European History Online (2011), accessed 17 June 2022, http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/transnational-movements-and-organisations/international-social-movements/leila-j-rupp-transnational-womens-movements; Susan Zimmermann, ‘Auf dem Weg zu einer Geschichte der vielen Geschichten des Frauen-Aktivismus weltweit’, in Wie Frauenbewegung geschrieben wird: Historiographie, Dokumentation, Stellungnahmen, Bibliographien, eds. Johanna Gehmacher and Natascha Vittorelli (Innsbruck et al.: Studienverlag, 2009), 63–80.

  26. 26.

    de Haan, ‘Writing’, 508.

  27. 27.

    See for definitions of transnational history: Thomas Adam, ‘Transnational History. A Program for Research, Publishing, and Teaching’, Yearbook of Transnational History 1 (2018), 1–10; Akira Iriye, ‘Transnational History’, Contemporary European History 13, no. 2 (2004), 211–22, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777304001675; Patricia Clavin, ‘Defining Transnationalism’, Contemporary European History 14, no. 4 (1 November 2005); Philipp Gassert, ‘Transnationale Geschichte, Version: 2.0’, Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte. Begriffe, Methoden und Debatten der zeithistorischen Forschung, accessed 17 June 2022, https://docupedia.de/zg/Transnationale_Geschichte_Version_2.0_Philipp_Gassert; Kiran Klaus Patel, ‘Transnational History’, EGO European History Online (2010), accessed 17 June 2022, http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/theories-and-methods/transnational-history.

  28. 28.

    Nancy L. Green, The Limits of Transnationalism (Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press, 2019); Anneeth Kaur Hundle, Ioana Szeman, and Joanna Pares Hoare, ‘What Is the Transnational in Transnational Feminist Research?’ Feminist Review 121, no. 1 (2019), 3–8.

  29. 29.

    Using Francisca de Haan’s broad notion of women’s movements and feminisms I want to emphasise the plurality and diversity of various activisms that become even more obvious when looking beyond the Western countries which are my focus here. de Haan, ‘Writing’, 504–505.

  30. 30.

    On the agency of translators see Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility; Theo Hermans, ‘Positioning Translators. Voices, Views and Values in Translation’, Language and Literature 23 (2014), no. 3 (2014), 285–301; Andrea Rizzi, ed., Trust and Proof: Translators in Renaissance Print Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

  31. 31.

    Lauren Berlant, ‘On the Case’ Critical Inquiry 33, no. No 4 (Summer 2007), 663–72; Johannes Süßmann, ‘Einleitung: Perspektiven der Fallstudienforschung’ in Fallstudien: Theorie – Geschichte – Methode, eds. Johannes Süßmann, Susanne Scholz, and Gisela Engel (Berlin: Trafo, 2007), 7–27; Birgit Lang, Joy Damousi, and Alison Lewis, A History of the Case Study: Sexology, Psychoanalysis, Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press., 2017); on biographical perspectives: Johanna Gehmacher, ‘A Case for Female Individuality: Käthe Schirmacher—Self-Invention and Biography’, in Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge, eds. Joy Damousi, Birgit Lang, and Katie Sutton (New York, 2015), 66–79.

  32. 32.

    Lässig, ‘Übersetzungen’.

  33. 33.

    This study builds on a multi-year research project that resulted in a comprehensive biography. For biographical details and further literature see Johanna Gehmacher, Elisa Heinrich, and Corinna Oesch, Käthe Schirmacher: Agitation und autobiografische Praxis zwischen radikaler Frauenbewegung und völkischer Politik (Vienna et al.: Böhlau, 2018); see also Gehmacher, ‘A Case’; Johanna Gehmacher, ‘Im/Possible Careers. Gendered Perspectives on Scholarly Personae Around 1900’, European Journal of Life Writing 11, Cluster: When Does the Genius Do the Chores? Knowledge, Auto/Biography and Gender (2022): WG70–WG102, https://doi.org/10.21827/ejlw.11.38786; Elisa Heinrich and Corinna Oesch, ‘Prekäre Strategien? Käthe Schirmachers Agieren in Frauenbewegungen vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, Ariadne. Forum für Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte, 67–8 (2015), 100–108; Corinna Oesch ‘Zwischen Wissenschaft und Journalismus. Weibliche Lebensentwürfe und politisches Engagement um 1900 am Beispiel von Käthe Schirmacher und Anna Schapire’ in Rosa und Anna Schapire – Sozialwissenschaft, Kunstgeschichte und Feminismus um 1900, eds. Burcu Dogramaci and Günther Sandner (Berlin: Aviva, 2017), 102–118; Elisa Heinrich, Intim und respektabel. Aushandlungen von Homosexualität und Freundinnenschaft in der deutschen Frauenbewegung um 1900 (Göttingen et al.: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2022).

  34. 34.

    Johanna Gehmacher, ‘Der andere Ort der Welt. Käthe Schirmachers Auto/Biographie der Nation’, in Geschlecht und Nationalismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa 1848–1918, ed. Sophia Kemlein (Osnabrück: Fibre, 2000), 99–124; Johanna Gehmacher, ‘De/Platzierungen. Zwei Nationalistinnen in der Hauptstadt des 19. Jahrhunderts. Überlegungen zu Nationalität, Geschlecht und Auto/Biographie’, Werkstatt Geschichte, no. 32 (2002), 6–30; cf. also: Liliane Crips, ‘Comment passer du libéralisme au nationalisme völkisch, tout en restand féministe? Le cas exemplaire de Käthe Schirmacher (1865–1930)‘, in Femmes – Nations – Europe, ed. Marie-Claire Hoock-Demarle (Publications de l’Université Paris 7 – a Denis Diderot: Paris, 1995), 62–77; Kirsten Heinsohn, ‘Denkstil und kollektiver Selbstentwurf im konservativ-völkischen Frauen-Milieu der Weimarer Republik’, in Lebendige Sozialgeschichte. Gedenkschrift für Peter Borowsky, eds. Rainer Hering and Rainer Nicolaysen (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2003), 189–205; Christiane Streubel, Radikale Nationalistinnen. Agitation und Programmatik rechter Frauen in der Weimarer Republik, (Frankfurt/M. and New York: Campus, 2006).

  35. 35.

    Martha Hodes, ‘A Story with an Argument: Writing the Transnational Life of a Sea Captain's Wife’, in Transnational Lives. Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700—Present, eds. Desley Deacon, Penny Russell, and Angela Woollacott (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 15–27; Madeleine Herren, ‘Inszenierungen des globalen Subjekts. Vorschläge zur Typologie einer transgressiven Biographie’, Historische Anthropologie 13, no. 1 (2005), 1–18, https://doi.org/10.7788/ha.2005.13.1.1; Isabella Löhr, ‘Lives Beyond Borders, or: How to Trace Global Biographies, 1880–1950’, Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 23, no. 6 (2013), 7–21; Françoise Thébaud, ‘What Is a Transnational Life? Some Thoughts About Marguerite Thibert’s Career and Life (1886–1982)’, in Gender History in a Transnational Perspective. Networks, Biographies, Gender Orders, eds. Oliver Janz and Daniel Schönpflug (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2014), 162–83.

  36. 36.

    Daniel Chernilo, ‘The Critique of Methodological Nationalism: Theory and History’, Thesis Eleven 106, no. 1 (2011), 98–117; Madeleine Herren, ‘Transkulturelle Geschichte: Globale Kultur gegen die Dämonen des Eurozentrismus und des methodischen Nationalismus’, Traverse: Zeitschrift für Geschichte 2 (2012), 154–69; Jani Marjanen, ‘Transnational Conceptual History, Methodological Nationalism and Europe’, in Conceptual History in the European Space, eds. Willibald Steinmetz et al. (Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 2017), 139–74.

  37. 37.

    Lang, Damousi, and Lewis, History, 2–4.

  38. 38.

    Lauren Berlant, ‘On the Case’, 666.

  39. 39.

    Hannes Schweiger, ‘Global Subjects: The Transnationalisation of Biography’, Life Writing 9, no. 3 (2012), 249–58; Falko Schnicke, ‘19. Jahrhundert’ in Handbuch Biographie. Methoden, Traditionen, Theorien, ed. Christian Klein (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2009), 243–250; Anne-Kathrin Reulecke, ‘“Die Nase der Lady Hester”. Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Biographie und Geschlechterdifferenz’, in Theorie der Biographie. Grundlagentexte und Kommentar, eds. Bernhard Fetz and Wilhelm Hemecker (Berlin et al.: De Gruyter, 2011), Anita Runge, ‘Gender Studies’, in Handbuch Biographie. Methoden, Traditionen, Theorien, ed. Christian Klein (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2009), 402–407.

  40. 40.

    Levke Harders, ‘Migration und Biographie. Mobile Leben beschreiben’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften (OeZG) 29, no. 3 (2018), 17–36; Johanna Gehmacher and Katharina Prager, ‘Transnationale Leben – Formen, Begriffe und Zugriffe’, in Handbuch Biographie, second revised edition, ed. Christian Klein (Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag, 2022), 123–32.

  41. 41.

    Donna Haraway, ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Priviledge of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies 14 (1988), 575–99; For a call for reflexivity and positionality in translation history see Rizzi, Lang, and Pym, What Is Translation History, 111.

  42. 42.

    Johanna Gehmacher, ‘Narratives of Race, Constructions of Community and the Demand for Female Participation in German-nationalist Movements in Austria and the German Reich’, in The Persistence of Race from the Wilhelmine Empire to National Socialism. Re-Examining Constructions and Perceptions of Cultural Narratives of Race in German History, 1871–1945, eds. Lara Day Benjamin and Oliver Haag (Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 2017), 154–74; Gehmacher, ‘Der andere Ort der Welt ‘; Gehmacher, ‘De/Platzierungen‘.

  43. 43.

    On the concept of legacy awareness: Kai Sina and Carlos Spoerhase, eds., Nachlassbewusstsein. Literatur, Archiv, Philologie 1750–2000 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2017); details on the Schirmacher papers: Gehmacher, Heinrich, and Oesch, Käthe Schirmacher, 514–9.

  44. 44.

    On autobiographical archives: Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, ‘The Afterlives of Those Who Write Themselves. Rethinking Autobiographical Archives’, The European Journal of Life Writing 9 (2020), BE9–BE32, https://doi.org/10.21827/ejlw.9.37323.

  45. 45.

    Gehmacher, ‘A Case’.

  46. 46.

    E.g. Karen Hunt, ‘“Whirl'd Through the World”.The Role of Travel in the Making of Dora Montefiore’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften (OeZG) 22, no. 1 (2011), 41–63; Dóra Czeferner, ‘Weibliche Identität in Mitteleuropa und Wissenstransfer zwischen den ungarischen, österreichischen und deutschen Frauenorganisationen 1890–1914’, Öt Kontinens/Five Continents 2 (2015), 7–30.

  47. 47.

    For important impulses see Francisca De Haan, Margaret Allen, June Purvis, and Krassimira Daskalova, eds., Women’s Activism. Global Perspectives from the 1890s to the Present (London and New York: Routledge, 2013); de Haan Francisca, Loutfi Anna, and Daskalova Krassimira, eds., Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries (Budapest: CEU Pressntral European Press, 2006); Susan Zimmermann, Grenzüberschreitungen: Internationale Netzwerke, Organisationen, Bewegungen und die Politik der globalen Ungleichheit vom 17. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2010); Julie Carlier, ‘Entangled Feminisms. Rethinking the History of the Belgian Movement for Women’s Rights Through Transnational Intersections’, Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 90 (2012), 13–51, https://doi.org/10.3406/rbph.2012.8289.

  48. 48.

    Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women. The Making of an International Women's Movement (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997); Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, ‘Forging Feminist Identity in an International Movement: A Collective Identity Approach to Twentieth-Century Feminism’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 24, no. 2 (1999), 363–86; Burton, Burdens of History; Kathryn Gleadle and Zoë Thomas, ‘Global Feminisms, c. 1870–1930: Vocabularies and Concepts—A Comparative Approach’, Women’s History Review 27, no. 7 (2017), 1209–24, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09612025.2017.1417685; see for a perspective on transnationality also beyond imperial contact zones Haggis et al., Cosmopolitan Lives.

  49. 49.

    Schirmacher represented the following associations: Association Frauenwohl Berlin (Verein Frauenwohl Berlin), General German Women’s Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein), Federation of German Women’s Associations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine) and the committee of the women’s congress that was to be held in Berlin in September 1896. Also, she had a commission to report on the congress in the German feminist journal Die Frauenbewegung. Nl Sch 904/122, Minna Cauer to Käthe Schirmacher (in the following: KS), 17 March 1896; Nl Sch 905/119, Lina Morgenstern to KS, 19 March 1896; 905/121, Auguste Schmidt to KS, 4 April 1896.

  50. 50.

    Nl Sch 905/119, 120. Lina Morgenstern to KS, 11 and 19 March 1896. The committee of the congress had printed a preliminary programme in French to be distributed in Paris. Nl Sch 570/005, Congrès International des Femmes à Berlin [conference programme].

  51. 51.

    B. Phillips, ‘Women’s Congress in Paris’, The Woman’s Journal 27, no. 20 (1896), 157: ‘Some of the ladies spoke French with fluency and elegance […]. Still, whenever a delegate was unfortunate enough not to be able to use the language in the oratorical style demanded by tradition at public meetings, she was jeered at and ridiculed…’

  52. 52.

    Anonymous, ‘Chroniques et nouvelles féministes’, La Revue Féministe (1896), 308–311.

  53. 53.

    B. Phillips, ‘Women’s Congress in Paris’, The Woman’s Journal 27, no. 20 (1896), 157.

  54. 54.

    Anonymous, ‘The German Women's Congress’, The Woman’s Journal 27, no. 44 (1896).

  55. 55.

    Nl Sch 904/122, Minna Cauer to KS, 17 March 1896.

  56. 56.

    Nl Sch 11/013, KS to Richard and Clara Schirmacher, 10 April 1896.

  57. 57.

    Nl Sch 905/120, Lina Morgenstern to KS, 11 March 1896; Nl Sch 904/123, Minna Cauer to KS, 12. March 1896.

  58. 58.

    Jan Born, ‘Defing Travel: On the Travel Book, Travel Writing and Terminology’, in Perspectives on Travel Writing, eds. Glenn Hooper and Tim Youngs (Aldershot and Burlington, 2004), 13–26; see also Arnd Bauerkämper, Hans Erich Bödeker, and Bernhard Struck, eds., Die Welt erfahren. Reisen als kulturelle Begegnung von 1780 bis heute (Frankfurt, New York: 2004); Hagen Schulz-Forberg, ed., Unravelling Civilisation. European Travel and Travel Writing (Brussels et al.: 2005).

  59. 59.

    Pratt, Imperial Eyes; Timothy Mitchell, ‘Die Welt als Ausstellung’, in Jenseits des Eurozentrismus. Postkoloniale Perspektiven in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften, ed. Sebastian Conrad and Shalini Randeria (Frankfurt/M. and New York: Campus, 2002), 148–76.

  60. 60.

    E.g. Alba Amoia and Bettina L. Knapp, eds., Great Women Travel Writers. From 1750 to the Present (New York, London: Continuum, 2006).

  61. 61.

    Gabriele Habinger, Frauen reisen in die Fremde. Diskurse und Repräsentationen von reisenden Europäerinnen im 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Promedia, 2006); Sara Mills, Discourses of Difference. An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism (London and New York: Routledge, 1991); Ulla Siebert, Grenzlinien. Selbstrepräsentationen von Frauen in Reisetexten 1871 bis 1914 (Münster u.a.: Waxmann, 1998); Natascha Ueckmann, Frauen und Orientalismus. Reisetexte französischsprachiger Autorinnen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2001).

  62. 62.

    Levke Harders, ‘Migrationsgeschichte als Geschlechtergeschichte: “Der Mädgemarkt in Ripen”’, Migration and Belonging, accessed 17 June 2022, https://belonging.hypotheses.org/286; Mareike König, ‘Femina migrans. German Domestic Servants in Paris, 1870–1914. A Case Study’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 33, no. 3 (2012), 93–115; Wolfgang Gippert and Elke Kleinau, Bildungsreisende und Arbeitsmigrantinnen. Auslandserfahrungen deutscher Lehrerinnen zwischen nationaler und internationaler Orientierung (1850–1920) (Köln et al.: Böhlau, 2014).

  63. 63.

    Johanna Gehmacher, ‘Reisende in Sachen Frauenbewegung. Käthe Schirmacher zwischen Internationalismus und nationaler Identifikation’, Ariadne, no. 60 (November 2011), 58–65; Johanna Gehmacher, ‘Reisekostenabrechnung. Praktiken und Ökonomien des Unterwegsseins in Frauenbewegungen um 1900’, Feministische Studien 35, no. 1 (2017), 76–92; Johanna Gehmacher, ‘Moderne Frauen, die Neue Welt und der alte Kontinent. Käthe Schirmacher reist im Netzwerk der Frauenbewegung’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften (OeZG) 22, no. 1 (2011), 16–40; See also on Schirmacher’s travel writing Ulla Siebert, ‘“Von Anderen, von mir und vom Reisen”. Selbst- und Fremdkonstruktionen reisender Frauen um 1900 am Beispiel von Käthe Schirmacher und Emma Vely’ in Nahe Fremde – Fremde Nähe. Frauen forschen zu Ethnos, Kultur, Geschlecht, ed. Widee (Vienna: Wiener Frauenverlag, 1993), 177–216.

  64. 64.

    E. Dely, ‘Vom Internationalen Kongress für Frauenwerke und Frauenbestrebungen zu Berlin’, Die Frau. Monatsschrift fur das gesamte Frauenleben unserer Zeit 4, no. 1 (October 1896); Schirmacher also brought the greetings of the Vice-President of the Women’s International League for General Disarmament (Ligue internationale des femmes pour le desarmement general), Ms Flammarion, to the Congress in Berlin; see ‘Grüße aus Frankreich’, in Der Internationale Kongress für Frauenwerke und Frauenbestrebungen in Berlin 19. bis 26. September 1896. Eine Sammlung der auf dem Kongress gehaltenen Vorträge und Ansprachen, eds. Rosalie Schoenflies et al. (Berlin: H. Walther, 1897) 346.

  65. 65.

    In July, she was still not sure if she could go as she could not afford the travel. Her well-to-do brother-in-law Otto Münsterberg had offered support which she hesitated to accept. Nl Sch 11/022, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 6 July 1896.

  66. 66.

    E.g. Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Le Congrès féministe international de Berlin’, Journal des débats, 8 August 1896; Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Der Internationale Frauenkongress in Berlin’, Badische Landeszeitung, 27 September 1896.

  67. 67.

    Nl Sch 11/013, KS to Richard and Clara Schirmacher, 10 April 1896.

  68. 68.

    Nl Sch 905/123, Minna Cauer to KS, 12 March 1896.

  69. 69.

    Nl Sch 905/110, A Madame la Présidente du Congrès féministe international…, 12 April 1896.

  70. 70.

    Susan Bassnett, Feminist Experiences. The Women’s Movement in Four Cultures (London and Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986).

  71. 71.

    Luise von Flotow, Translation and Gender. Translating in the ‘Era of Feminism’ (Manchester et al.: St. Jerome Publishers, 1997); Luise von Flotow-Evans and Hala Kamal, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Feminism and Gender (London New York: Routledge 2020); Luise von Flotow and Joan W. Scott, ‘Gender Studies and Translation Studies. “Entre braguette”—Connecting the Transdisciplines’, in Border Crossings: Translation Studies and Other Disciplines, ed. Gambier Yves and Doorslaer Luc van (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 2016); Sherry Simon, Gender in Translation. Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission (London and New York: Routledge, 1996); see also Eleonora Federici and Vanessa Leonardi, eds., Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice in Translation and Gender Studies (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013); Sabine Messner and Michaela Wolf, Mittlerin zwischen den Kulturen – Mittlerin zwischen den Geschlechtern? Studie zu Theorie und Praxis feministischer Übersetzung (Graz: Inst. für Translationswiss., 2000); Olga Castro, Emek Ergun, Luise von Flotow, and María Laura Spoturno, ‘Towards Transnational Feminist Translation Studies’, Mutatis Mutandis. Revista latinoamericana de Traducción 13, no. 1 (2020), 2–10; For a call to reflect on historical contexts and not to leave out earlier forms of feminist translation cf. Stefania Arcara, ‘Feminists of All Languages Unite: Translation as Political Practice in the 1970s or a Historical View of Feminist Translation’, in The Routledge Handbook of Translation History, ed. Christopher Rundle (London and New York: Routledge, 2022), 355–371, at 367.

  72. 72.

    Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘The Politics of Translation’, in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Outside in the Teaching Machine (New York et. al.: Routledge, 2009), 200–225; Marilyn Booth, ‘Peripheral Visions: Translational Polemics and Feminist Arguments in Colonial Egypt’, in The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East, ed. Anna Ball and Karim Mattar (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 183–221; on power relations see also how Kathryn Batchelor discusses Sherry Simon’s reflections on Spivak’s translation practices: Kathryn Batchelor, Translation and Paratexts (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), 34.

  73. 73.

    Arcara, Feminists of All Languages Unite; Maud Anne Bracke, Penelope Morris, and Emily Ryder, ‘Introduction. Translating Feminism: Transfer, Transgression, Transformation (1950s–1980s)’, Gender and History 30, no. 1 (2018), 214–25; Maud Anne Bracke, Julia C. Bullock, Penelope Morris, and Kristina Schulz, eds., Translating Feminism. Interdisciplinary Approaches to Text, Place and Agency (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2021.

  74. 74.

    Johanna Gehmacher, ‘In/Visible Transfers: Translation as a Crucial Practice in Transnational Women’s Movements Around 1900’, German Historical Institute London Bulletin XLI (2019) no. 2 (2019), 3–44, https://www.ghil.ac.uk/publications/bulletin/bulletin_41_2/.

  75. 75.

    Tymoczko, ‘Translation and Political Engagement’, 23; Maria Tymoczko, ‘Translation, Resistance, Activism: An Overview’, in Translation, Resistance, Activism, ed. Maria Tymoczko (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), 1–3.

  76. 76.

    Tymoczko, ‘Translation and Political Engagement’, 34–37, 235–249.

  77. 77.

    Tymoczko, ‘Translation, Resistance, Activism’, 12–14.

  78. 78.

    Anthony Pym, ‘Humanizing Translation History’, Hermes—Journal of Language and Communication Studies 42 (2009), 23–48; Anthony Pym, ‘Conceptual Tools in Translation History’, The Routledge Handbook of Translation History, ed. Christopher Rundle (London and New York: Routledge, 2022), 86–101; Rizzi, Lang, and Pym, What Is Translation History.

  79. 79.

    On the importance of the scopus a translator sets for his/her translation: Julia Richter, Translationshistoriographie. Perspektiven & Methoden (Vienna: New Academic Press, 2020), 153.

  80. 80.

    On the various claims made by translators and patrons: Rizzi, Lang, and Pym, What Is Translation History, 42–43.

  81. 81.

    On interpersonal (thick) and professional (thin) trust see Rizzi, Lang, and Pym, What Is Translation History, 12–14.

  82. 82.

    On the importance of ‘a clear set of shared goals and values’ for a translation movement to be effective see Tymoczko, ‘Translation and Political Engagement’, 41.

  83. 83.

    Ute Frevert, The Moral Economy of Trust: Modern Trajectories, German Historical Institute London. The Annual Lecture (London: German Historical Institute, 2014).

  84. 84.

    Nl Sch 11/013, KS to Richard and Clara Schirmacher, 10 April 1896.

  85. 85.

    Nl Sch 11/014, KS to Richard and Clara Schirmacher, 11 April 1896.

  86. 86.

    Jules Bois, ‘Quelques silhouettes de féministes’, Le Figaro, 8 April 1896.

  87. 87.

    Käthe Schirmacher, Flammen. Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Leipzig: Dürr & Weber, 1921).

  88. 88.

    Walter Benjamin, ‘The Task of the Translator’ in Walter Benjamin. Selected Writings. Volume 1, 1913–1926, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA and London, 1996), 258; on the concept of the noncommunity cf. Tara Zahra, ‘Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis’, in Slavic Review, 69 (2010) 1, 93–119.

  89. 89.

    Arundhati Roy, ‘In What Language Does Rain Fall Over Tormented Cities? The Weather Underground in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’, in Arundhati Roy, Azadi. Freedom, Fascism, Fiction (London et al.: Penguin, 2020), 7–52.