by Gertrud Scholtz-Klink
German women of all classes and
organizations stand before the Führer at the beginning of the new year and
thank him for preserving the life of our people, and for helping it to find
itself again. We have done our best to do our part in helping our people to
“find itself again,” and in making that real to all our women and girls. What
we did not accomplish in past years will be done in the future. This we believe
more than ever before, since despite all the difficulties we faced in the past
year, it was a year that uniquely tested our strength, which therefore grew.
The men and women of this people, in
their hundreds and thousands out there in local groups and counties, know that
these strengths that were so desperately needed could grow within them because
the Führer believed in the goodness and strength within them. Therefore, as his
followers it is our greatest task to awaken and strengthen this faith in those
we are responsible for, and to transform it into action.
This inner command is equally
binding for man and woman, for the blue collar and white collar workers of our
people.
The National Socialist movement sees
the man and the woman as equal bearers of Germany’s future. It asks, however,
for more than in the past: that each should first completely accomplish the
tasks that are appropriate to his or her nature.
The woman, besides caring for her
own children, should first care for those who need her help as mothers of the nation.
This primarily involves thinking
about family law and supporting families, youth legislation, and protecting the
youth. It also requires thinking about the occupational paths that female youth
will follow in the coming years, since some men and women are still unemployed,
and some changes in women’s work will therefore be needed. Given our relations
with each other, we affirm these temporary measures because we have firm faith
that we have the strength to overcome the many present difficulties that our
people faces. Our love for our people, however, will never allow these
temporary difficulties to cause conflicts only for the sake of conflict, or
that they be interpreted by sensation-hungry individuals as a failure of the
National Socialist worldview.
We are always being asked if we see
everything that has to be done in the area of women’s work. We can only say
that each has the right and the opportunity to work with us and to follow the
path leading to the resurrection of our people. However, we must sense love and
concern, we must see that he comes to us because of a love for his people.
Empty intellectual thinking or a superiority complex have never saved a people.
This love should teach us all in the
new year to listen even better to life around us, and to do our duties in the
place we stand in a way that will make clear its deepest meaning: to become true to our calling as
Germans!
Women, I wish to try briefly to make
clear what the deepest calling we women have is: motherhood. In the bad
fourteen years between 1918 and 1933, motherhood was often robbed of its
deepest meaning and reduced to something superficial, something that was even
held in contempt. Instead
of a child being seen as the deepest affirmation of the woman and of life,
it was seen as a burden, as a sacrifice on the part of the woman. A child was
often seen not as a great link to God as the creator of all life, before whom
we must bow with folded hands and trembling hearts, but rather very often as
the result of a weak mind and as an escape from the great events of life.
Many women were superficially
mothers, but they had forgotten to subordinate themselves to the law of life,
which sees the affirmation of a child as the answer of the woman to her people,
and also her contribution to the right of her people to survive.
Transforming the calling of
motherhood to the job of motherhood left children joyless, unhappy, without
strength or soul. Devilish forces under the leadership of Marxism attempted to
lead German women along this path.
It is therefore our task to awaken
once again the sense of the divine, to make the calling to motherhood the way
through which the German woman will see her calling to be mother of the nation.
She will then not live her life selfishly, but rather in service to her people.
We know and believe that all German
women will accept this calling over time if we clear the rubble left by a
mistaken age. More and more faithful helpers will join our ranks, working
cheerfully and strongly as we have done in the past. Not only those women with
children will become mothers of the nation, but rather each German woman and
each girl will become one of the Führer’s little helpers wherever she is, be it
in the labor service, in a factory, at a university or in a hospital, at home
or on the high seas.
We have established a chain of
helping hands that will grow ever stronger, because that is what our love for
our people requires!
We have women who served their
people during the Great War, and proved that they placed their people above
themselves. Often, they were the first who continued their service in the N.S.
movement. They are joined by younger women who came to this movement because
they affirmed the life of the nation. They did not ask what would happen.
Instead, they were there where they were needed.
For us women, to be German meant,
and still means, always to be strong.
Only she can be strong who knows
sorrow and deprivation. Overcoming oneself, and life, leads to strength. And
that also leads to clarity. Since many Germans must still learn to understand
this, all of our efforts will also involve struggle, struggle with each other.
In all this, however, we must be strong and cheerful people.
We enter the new year as Germans.
That means we want to be alert and untiring, because we want to support each
other in everything our nation faces. We do not want to compromise from
weakness, but be comrades one to another who can demand the utmost of each
other, because we are willing to give it ourselves. Then the work of German men
and women will together form the self-aware and proud Germans that we need,
since our people must live!
With this will, we all return to
work!
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