2 - The Personal Is Political (1966–70): From Feminism to a Language for the Revolution

Summary

Privatangelegenheiten sind immer politisch … Kindererziehung ist unheimlich politisch, die Beziehungen, die Menschen untereinander haben, sind unheimlich politisch, weil sie etwas darüber aussagen, ob Menschen unterdrückt sind oder frei sind.

[Personal matters are always political … Raising children is totally political; the relationships people have with each other are totally political — because they say something about whether people are oppressed or free.]

—Ulrike Meinhof, Christmas 1969

IN 1969 THE IRANIAN EXILE Bahman Nirumand (b. 1936), a fierce critic of the shah's regime, was facing extradition from West Germany after extension of his leave to remain was refused. Ulrike Meinhof appealed to konkret readers to demonstrate their solidarity with him, but she used her regular column in the magazine to address the situation faced by his wife and daughter. “Alle reden vom Wetter” (Everybody Talks about the Weather) asks why protest on behalf of women and children is perceived as emotional rather than political. “It is unpolitical to protest over a woman's fate,” Meinhof complains: “what is experienced as unpolitical is the … oppression of women” (“Es ist unpolitisch, wegen der Frau zu protestieren … was da als unpolitisch empfunden wird, ist die … Unterdrückung der Frauen”). And yet the oppression of women needs to be understood not as separate from, but as part of, capitalism's structures:

Dann erst, wenn der Protest wegen der Frau und des Kindes … die Klassenstruktur der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft angreift, zu deren strukturellen Merkmalen die Unterdrückung von Frauen und Kindern gehört, dann wird auch kein Senat es mehr wagen, Bahman Nirumand die Aufenthaltsgenehmigung zu verweigern.

[Only when protest about this woman and this child … attacks the class structure of capitalist society — which is structurally characterized by, among other things, the oppression of women and children — will no senate dare any longer to refuse Bahman Nirumand leave to remain.]

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to Meinhof's engagement with the emerging West German women's movement. The slogan of that movement — the personal is political (das Private ist politisch) — informed not only her article on Nirumand, but the research into children's homes and young offenders that was a significant part of her journalistic work.