Abstract
Providing the conceptional framework of the special issue and discussing its main hypotheses, the introductory article points out that extraordinary vivid discourses on birth control in journalism emerged during East Central Europe's interwar period. They fought for more liberal attitudes towards birth control, but were combined with a peculiar emphasis on the nation, since they were more intensively colored by and integrated in nationalizing discourses. Thus, they became an essential part of the question of how the society should like, so that they were only partly a reflection of female self-empowerment. Thus, birth control as a core method of family planning at that time had become an issue of national survival.
Redefining “Nation” Through Family and Birth Concepts
Around 1930, the large number of abortions became a “political code” 1 for the broad social changes in Germany. Nowhere else did the mass demonstrations in favor of legalization find such a broad fundament than in the late Weimar Republic. They were an obvious reflection of achieved self-empowerment by women. In contrast, in East Central Europe's interwar period, there was no mass mobilization for a more liberal abortion law as in Germany but extraordinary vivid discourses in the press. Here, the fights for more liberal attitudes were fought and combined with a peculiar emphasis: The discourses of abortion were more intensively colored by and integrated into nationalizing discourses; they were an essential part of the question of how society should look. These discourses mostly reflected approaches to stabilize the “new” society and state and were only partly a reflection of women's self-empowerment. In doing so, they were an expression of othering discourses and hence a product of national interferences, even if they were very similar in content. Thus, birth control as a core method of family planning at that time had become a national affair, an issue of national survival. Birth control discourses were used not only as a replacement and proxy function for national ambitions in that they focused on how the family as the “heart” of the nation should look, but also as a code for these visions. They gravitated towards a national challenge.
Ensuring an appropriate quantity and quality of the “national body” was a cornerstone in the nation building processes that emerged after 1918, particularly in Eastern Europe. But the actors within these processes could build on processes that had started already in imperial times. As early as the late nineteenth century, when the so-called demographic change was perceptible, families were 2 perceived as the nucleus of the nation, that is, of one's own nation's body. This also meant, however, that under the influence of modern biologistic thinking and especially the developing theories and practices of eugenics, the strength and health of the family were discussed: The focus here was less on the number of children than on their health. Practices of birth control and thus family planning were critically questioned and became a political matter, as, for example, the German social hygienist Alfred Grotjahn succinctly stated in 1914: birth control was “not a private matter, but a cultural, national, and eugenic matter.” 3 Thus, discourses on birth control and “new” family concepts turned into a part of the redefinition of the nation.
Concepts like Neo-Malthusian ideas became part of the experts’ discourse but it was only with the formation of nation states in East Central Europe after World War I that these ideas emerged there as a part of nation-stabilizing discourses. Various disciplines (e.g. medicine, law, sociology, theology) discussed or questioned the “population trap”: linear food production and the social infrastructure were regarded as insufficient for providing for an exponential growth of population. All East Central European countries (except Poland) faced a low birth rate and in consequence of the population losses during the wars, which in some regions only ended in 1921, these countries suffered from a gender disproportion. Therefore, single men and women were a constant topic in public and political discourses, 4 which focussed on their impact on a state's and/or nation's future. Moreover, the steady economic crises resulting from the restructuring of economic ties within the region after the breakup of the former Empires, challenged the societies as well as the fact that they were de facto multi-ethnic and “inherited” national conflicts from the Empires, which had already become more intensive during World War I.
These discourses on birth control and family patterns functioned like a lens and bundled more general problems. The state's prosperity and welfare was regarded a crucial point for stability after World War I when new countries were founded after the fall of the Prussian, Tsarist, and Austro-Hungarian hegemonies that had reigned over this part of Europe. In sociopolitical terms, the changing borders and the question of establishing homogeneous nation-states affected over 40 million people. 5 Yet, East Central Europe is a region where the conception of a nation-state has no tradition: Citizens of a state can belong to different nations but they are united by a common citizenship. Nation is thus related to a common language and culture. 6 This also means that people from the same nation can live in different states. Due to the border shifts, conflicts in the case of Poland and Lithuania, but most notably in Hungary, arose in the aftermath of World War I. 7
Besides the complex postwar situation, it is important to consider that the notion of family is an equally multi-layered phenomenon as the social historian Béla Tomka puts it: The family is a social institution related to biological reproduction (birth, ageing and death) as well as to crucial social and economic processes (the socialization of children, the production of goods, services and welfare, etc.). It is also affected by demographic changes, social policies, cultural values and religious institutions. Several of these aspects surface in the definition of the family: it is a close domestic group consisting of people related to each other by bonds of descent, sexual mating and/or legal relationship.
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Nonetheless, besides these public and political considerations, the private sphere of family planning underwent changes that stand in contrast to those in politics. The nineteenth century marks the turning point in the family planning discussion. Motherhood gradually became a conscious decision and was no longer perceived solely as a fateful coincidence. 17 The emerging discussions around the turn of the centuries also deconstructed the idea of motherhood as a social institution. Numerous and powerful women's initiatives 18 cleared the path for the individualization of birth control and ascribed the agency to women to make decisions about their own bodies and destinies. Our authors consciously depict this contradictory development in Poland, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. The moral double standard regarding sexual self-determination of individuals and their “national” task of producing offspring was an irresolvable tension of that time.
The Consequences of World War I in Central and Eastern Europe
The interwar period appears as a time of contradictions: Modernity, loosening of moral convictions 19 and democratization clashed with the postwar realities of ruined territories and “cultural malaise” 20 and an increasing importance of the family in national discourses. This special issue explores the connections between the changes on the interpersonal, social level, and the political level in relation to the “chronic tension in the emerging modern states between the struggle for progress […] and the need to maintain personal identity.” 21
With regard to women, the most notable consequence of World War I was that, in most new East Central European nation states, female suffrage was established. “The prolonged absence of male family members and deteriorating conditions of daily existence influenced women to become significantly more independent” 22 as Katarzyna Sierakowska argues. The war somehow catalyzed emancipatory attempts and questions around gender. Post-war democratization validated this development to a certain extent. 23 In terms of education, for example, inequalities were slowly fading thanks to rising female employment rates and the increasing numbers of female students at universities. 24 On the other hand, the “modern” family pattern, which became the “new traditional” one understood as the “nucleus cell” of nation was discursively fostered in the interests of strengthening the nation. Any deviations were perceived as a potential threat to geopolitical aims, as Denisa Nešt’áková states for the Czechoslovakian case. 25
In the case of Poland, the leading figures fostering public awareness for birth control were Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński 26 and Irena Krzywicka. Although conservative voices were still present, the urge to promote birth control, family planning, and female self-determination became a dominant force in liberal media and also influenced the work of the Polish codification commission: in 1932, the most liberal abortion law in Europe at that time was put into force. Abortions were thus permitted on medical grounds or in the case of incest or prostitution.
In the First Czechoslovak Republic, on the one hand the idea of the extinction of the nation or “national death” was omnipresent in political circles, and thus a growing number of researchers began to debate such ideas of the time, including eugenics. 27 On the other hand, while the new country aimed to create its own identity and family culture and desired to distinguish itself from its new neighbouring countries, Hungary and Austria, some scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century point out that the society of newly-established Czechoslovak Republic clung onto many residues from Austria-Hungary, and inherited its particularities in terms of family life and family planning. 28
In post-War Hungary, experts developed maybe the most nationalistic discourse of that time: Attila Kund analyzed scientific publications regarding the justification for racial scientism. The idea of racial purity and biological reproduction was particularly attractive for the Hungarian scientific discourse since the country encountered massive territorial losses due to the Treaty of Trianon. In 1921, Hungary lost two-third of its territory; as a result, sizeable Hungarian minorities still exist today, especially in Romania, and are still targets of political agendas. 29 The interwar experts represented [sexuality] in their framework as a crucial aspect of the reproduction of the “Magyar race.” 30
Following the trends of Central Europe at that time, also Latvia (as well as the Estonia and Lithuania) discussed the chances of biological regeneration through birth control and eugenics, which was the main form of bio-politics in the Baltic states. The self-perception as a small country notably influenced the development of positive (counselling bureaus) and negative (abortion) measures to maintain “quality” and “quantity” of the nation-state. 31 The public discourse showed great awareness for marriage patterns and relationships that were outside traditional categories, nonetheless the idea of “free love” remained suspicious and was exploited from right wing publicists even as a “Jewish plot to destroy the traditional family.” 32 This pejorative and anti-Semitic characterization became an argumentative pattern, but could be altered for othering other groups, for example communists blamed the “bourgeois,” Slovaks blamed Hungarians, Czech the Germans. The accusation of destroying the family was hence a form to vilify stereotypically the other as the enemy, in other words it was added to a broad set of stereotypes.
The geographical area this volume examines is divided by the so-called Hajnal line: The Hungarian-British economist John Hajnal divided Europe according to its marriage patterns: Running diagonally through Europe from St. Petersburg to Trieste, this line separated the northwestern part of Europe where late marriage and a higher ratio of nonmarried people were common from southeastern European countries, where the nuptiality age was lower and marriage almost universal. The “non-European” marriage pattern was subject to a shift in most of the countries of Central Europe and approached the Western European fertility regime. After the First World War, the illegitimate fertility rate was significantly higher in all countries than after 1945. 33 The data also give reason to assume that rural and urban family patterns were highly differing and explain a popular commonplace of these times, that is, the immoral city versus the moral countryside—a stereotype that also persisted in Latvian media. 34 The numbers show that children out of wedlock were far more common after World War I which was surely a consequence of the war: In her study on human anxiety in wartimes Katarzyna Sierakowska came to the conclusion that people simply were looking for strategies to reduce negative emotions: “different defensive strategies were developed, like writing letters, using stimulants, e.g., tobacco and alcohol; another way to release emotions was sex.” 35 Hence, the lack of possible spousing partners, as well as financial and material constraints that did not allow people to plan a family led to more extra-marital relationships and therefore an increased birth rate for such children.
The Concept and Focus of the Special Issue “Birth Control as a National Challenge”
The two main terms of interest to us—“birth control” and “family planning”—are defined as the entirety of conscious decisions that couples or—especially in the time period in question—women make to have or not to have children. While “birth control” describes contraception (a method or device used to prevent pregnancy), its planning, making birth control available, and using birth control, is known as “family planning,” which includes specific family conceptions. 36 Hence, beyond the individual and liberal interpretation, “family planning” has evolved as a broader concept than “birth control” and finally became a social value in the second half of twentieth century, which we could not discuss here. However, fleshed out, it affects fundamental social attitudes and practices and is strongly influenced by an interaction of unconscious considerations balancing social, religious, moral, and ideological beliefs with the current life situation.
What is particular for the interwar period is the new need to explain sexuality scientifically. 37 Moreover, the discourses on birth control were argumentatively “colored” and interpreted by national thinking. It thus appears in these discourses, despite commonalities, as a very specific practice and justification for dealing with sexuality, dependent on the particular society. Although transnational at their core, the concepts were handled as national ones as we want to show with this special issues.
It therefore seems to be necessary to explore this argumentative emphasis with regard to previous research, particularly with regard to multi-ethnic societies in East Central European conflicting ethno-spaces. Since national strife became a core characteristic of these societies embossed by imperial rule in the second half of “long” nineteenth century, it seems crucial to have a look at the interpretation of birth control. It and the concept of families were “nationalized” by their argumentative “coloring,” but at the same time they were ascribed a nationalizing role.
For Eastern Europe, changing values in imperial and post-imperial (nation) societies have not yet been or have been insufficiently studied, especially with regard to family conceptions. Likewise, a history of the family in Eastern European states is still lacking, as is a comparative history of family concepts and values in this region. The current trend to study abortion practices and perceptions arose under the influence of seminal syntheses on the history of the family and sexuality, while the nationalizing impact of discourses on family planning concepts is still to be highlighted. Fundamental studies on women's and gender history have been presented above all by the impulse-giving volumes of Anna Żarnowska and Andrzej Szwarc'. 38 There are also studies on Czechoslovakia 39 and some on developments in the Baltic states, 40 on the relationship between sexuality and social control, 41 and on the history of the body and the nationalization of the body. 42 As focal points, abortion 43 debates and also contributions to the history of eugenics 44 can be filtered out, and practices of birth control are examined—mostly rather selectively and exemplarily. The contributions on aspects of the history of the family and the role of women in Eastern Europe, which can mostly be characterized as selective, deal less with the change in values and norms inherent in “family planning” and their national coloring. 45 Current research has started to stress the connection between the history of the family, sexuality, medicine, and gender in Eastern Europe, but focusses primarily on the post-World War II period. 46 There seems to be a gap in research with regard to national strife in the post-World War I multi-ethnic states perceiving themselves as nation-states. Hence, this special issue sees one important trigger and characteristic of the nationally colored discourses on abortion and family concepts in multi-ethnicity, since their respective public spheres could be described as conflicting ethno-spaces. The public sphere was contested and a place of national ambitions, so the discourses on birth control and family concepts had to be established within this frame.
Each paper is based on the assumption that private conceptions of family planning were nationally charged and represented particular conceptions of how nations should develop. We also see a need to question the dyad of Western and Eastern approaches, since our contributors show that there has always been international exchange and that the Eastern European countries did not only follow the Western ideologies and discussions but they also adopted them to the realia of the respective country and its specific national situation. Recent research has placed a central focus on these transnational entanglements. 47
All the articles consider the First World War to be a catalyst for social changes regarding birth control issues. In order to overcome war losses, the countries understood the urge to provide well working health care systems for mothers and children in order to reduce the high infant mortality rate and number of illegal abortions. Hence, pro-natalist regulations clearly dominated on a political level. Fanni Svégel explores political, social, and medical discourses in Hungary and points out the agency of women at that time. On the one hand, she depicts the official side of the discourse of specialists and institutions and, on the other hand, she underlines the contradictory role of individual actors, like midwives, who either provided women in need with birth control or abortion advice, or followed the pro-natalist state regulations and deprived women of their choice. Denisa Nešt’áková analyzes female actors and the development of feminism in Czechoslovakia from a postcolonial perspective, questioning the treatment of Eastern European feminism as a “second class” movement. She sheds light on the impact of women as contributors to the most important medical journal Praktický lékař (General Practitioner) and explains why women saw men as their allies in the fight against Austro-Hungarian population politics. Hence, she argues for a change in the way research perceives the “East” since it was anything but an uncivilized region that only looked up to Western ideas. Miloslav Szabó then underlines later Slovak efforts to establish of a museum of hygiene according to the German model and sheds light on the intersections between the Church and the “positive eugenic” politics of the Slovak government. Finally, he outlines the impact of these interdependencies regarding the preparation and implementation of the anti-interruption law on “fetal protection” of 1941. Ineta Lipša focusses on casual liaisons between Latvian women and Russian or German soldiers during and after the First World War. Her article again shows the contrast between the private sphere and the public Latvian discourse that promoted sexual restraint in order to limit offspring from multiethnic relationships. Moreover, Lipša's article exemplifies the prevalent denial of “misalliances” of nationally mixed couples as a national danger. Lipša argues that this idea, spread by the Latvian-speaking press, was one counterstrategy to the Russian family policy aiming at increasing the number of births. Elisa-Maria Hiemer takes a look at the border region of Upper Silesia, where German health care policies intended to strengthen the German family by pathologizing the Polish neighbors. On the basis of various archive materials, she underlines the anti-Polish (anti-Slavic) idea of measures such as midwifery, prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, and compulsory sterilization and their importance in a region where national boundaries clashed with territorial claims after the First World War. Heidi Hein-Kircher's analysis of the birth control debates in the Polish-Jewish journal Ewa at the end of the 1920s and first years of the 1930s transmits the focus to the question, how national minorities perceived the contemporary debates and put them on their own national agenda. This journal provides very characteristic examples of the ideological adaption and the nationalization of “family” as well as the negotiation of societal and individual attitudes towards birth control. In this case, Ewa's contribution shows that these processes were not simply copied, but adapted in a very particular way through a Zionist interpretation of Polish Jews. In doing so, it clearly reflects the challenges of modern life within a socially and culturally changing community that was still religiously embossed.
Taking into account the multiple interdependencies, this special issue explores the interwar developments at a time when Eastern Europe underwent multiple changes of governmental and hegemonic power. We as editors wish to contribute with this comparative approach to the academic discussions on birth control and family history and to propose that it be regarded as a multi-layered issue dependent on private decisions (influenced by, e.g., world views, religious beliefs, social and economic conditions, etc.) as well as national needs and values during the state and nation building processes.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publicationof this article: This special issue is an outcome of the project "Family Planning in East Central Europe from the Nineteenth Century Until the Approval of the 'Pill'" funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the code 01UC1902.
