Introduction: birth rates, ideology, and sexual duties; 1. Venereal disease and the crisis of sexuality in the Weimar Republic; 2. Marriage counseling in the Weimar Republic; 3. Nazi Bevölkerungspolitik, health, and the family; 4. Venereal disease control in the Nazi era; 5. Controlling venereal disease in four-power Berlin; 6. Counseling couples in the post-war rubble; 7. Guarding the health of workers and families in the German Democratic Republic; 8. Sexual duties in Cold-War West Germany; Conclusion: the end of sexual duty and the future of Bevölkerungspolitik.
How a declining population influenced reproductive and sexual health policy in Germany.
Annette F. Timm is Associate Professor of History at the University of Calgary. Her work has appeared in multiple journals and books, including the Canadian Journal of History and the Journal of the History of Sexuality. She is the co-author, with Joshua A. Sanborn, of Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe: A History from the French Revolution to the Present Day.
'Timm presents a nuanced and convincing argument on the basis of
extensive research, yielding new and important insights. The scope
and focus of this book should certainly generate fruitful
discussion.' Edward Dickinson, University of California, Davis
'Timm has written an ambitious and important book. Meticulously
researched and theoretically informed, The Politics of Fertility
tells the story of the delicate, politicized, and thus unstable
balance between sexual duties and sexual rights. Despite its broad
chronological reach, it never retreats into generalization or a
'top-down' approach. Instead, it turns an astute eye to popular
desires and demands at the local level. And its contemporary
relevance will not be lost on anyone attuned to reproductive
politics today.' Elizabeth Heineman, University of Iowa, and author
of the forthcoming Before Porn Was Legal: The Erotica Empire of
Beate Uhse
'What is sex for? How do states intervene in citizens' most private
moments and how do public health authorities reconcile their own
obsessions with 'eugenic responsibility' and demographic management
with citizens' more inchoate, elemental longings for happier
coupling - and this across four very different ideological regimes?
Timm's imaginative, deeply researched study offers a wealth of
riveting and thought-provoking detail and a magnificent fresh
perspective on the unexpected continuities and counterintuitive
subtle shifts in twentieth-century German population politics. The
book provides a gold mine of insights for transnationally
comparative histories of sexuality.' Dagmar Herzog, Graduate
Center, City University of New York
'This complex exploration of Berlin's efforts to combat VD and
offer marriage counseling argues that the rhetoric of 'sexual duty'
served as a basis for German citizenship across four different
regimes in the twentieth century. The author offers an innovative
interpretation of population policy as an 'inclusionary racism'
that attempted to increase fertility through a sense of national
responsibility, supplemented by incentives of the welfare state.'
Konrad Jarausch, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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