Layla Kiefel | Doktorandin Stipendiatin

Mobilities, Migrations, Reconfiguration of Spaces
Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstraße 191, D-10117 Berlin
Email: layla.kiefel  ( at )  cmb.hu-berlin.de Tel: +49(0) 30 / 20 93 70700

Home Institution : Université Bordeaux Montaigne & Universität Konstanz | Position : PhD-Student | Disciplines : German studies |

Biography

Since 2020, Layla Kiefel has been a doctoral student at the University Bordeaux Montaigne and at the University of Konstanz, researching women in the resistance against National Socialism. She got a PhD contract at the University Bordeaux Montaigne for the years 2020-2023 and she is a DAAD scholarship holder.

After a German-French baccalaureate, she first studied humanities at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris and was then accepted at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Lyon. There she completed her Bachelor's degree (2014), the agrégation (2017) and Master's degree (2020) in German Studies and German History. She spent two semesters at the University of Konstanz and two more at the Free University in Berlin, where she also did an internship at the Centre Marc Bloch (2019-2020). Her first Master's thesis was about the portrayal of prostitution in German television documentaries after its legalisation in 2002. Her interest in gender studies and history led to the subject of her second Master's thesis, dedicated to the ISK women of the daily newspaper Der Funke, who tried to mobilise a socialist united front against National Socialism in 1932-1933. She also worked during her two-year stay in Lebanon at the research institute Institut français du Proche Orient (ifpo) in Beirut (2018) and as an e-learning project manager at an NGO (2019).

Scholarship

2020-2023 : Doctoral contract with University Bordeaux Montaigne

2022 : Partial support for a research stay for PhD students (CIERA)

2023 : Geneviève Bianquis Price (AGES)

2023-2024 : DAAD cotutelle scholarship

(cotutelle)
Title of thesis
Women of the Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund from the Weimar Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany: commitment, resistance, emancipation
Summary of thesis

This thesis examines the role of women in one of the few German resistance groups against National Socialism with one third of women (out of 300 people), the Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund (ISK). This party was created in 1926 after having split from the social democratic party (SPD) and led by the pedagogue Minna Specht and the journalist Willi Eichler. The issues at stake in this study are the paths and ideas of women as well as gender relations within the party. Although the thesis focuses on the period of resistance in the Third Reich (1933-1939) and in exile (1939-1945) in France, Denmark and Great Britain, it will take into account the periods that preceded and succeeded it, from the Weimar Republic (1926-1933) to the Federal Republic (1945-1950). The aim is to analyze the impact that the different categories of femininity and masculinity have had on ISK women across contexts, societies and scales. We will question the room for maneuver and the power relations in their political commitments and in their resistance activities. The tools of gender studies will be used to enrich the concept of resistance, but also to question the articulation between socialism and feminism, or to adopt an intersectional perspective in order to better understand the identity of these women, oppressed in turn for their political ideas, their gender and for some of them their Jewish origins. Furthermore, it will analyze the awareness that women have of sexist domination: do their actions reproduce gender norms or do they seek to free themselves from them? We will rely primarily on the prolific journalistic activities of the members between 1926 and 1947 (newspapers, leaflets, bulletins), as well as on meeting reports and correspondence.

Institution of thesis
Université Bordeaux Montaigne & Universität Konstanz
Supervisor
Hélène Camarade & Anne Kwaschik

Women of the Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund from the Weimar Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany: commitment, resistance, emancipation

This thesis examines the role of women in one of the few German resistance groups against National Socialism with one third of women (out of 300 people), the Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund (ISK). This party was created in 1926 after having split from the social democratic party (SPD) and led by the pedagogue Minna Specht and the journalist Willi Eichler. The issues at stake in this study are the paths and ideas of women as well as gender relations within the party. Although the thesis focuses on the period of resistance in the Third Reich (1933-1939) and in exile (1939-1945) in France, Denmark and Great Britain, it will take into account the periods that preceded and succeeded it, from the Weimar Republic (1926-1933) to the Federal Republic (1945-1950). The aim is to analyze the impact that the different categories of femininity and masculinity have had on ISK women across contexts, societies and scales. We will question the room for maneuver and the power relations in their political commitments and in their resistance activities. The tools of gender studies will be used to enrich the concept of resistance, but also to question the articulation between socialism and feminism, or to adopt an intersectional perspective in order to better understand the identity of these women, oppressed in turn for their political ideas, their gender and for some of them their Jewish origins. Furthermore, it will analyze the awareness that women have of sexist domination: do their actions reproduce gender norms or do they seek to free themselves from them? We will rely primarily on the prolific journalistic activities of the members between 1926 and 1947 (newspapers, leaflets, bulletins), as well as on meeting reports and correspondence.