"The most famous Jewish pacifist was Jesus of Nazareth": German-Jewish Pacifist Clementine Krämer's Stories of War and Visions for Peace

In: Women in German yearbook: feminist studies in German literature & culture, Band 23, Heft 1, S. 127-155

Abstract

This essay reintroduces the undeservedly forgotten literary oeuvre of the German-Jewish writer, feminist, social worker, and pacifist Clementine Krämer, focusing on her pacifist writings. These texts, published between 1915 and 1927, are read in the context of Krämer's dual commitment to the German women's movement and the Jewish community, probing how she negotiated in her writing and activism the multi-faceted identity of a German, Jewish, and feminist pacifist. The essay identifies two distinct periods in Krämer's pacifist writing. During the war years, Krämer published in the mainstream press stories and poems that were subtly subversive and studiously devoid of Jewish issues and characters. With the notable exception of her Bavarian-dialect pacifist novella Die Rauferei (The Fight, 1927), Krämer's postwar texts, which appeared almost exclusively in the Jewish press, were overtly and uncompromisingly pacifist, positing an inherent affinity between pacifism, Judaism, and feminism. (EL)