Domestic Violence and Women’s Shelters in East Germany (1979–1997)

Domestic violence and the establishment of autonomous women's shelters (Frauenhäuser) in the GDR and the new federal states (1979–1997)
How did feminist initiatives in the GDR transform the issue of domestic violence from a silenced social problem into a publicly recognised field of action? This project examines the emergence and institutionalisation of feminist responses to violence against women through the creation of autonomous women’s shelters in the GDR and the new federal states between 1979 and 1997. It starts from the contradiction between the socialist state’s official commitment to gender equality and its denial of domestic violence. From the 1980s onwards, autonomous women’s groups challenged this silence by demanding legal recognition of marital rape, greater awareness of patriarchal violence and the creation of protection structures.
The study analyses how activist initiatives developed within marginal feminist spaces and were transformed into permanent social institutions during the transition of 1989–1990. Five local case studies in Weimar, Erfurt, Eisenach, Magdeburg and Rostock will explore different trajectories of mobilisation and institutionalisation. Drawing on various archival sources and, above all, oral history interviews with former activists and participants, this research examines the strategies, networks and forms of feminist agency that shaped the emergence of autonomous women’s shelters. It aims to understand how these initiatives contributed to the reconfiguration of feminist engagement and social policy in post-socialist Germany.