In contrast, the third and most predominant mode of interpreting the female surplus of Imperial Germany can be found in the historical works of James Albisetti, Marion Kaplan, Patricia Mazón, Elisabeth Meyer-Renschhausen, Barbara Greven-Aschoff, Nancy Reagin, Lora Wildenthal, and Bärbel Kuhn. Each of these scholars acknowledge that the female surplus played a powerful role in creating the vision, practical work, and bourgeois orientation of the early organized German women's movement.
In his study of teaching as a female profession, Albisetti notes “the perception that Germany had rather suddenly acquired a large number of unmarried women who had to provide for themselves. Open to question is the accuracy of the numbers cited at the time, but not the fact that most contemporary commentators believed that a new situation had arisen and required a response.”42 While Albisetti confirms that many Germans believed in a female surplus of recent advent, his project does not require an investigation into the numbers or nuances of the concept. Marion Kaplan offers a similar reading in her examination of Jewish middle-class women in Imperial Germany. Discussing Jewish marriage, Kaplan recognizes the importance of the fear of spinsterhood in nuptial negotiations and notes that extra women could become superfluous in the bourgeois household economy.43 Kaplan maintains that “the much vaunted Frauenüberschuß. meant that not every woman could marry. In fact, the situation was worse for Jewish women.”44 Kaplan's work identifies the surplus as a fact of life in the Jewish middle-class milieu but does not delve into its foundations.
In Gender and the Modern Research University, Patricia Mazón asserts that the German women's movement saw female university study “in terms of the woman question and as a partial solution to it.”45 Significantly informing the woman question were “several concrete areas of social anxiety,” among the most pressing of which were “changes in the family structure brought about by industrialization. Overall marriage rates were thought to be declining, leading to a group of ‘surplus' women. The consequences were considered to be especially disastrous for the middle class.”46 The concern over what to do with daughters of the middle-class displaced by the changing economy helped to promote the discussion of female university study.
Elisabeth Meyer-Renschhausen's study of Bremen cites the dual shame associated with single status; not only had the Alleinstehenden failed to find a husband, but injury met with insult when they found themselves forced to look for work. The woman question was both an economic and moral question: “Although unmarried aunts and daughters could no longer be supported, within the urban middle-class it was still considered a dishonor to send them outside of the home to earn money. Paid female work harmed the reputation of the family.”47 Meyer-Renschhausen adds that among the middle-class, “a further cause of the Frauenfrage was the constantly extending training period of the sons, so that many could not think of marrying before the thirtieth or fortieth year of life.”48 The increased professional training required of bourgeois men left many prospective brides to ruminate over what they were to do as they waited for a good man to come along—and to begin to wonder whether the wait was worth it. Meyer-Renschhausen emphasizes that class status informed the Kaiserreich debate about the female surplus. The long-acknowledged link between bourgeois interests and the mainstream German women's movement cannot simply be explained on the basis of sympathy with the “doctrine of liberal individualism”—and its success or failure cannot be haphazardly linked to the fate of German liberalism.49 It would be superficial as well to suggest that the middle-class women's movement evolved purely out of the reformers' self-interest. The Frauenüberschuß adds an important element to discussions of middle-class bias in the German women's movement: the belief that bourgeois women faced exceptional and singular challenges as a result of changing economic circumstances.
In a study of the middle-class women's movement, Barbara Greven-Aschoff further elucidates the plight of unwed women. She notes the “problem of the alte Jungfer [old maid] as family calamity,” and contends that the Frauenüberschuß manifested itself as a socio-psychological issue as well as a demographic event.50 Among the middle and upper classes, the time a young woman spent waiting for “a possible marriage could hardly be filled with productive activity. In the course of industrialization and urbanization, numerous functions otherwise necessary for housekeeping had become unnecessary, leaving for the maturing female generation only a type of ‘parasitic’ existence.”51 Shifting economic conditions necessitated vocational change: “In view of marriage chances becoming more uncertain, the necessity of enabling young women an existence outside of the family of origin emerged. In pre-industrial societies, convents or ladies' institutes offered such possibilities to women of class. In the modern, secularized society, it is the arena of work.”52 Greven-Aschoff expands upon the argument of those nineteenth-century middle-class women's rights advocates who asserted that demography was not the defining element of the female surplus. It was instead a question of Beruf (vocation, calling). To what were single women called? The industrial age made this question all the more urgent. Middle-class women waiting to marry had the leisure to know that they were, indeed, waiting. Nancy Reagin makes a similar point in A German Women's Movement. In her history of class and gender in Hanover at the turn of the century, Reagin's examination of women's work grapples with the concept of the Frauenüberschuß. Reagin concludes that the demographic data likely do not support the notion of a distinct and new oversupply of women at the turn of the century.53 Her work confirms the notion that “the perceived reality was that many German bourgeois women were destined to remain spinsters.”54
In her history of German Women for Empire, Lora Wildenthal sees the female surplus as a significant justification for a female presence in the colonies of Wilhelmine Germany. Wildenthal describes how “feminists and other commentators on the ‘Woman Question’ fretted over a supposed surplus of women who remained unmarried, lacked careers appropriate to their social station, and would waste their maternal energies.”55 Both radical reformer Minna Cauer and moderate activist Hedwig Heyl agreed that placing women in German settlements to partner with men would offer a pragmatic alleviation of the female surfeit, yet their vision went beyond absorbing a problematic cohort: “Marriage was a worthy goal…but German women could not be restricted to a wifely position. They needed a larger role that would permit them to exert positive moral influence.”56 Colonial placement seemed to offer a fruitful solution to the overage of women, but such a way out evaded core questions: “The colonial Woman Question sidelined feminist demands for social change by emphasizing numbers of German women rather than the conditions of their existence. It promised that unmarried middle-class women could be converted from a social problem in Germany into a solution for the colonies.”57 Social class is thus a key element of Wildenthal's assessment of the female surplus. In the colonial context, the Frauenüberschuß elicited both sympathy and scorn; by the turn of the century, groups involved in placing women in the colonies sought ideal candidates for marriage but turned away applicants who were overqualified or who seemed too desperate to marry.58 Wildenthal's study establishes the link between conceptions of a domestic female surplus and the colonial woman question, but the book's primary engagement is with the interaction of nationalism, race, and gender.
Bärbel Kuhn's Familienstand Ledig, a comparative collective biography of German single men and women during the period extending from 1850 to 1914, confirms that the demographic notion of a female surplus was an illusion59 and asserts that “the woman question was discussed in contemporary journalism and in the public sphere as a ‘social question’ of the bourgeoisie, as the affliction of the unmarried daughters of the bourgeois classes.”60 The Surplus Woman shares its topical focus with Kühn's work. Kuhn's book approaches the topic of single marital status by emphasizing the history of everyday life, biography, and a comparison between the worldviews of single women and single men, while the present work delves into the contours of a cultural construction amid the broader context of the German women's movement. The female surplus is not the central concern of Kuhn's inquiry; as is the case with the other historical works just described, the general belief in a perceived overabundance of women is a basic assumption that sheds light on other areas of German women's history. None of these works tease out the social and cultural contours of that assumption, nor is it their intention to do so. In a wide range