Abstract
In a 1930 study, Siegfried Kracauer explains: “[I]n Berlin, a salaried type [Angestelltentypus] is developing, standardized in the direction of the desired complexion. Speech, clothes, gestures and countenances become assimilated and the result is that very same pleasant appearance, [which] with the help of photographs can be widely reproduced…” A new type was thus established within the Weimar Republic and promulgated by photography: the secretary, the banker, and the clerk. Situated between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, these were the jobs identified as belonging to the salariat, or Angestellten, and to them belonged a specific type identified by outward appearance. Drawing from my 2019 dissertation, this paper examines the visual construction of the new salaried type in August Sander’s archival People of the Twentieth-Century, focusing on the female salariat. Sander presents his audience with two distinct versions of the secretary: the young New Woman whose modernity overrides any sense of class identity, and the matronly clerk whose identity cannot be separated from her employment. As Kracauer reminds us, the semiotics of the surface, of appearances and accoutrements during the Weimar Republic, should not be underestimated as such details can be revelatory. I argue that Sander has here juxtaposed the New Woman and the salariat, suggesting that the identity of the former subsumes and overwhelms that of the latter. My analysis thus reveals ideological forces that reinforce traditional German ideas about womanhood, motherhood, and female independence, and situate the salariat within the sphere of capitalism and acceptable gender roles.
Presenters
Stephanie BenderAssistant Professor, Humanities/Literature and Language, Chipola College, Florida, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Photography, Class Identity, Critical Theory, Weimar Republic, The New Woman
