Working Weimar Women into the National Socialist Community: Carl Froelich’s Women’s Labor Service Film, Ich für Dich—Du für mich (1934), and Mädchen in Uniform (1931)

Abstract

This article examines the intertextual relationships between Carl Froelich’s Ich für Dich—Du für mich (I for You—You for Me), a film commissioned by the Nazi party to promote the Women’s Labor Service, and Leontine Sagan’s Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform), a well-known Weimar women’s film about same-sex desire in a Prussian boarding school. Close readings of Ich für Dich and discussion of it in the trade press show how the film exploits references to Mädchen in order to help spectators envision the role of women in an idealized National Socialist community, and to illustrate how the modern New Women, female sexuality, and filmic styles associated with the Weimar era can be successfully integrated into that community. Analysis shows, however, that Ich für Dich ’s cooptation of elements from Mädchen also has presumably unintended consequences, by evoking desires, identities, and styles that fascism struggled to contain. (VW)

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