New Objectivity - 915

Narrator (m):

(Zitat) “The man desires for the future no influence on the matters of the woman with whom he has to do; yet, on the other hand, he harbors the hope not to sink to being an object of her sympathy. The parties are equalized. In the restaurant, every man pays his bill; at the treasury, every man pays his taxes; and share equally the expenses for the children. The relationship of absolute equilibrium promises justice, harmony, and objective successes.”

Narrator (f):

The poet and writer Georg von der Vring wished and noted that in 1926. The majority of the female population, however, could only dream of emancipation and career equality. The reality of life looked very different. Hard work and poverty marked the lives of proletarian women. They had to eke out an existence under precarious living conditions. The discussion of the antiabortion law Paragraph 218 climaxed In the early 1930s.

Narrator (m):

The breakdown of established patterns also created new professions, including the armies of salaried employees described by Siegfried Kracauer. Many of them were women pursuing careers in office work or in industry, as seen in Lab Assistant of 1927 by the painter Richard Birnstengel of Dresden. The portrait is entirely caught up in the contradictory positions of its era when people were struggling to understand new roles. It is summed up in the first scene in Kracauer’s Salaried Masses in which a department head justifies the firing of a female employee before a labor court: “The employee did not wish to be treated as an employee but as a lady.”

Narrator (f):

Something of this conflict seems to reverberate in Birnstengel’s painting as well. On the one hand, the lab assistant embodies a self-determined and professionally independent young woman who is responsible for properly handling dangerous, very poisonous substances. On the other hand, Birnstengel presents her posed and readied for the male gaze. The light entering from the side on her cheek and torso seems as well placed as if for a nude photograph. Competence, emancipation, submissiveness, and diligence convey an impenetrably ambiguous impression here.