ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the notion of Bildung was centrally important to feminist theories. It provides a brief overview of the women’s movement’s interest in higher education and the developments that led to the eventual admission of the women students to the universities in the different German states. The chapter explores the ideas of those who opposed women’s entry into higher education, paying attention to how the figure of the woman student was thought of in relation to its meanings for the social organism and the universities and focusing particularly on the role of the concepts of Bildung, scholarship, and cultural creation. It examines the ways in which feminists conceptualized and argued for the necessity of women’s entry into higher education. At the turn of the century, the women’s movement in Germany was distinguished by the enormous breadth of its organization and its numerical strength. An exceptionally strong working-class women’s movement developed in Germany under the leadership of Clara Zetkin.
