The BDM-Werk Glaube und Schönheit, the BDM Faith and Beauty Society, was founded in 1938 to serve as a tie-in between the work in the League of German Girls (BDM) and that of the Nazi Frauenschaft. Membership was voluntary and open to girls 17 to 21.
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The Faith and Beauty Society was founded in 1938 to serve as a tie-in between the League of German Girls and the *Nazi Frauenschaft. The idea was that girls should be part in the work for the whole Volksgemeinschaft before they went on to either jobs or—ideally—to marry and have children.
Membership was voluntary and open to girls 17 to 21. The work in the Society was mainly geared toward priming the girls for their tasks as wives and mothers, and while courses offered were very interesting for many girls and ranged from fashion design to healthy living, the overall idea was to teach them home economics so they would properly run their households, cook well for their families, and care properly for their children.
According to Dr. Jutta Rüdiger, who had taken over as the leader of the League of German Girls in 1937:
The task of our Girls League is to raise our girls as torch bearers of the national-socialist world. We need girls who are at harmony between their bodies, souls, and spirits. And we need girls who, through healthy bodies and balanced minds, embody the beauty of divine creation. We want to raise girls who believe in Germany and our leader, and who will pass these beliefs on to their future children.
*The NS-Frauenschaft (NSF: National Socialist Women’s League, literally NS-Womanship) was the women’s wing of the Nazi party. It was founded in October 1931 as a fusion of several nationalist and national-socialist women’s associations.
The Nazi Frauenschaft was subordinated to the national party leadership (NSDAP-Reichsleitung); girls and young women were the purview of the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM). From February 1934 to the end of World War II in 1945, the NS-Frauenschaft was led by Reich’s Women’s Leader (Reichsfrauenführerin) Gertrud Scholtz-Klink (1902–1999). It put out a biweekly magazine, the NS-Frauen-Warte.
Its activities included instruction in the use of German-manufactured products, such as butter and rayon, in place of imported ones, as part of the self-sufficiency program, and classes for brides and schoolgirls. During wartime, it also provided refreshments at train stations, collected scrap metal and other materials, ran cookery and other classes, and allocated the domestics conscripted in the east to large families. Propaganda organizations depended on it as the primary spreader of propaganda to women.
The NS Frauenschaft reached a total membership of 2 million by 1938, the equivalent of 40% of total party membership.
The German National Socialist Women’s League Children’s Group was known as "Kinderschar".
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