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Helena Deneke and the Women of Germany: A Note on Post‐War Educational Reconstruction
Author(s) -
Phillips David
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0483.00154
Subject(s) - memoir , scholarship , democracy , work (physics) , history , classics , sociology , political science , law , politics , engineering , mechanical engineering
This paper is concerned with the work of a prominent Oxford Germanist, Helena Deneke (1878–1973), in the post‐war democratic development of women’s organisations in Germany. Helena Deneke was one of the earliest women teachers in the University of Oxford and typified a particular combination of teaching, scholarship, high moral authority and commitment to public service to be found among other Oxford figures of her day, like Lord Lindsay and E.R. Dodds, who felt able to ‘do something for Germany’ in the dark years of educational reconstruction following the cessation of hostilities. Her work resulted in the publication in 1947 of an important report, The Women of Germany . From her unpublished memoirs and other papers it is possible to reconstruct the detail of her involvement in a vital aspect of post‐war education for democracy and to gain insight into the policy of the British occupying forces in this domain.