Gertrud Scholtz-Klink was born in Germany on 9th February, 1902. She married a postal worker at the age of eighteen and had six children before he died.
Scholtz-Klink joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP)in 1928 and in 1929 became leader of the women's section in Baden.
When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 he appointed Scholtz-Klink as Reich Women's Leader and head of the Nazi Women's League. A good orator, Scholtz-Klink's main task was to promote male superiority and the importance of child-bearing. In one speech she pointed out that "the mission of woman is to minister in the home and in her profession to the needs of life from the first to last moment of man's existence."
In July 1934 she was appointed as head of the Women's Bureau in the German Labour Front. Scholtz-Klink headed all female groups within the NSDAP: "the Frauenwerk, the Women's League of the Red Cross, the Women's Bureau in the Deutsche
Arbeitsfront, and the Woman's Labor Service" She was the most important woman in all of Nazi Germany.
Scholtz-Klink had responsibility for persuading women to work for the good of the Nazi government. In 1938 she argued that "the German woman must work and work, physically and mentally she must renounce luxury and pleasure."
Unfortunately, Scholtz-Klink held no political power or influence. The Nazi Party did not
advocate feminism but a policy for women to fulfill their station in life as "breeding machines and beasts of burden for the greater glory of the Reich".
After the Second World War Scholtz-Klink went into hiding and was not arrested until 1948. Later that year she was sentenced by a French military court to eighteen months in prison.
In November 1949, Scholtz-Klink was branded a "Major Offender" due to her strong adherence to the Nazi ideology by a de-Natzification court. She lost all civil rights and was "acquitted of any guilt for war crimes".
Reichsfrauenführerin Gertrud Scholtz-Klink
Lüneburg 1939
http://www.acs.appstate.edu/~brantzrw/g_scho.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERscholtz.htm
