Wife Training School in Nazi Germany

In 1937, the Nazis opened Wife Training Schools. Girls who married SS members and NSDAP functionaries were supposed to pass through them. Today we will tell you how the future wives of members of the Nazi Party were trained and who could hope for such training.

Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler in 1936 signed a decree on the creation of a special training course for girls who wish to become the wives of the Nazis.

Such “schools of brides” were headed by Gertrud Scholz-Klink, head of the National Socialist Women's Organization.

Only Aryans were admitted to the school. They were not to be physically handicapped or mentally ill (they were also excluded from school if one of their parents suffered from schizophrenia).

In schools, the brides took a 6-week course (since 1939 - a two-month course), during which they studied not only housekeeping, but also the basics of genetics and the doctrine of races, as well as political science and history. 2 lessons of physical education were obligatory every day. Also, agriculture became an obligatory element of study - only this work was recognized as worthy of a German woman.

In addition, brides were taught rhetoric, social manners, and childcare. At the end of the course, subject to the assimilation of all knowledge, certificates were issued giving the right to marry “exemplary Germans”. Such graduates performed marriage according to neo-pagan rites.

Education in such schools was paid - 135 Reichsmarks (about 20 thousand rubles at the current rate). But this money was soon “fought back”: when a graduate of such a school married a “true Aryan”, the state gave them an interest-free subsidy of 1,000 marks for 5 years (150 thousand rubles), and at the birth of each child, 250 marks were forgiven from this amount.

The basis of the upbringing of a German wife then was the “three well-known Ks”: kinder, küche and kirche (children, kitchen and church). The ideological basis that "schools for wives", that the role of women in society was invented even before Hitler came to power. In 1917, the first “School of Mothers” was opened in Stuttgart, where, against the backdrop of the hardships of the First World War, women were centrally taught devotion to the family, the state and home economics.

The Nazi regime was very interested in increasing the population. And from this it followed that hired work and education in universities were an obstacle to the fulfillment of the main function of a woman.

In 1936, married women who worked as judges or lawyers were dismissed, since their husband could support them. The number of female teachers was sharply reduced, and in women's schools, home economics and needlework became the main subjects.

After coming to power, the Nazis began to view the desire of women for professional, political or academic careers as unnatural. The highest happiness for a woman should have been her stay at the family hearth next to her husband. 

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