Convent school education for Girls in the 60s in the South of Germany

(DE) It’s a hot summer’s day in 2019 as a group of elderly ladies are led, laughing and chattering happily, through their old schoolhouse, which they left for good pretty much 50 years ago. The young nun who was the tour guide for the former alumni can’t help but join in the hilarious atmosphere. he laughs along with the memories of the gym and the changing room smells, of failed cooking and sewing skills, and of special teaching methods of individual school sisters of that time. The modernity of today’s schoolrooms is impressive and can in no way be compared with what awaited the 44 girls in autumn 1965 on their first day of school at the convent school, a commercial secondary school for girls only. Nuns dominated the teaching staff, the equipment was simple in keeping with the times and averse to any kind of technology, and huge class sizes were the norm that would make any teacher of today run away.

Educational goals of a convent school for girls "Behind every great man...

There would have been other secondary schools in the city, but a solid education in a school run by nuns with commercial subjects as well as particularly useful lessons for aspiring housewives was valued by many parents. The mother of a fellow pupil, however, had tried unsuccessfully to enrol her daughter in a secondary school with boys. She failed due to the resistance of the family and the daughter. In some families it had already been customary for generations to send their daughters to the nuns’ secondary school for girls. Often cliques of girls in the 6th grade of primary schools had joined together and transferred to the secondary school. As is so common at this age, one follows one’s friends and not some dubious ideas of a nebulous future.

...is a great woman!"

There they sat in their benches and were introduced to their roles as subordinates, whether as employees in a company or as wives, mothers and housewives. Hovering over everything was Sister Orlanda’s class leader’s mantra that behind every great man is a great woman. Even in the minds of the 66-year-old women who met for the 50-year class reunion, this “law of nature” is still present as a memory.

Today, every school has formulated a guiding goal, which it sets out on its website. In 1965, most people would not have understood the question. At this convent school, however, the answer would have been simple. The Sister Superior would have explained that the girls were to be educated first and foremost to become Christian wives and mothers. Secondly, the woman should impress the man with her reserved, helpful support and accompany him in his undertakings, whether at work with the boss or colleagues or at home with the husband. The woman should subordinate herself to the man and serve him, thus contributing to the well-being of society. The “greatness of the woman” behind the great man consisted, according to these traditional Christian educators, in obedience rather than self-confidence.

Of course, these educational goals, which actually do not really do justice to the Bavarian Education and Instruction Act, were implemented on a large and small scale.

Girls with a spirit of dissent had to be tamed.

Monika K. was one of these girls. She remembers, still infuriated today, some anecdotes:

“At some point, I discovered that the first letter of my family name, namely the “K”, could also be written with a flourish. In a list where I gave free rein to my creative streak in signing, my deviating K attracted unpleasant attention. As a result, I had to write two pages of my name with a conventional “K”. What was I supposed to grasp? What should be the learning effect? That deviation from the norm is penalised? That one must not stand out from others? That individuality, as opposed to conformity, is not a value? It dawned on me early on that I would have problems with these educational goals!

Another scenario exacerbated this oppressive feeling.

At some point, I had been appointed class representative and was actually doing this job quite well to everyone’s satisfaction. One day, while playing dodgeball in the courtyard, there was a disagreement between me and our PE teacher, Mrs Renner, about how the game was going. She told me to leave the game because I had been hit. I, on the other hand, knew for sure that this was not the case. I moaned unsuccessfully and walked off the field, grumbling about the injustice.

Two days later, Sister Orlanda called me in front of the class to tell me that I had been removed as class representative because I had contradicted Mrs Renner’s orders.

Contradicting – a crime that goes hand in hand with removal from office!? This understanding of education for obedience, for subordination, for accepting injustice went completely against my grain.”

Disciplining through humiliation

“And the punishment was always accompanied by a certain humiliation. One was exposed, reprimanded and punished in front of the whole class. Justification, defence or a simple expression of opinion was much less tolerated in front of an audience.

So I couldn’t defend myself when I was summoned to the front of the class by our headmistress, Sister Orlanda. She paraded me in front of the class because I was wearing a dress that was, in her opinion, much too short. This dress had been bought for me by my father and it was my first new dress of my own. As the youngest of three sisters, I was condemned to wear the hand-me-down dresses, as was the custom in those days. Unfortunately, a growth spurt soon turned my decent dress into a rather modern short one. But I just wanted to wear it so badly.

At our convent school, there was no understanding whatsoever for such matters. Vanity – a sin! Provocative clothing – a mortal sin! Being put in the pillory – a medieval method of shame and punishment – an adequate method of education! No one doubted that!

Also strange was the disciplining by the Sister Superior, which sometimes took place on Saturdays after classes ended at 12 noon. We would walk briskly and certainly chattering and laughing, running down the stairs towards the exit. Sister Superior saw the need to intervene on some Saturdays and kept us standing at attention, quiet as mice for some time. Of course, I was not allowed to say that I would miss my bus to Lappersdorf because of this, which did not leave again until late in the afternoon. I had to walk all the way home and the Saturday was over. “(MK)

Nip sexuality in the bud

Everyone, really everyone without exception, remembers the dress code. Trousers were not allowed to be worn at any time of the year. Even those who cycled to school even in the colder seasons or who had to wait a long time for the bus or train in the freezing cold were only allowed to attend classes in skirts that covered their knees. So the girls carried skirts to school with them, to change at the bike stand or in the entrance area to put on a skirt on top of their trousers. Of course, miniskirts were generally not tolerated ( not even over trousers).

But of course the convent schoolgirls were also girls of their time and immediately after leaving the school building, they rolled up their skirt waistbands several times, creating a hot miniskirt as if by magic.

Sleeveless blouses and dresses, which were also forbidden, could unfortunately not be transformed unless one wore a cardigan in the summer heat in the classroom. The girls were told that the male religion teacher could not be subjected to the sight of armpit hair when raising one’s arm to report.

“I even remember a sister replying to my naive question as to why that was an imposition, that the armpit hair would look unsavoury like worms. Sometimes I think that this view has become accepted in society as a whole. Removing body hair is now a matter of grooming and hardly anyone allows hair to grow wild except on the head. I doubt, however, whether this would have led to sleeveless dresses not being an issue.” (TA)

Of course, the nuns were concerned with making respectable women out of the girls, who, if possible, did not develop their sexuality, did not flaunt it and even, if possible, did not act it out before marriage, and did not seduce the men, which is said to have happened. Therefore, made-up faces, in which coy uses of make-up, lipstick, eyeliner and mascara showed, were denounced and had to be washed off in front of the whole class.

Aspiration and reality

For the sake of preventing vanity, there were no mirrors in the toilets! Monika remembers:

“After my bike ride to school, I always raced to the toilet to comb my hair, without a mirror, but at least not under the disapproving glare of a nun. Once I couldn’t believe my eyes, there were mirrors in the mirror holders. Sister Orlanda told us that sisters from the order in the USA were visiting that day, so…..

The next day the mirrors were gone again! This hypocrisy made me very angry at the time. So did the injustice towards a classmate who had bought the youth magazine “Bravo”, which we had all been brooding over during the lunch break. This “offence” was certainly only the trigger for her dismissal because our classmate was unusually self-confident and rebellious and unimpressed by moral sermons and sanctions, which of course the rest of us admired. Still, I was shocked and felt that this measure was unjust.” (MK)

In other respects too, the nuns clearly did not live up to their own standards to any extent. There was envy and resentment among themselves, which children and young girls could clearly feel.

“As there was a lot of quarrelling in my family, I considered for a while whether I should enter the boarding school of my school. However, one day when I observed that a school sister was gesturing with her foot to her fellow sister, who was obviously on duty as a cleaning lady on the stairs, to make way for her, this thought was off the table. Where were equality, Christian charity and humility instead of arrogance?” (TA)

It must be said that although the nuns massively enforced their Christian moral concepts and also incorporated them into the lessons, their glance at the schoolgirls as potential novices was not noticeable or intrusive.

Marianne remembers a final conversation with the head of the class, Sister Orlanda, who resignedly said to her as she was leaving: “With you, I thought I would get you into a convent. But you are too much focused on money. Well, I actually became a banker!” (MS)

Commercial education for girls

Since it was a commercial secondary school, the central subjects were business maths, bookkeeping, typing and shorthand. The lessons were factual and demanding and practice-oriented. There were no ideological or religious biases here, but logical thinking, speed and skill. In the 1970s, these skills and knowledge were put to good use, as there were no computers or accounting programmes yet. Those who had a perfect command of the 10-finger system on the typewriter were later also fast on the computer keyboard. And anyone who could make a calculation, knew about accounts and balance sheets, could keep track of things in his own household, in a small business or even in the computer programme of large companies. This training actually made sense, even if you didn’t want to become a secretary.

Lisa recalls:

“I enjoyed business maths and bookkeeping, it had that logic in it that I could understand and apply. Even to this have to calculatedo my accounts, financial planning and do my tax return. I’m still good at mental maths and it’s an advantage to keep a professional eye on my finances. I also found shorthand useful. I could always quickly record what was said during lectures and in meetings. This task was therefore often gladly given to me. The disadvantage was that unfortunately I hardly had the opportunity to contribute anything myself because I was too busy recording the discussion. During my studies and later in working groups, when mainly conventional high school graduates sat at the table who could neither write well on a typewriter nor use shorthand, they sometimes would have liked to push me onto this siding.

But in school I had my problems with typing in class. Although my fingers soon got the trick of operating from the base station, (left asdf, right jklö) with 10 fingers and I also became swift because I practised diligently on my father’s old Mercedes typewriter, our teacher became a problem for me. This young novice who, for whatever reason, had it in for me made me nervous. Every time we had a test and had to type a given text quickly and correctly for 10 minutes, she stood behind me and watched my fingers. Consequently, I kept mistyping and you have to know that you couldn’t just delete mistakes once they are typed on paper. My failure, in turn, confirmed her suspicion that I was too clumsy and she reprimanded me for it. The next time, she promptly stood next to or behind me again, stared at my fingers and triggered the same mechanism. I couldn’t get it right. Nevertheless, my fast 10-finger typing system has been very useful throughout my life. As a student, I even earned my living by typing diploma and doctoral theses for others, quickly, correctly and reliably.” (LL)

Needlework – an underestimated art

“Do you still remember what a horrible baby jacket you crocheted? The biceps were gigantic and nothing else matched either,” my friend Luise always asks when we talk about our school days. Even today we laugh about our self-sewn nightgowns with the disproportionately huge or skin-tight sleeves that made them almost impossible to use. A year later I dared to try again. I crocheted myself a purple bikini. The result was sensational and regularly contributed to the general amusement of my circle of friends. For when I emerged from the water like Venus from sea froth, the waterlogged bikini parts hung down my body. If necessary, I could pull the previously tight-fitting bikini panties up almost to my collarbones. Anyway, I gave it a go, using my needlework skills. However, I eventually had to accept my lack of talent.” (TA)

The curriculum of those years required all girls to know how to embroider, knit, crochet and sew, as well as darn stockings and underwear. There was no question about that. In fact, these skills were out of date as clothes became cheaper and inferior. Embroidery was going out of fashion and crocheted oven gloves were not as popular with mothers and grandmothers as they used to be.

For Helga, needlework was one of her favourite subjects and she says today that learning to sew and knit etc. has benefited her all her life. However, this does not mean that everything she made in needlework classes was successful:

Tried and tested christening gown after years sold on eBay

“I still remember the baby outfit (consisting of a jacket, a little hat, and a pair of shoes) very well… My baby jacket was white, crocheted in a tufted pattern with a pale green border and little pom-poms. The little hat turned out in real life to be too big, the jacket could only be put on the child by breaking its little arms because the sleeves were too tight. I couldn’t even put it on a doll. But the christening gown (white satin with self-embroidered tulle lace) was worn by my two boys for their christening and 3 years ago I sold it for €15 on eBay to an enthusiastic young mother!” (HG)

Lisa recalls:

“We used to knit socks like my mother used to do and crochet baby jackets. They were either pink or light blue. I rebelled against gender labelling even then, so I brought yellow wool. I never used the ugly embroidered tablecloths and pillows cases. After they had been lying unused in our attic for decades, my mother finally took pity on them and put them to use. Nor did I ever wear the knee-length skirt made of old-fashioned bone-patterned fabric.” (LL)

Monika, however, remembers another special occasion:

“Only recently I remembered that we were in the ice stadium for the ceremonial opening of an event. In our needlework class, we had all made a white short pleated skirt and then danced in the ice stadium according to a choreography. I just remember being so excited and still messing up on the few steps we had practised.” (MK)

“And I got a fever from all the excitement and couldn’t or didn’t even need to take part in the performance. Pleated skirts this, pleated skirts that!” (LB)

Probably the judgement on the usefulness of needlework is different today than it was for the young girls of the 60s. Who wore self-knitted socks? Who darned socks when the thin synthetic socks were cheap anyway? Fine nylon stockings were more in demand. Self-made clothes were not in fashion, but off-the-peg clothes were modern and chic. And those who felt connected to the hippie movement towards the end of their school days wore worn-out clothes and baggy clothes anyway.

Today, on the other hand, people spend a lot of money on hand-knitted goods. Hardly anyone can afford a tailor-made dress, so blessed are those who not only learned the art of sewing in their youth but developed it further and advanced to become their own seamstress.

Successful home-made cooking with hand-sewn aprons

What is likely to have stuck with even the most untalented schoolgirls throughout their adult lives is that most girls of those days could at least shorten trousers and skirts, sew curtains and cushions and knew how to help themselves when in doubt if a zip broke or a favourite jumper had a hole. Some were even able to crochet, knit or sew little doll dresses for the children or even the princess dress for the daughter or the vampire cape for the son for the carnival. That’s something. When hand-sewn masks were to protect against Coronaviruses in 2020, some even spontaneously set about making entire collections. Once learnt, never forgotten!

Cooking – really useful

In the 10th grade, the girls were taught cooking, both theoretically and practically, in the school kitchen located in the basement. The school fees of 20 DM per month were increased to cover the cost of ingredients.

The school sister was not only concerned with teaching basic cooking skills but to empower the girls to be able to conjure up a meal from random leftovers.

Stove switch functions explained good for teaching cooking but also physics

One felt that the wartime and post-war experience of food shortages was still very present even in the late 1960s. People distrusted the economic miracle. They thought it was a temporary phenomenon and wanted to be prepared for setbacks by not throwing anything away and by enabling young women to make something out of everything. Considering that today in Germany, especially in poorer households, more expensive and inferior ready-made products are put on the table because many of the adults are no longer capable of cooking a meal from fresh produce, one really appreciates the intention of the cooking teacher at that time. None of her pupils ever stood helplessly in front of fresh vegetables or fruit, an almost empty fridge or stale bread.

And when in doubt, there was always the recipe booklet with entries for all kinds of mostly simple and thus also inexpensive dishes.

From our collections of recipes

Sticky semolina slices

Monika recalls:

“Even today I could make “apples in a dressing gown” based on my notes at the time. However, I don’t remember what the pineapple tart tasted like that we had to make for our final exams. I think something so luxurious was served exclusively to the sisters.” (MK)

Helga still remembers self-sewn headscarves that had to be worn for hygienic reasons and she can recall the awful taste of a Nescafé caramel pudding that secretly ended up down the drain. But she still consults the cookbook she wrote during her school days. (HG)

Unforgetable apple in a dressing gown

Lisa also recalls some dishes, such as Rahmschnitzel, Liptauer and Celery soup. “But I have to admit that I benefited most from the cooking tips on using leftovers. I open the fridge, find meagre leftovers of something or other in there and immediately have an idea of how I could prepare a tasty meal. Cooking has always been fun for me and I’m good at it.

However, I still remember the semolina slice fiasco at school. For some reason, very few could choke down those soggy things. But we had a duty to eat our home-cooked food. Our teacher was strict about it.

Bread soup to use up old bread

So we thanked providence, which had made sure that we had pockets on our aprons. In these pockets, we put the disgusting semolina slices until we could dispose of them in the toilet. Unfortunately, they were so sticky that they overstrained the drainage system of the old school building. We had blocked toilets for some time and were always afraid that the corpus delicti, i.e. our semolina slices, would turn up and expose us as wasters. But that cup passed us by.

Another cup, or rather a bottle of wine, did not pass us by, but fell into the hands of my cooking group of four. Some wine had been needed for the sauce of a dessert and so there was a bottle of wine in our field of vision. A happy coincidence led to us being alone in the storage room while cleaning up and we had a few sips of wine. Blissfully and happily giggling, we took part in the following lessons completely relaxed. No one noticed!” (LL)

Luise, on the other hand, was very impressed by the orderly rules and tried to convert her mother at home to the strict distinction of dishtowels for glasses, dinnerware and pots. Mum, however, confidently waved them off. (LB)

“My memories of cooking lessons are quite different. If needlework was already not my gift, I couldn’t win a flower pot at cooking either. Neither one nor the other was my thing! One day during a cooking class, the sister thrust a screwdriver into my hand and asked me to tighten the screws on the hanging cupboard, then on the table and chairs. I was blissfully happy. Here I was in the right place. I certainly learned to cook as my family can attest, I had to, but I proudly remember only my craftsmanship during cooking lessons at school.” (TA)

Natural sciences and Sister Adele

We all sat in our physics room, which rose in steps, awaiting Sister Adele, our 80-year-old, petite little physics teacher. She often appeared with a black scarf or part of her veil pulled low over her face. ” Children, turn off the lights or, alternatively, close the curtains! I have such a headache!” was the explanation for her appearance. Sighing, she faced her task and began the lesson by announcing that they were now going to look again at how the Good Lord had arranged everything so beautifully. Sometimes the misery of her teacher’s fate got the better of her and she would complain: “Children, why should I burden you with heavy physics! You’re going to get married and have children anyway!

In terms of motivation, she was obviously not helpful either. Monika recalls:

“Once she had set up a transformer that made a light bulb glow. One pupil after the other was called forward and asked to explain how the witch’s machine worked. None could. The rest of the class and I were shrinking in our benches. But there were no mouse holes to escape into. The inevitable happened, my name was called. Hesitantly, I went to the front, looked at the device perplexed and relayed what I saw: “Yes, so there’s the plug and the light bulb is burning in the front.” Sister Adele looked at me lost in thought, then shook her head and announced composedly, “Sit down! You’re as stupid as the rest of them.” This sentence has stuck with me to this day and that’s why I nod in agreement when my husband, a mechanical engineer by trade, beckons and says, “You with your Niedermünster physics!” (MK)

But at least she taught us the laws of applied physics. We learned how a thermos flask works and how a hotplate works. There are modern teaching methods that would advocate such an approach. Perhaps Sister Adele was ahead of her time in some respects?

In any case, she meant well for us girls. When we had to write a physics test, she always announced when she intended to go through the rows. She ignored the fact that there was so much noise in the benches because we abruptly pushed our physics books under the benches.

And she still had some practical life lessons ready for the so difficult physics lessons. We were supposed to be able to astonish a dinner party by being able and willing to eat a banana with a knife and fork.

She could even contribute something to our future happy married life. She revealed that we had some chance of keeping our husbands if we ironed our nightgowns. Did she know that the nightgowns we sewed in needlework class were so rough that they would send even the most undemanding spouse running?

Well, Sister Adele had her moments and probably never learned that men don’t place much value on ironed nightgowns and that girls, even if they marry and have children, still want to understand difficult physics. She was not alone in this assessment in the 1960s, however.

“Despite my inadequate previous education, I dared to attend the transition class in a mathematics and science grammar school in order make it to the higher school and take the Abitur. Significantly, there were 5 girls in the whole school at that time, two of whom attended this transition class. The extent of my ignorance was gigantic and I suffered agony. But I made it and then transferred to the new economics grammar school. Here there were also proper physics, chemistry and mathematics classes, but there were also business subjects. That was my chance, as I never really thought I was capable of anything in the natural sciences. Sister Adele sits deep!” (TA)

It is still today, more than 50 years later, a particular concern and not self-evident normality in the German school system to get girls excited about science. Obviously, there are external and internal hurdles that can only be dismantled slowly.

English – fluency and lack of it

“English was my favourite subject and our English teacher, Sister Germana, was a wonderful, almost secular teacher,” Helga recalls.

“She talked a lot about the trips she had made and that interested me fiercely. I also wanted to travel and expand and use my English skills. However, it took a few decades before I really fulfilled this dream. Because I was bored in my secretary’s job, I attended English courses at the Cambridge Institute in Munich alongside work and took my First Certificate. I regularly visited Malta to fine-tune my practical English language skills in the bright sunshine and eventually I even managed to get a job at the German Embassy there. But that’s another story again.” (HG)

Luise remembers the English lessons differently:

“I, in contrast, have inhibitions about speaking English to this day, because Sister Germana never called on me. I always learned vocabulary and was well prepared, but never spoke up for fear of making a mistake. So after the lesson, I was always glad to have got away again. Renate and Helga were the discussion partners for our teacher. They dared to talk and were encouraged accordingly. The fact that I wasn’t challenged in English lessons showed me that even my teacher didn’t think I was capable of mastering the language. I had no opportunity for even a small sense of achievement that might have brought me out of my shyness and insecurity. It’s a shame, really, because my husband and I have always travelled a lot and I’ve usually had to hand him the talk-to-the-people-in-English card.” (LB)

Monika was also glad that Sister Germana rarely questioned her. “I, therefore, considered the risk of a bad grade in English to be quite low and did not learn any vocabulary. However, we then were the first cohort to have to sit a final oral exam in English and for years afterwards, I still had nightmares about it, because I definitely hadn’t learnt anything. However, my presentation “outer Hebrides” was still a success and my grade exceeded my actual language skills by quite a bit.” (MK)

One can argue about Sister Germana’s teaching style. What is certain is that for the monastic teachers it was certainly a matter of teaching applicable knowledge. But if it had no practical relation to our future roles as temporary office workers, wives, housewives and mothers, then no one tried to deepen this knowledge. It was part of the general education with which one did not attract unpleasant attention in society or at best could impress someone. But no one seriously expected that it could be applied in one’s own professional life when climbing a career ladder. Some teaching material was left hanging in a vacuum.

While today school exchanges with foreign countries are commonplace and it is clear to everyone that one has to be able to speak English because one travels around the world in one’s professional and private life. This was not a matter of course back then. Sure, the song lyrics of the hit parade were in English, but foreign languages did not yet play a major role in the everyday lives and visions of the future of secondary school girls in a medium-sized city in Bavaria.

Education at the turn of the times

It was the 1960s and, as everyone knows today, times were changing. The post-war period, marked by the repression of guilt and war trauma as well as reconstruction, had been replaced in the 1950s by the ever-growing consumer frenzy of the years of the economic miracle. Society still believed in the old values such as diligence, obedience, fulfilment of duty and recognition of institutional authorities, to which human and civil rights were basically subordinate in the self-image of the population.

This is particularly clear in the case of women’s rights. With some effort on the part of a Kassel lawyer, equal rights for women had ended up in the basic rights of the German constitution in 1949. Nevertheless, it was not until 1977 that the law was repealed in which the husband had to agree if his wife wanted to work. She was only allowed to do so if it was “compatible with her duties in marriage and family”. And that, of course, was for the husband to judge. The wife also needed the husband’s signature to open an account.

So it was by no means an absurd, out-of-date education that the school sisters gave their pupils at that time. It also reflected the ideas of many fathers and mothers.

At the same time, the 60s were also a time of change full of contradictions.

On the one hand, students protested in the lecture halls and on the streets, demanded a ruthless reappraisal of the Nazi past, denounced the dangers of the emergency laws, and countered narrow-minded moral concepts with sexual freedom and self-determination rights. On the other hand, they left their female fellow students to do the legwork in support of the revolutionary “heroes” and often put them under sexual pressure by saying ‘You must be frigid!’ if a woman did not want to have sex with them and by claiming the definition of “bourgeoisie” for themselves alone. The slogan, “If you sleep with the same girl twice, you’re already part of the establishment!” says it all. The generations around the legendary 68ers were also children of their time. But this is a detailed topic for further articles.

In our school we didn’t hear anything about all this. In any case, the belief remained in our girls’ school: Girls should acquire knowledge and skills in order to be able to serve. But the question is, serve whom! For the nuns, of course, it was the husband. Most of us girls who emerged from the 60s sooner or later no longer followed this line of vision. The model of the husband as a point of orientation and sole identification figure had slowly become obsolete.

But we were trained to think and act in a task- and solution-oriented way. And again, there is nothing wrong with that! While the boys were sent into the competition for recognition and profiling as future doers, the girls and later the adult women did not care about their profile, but focused their attention on fulfilling tasks and solving problems. Unfortunately, due to their socialisation, they were not wondering why it was mainly the men who received the laurels and made a career for themselves. One was, after all, destined to be the “strong woman” behind the “strong man”.

“I was always a good number 2,” Lisa says of herself, and I, Tanja, can only underline that. Is that why this generation of women so rarely attained a top position? Is that why there are still so few women in leadership positions? Would more women be leaders if the decisive factor in the selection was not the ability to distinguish oneself, but the will and the ability to serve a task? Did the women of our generation not believe in the value of their abilities themselves, assuming that female leaders had to be masculine or unfeminine and that the price of their career had to mean harm to the family?

We, the girls of the 60s, had to free ourselves from the old role model of women, from the obligation to obey and obedience to authority, from hostility towards sexuality and narrow-minded moral concepts. It was not easy for a girl of the 60s to find her way as a woman through the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s. So much baggage had to be discarded that was not immediately recognised as such. Role models, role concepts and visions only slowly penetrated the consciousness and so our generation had no choice but to engage in lifelong self-experimentation.

But this is where the individual fates, individual solutions, trials and tribulations, the exciting stories of our classmates of yesteryear begin. (TA)