A Gendered Perspective on Cultural Transfers: The Circulation of Women’s Writing between French-Speaking Belgium and Germany in the Third Reich (1933-1945)

Crombois, Julie
(2026) Gender and Mediation. Reception of Belgian Literature in Czech- and Germanophone Cultural Spaces during Modernism (1870-1940) — Location: CEFRES - French Research Centre in Humanities and Social Sciences, Prague (15.April.2026)

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Abstract
If one surveys today the list of works translated between Belgium and Germany for the years 1933–1945, one cannot but note that women are largely underrepresented. Despite the role women have played in the history of cultural mediation, the circulation of women’s literature and the modalities of its mediation remain a blind spot in Transfer Studies. This contribution aims to dive deeper into the reception of female authors in the Belgian German cultural spheres between 1933 and 1945. It sets out to highlight the mechanisms of mediation—translation, publishing, critical reception—through which women's literature entered the public sphere and circulated beyond national borders in the context of the Third Reich. This paper will try and show how the political and ideological context of the 1930s and 1940s shaped both the reception and thematic framing of women’s writing based on several case studies. A first part will be dedicated to the German translations of Flemish author Marie Gevers, whose works were ranked as “recommendable reading […] especially for women” (Crombois 2018) by NS-propaganda services and critiques, mainly because of her apolitical stance and the specific moral values and gender roles depicted in her novels. The second part will be dedicated to the modalities of reception of German female authors in French-speaking Belgium for the same period, with specific attention for NS-official writer Josepha Berens-Totenohl. The main objective of this paper is to try and establish how women’s writings were received in terms of aesthetics and modernity on the one hand and valued in terms of (perceived) moral and social function on the other hand, as they conveyed certain gendered roles and expectations in a context marked by societal turmoil and authoritarian ideology.
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Crombois, J. (2026, April 16). A Gendered Perspective on Cultural Transfers: The Circulation of Women’s Writing between French-Speaking Belgium and Germany in the Third Reich (1933-1945). Gender and Mediation. Reception of Belgian Literature in Czech- and Germanophone Cultural Spaces during Modernism (1870-1940), CEFRES - French Research Centre in Humanities and Social Sciences, Prague. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/275630