19.03.2025

Corinna Schattauer in an interview with Leibniz Magazine about her monograph ‘Weibliche Handlungsmacht und Mobilität’

‘Many participants consciously used their bodies as capital. You can definitely recognise an emancipatory step in this.’ (Translation by IEG) — In an interview with Tobias Sauer, Corinna Schattauer spoke about her dissertation on commercial beauty pageants in Germany between 1909 and 1933.
In it, the IEG alumna examines the female body as a resource for economic and social advancement: Women's beauty has not only been spectacularly staged and judged since ‘Germany's Next Top Model’.

Commercial beauty pageants have captivated people for over a hundred years. In Germany, they have been around since 1909 at the latest. However, they only really took off in the 1920s, during the Weimar Republic - a time when contemporaries were obsessed with the external appearance of themselves and their fellow human beings. The work examines the beauty pageants between 1909 and 1933 in their local, regional, national and transnational networks and thus provides fundamental research. The focus is on women as economic actors. The study shows that although they were dependent on social norms and patriarchal structures, they nevertheless managed to use their agency in a targeted manner to become spatially and socially mobile - and to make a career for themselves.

Corinna Schattauer was an IEG fellow in 2021 and worked on her dissertation here. Last year, the monograph was published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht as volume 271 of the ‘Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte’ (Publications of the Institute of European History) - also in open access. It is available in German. Schattauer has also been a guest on the SWR Kultur am Mittag programme to talk about her dissertation.

The interview with Corinna Schattauer was published in Leibniz Magazine in German and can be accessed via the link below.