Doctoral project: Educational concepts and professionalisation strategies in nursing 1918-1933 with particular reference to Protestant nursing sisterhoods (Ulrike Gaida, M.A.)

The Weimar Republic was a period of new beginnings, disparate concepts and professional fragmentation in nursing. The study deals with the efforts undertaken by Protestant nursing associations to set up a formalised training based on tested theoretical concepts. The attempts to improve basic and supplementary training met with strong resistance. This was due on the one hand to the vagueness of the professional concept itself and on the other to the external pressures brought to bear on the occupation by the medical profession. The concept of professional “nursing” was geared to the ideas of “social motherliness”. It demanded a great deal of knowledge, ability and willingness to work, yet little value was placed on a formalisation of the job description. Competitive advantages resulted, yet the formalisation of the profession was inhibited. The nurses’ most important allies in their demands and in the formulation of their training aims were the international women’s movement and individual doctors and politicians who advocated improvements in nursing.