Trümmerfrau
Trümmerfrau (German pronunciation: [ˈtʁʏmɐˌfʁaʊ̯] ⓘ; literally translated as rubble woman) were women who, in the aftermath of World War II, helped clear and reconstruct the bombed cities of Germany and Austria.
Since the first Allied bombing raids in 1940 the Germans had become used to clearing up the resulting devastation, but most of this clearance work had been undertaken by forced laborers and POWs.
Wood and steel beams, fireplaces, wash basins, toilets, pipes and other household items were collected to be reused.
The American journalist Margaret Bourke-White commented in 1945: "These women forming one of the many human conveyor belts which were organized to clean up the city passed their palls of broken bricks from hand to hand with such slow motion that I felt they had calculated the minimum speed at which they could work and still draw their 72 pfennigs an hour.
"[3]In the Soviet Occupation Zone, the Nationales Aufbauwerk (National Reconstruction Works) was founded, in order to coordinate the efforts of the Trümmerfrauen.
[1] On 4 October 2006, a weekly newspaper published the memoirs of the Trümmerfrau Elisabeth Stock (83), including the following passage: "... it were mostly women who shoveled their way through the rubble of Aachen's inner city that was totally destroyed; just for one bowl of soup from the Americans, we hammered and dragged debris all day long, even the pickaxe was part of our equipment ... that's probably one reason why they put a memorial plaque for Aachen's Trümmerfrauen at the back of the townhall.
For this reason, the Trümmerfrauen had to work hard and their commitment gained widespread recognition: In 1946, the Allied headquarters published a series of stamps, the so-called "Bärenmarken", for the whole of Berlin.
On 13 October 1950 the mayor of East-Berlin Friedrich Ebert offered a newly built flat to a former Trümmerfrau in honour of her commitment.
In 2001, due to an initiative of the 1998-founded club Verein figürliches Glockenspiel im Alten Rathaus-Turm zu Chemnitz e.V together with the support of numerous donors, a carillon with a total number of 25 bells was installed.
The figures were designed by the sculptor Johannes (Hannes) Schulze from Plauen and forged by the bell foundry Rudolf Perner Karlsruhe und Passau.
Once the Allied soldiers arrived and the long process of clearing the rubble began, the Trümmerfrauen realized that they could continue to sell the objects they found in other buildings.
Second, dresses immediately after the war served aesthetic purposes, in other words making the women more appealing to the Allied soldiers.
The German word Fräulein (at the time) defined a woman that fraternized with a soldier, an act that was strictly forbidden during the war.
If a woman could attract the attention of an Allied soldier, she was likely to receive payment in the form of food, or in some cases protection from other men.
[6] Historian Leonie Treber recognizes that many cities and people regard the Trümmerfrauen as a great movement of heroism and strength.
In areas like Berlin's British sector, Treber reports that the percentage of women who joined in the difficult job was only a third of one percent.
According to Treber, many saw the job as punishment or beneath them, as the Nazis had made the Hitler Youth, POWs, and concentration camp prisoners remove the debris from bombed-out cities.
