It is important to become aware of the impact of the past. A look back at the past centuries and what women have experienced includes witch burning, rapes, lawlessness, death in childbirth, then two world wars for which Germany was largely responsible. This experience has an impact on subsequent generations. In technical terms, this phenomenon is referred to as transgenerational transmission: Severe experiences of violence by perpetrators and victims cause traumas that continue to manifest themselves in subsequent generations. Freud referred to this process as “emotional inheritance”. Psychotherapy suggests that this phenomenon can have an effect over several generations.

Even though other countries and people were also heavily traumatized by wars, one can still derive a national specificity from its history in Germany, which twice a perpetrator nation and war loser in a short period of time. At the end of the wars, Germans primarily saw themselves as victims—because of the demands for reparations by the victorious powers, severe famine as a result of the war, arbitrary rule suffered under the Nazis, widespread bombings of cities and civilian populations, and the rapes and murders of women and children.

The question of equal treatment of women, especially the........

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