Courage, Emma: You Can Read Two Feminist Magazines Each Month in the Federal Republic of Germany!

Emma—a traditional German name, a name which sounds round and energetic, but transforms tradition in the direction of Amazon and ema/ncipation, according to Alice Schwarzer, the magazine\u27s founder and publisher. Courage—for the seventeenth-century German writer Grimmelshausen\u27s heroine, whose experiences transfigure her from camp-follower to a self-sufficient woman who fights for her rights with joy and humor. These are the names ofthe Federal Republic of Germany\u27s two feminist magazines. Courage, published in West Berlin, was begun in June 1976; Emma, located in Koln, in February 1977. Each is about sixty pages long.costs three marks (about $1.50), is staffed exclusively by women, and is intended for feminist readers. Why are there two? Are there significant differences between them? Is there room for both? At first, the predictable overlap in subject-matter is discouraging: both have many articles on women working, women in history, sexuality, lesbianism, motherhood, and so forth. But clear differences can be traced in their origins and their intentions. Courage\u27s trial edition announced it as a publication founded by women active in the autonomous women\u27s movement to provide a medium by and for women with the goal of expanding the movement. Emma, Schwarzer explained in her first column, is an undertaking by women journalists fed up with the restrictions and antifemale bias they have encountered in the established male press; its intention is to offer the female reading public a feminist magazine produced by professionals

Readers\u27 Speakout

Dear Ms. Howe: Your Women\u27s Studies Newsletter\u27s report on feminism in Germany is interesting (Vol VII, No. 1, Winter 1979), but I have some problems with Ms. Zagarell\u27s report. Although one questions in certain quarters what men have to say, one may not question as readily my devotion to research on feminism in Germany. I have problems especially with the last paragraph\u27s assertions (p. 26). Although some see Emma and Courage as excellent sources of information on the German women\u27s movement, they are not so on German women\u27s lives, or the other points asserted. The journals may indeed be a revolutionary statement, but even at a total circulation rate of 300,000 per month, they would hardly have things to say about, or to, more than a miniscule percentage of the German female population. One should ask some of the other 90 percent of Germany\u27s women how well they feel represented