IN 1899 THE LEADERS of the women's movement organized a great memorial in the Berlin City Hall to celebrate and honor the life of Jeannette Schwerin, an activist in the new field of social work, who had died of cancer at the age of forty-seven. People from all walks of life came together to pay their respects and to express their grief at Schwerin's early death. In light of the crowds, reformers marveled that in the past only royal queens, who won public admiration as a result of their position rather than their accomplishments, had brought together so many people to mourn a woman. Twelve organizations mobilized the memorial for Schwerin's life and work, from the Bund Deutscher Frauenverein with 137 chapters and 70,000 members to the Berliner Handwerkerverein (Artisan Union), based in the capital and reform groups such as the Verein Jugendschutz (Association to Protect Youth), and Lette-Verein, which organized education and training services. The memorial, the manifold newspaper obituaries, and the ways in which Schwerin was officially honored by diverse organizations testified to her importance as a leader in Berlin and in Germany as a whole. And her mourning followers, as well as Schwerin herself, emphasized above all her role as a mother.

Since the eighteenth century Central European men and women have extolled the power of Mutterliebe (motherlove), even if the nature of women's roles and duties was a subject of disagreement. Often such exultation served to buttress a view widely held by the middle class that women and men flourished best in separate spheres. Yet in the late nineteenth century, as elite women gained access to new opportunities and as increasing numbers worked for pay outside the home, leading Central European women invoked motherlove to claim a role in the public sphere. Women active outside the home as social workers, teachers, or reformers described their work in terms of “geistige Mütterlichkeit” (spiritual motherhood).5 Helene Lange, leader of the moderate wing of the women's movement, explained how this “geistige Mütterlichkeit” is “unabhängig von physischer Liebe und Mutterschaft,” but nevertheless a force “die jede echte Frau durchdringt” (independent from physical love and motherhood [but nevertheless] permeates all true women).

Smallpox came to the Roman world in 165, brought by Lucius Verus’ retreating army. In twenty years it reduced the population by about 25 per cent. New leaders took Montanism forward: Themiso, Miltiades, Theodotus. Great Church figures organized opposition. In Rome, Bishop Victor (189–199) may have been behind the decision that Montanist teaching was unacceptable. In Africa, Perpetua and the others martyred with her in 203 may have had a pro-Montanist catechism teacher. But even if the African situation was ambiguous, in Asia a critical mass built up in Great Church circles against Montanism. At Temenothyrae (Uşak) in Phrygia, however, some early third-century gravestones of clergy survive. Ammion, a woman presbyter, is commemorated, as are Bishops Artemidorus and Diogas. Loukios and Asclepiades may also have been clergy. The sites of Tymion and Pepuza were identified near Uşak in 2000. These clergy buried at Uşak must have known the early Montanists at Pepuza, Stephen Mitchell observes, arguing that the Uşak clergy were anti-Montanist. But the fact that one of the Uşak clergy was a woman points in the opposite direction, implying that they were on the Montanist side.

Philip the evangelist, one of seven deacons appointed in Jerusalem by the Twelve, and at least two of his daughters, died at Hierapolis in the Lycus valley. In a letter written between 189 and 198, Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, names Philip and six other bishops as members of his family. This shows the importance of family networks in the growth of Christianity. Parallels include Jesus’ own family, members of which became bishops of Seleucia (Ctesiphon), and later, the family of Basil of Caesare – whose relatives were bishops of several churches in Cappadocia and Pontus. Also at Hierapolis, Papias wrote the Account of Logia about the Lord, a redacted account of Jesus. For this work, completed any time between about 90 and the 130s, Papias had interviewed anyone who came his way and ‘had been in attendance on the elders’. Like Laodicea, Hierapolis had a synagogue and an important Jewish community; there may even have been a Jewish quarter in the city. Glykon, buried at Hierapolis, left money to fund distributions to members of the carpet-weavers’ guild during the festival of Pentecost, and also at the Roman new year on 1 January. Glykon may have been a Godfearer.

ELISE REIMARUS (1735–1805), a proud lifelong resident of the republican city state of Hamburg, consistently advocated republican government ideals that rely on the ability of its citizens to participate actively in public affairs and lead others toward the common good. This emphasis on civic participation accounts for Reimarus's insistence on an educated citizenship. In this respect she differed markedly from most contemporary educators who, for good reason, considered a curriculum with history and politics a threat to the stability of a monarchical state and wanted to limit the privilege of education to future noble rulers. Of course, even in Hamburg, citizenship did not eradicate all inequalities. Reimarus wrestled with the reality that women, relegated to domestic roles, were barred from public office and other leadership positions. In this essay I argue that Reimarus nevertheless exercised civic leadership as a writer and educator, advocating political education not only for boys but also for girls.

It was not unusual for an eighteenth-century female writer to discuss education: virtually all contemporary women writers did so. But it was not at all common for a female writer explicitly to address civic education and to include girls in the discussion. Reimarus did just that. One of her early works is a treatise on the Roman philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121–180 CE), aimed specifically at girls. This work reflects her understanding that effective government and civic education belong together. While the text survives only in incomplete form and was never printed, as was apparently intended, it is significant, because it shows Reimarus's use of Roman history for educating eighteenth-century girls in civic-political matters.

Her portrayal of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus conveys support for a government that promotes the well-being and happiness of the people, listens to the people and their representatives, attends to the weak and vulnerable, uses resources only for the benefit of the common good, respects laws and refrains from arbitrary revenge, and supports education, including female education. In promoting these leadership qualities across genders, based on a male model from classical Rome but intended for a female audience, Reimarus delves into a subject matter usually off-limits for women.

HAVING SERVED AS party cochair and lead candidate in four elections, Petra Karin Kelly became the first spokesperson of the Green Party's delegation to West Germany's federal parliament, the Bundestag, in 1983. Kelly was, by that time, known internationally as the Greens’ leader and renowned for her role in the peace movement. She was named “Woman of the Year” by the Philadelphia-based group Women Strike for Peace in 1983, and awarded the Right Livelihood Foundation's “Alternative Nobel Prize” for her activism in 1982. At her acceptance speech in Stockholm, Kelly argued that the formation of “a nonviolent, ecological, and non-exploitative republic,” required that “women must change their consciousness, break from the patriarchal circle, and free themselves from such ill-suited ideals as those of the masculine, patriarchal, and nuclear society.” The leadership positions she held, the accolades she received, and her outspoken views all drew attention to Petra Kelly. But it was ultimately her gender that defined the way she was seen by her contemporaries. She was described by fellow Green politicians such as Wilhelm Knabe and scholars such as Dieter Rucht as a modern-day “Joan of Arc.” The image stuck. In an August 2017 segment on the emergence of the Green Party, which aired throughout Germany as part of the history and science program Planet Wissen, Kelly was referred to as the “Joan of Arc of the atomic age.”

In the early 1980s Kelly was famous, female, and outspoken, but why has she consistently been compared to a French patriot of the fifteenth century? For Knabe, the comparison was intended to show that Kelly “embodied the new emancipatory self-understanding of the [Green] Party.” His statement can be interpreted as a reference to both Joan of Arc's legacy as an exceptional and emancipated woman who led an army of men into battle and her role in liberating France from British rule. Planet Wissen explained that Kelly resembled Joan in that she was “just as idealistic as she was uncompromising.” For Rucht and his coauthor Roose, the comparison with the Maid of Orleans was intended to reflect the idea that, unlike other political leaders, Kelly was merely a standard bearer, who played “no strategically important function” in her party.

POLITICAL SCIENTISTS David Chandler and Julian Reid discuss the neoliberal subject as a frantic maker of choices. They argue that such an anxious quest for control through an individualized form of decisionism presents the only weapon against uncertainty and risk. In the following, I show that, in three recent comedic treatments, female executives in corporate leadership roles are portrayed as dangerously vulnerable, in the sense that they expose the conceptual flaws of neoliberal self-referentiality. I define neoliberal self-referentiality as the solipsistic worldview of actors engaged 24/7 in a system where everything is marketized. According to the corporate data portal Statista, for 2016, the overall percentage of German women in leadership positions falls between 12.5 and 16.9 percent, with companies with 101–550 employees occupying the lower end of the spectrum and those with more than 10,000 employees showing the somewhat higher percentage of women in management. Since Germany boasts a predominance of small and mid-size companies, companies with fewer women in leadership positions, that is between 12.9 and 14.1 percent, are more common than larger corporations with their somewhat higher percentages. These figures indicate that women lag significantly behind in leadership positions in the German business workplace. Female managerial positions involve control over budgets and authority over subordinates, but are often subject to review by superiors as well. The power of female managers to implement their own decisions is often relative. In the neoliberal marketplace, female middle managers continue to be under pressure to self-optimize by combining their business acumen with so-called “soft skills” for employee management, all the while monitoring their bodies for slimness and youthful attractiveness. If they boldly state an economic decision at a business meeting, they may receive criticism for being too strident or unethical. Performance reviews may describe women with emotive clichés as supportive rather than aggressive, implicitly denying them leadership potential. At the same time, the business world is the only arena where there is a sustained engagement with the concept of female leadership, as there is a constant feedback loop of job performance surveys and profitability.

Traditionally, women are taught to self-monitor their bodies and their conduct to a much greater extent than men. Therefore, as the Germanists Hester Baer, Carrie Smith-Prei, and Maria Stehle have argued, “neoliberalism constructs women as its ideal subjects.”

The New Prophecy (= Montanism), a movement which began about 170, originated in Phrygia, east of Philadelphia. Opponents found fault with the Montanists’ style of prophesying, but what they did was similar to prophecy in other Christian traditions. Priscilla and Maximilla, two women prophets, were key figures, along with Montanus, in the first Montanist generation. The Montanists based their church at Pepuza. According to Hippolytus, they wrote ‘countless books’ as well as carrying out missionary journeys to attract disciples. Montanus’ Odes may have been the Montanist hymnbook for almost four centuries. But Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla made their mark in less than a decade, Maximilla dying last, in or about 179. They built on an established prophetic tradition. At Thyatira, the church became Montanist from 172 to 263; and the New Prophecy spread far beyond Asia, to Lyon, Rome, Africa. The martyrs of Lyon (177) were influenced by Montanism, and a bishop of Rome acknowledged Montanist prophecies, before retracting his favourable judgement. At Pepuza, a hypogeum found in 2001 may (Peter Lampe argues) have been the burial place of Montanus and the prophetesses.

At Eumeneia (Işıklı) distinctive phrasing was used in the third century on the gravestones of Christians. Even at the time of Decius (249–251), it seems, fear of persecution was not severe enough to deter Christians from making their gravestones identifiable in this way. Like other Phrygian cities, Eumeneia seems to have flown below the radar of official scrutiny – a fact which facilitated change in the sacred canopy. Over a hundred Eumeneian formula gravestones survive, some of them dated. The dated examples were erected between 246 and 274. These dated stones (reproduced in Appendix 2) are discussed. They commemorate a partial cross-section of the Christian community at Eumeneia and Apameia (Dinar). On the imperial estates in the Phrygian–Pisidian borderland to the east of Eumeneia, a series of inscriptions attests a cult-based association (the Tekmoreian Guest-Friends) whose purpose was to demonstrate loyalty to the emperor. These inscriptions, with their lengthy lists of contributors, show that polytheist religion was lively and capable of innovation in the rural districts at the time when the Eumeneian formula was in use not far away in Eumeneia and Apameia.

THE SEISMIC IMPACT of Western election cycles in 2016 fractured the image of women as world leaders and citizens. The US presidential race morphed into a face-off between liberal and conservative ideologies that succeeded in polarizing oppositional politics and dividing the nation along attributes of intersectional identities, not least gender lines. While the 2017 federal elections in the Federal Republic of Germany confirmed Chancellor Angela Merkel for another term at the helm of the most powerful country in the European Union (EU), she has faced significant challenges in building the coalition necessary for effective national and transnational leadership. Tepid endorsements of the election results proclaimed it “inconclusive,” and the media rapidly turned the EU spotlight on Emmanuel Macron, “France's energetic young president.” With successful elections seemingly transcending race and gender differences, many were quick to proclaim that ours is a post-racial, post-gender, and post-national world. Yet the election results of 2016 and subsequent surges in gender-specific protest, against systemic sexual harassment, for example, point to the persistence of patriarchal structures in personal and professional realms. Contemporary democracies are undergoing a radical shift in the negotiation of gender politics that empower a largely white male demographic to repossess power, privilege, and entitlement allegedly disrupted by the rise of “political correctness” and images of gendered and racialized otherness. In this essay I examine the contrasting and often contradictory projections of female leadership and the escalation of critical rhetoric through a series of allegories generated by far-right antifeminism and the critique of Merkel as a failed and multicultural mother. In other words, I inventory the perils of governing while female through an analysis of select texts and images, including the portrayal of Merkel as “Frau Europa”; the “enigmatic,” mysterious, and inscrutable Mona Lisa of the European Union; the gender-neutral portrayals that acknowledge her power and rationality; and the maternalizing depictions of her as “Mama Merkel” and “Mutti-Multikulti” in response to her handling of the refugee crisis.

Merkel herself is the subject of continued scholarly and popular analysis. Political scientists, cultural critics, and comparative gender-studies scholars focused attention on her leadership style, her memory politics, and her policies.

At Apollonia (Uluborlu) after Augustus died the Res gestae was inscribed below statues of the imperial family. Apollonios, son of Olympichos, went on a mission to Germanicus Caesar in 18<AU: Pl. confirm date is correct>. Apollonios’ grandfather had been a priest of Zeus, but Apollonios was a priest of the goddess Rome. In the third century, a cross was carved on the pediment of the gravestone of Alexandros (also known as Artemon), a member of this same family. Still prominent in civic life, the third-century descendants looked to Christianity. In churches, feelings about holding public office were mixed. Origen advised against, and the Council of Elvira ruled that duoviri should not step inside a church during their term of office. But Christian city councillors are attested, and more in Phrygia than anywhere. At Synnada, Dorymedon, a councillor, was martyred during the reign of Probus (276–282), along with Trophimos, whose ossuary is now in the Bursa Museum. Another gravestone, from outside Apollonia, commemorates Zoulakios, whose father-in-law was ‘Diogenes the Christian’. Probably this Diogenes was born before the middle of the second century, so one can argue for a connection with the Montanist missionary endeavour.

Paul’s inland travels in Galatia and Phrygia are hard to trace: the narrative in Acts, long subjected to detailed scrutiny, is incomplete at best. Complex modern arguments based on the text of Colossians have linked tensions in the church at Colossae, in the Lycus valley, to contacts with Cynic or Middle Platonist philosophers; however, Colossae was not high on the philosophical food chain. The quality of philosophical debate there was probably provincial at best. ‘Worship of angels’ was a feature of popular religiosity in Asia Minor, in multiple contexts, and it is probably right to understand the ‘Colossian philosophy’ as a concoction formed from folk belief. The church at Laodicea is addressed in Revelation and a ‘letter from Laodicea’ is mentioned in passing in Colossians: but this text may be the epistle known as Ephesians. The complex of early texts relating to the Lycus valley cities is informative about the interface of the Jewish-Phrygian and Gentile-Phrygian worlds. The Jews in Phrygia were a successful community, but it is difficult to understand the sources relating to how Jewish, Christian, and Graeco-Roman polytheist communities interacted in the Lycus valley.