Mit dem Geischt nach Deutschland (My Face Turned toward Germany) was the title chosen by Erich Matthias for his 1968 report on emigration among Social Democrats. This title reflects the feeling of many politicians, both men and women, who were forced to leave the German Reich in 1933. They took with them the ideals and political aims that had contributed to the creation of a republic structured along democratic lines. But their life's work was for the time being a failure. Nevertheless, they maintained an intense involvement in German political developments, and in the 1940s they took part in the elaboration of proposals for the restoration of political order after Hitler's defeat.

My research on Social Democratic women in the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag has led me to conclude that the first generation of women members of parliament, who had broken into this male domain without role models to follow, had taken their political mandates much more seriously than did their male colleagues.2 Female members of parliament had cultivated more intense contacts with their constituencies, thus gaining a deeper understanding of the worries and needs of their constituents, particularly those of women. They had put their findings and their knowledge to appropriate use in the course of