[Interview] German feminist Alice Schwarzer moved by preventing spirit of Korean ladies

Standing on the Rhine the place it cuts throughout the German metropolis of Cologne is a lone tower. It’s all that is still from the place a metropolis fortification crumbled.

This five-story tower that has survived for over 800 years is named “Bayenturm.” It seems just like the form of place the place a witch may dwell — or the place Rapunzel may need let her hair down after being locked up by a witch.

Ringing the bell at its entrance, I noticed a darkened hall. Frames hanging on the wall confirmed a black brassiere, massive scissors, and the form of broom {that a} witch may need flown on.

Since 1994, the tower has been referred to as “FrauenMediaTurm,” or “ladies’s media tower.” The historic construction was occupied by a basis for the administration of a feminist archive, the group of which was spearheaded by the German creator and feminist activist Alice Schwarzer.

The gathering consists of over 86,000 paperwork and greater than 9,000 pictures and posters. It proclaims itself because the world’s “best feminist archive,” chronicling the concepts and actions of feminists over a 200-year interval relationship again to the nineteenth century.

The Bayenturm, a medieval tower in Cologne, Germany, grew to become referred to as the “FrauenMediaTurm” or “Girls’s Media Tower” in 1994. (Lee Yu-jin/Hankyoreh)

The constructing can also be the place Schwarzer’s feminist journal EMMA established itself after one thing of a tumultuous course of. Launched in 1977, the journal celebrated its forty eighth anniversary this 12 months and served as an affect on the creation of the Korean feminist journal IF. 

In the present day, EMMA is revealed each different month, with paid subscribers accounting for round half its output of fifty,000 copies. Emphasizing freedom from enterprise pursuits, the journal has maintained its monetary independence by lowering its reliance on promoting.

Schwarzer had a smile on her furrowed face as she greeted reporters at her workplace throughout the FrauenMediaTurm on the afternoon of Oct. 16.

“Plenty of feminist magazines have light away, however we’ve been the exception with our survival,” she defined.

“I don’t suppose we’d have been in a position to say all of the issues we’ve wished to say thus far if EMMA weren’t financially impartial,” she added. “Independence has been crucial factor to me as a lifelong feminist. Independence and freedom have been essentially the most important conditions for me to dwell whereas sustaining my very own concepts.”

Schwarzer, one of the pioneering and outstanding feminists in Europe, can nonetheless be discovered exhausting at work in her workplace right this moment. A large portrait of Simone de Beauvoir, who vastly influenced Schwarzer as a younger lady learning feminism in France, hangs proudly on one of many partitions of her workplace. Schwarzer expressed a profound curiosity in South Korean ladies as quickly as we sat down to speak.

The FMT feminist archive homes over 86,000 paperwork and over 9,000 visible supplies, spanning over 200 years of feminist thought and motion. (Lee Yu-jin/Hankyoreh)

 
“I started studying the works of South Korean ladies writers a couple of years in the past, and they’re fairly astounding. What drew my consideration essentially the most was the truth that you may see the dissonance between custom and the trendy world inside these works,” she remarked. “The lives of South Korean ladies are an space of nice curiosity to us as properly.”
 
Schwarzer named Cho Nam-joo’s “Kim Ji-young, Born 1982” and Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian” as among the works by Korean ladies writers she had learn. 

“I used to be stunned by how ‘Kim Ji-young’ depicted generations of girls and by the radicalism in Han’s work,” she shared. 
 
EMMA has been the quintessential instance of a radical medium, standing on the coronary heart of many controversies for 50 years because it led the motion for the legalization of abortion whereas criticizing the commodification of girls’s our bodies and sexual violence by males. Schwarzer identified that as time has handed, nonetheless, we have now come to see ladies commodifying their very own our bodies voluntarily.
 
“These days, ladies see clear pores and skin, weight reduction and adhering to strict diets as necessary ‘values,’ and act as if doing so is progressive,” she mentioned. 
 
Commenting on the “4B motion” in Korea — a motion primarily based on saying no to marriage, no to relationship, no to having youngsters and no to having intercourse with males — Schwarzer smiled as she described it as a “fairly provocation.” That being mentioned, she added, “ladies can’t be positioned into one single field, and choices about such issues are as much as the person.”
 
“Up to now, emphasizing ladies as a bunch was necessary to the feminist motion. Nevertheless, ladies exist inside teams but additionally as people. Refusing to have youngsters is significant, however I personally have by no means believed child boycotts would obtain what they got down to,” she mentioned.
 
All through our interview, Schwarzer spoke emphatically, typically pounding the desk along with her fingers.

Alice Schwarzer speaks to the Hankyoreh from the FMT in Cologne. Behind her, a number of problems with EMMA, the journal she based, are on show. (Lee Yu-jin/Hankyoreh)

“Our lives can’t be lowered to mere packages,” she mentioned. In different phrases, ladies are usually not a monolith. 
 
“The protagonist of ‘Kim Ji-young, Born 1982’ knew all too properly the isolation ladies face, however nonetheless suffered from [the patriarchy]. The patriarchy is a system that has stayed in place over 1000’s of years, so attempting to topple it’s no simple job,” she mentioned. 
 
Schwarzer was raised by her grandparents. “My grandmother was a politically tenacious lady with a preventing spirit, whereas my grandfather was a compassionate one who took an curiosity in care. My mom was, within the conventional sense, very very similar to a person at coronary heart.”

This setting naturally led her to feminism. Schwarzer mentioned that, ever since she began practising feminism, she has by no means felt torn between her beliefs and the life she lives. When she was youthful, she lived in France with a feminist man for 10 years, and he or she now lives with a lady. “I used to be invited to present a chat in South Korea in 2022, however that invitation was canceled as a result of my companion was a lady,” she remarked.
 
In Germany, the truth that Schwarzer lives with a lady is probably the least controversial factor about her. Relatively, her stances on the warfare in Gaza and transgender points have echoed conservative speaking factors and have earned her an uncommon welcome from a conservative viewers. In her dwelling nation, Schwarzer has been criticized as a racist involved solely with white Western feminism and has been referred to as a Putin apologist following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Alongside the hallways of the FMT, typical witch paraphernalia — brooms, black bras, massive scissors — are framed. (Lee Yu-jin/Hankyoreh)

 
“All of these accusations are false. I’m not a racist, nor do I assist Putin. I’ve said that the German authorities ought to cease offering weapons to Ukraine and have led the anti-war motion. To me, negotiations are extra necessary than warfare,” she mentioned. 
 
Two days earlier than our interview, in the course of the opening press convention for the Frankfurt Guide Honest, German author Nora Haddada condemned the “genocide” she mentioned Israel was committing in Gaza and criticized the German press for downplaying Israel’s atrocities in opposition to Palestinians.

Nevertheless, Schwarzer posited that the media is doing “greater than sufficient work to publicize the ache of the Palestinians.”

“In truth, I imagine that it’s not doing sufficient to spotlight Hamas’ crimes in opposition to ladies,” she mentioned. 
 
“As a German, the individuals answerable for the Holocaust, I oppose [Israel’s] retaliation [against Palestine]. I do imagine that Jews have to be assured the proper to outlive and the proper to a homeland. I don’t criticize Islam as a faith, however quite misogynistic, far-right political Islamism,” she mentioned. 
 
When knowledgeable that feminists in South Korea have come out in solidarity with Palestine and pressed to supply her opinion on the problem as a feminist, Schwarzer mentioned, “After all, we have to stand with the Palestinian individuals in Gaza.”
 
“I oppose Hamas holding Palestinians hostage and their acts of violence. We additionally have to criticize Netanyahu himself. Nevertheless, I don’t imagine that it’s proper to lambaste Israel as a whole nation once we condemn Netanyahu,” she added. 

Alice Schwarzer speaks to the Hankyoreh from her workplace within the FMT in Cologne, Germany. (Lee Yu-jin/Hankyoreh)

 
She vehemently denied accusations of transphobia. 

“I already made statements defending transgender individuals in 1983, and I’ve all the time stood in solidarity with transgender ladies, who I name ‘my beloved sisters.’ Nevertheless, solely 0.002% of the inhabitants within the Eighties recognized as transgender and now, the variety of such individuals has surged dramatically within the West over the previous few years,” she mentioned. 
 
“Younger ladies appear to imagine that transitioning is ‘stylish.’ If younger ladies are unhappy with their lives as ladies, we should always problem the gender roles imposed upon them by society,” she mentioned. 

“I’m not saying that I don’t acknowledge transgender individuals. I merely imagine that younger individuals ought to establish whether or not they actually do really feel the necessity to transition, or if they’re merely sad with the gender roles that society locations on them,” she mentioned. “Such distinctions will then allow us to hunt options.”
 
These beliefs have earned Schwarzer the label of an old school feminist constrained by the gender binary. However that doesn’t cease her from talking her thoughts. Her responses additionally revealed the advanced setting surrounding the discourse in Germany — reflecting on Nazi warfare crimes, World Warfare II and the division of East and West Germany, reunification, wars in Europe and acceptance of refugees, transgender points — together with the difficulties of feminist thought and follow.
 
When requested if she believed that her competition that Islam’s oppressive tradition in direction of ladies could possibly be used to justify wars or bolster US President Donald Trump’s anti-feminist, anti-gender insurance policies, she responded thus: “The US has by no means as soon as cared in regards to the rights of girls. Trump is merely utilizing gender as an excuse to cover behind, and such makes an attempt are nothing greater than easy methods to cowl up his imperialistic insurance policies.”
 
Schwarzer is slated to publish her final guide, titled “99 Ideas of Feminism,” in February 2026. Whereas she appeared assured in her personal guide, when requested about her opinion on the way forward for feminist publishing on the whole, she took her time to mull over the question earlier than providing a solution.
 
“It’s an advanced topic to debate. Apart from EMMA, it’s virtually inconceivable to seek out feminist magazines. Many books have change into so attuned to the market that they operate as nothing greater than reinterpretations of previous youngsters’s tales. I additionally really feel as if I should push myself fairly exhausting to woo potential readers,” she mentioned. 

The feminist archive within the FMT. (Lee Yu-jin/Hankyoreh)

 
By Lee Yu-jin, senior employees author

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