Hildegart and the Making of a New Generation in Spain, 1914-1933

Abstract

During her short, but prolific career, writer and propagandist Hildegart took an active part in campaigns to craft the generation that would build a new culture atop the ruins of a society perceived by many to be mired in ignorance and degeneracy. In the dying days of the Primo Dictatorship (1929-1930) and early years of the Second Republic (1931-1933), she drifted between liberal and revolutionary circles, encountering new stages from which to articulate her calls for social change, and consistently challenging the boundaries of propriety for women and young people. This study seeks to explain how an adolescent woman gained access to these public stages and why men and women, in Spain and abroad, stopped to listen. Complementing the well-known stories about her earlier life—her eugenic birth, precocious intellectual development, achievements, and early entry into public life—the thesis focuses on the short, but critical window of time in which Hildegart forged a career in public life. It demonstrates that stories about Hildegart’s childhood enabled her to offer herself as a prototype for a ‘conscious generation’ and gain exception to social norms restricting the access of women and young people to the public platforms upon which she briefly stood. Approaching Hildegart’s career as a campaign on multiple fronts for the creation of a new society, I contribute to several overlapping fields of historical knowledge, including population amelioration, ideas about maternity, education history, youth mobilisation on the Spanish left, and the international crusade for a ‘new sexual ethics’. Through analysis of Hildegart’s public activities, the thesis enriches understandings of youth and women’s mobilisation in the early twentieth century and contributes to cultural histories of tension between revolutionary and liberal visions of a Spanish Republic.