Motherhood training: a cooking class, 1937
Young women in kerchiefs and aprons cook together in a teaching kitchen, then stand for grace and eat what they have made at a long table.
A dozen young women in kerchiefs and aprons crowd round the tables and stoves of a teaching kitchen, pour batter, knead dough and shape dumplings under the eye of an older teacher; then they stand at a long table with folded hands and bowed heads, sit down and eat, laughing and talking, beneath a small framed portrait on the wall.
The course belonged to the Reichsmütterdienst, the mothers' service that Gertrud Scholtz-Klink built up from 1934 within the National Socialist women's organisations. Its classes in cooking, sewing and child care taught thrift as a national duty; under the Four-Year Plan the housewife was to cook with home-grown food and waste nothing.
Film Grace before the meal at the cooking class, 1937
Film Cooking class for young women, 1937
Film Kneading dough in a cooking class, 1937
Film Women at the stove in a cooking class, 1937
Film Serving the meal at the cooking class, 1937
Film Young women eating together, 1937
Film Faces at the table, cooking class 1937
Film