Crossing More than the Street: Johanna M. Lankau’s Dresdner Spaziergänge and the Walking Woman as Outsider

Authors

Bess Hayes, Brigham Young University
Dr. Robert McFarland, Brigham Young University

Keywords

Johanna M. Lankau, Dresdner Spaziergänge, Dresden Walks, female author

College

Humanities

Department

German and Russian

Abstract

In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany, it was ideologically inappropriate for women to walk unaccompanied through the city. Because of these gendered strictures, women’s narratives of city walks are extremely rare. Johanna M. Lankau’s Dresdner Spaziergänge (“Dresden Walks”) is one of these rare exceptions. Though recent scholarship is divided about the historical reality of writing women walkers, her book shows that there were indeed women walkers who wrote about the city. In her 1912 book, Lankau writes:

Recommended Citation

Hayes, Bess and McFarland, Dr. Robert (2013) "Crossing More than the Street: Johanna M. Lankau’s Dresdner Spaziergänge and the Walking Woman as Outsider," Journal of Undergraduate Research: Vol. 2013: Iss. 1, Article 845.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jur/vol2013/iss1/845