Matriarchal theory in the 1920s appealed across the political spectrum

Evidence

In the 1920’s, matriarchal theory aroused renewed excitement in several different quarters. Antimodernist critics of bourgeois society on the right, such as Alfred Baumler and Ludwig Klages, were attracted to it for its romantic, naturalistic, anti-intellectual implications. Several of Stefan George’s former disciples, repudiating his misogyny, left the George circle in search of the eternal feminine. This was, as E. M. Butler has pointed out, an almost exact repetition of the French St.-Simonians’ quest for the “Mystic Mother” almost seventy years before. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 335

Categorization

• XREF: Useful context that matriarchy theory was a contested, cross-ideological discourse — both right-wing romantic antimodernists and left-socialist circles drew on it, prefiguring later debates over gynocentric theory. — connects to: Matriarchy theory had a socialist pedigree before its 1920s revival — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 334