Few regions have experienced anything like the repeated annexations inflicted on Alsace by France and Germany between 1870 and 1945. Despite its long and distinctive history, Alsace was imagined and reimagined during this time as part of two mutually exclusive nations. This book, however, goes further to argue that nationalism in a contested border region such as Alsace involved continuous negotiation between the center and the periphery. National identity in Alsace was neither monolithic nor simply imposed from the outside, and Alsatians were not passive objects. Vlossak writes about the nationalization process through the lens of gender, differentiating the experience of women from men. By centering her focus on the nationalization of Alsatian women, Vlossak shows that nationalism did not operate on a one size fits all basis. Existing scholarship on Alsace has already established that different classes, religious communities, and political parties varied considerably in their responsiveness to nationalization. This book demonstrates that nationalization was profoundly gendered as well.

The literature has paid little attention to either Alsatian women or how the dynamic of nationalism differs for women. Consider the difference between men and women when Alsace became German in 1871. Women did not generally go to university, enter the military, or engage in politics, all of which were significant for nationalizing men. Even their relationship with language was different since women were not in school long enough to become fully proficient in a second language and they tended not to be as integrated into the public sphere as men. Nevertheless, German administrators believed that women were essential to educating families and teaching the “mother” tongue. Consequently, Germans tried to engage women through women's organizations and women's magazines and media in the hopes of building common ground between Alsatian and German women.

After more than forty years, Alsatian women became accustomed to being German, at least insofar as their social experience mirrored that of German women. Such integration as had been achieved through religious organizations and women's groups such as the Women's Association of Alsace, however, quickly dissipated during World War I. Mobilization, the direct threat of military operations, and civil repression by the Germans eroded women's attachment to German identity. At the same time, some women suffered at the hands of the French either in holding camps or as deportees in France. Alsatian women's experience of the war did not correspond to that of either French or German women, with the result that they remained ambivalent about identifying with either country.

When the French regained possession of the region in 1918, the government aggressively sought to reconnect Alsatians to France. Most Alsatians resented the direct imposition of French in the schools, the attempt to secularize Alsace, and the economic consequences of shifting from the German to the French economy. In 1924 the Alsatian malaise erupted in the form of widespread protests against French policy. Once again, as in the Wilhelmine period, the experience of women deviated from that of men in what Vlossak describes as a “malaise féminine.” All Alsatians were marginalized by French policy, but women bore the additional burdens of remaining outside the formal political process at a time when German women could finally vote and being subject to the retrograde provisions of the French Code Civil. Female activism tended to be confined to participation in confessional women's groups or organizations—a signal that they internalized religious identity more thoroughly than French identity.

The German annexation of Alsace from 1940 to 1945 did little to attach women to Germany. The heavy-handedness of Nazi rule may have nudged Alsatians toward accepting French identity, although the épuration and the poor treatment of Alsatian refugees did not necessarily endear the French to the Alsatians. Nevertheless, by the end of the war, the slogan “C'est chic à parler français” articulated a significant change in Alsace. For women, acquiring the vote may also have been crucial for accepting French identity.

Did Alsatian women embrace nationalization? Certainly France and Germany characterized Alsatian women as female icons of national identity. The traditional Alsatian coiffe, for example, signified for the Germans Alsace's underlying German ethnicity while the French saw it as a symbol of resistance to German rule. Alsatian women, however, did not conform to such stereotyped expectations. Under certain circumstances, they would identify with either the French or the Germans. Yet their affiliation was always provisional—a negotiation not just between the center and the periphery, but between two centers and a periphery. Alsatian women's ambivalence suggests a third, Alsatian, cultural identity capable of weathering French and German nationalist claims.