The experienced archivist and historian of religious orders Helga Penz, in her book entitled Die Tüchtigkeit der Frauen (The Efficiency of Women), has done a splendid job exploring the history of the Catholic sisters’ convent Wiener Barmherzigen Schwestern (Viennese Sisters of Mercy) from its inception in 1832 to the end of World War II in 1945. The volume concentrates on the role this women’s religious order played in the creation of social welfare services in Vienna in particular, and more generally in Austria. The book has been nearly five years in the making and draws upon a wide range of archival and historical sources to build a detailed picture of the Viennese Sisters of Mercy and their sociopolitical contributions. The Sisters of Mercy at St. Vincent de Paul in Vienna, the Vinzenz Group Hospital Administration, and the Association of Religious Schools in Austria commissioned the research project that yielded this diligently investigated book.
Research on women’s religious orders being sparse, Penz’s work is a significant step toward filling a large gap in scholarship. In this context, Penz raises several interesting questions. How are women’s religious orders to be understood vis-à-vis traditional church history? What were the unique challenges they faced? How did they address these challenges in lieu of larger issues of women’s emancipation? Highlighting these questions, Penz argues convincingly that the Viennese Sisters of Mercy made instrumental contributions in the development of social welfare services, especially healthcare and education services for the poor, in Austria. The underlying thesis of Penz’s book is that women’s religious orders drew upon various religious interpretations to come up with highly innovative approaches to social problems as well as to keep up their welfare activities, even during changing political circumstances.
The book is divided into three parts, excluding the introduction, conclusion, and the detailed appendix. The introduction lays out the author’s approach and background literature on how religious orders have traditionally been studied. Here, Penz highlights the intricacies involved in the study of religious beliefs, practices, and experiences, especially pertaining to religious orders. Penz refers to the works of sociologist Michael Hochschild, the ethnologist Gertrud Hüwelmeier, and the social scientist Myriam Rutschmann and underscores the lack of sufficient exploration of the gendered identities of women in religious orders vis-à-vis their religious experiences. Penz’s intervention is to make up for this lack. Using discourse analysis, Penz selects texts and contexts from the nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries to examine the interactions between the internal and external aspects of women’s religiosity (17).
The first part of the book describes the mission of the Sisters of Mercy and the formation of their order. Penz details both the internal as well as the external life of the order in the nineteenth century. A view of the workings of the order, including its internal hierarchies and functioning, is provided. Being a women’s institution in a man’s world during the Habsburg period, the order faced considerable cynicism on a variety of fronts in addition to financial difficulties. Despite these challenges, through efficient management and innovative approaches, the order was able provide healthcare services. The second part of the book details the services provided by the order in the areas of healthcare and outreach to the poor. Principally, the Viennese Sisters of Mercy provided hospital management services. However, they also focused on providing childcare and schooling to poor families. Their approaches to the various services they provided aligned with their mission to nurture mankind through divine mercy.
The third part of the book deals with the order’s activities during the First Republic, the interwar period, and World War II. The early part of the twentieth century was an extremely turbulent period. Several movements including the women’s movement shaped the social climate in this time of political instability. The women’s movement, which took root in the late nineteenth century in the Habsburg realm, gained momentum during the Austrian First Republic. A key component of the women’s movement in Austria was the Catholic Women’s Movement. Penz argues that the Viennese Sisters of Mercy had a complicated and often contentious relationship with the Catholic Women’s Movement. The fascist dictatorships that arose in the 1930s disbanded several social democratic institutions, and Penz acknowledges that the Catholic Church aligned itself with these governments. However, she underscores that the Viennese Sisters of Mercy performed their activities the best they could in these complex political climates. The focus of this part of the book is how the Sisters navigated the difficult political situation. The brief conclusion provides cursory remarks on some interesting developments that affected the order. For example, the new Code of the Catholic Church of 1983 equalized male and female institutions, including in matters of leadership, thus taking an enormous leap forward in women’s emancipation in religious matters (336). The seventy-five-page appendix is a commendable yet laborious amalgamation of Sisters’ biographies and the order’s branches. While the appendix does reflect the extraordinary effort undertaken by Penz in tracing down the various primary sources, it is quite a tedious read.
Die Tüchtigkeit der Frauen is an extraordinary book in many ways. First, the author has taken painstaking efforts to track down, include, and interpret a variety of archival and primary sources. Second, the author’s writing style, while occasionally overly descriptive, is mostly very engaging and lively. Third, the author brings her tremendous expertise of twenty years of working on religious order to bear on her arguments. However, it should be noted that the author is obviously trying to promote the good qualities of the religious order. Even the order’s navigation of authoritarian political landscapes is shown as proof of its incredible capacity to adapt. The point is well taken. However, to get a more well-rounded perspective, this reader would have also liked to read about those instances when the order was less than noble in its activities. Overall, however, this book will be a fruitful read for any scholar interested in religious history, the history of women, and indeed the history of women’s religiosity, and this reader is impressed with its many good qualities.
