Lecture on February 17, 2026, 6 p.m., by Florentine Pramann M.A.

"19 pretty young ladies on duty in uniform" was the headline in the Hanoverian newspaper Bild in 1982. A year earlier, the headline read "With charm and a pistol. 12 policewomen will soon be on patrol in Hanover": "They all look chic in their green skirts and brown blouses. They can even tie their own ties." When the first policewomen in uniform took to the streets of Lower Saxony, the media response and public attention were huge. At that time, people were already familiar with traffic wardens and female officers in the criminal investigation department were also a familiar sight - but women in the police force were a new sight and met with great astonishment. At the end of 1980, Lower Saxony's Minister of the Interior, Dr. Egbert Möcklinghoff, announced that women would also be recruited into the Lower Saxony police force from 1981 as part of a pilot scheme, as they were "basically just as suitable for the police profession as men." But how did the integration of women into the Lower Saxony police force take place? What problems, opportunities and adaptation processes did they encounter? And what ideas of masculinity and femininity accompanied this process? Florentine Pramann will explore these and other questions in the course of her lecture, providing an insight not only into the police force itself, but also into the quest for equality at the time.

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Florentine Pramann completed her master's degree in history and political economy at Leibniz Universität Hannover in 2024. During her studies, she worked as an assistant at various institutes and projects, including the Institute for Didactics of Democracy. Since June 2021, she has also been a freelancer at the Historical Museum, where she works primarily in education.