Introduction: The emergence of the virginal mother in the eighteenth century
The creation of the virginal mother: Sophie von La Roche's The history of Lady Sophia Sternheim
The ideal virgin and the failed mother: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The sorrows of young Werther, Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship, and Faust I
The popular virginal mother: E. Marlitt's The old maid's secret and The second wife
The "real" virginal mother: caregiving and motherhood in the autobiographies of Hedwig Dohm, Adelheid Popp, and Ottilie Baader
The virginal mother of orphans and the vamp anti-mother: Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang's Metropolis
Conclusion: The decline of the virginal mother and the rise of the biological mother under the Third Reich.