“Assume your Wonder Woman stance,” I advised my disgruntled teenage daughter.

Her best laid plans had gone awry, and now she was reduced to exasperated handwringing. She needed some secret superpowers – invulnerable strength, warp speed, the handy capacity of dodging bullets to fly high above the Sturm und Drang of adolescent disappointment. My general understanding of superheroes was roughly that they were the modern equivalent of Greek mythology – commissioned by Zeus to protect mankind, champion liberty, and generally knock the stuffing out of evil.

It was our joke, but also meant: Mom wants you to summon your inner heroine to conquer yourself when things go pear-shaped. Attitude is the filter that sets the colors of your worldview. Foster above all else the intention to overcome, and eventually things will turn out fine. 

After my daughter watched a Wonder Woman movie at a birthday party, I did too. Action-packed and exciting, the 2017 Gal Gadot film pitted the Amazon princess Diana of Themyscira against Ares, god of war, in a World War I setting. I didn’t know much about Wonder Woman besides a vague understanding that she was a feminine force for the good. Online reviews of the movie were overwhelmingly positive. Could this be the perfect role model every mother dreams of?

Yet there was something about its vision of womanhood that bothered me. I wondered about the message and where it was coming from. Who invented Wonder Woman, the ultimate badass girl-power symbol and protector of humanity, and why is she so popular that she swamps toy store shelves and her posters adorn bedroom walls? Boy, was I surprised to learn that this famous heroine sprang from the mind of a male psychologist.

I decided that our house would not be needing any Wonder Woman action figures, because it has a little protectress already. A small figurine stands on a high shelf in our living room, out of range, I hope, from my youngest son’s Nerf blaster darts. Her travels began with my Aunt Rosie, a midwife who delivered hundreds of babies but had no biological children of her own. A month after her death in 2019, I received her final gift, saved for me from her most treasured belongings – a bubble-wrapped parcel that had voyaged from New York State to my home in rural Australia.

Upon its arrival, I clipped the tape and released a small porcelain statuette – a brunette girl holding out a fistful of red flowers. She stood about four inches in height, on the palm of my hand. I looked into the tiny face. A singular, almost defiant spirit radiated from the little figurine, pulsating something good and holy back at me.

I held a “Hummel,” labeled at the base: Forever Yours. She was familiar to me because my childhood had been full of Hummel’s art, mostly postcards of children and angels that I plastered around my bed at Christmas and Easter. As I stood on tiptoes to set her in place, I was a young girl again, putting up a memento to safeguard my space. From there, looking down on the ebb and flow of family life, Forever Yours radiates the cheerful innocence and purity of childhood into our home.

Photograph by Album / Alamy Stock Photo.

The first Hummel figurines were displayed at the Leipzig Spring Fair in 1935, launched by W. Goebel Porzellanfabrik, a porcelain manufacturer from Rödental, Germany. These three-dimensional models were of idyllic childhood images, based on the work of a German artist, Maria Innocentia Hummel. Hummels had an air of both the virtuous and religious.

By the end of 1935, forty-six different figurines were available for sale and already appearing in the United States. Over the next seventy-three years, hundreds of thousands of figurines, cast from original and replica images, were crafted in Goebel factories, then distributed around the world. By the time production ceased in 2008, the world was awash in porcelain figurines and memorabilia. Classified by current and former owners as both kitschy and collectible, Hummel art peaked in monetary value as collector’s items in the late 1970s.

Today the rarest 1935 Hummel editions have an estimated market value of $20,000, while later rare editions might bring in $3,000 to $5,000. All the rest, sold here and there by small fan clubs online, may bring in between $5 and $45.

Aunt Rosie (having made a vow of poverty as a member of the Bruderhof) had little knowledge of the monetary worth of a collectible item. To her, the value of the little porcelain figure lay in something else – some element of humanity it represented, an image of what she held dear.

As it turns out, Hummel had something in common with many a superhero: she faced down a dictator and came out on top. The difference is, she did so in real life.

Berta Hummel was the third of six children, born in 1909 in Bavaria. Hummel, meaning “bumblebee” in German, personified a happy childhood in an industrious family. Hummel’s artistic ability was noticeable from early on, her talent further encouraged by her father, who urged her to apply to the elite Academy of Applied Arts in Munich. She was accepted, a feat few women could dream of at the time.

It came therefore as a great shock to her fellow students and teachers when, one year prior to her graduation from the famous art school in 1930, Hummel requested admission to a Franciscan convent.

Few could understand why a rising star would exchange artistic glory for a lowly life of poverty, chastity, and obedience to God. Becoming a nun meant voluntarily giving up her independence. Even creativity itself must be laid down in submission. But Hummel turned her mind and heart to a new life, one of silence, contemplation, and prayer. In April 1931, one month after graduating from art school at the top of her class, she entered the convent as a candidate. She was twenty-one years old.

Her letters home attest to both a difficult adjustment and a sense of deep fulfillment: “Dear Papa, I am so happy, and happier from day to day, to be able to be here; though the sacrifices are great, the joy and happiness are that much greater.” When she witnessed other sisters taking their final vows, she wrote, “Rejoice with me. I realize that more clearly every day and all the more because I have seen how it is in the world and what the world calls happiness.”

Hummel was assigned to work in the parament workshop creating decorative liturgical textiles. She began to produce commissioned artwork for the convent in 1933, the same year she assumed the habit, adopting the name Maria Innocentia. A book of her art, Hummel-Buch, came out near the end of 1934, and by spring of the following year, the first figurines based on her paintings went into production. In 1935 the convent sent her back to school for further art studies.

Meanwhile, as Hummel’s fame as an artist took off, the Nazi influence spread across Germany and beyond.

William Moulton Marsden was born in 1893, sixteen years before Hummel. He was a successful businessman and published author, whose accomplishments included the invention of an early lie detector test, and psychological work on human behavior that is still credited in modern personality assessments. But he is best known for creating Wonder Woman.

His personal life was unorthodox: Marston fathered two children each with his wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, and their polyamorous life partner, Olive Byrne. Through Byrne, he maintained close connections to the birth control movement: her mother, Ethel Higgins Byrne, opened the first American birth control clinic in 1916, and her aunt was activist Margaret Sanger.

Marston wrote Emotions of Normal People in 1928 as an explanation of how humans interact with one another. His psychological theories revolved around the way people either forcefully or willingly coexist within society. He described all human interactions, for good or ill, as falling into two primary dynamics: either dominance and compliance, or inducement and submission. Marston believed dominance forced people to unhappily comply, but people who were induced tended to more happily submit. Since, in his view, men tended to be domineering, women, being in nature more selfless or loving, were better placed to bring about positive inducement. Although women could influence others to submit by inducement, they themselves need not be submissive.

In Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World's Most Famous Heroine, comic book historian Tim Hanley writes, “Marston’s theories idealized women and sexualized their power, basically stating that they were better suited to rule solely based on their ability to fulfill the desires of the men they subjugated.”

In 1941 Marston chose the artist H. G. Peter to collaborate with him on a new comic book character. Their creation, Wonder Woman, debuted as the demigoddess Diana, splashing onto the colorful pages of All-Star Comics in often erotic poses. Despite this decidedly adult characterization, millions of children read the comics.

Over time, the superheroine received several mechanical advantages, acquiring an invisible plane, a “Lasso of Truth,” and, perhaps most famously, “Bracelets of Submission.” The basic format Marston established for the character continues to this day. Although Marston’s comics were written for a juvenile audience, they were driven by his theories that had a lot to do with adult sexuality. “Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world,” Marston wrote.

He elaborated on this type of woman in The American Scholar in 1943:

Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women’s strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.

By now World War II was well underway. Marston contributed to the war effort by boosting morale on the home front through comics. Many of the early stories featured Wonder Woman focusing her considerable powers on pulverizing the hapless German and Japanese enemy.

Over in Germany, Hummel was in trouble with the real Nazis. The merry, childlike nature that infused her works stood in stark contrast to the hardened, fanatical ideals the Third Reich wished to promote. “My education is hard. Weakness must be hammered out,” Hitler wrote. “A youth will grow up before which the world will cower. A violent, domineering, fearless, brutal youth is what I want. … There must be nothing weak or tender within them. The uncaged, magnificent beast of prey must once again flash from their eyes.”

In 1937, the Nazi newspaper SA-Mann described Hummel’s work as “endless variations of the same type of hydrocephalic and club-footed creatures, with the tab always sticking out of their coats and the laces hanging from torn shoes for cute humor. … There is no room in the ranks of German artists for such as lack the necessary dependability and aptitude for carrying out their high responsibility.”

Then Hummel came face to face with Hitler himself. The Munich School of Applied Arts, where she had returned for further studies with the convent’s blessing, was directed by Richard Klein, the Führer’s favorite painter, who brought him around for a tour. Everyone was eager to please, toadying up to the dictator who himself claimed to be a talented artist. In every classroom, flustered students presented their work to Hitler for his comment and review.

At last, he came into the room with the nun. When Klein introduced “the famous Hummel,” Hitler was speechless. One of her sisters in the convent later recounted, “Maria Innocentia would speak full of consternation about his eyes, how for one moment he had looked into her face.”footnote Then he turned on his heel and exited the room with his entire retinue. It was not Hummel who turned away, but Hitler who beat a hasty retreat. They did not meet again in person, but in 1940 his chilling authority could be felt when the Nazi district leader Drautz of Heilbronn sent his forces to commandeer the convent. “Send the sisters home! Let their Jesus take care of them!” the Nazis mockingly advised. The military used the convent to house resettled Germans from the European theater and forced a few dozen of the sisters to remain to serve them. Hummel initially evacuated to her parents’ home but soon returned to be with the remaining sisters, spending her days in a cold basement cell.

French tanks finally liberated the convent in 1945. But Hummel was ill. Diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1944, her health was poor during her final years. She told her sister Centa, “You know, I think I am our family’s war sacrifice.” In 1946, at the age of thirty-seven, Hummel died in her beloved convent as the Angelus bell chimed.

Martson lived one year longer than Hummel. Once a highly renowned psychology professor at the cutting edge of groundbreaking research, Marston’s star waned as the scandals surrounding his controversial family, his more esoteric theories on sexuality and gender, and charges of federal business fraud engulfed and truncated his academic career. His reputation in tatters, Marston was no longer welcome in universities across the country and largely banned from teaching students and conducting research. Marston died of cancer in 1947. He never told the two sons of Olive Byrne that he was their father, and none of his children learned the true nature of his double life until after his death.

Despite these shadows falling across her past, Wonder Woman seems to have attained, in popular culture, the immortality gifted to her by the gods. After years of keeping to the flat comic book pages, she sprang into 3D life when she was mass produced by Mego Toys as chintzy, low-quality, doll-like “Super Gals” with identical bodies and costumes. Before the company went out of business in the early 1980s, dozens of variations were created and sold in blister packs and plastic boxes. These crude early figures with silk-screened paint eventually morphed into rubber bodies with bendable limbs. Nowadays, McFarlane Toys produces high-quality plastic Wonder Woman action figures. Avid collectors and fans add to her renown with every plastic clone as ongoing comic series and new movie spin-offs carve out lucrative markets worldwide.

The creators of Wonder Woman and Forever Yours are contemporaries, linked by history and an inverted symmetry in their lives and creative legacies.

Marston, the man credited with the invention of the lie detector, pushed questionable narratives surrounding womanhood into all his characters. His comics were a mouthpiece for his ideology of the strong, new women who would control the men who loved them by fulfilling their desires, and thus come to rule a happy and gratified world.   

Hummel, above all, remained true to her calling and her God. She lived out an uncomfortably real, sacrificial faith that came at a great cost to her self-determination, artistic realization, and personal safety. Having given up the option of becoming a mother, she let her love of children ring a clear, pure note amidst the blare and din of the Nazi propaganda machine, staring down Hitler himself and sending him scurrying.

My porcelain Hummel was molded in 1992 – the year of my high school graduating class, the year I left the shelter of my childhood home. She is as old as my first decisions to make my own way as a woman. Forever Yours is too young to be an original but holds within her the essence of a thought born from one Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel. Aunt Rosie left her to me, and I will one day pass her on to my daughter.

Hummel possessed the very characteristics Marston lauded, “force, strength, and power” combined with “tender, submissive, peace-loving.” Yet she never tried to fulfill any desires except one: to serve God. In my eyes, this Franciscan nun, costumed modestly in her black and white habit, was the true Wonder Woman.

Footnotes

1. Archive Convent Siessen, according to an oral account by M. Cecilia Denkinger, 1985 and 1994.