 Although they had little prior journalistic training and no start-up capital, their aim was to encourage other women to advocate for increasing power and political responsibility.The title was inspired by the central character of Bertolt Brecht's 1939 play "Mother Courage and Her Children", whom the editors saw as a "self-directed woman ... not a starry-eyed idealist but neither is she satisfied with the status quo".To raise funds for the printing of the first issue, the editors held a women's festival in Berlin.