One of Germany's best known television personalities has spawned a national debate by telling women they should be content as stay-at-home housewives and mothers.

German TV news reader Eva Herman encourages women to rediscover their femininity in her book "Das Eva Prinzip". [DPA]

Eva Herman blond, rich, famous, married four times and the mother of one child has been in the headlines with her anti-feminist arguments, contained in a new best-selling book.

Weeks before the book hit the stores, pre-publicity hype had turned Herman from a sweet-faced prime-time news anchorwoman into the most controversial woman in the country.

"Women simply cannot pursue a career and raise children properly at the same time," she said in a news conference ahead of the book's publication. "They can't raise children properly and they can't pursue a career properly. The two things simply don't go together. And it is a grave mistake for women to miss out on raising children, which is their God-given duty."

In a nation governed by a childless woman, Chancellor Angela Merkel, those were fighting words. Merkel herself declined to comment on the remarks, saying she had affairs of state to look into.

But response was quick from many working mothers in a nation where over half of all families are reliant on two incomes.

"This is not the 19th century when women wore corsets and were not allowed out on the streets without chaperones," said Regina Seidel, head of the German Businesswomen's Association.

"This is the 21st century and this is Western Europe and we have the best-educated and most liberated women of all time. And a lot of them want to pursue careers and also raise families, and that is proving to be a very good development for humankind."

Working mothers throughout Germany have joined the anti-Herman bandwagon.

"I have a 3-year-old daughter and am nine months pregnant with my second child and I have a beauty salon to run," says Karina Brendal in the Baltic port of Luebeck. "It's not easy, I'll admit. But I love my business and I can't imagine just being home with the children all day."

Herman herself, a 47-year-old celebrity best known as anchorwoman on the most-watched evening news show on German television and also as a late-night TV talk show host, says she has received thousands of letters and emails since the book was published on September 8. She insists 90 per cent of them were positive.

But high-profile women in business and politics were not among them.

"I am quite upset that a woman whom I've hitherto held in high regard should write such utter rubbish," said Renate Schmidt, who was minister for family affairs in the cabinet of former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. "It is utter and absolute rubbish. And I can't believe she actually wrote it."

The initial print run of 50,000 copies was already reported to be sold out when Herman held a news conference to clarify her remarks and to protest that she had been misunderstood.

"Women should go back to being women. We desperately yearn for someone to look after us, for a home and a family as we try to cope with a man's world. Our relationships break down faster and faster. We opt out of having children or, if we have them, we end up putting them in other people's hands. Our future as women is at stake," she said.

In the whole debate, male voices have been largely absent.

"If a man had dared to say these things," said Martin Sommerauer, a 33-year-old father pushing a baby in a stroller through the streets of Luebeck, "he would have been strung up by his heels."

But one male voice joined the debate. In a front-page article in Germany's biggest tabloid paper, Herman's first husband published an open letter in which he countered all of his ex-wife's arguments.

"Dear Eva," wrote 55-year-old Werner Herman, "you were the one who always wanted to pursue a career and you were the one (not I) who did not want to have children."

He added, "You didn't do housework because we had a maid who took care of all the housework, except for flower arranging, which was your specialty."

Quoting a passage from his ex-wife's book in which she calls on women to sacrifice their dreams of a career in order to stay home, he wrote: "I don't believe, Eva, that you would ever be prepared to sacrifice your dreams of a career and a big salary. You have a standard of living to maintain and I have no doubt that you will do everything in your power to maintain that standard of living."