German girl

“ Among all classes in Germany specimens of Beauty may be found that could hardly be surpassed anywhere else. Pretty faces are more frequent than elegant figures, which commonly are too robust and masculine. German girls are the most domestic and amiable in the world, and it is their amiability and depth of feeling that gives their mouth such a sweet expression and refined outlines. When German girls are educated, as often they are in America, their faces beam in irresistible beauty. The most beautiful non-Spanish eyes I have ever seen belonged to a girl in Baden ”

“ I will not here describe the excellence or defect of either; but will, if it be in my power, say a word as to this difference. The German girl of one-and-twenty,—our Isa’s age,—is more sedate, more womanly, more meditative than her English sister. The world’s work is more in her thoughts, and the world’s amusements less so. She probably knows less of those things which women learn than the English girl, but that which she does know is nearer to her hand for use. She is not so much accustomed to society, but nevertheless she is more mistress of her own manner. ”

“ How much more numerous the motives which can be given an American girl than one who lives on foreign soil! Look at the German girl, for example. Her country arbitrarily divides its people into high and low. The peasant maiden has so long stayed one side of the barrier, she thinks she always must; so, with her scanty loaf of black bread near her on the ground, she leans against a tree, knits her stocking, and tends the flock. When night comes she goes home to her rude stone cottage, lifts a prayer to the Virgin, if she is an Austrian, and one for the king. ”

“ She is not taught to think so much of those things which flurry and disturb the mind, and therefore she is seldom flurried and disturbed. To both of them, love,—the idea of love,—must be the thought of all the most absorbing; for is it not fated for them that the joys and sorrows of their future life must depend upon it? But the idea of the German girl is the more realistic, and the less romantic. ”

“ It is not alone in matters of courtesy that young American ladies shock the Germans. Though a young lady has more freedom in Germany than in France and Italy, she is expected to conform carefully to the custom of going out in the evening or travelling only in company with a relative if a gentleman, or with an older lady. It is true that American girls are forgiven some liberties which no German girl would think of taking, on the ground of American customs ”

“ Austin says, "have no measure for the character of a German girl, brought up in comparative solitude, nurtured on poetry and religion, knowing little of the actual world, but holding close converse with the ideal in its grandest forms. She is capable of an enthusiasm we know not of." ”

“ The better grade of the poorer girls will be taught book-keeping and typewriting. They will be taught to be telephone operators, and how to wait on customers properly. But a girl will be taught only one of these branches, and she will be allowed to choose the one that she likes best.
Of course most German girls get married, but they must have some specialty to fall back on in case of the men going to war, or in the case of the loss of a husband, when they may be left with many little children to support. ”

“ Look at France, at England,--women are everywhere employed and the sphere of their capabilities enlarged, and the sex is held in higher estimation. Unfortunately, I cannot deny that the mass of German women are either mere household drudges, with never a thought beyond the material interests of the kitchen and nursery, or glittering dolls, with no idea of anything but the adornment of their persons. They understand little or nothing of politics, of the interests of their native land, of science, or of poetry; they go to art for amusement, not for instruction and refreshment. ”

“ In associating with young men, an English girl will always remember that in each one she so meets she may find an admirer whom she may possibly love, or an admirer whom she may probably be called on to repel. She is ever conscious of the fact of this position; and a romance is thus engendered which, if it may at times be dangerous, is at any rate always charming. But the German girl, in her simplicity, has no such consciousness. ”

“ You have only to place this type of young woman beside the Backfisch, who represents an older type quite fairly, to understand how far the modern German girl has travelled from the traditional lines. If you can imagine the Backfisch married and mentally little altered in her middle age, you can also imagine that she would find a daughter with the new ideas upsetting. ”

“ While there are, of course, quite a few exceptions, they, on the most part, cannot stand inspection.
“On the other hand, there is the German girl. People are apt to decry them by comparing the country girl of Germany with the city girl of other countries. I am sure that you, an American, will admit that you were most impressed with the musical voices of the women, their long silky hair and fine complexions. In those respects she cannot be compared with the women of any other country. The women as a rule are modest, orderly and home-loving. ”

“ But they are sufficiently widespread to express themselves in many modern essays, novels, and pamphlets, and even to support several magazines. The women holding them are of various types and quality, and are by no manner of means agreed with each other; while those women who are working steadily and discreetly for the progress of their sex condemn the extreme party, and consider them a check on all real advancement.
The German girl, then, is not always the simple creature tradition paints her. At any rate she reads novels and sees plays that would have been forbidden to her mother. ”

“ I felt I didn't like them to look at an English girl like that!
Muriel seemed to have no such thought as these Germans took their food from her hand and drew nearer to her, smiling into her face and answering the greeting she gave to them in their own tongue.
"You like working here on the land?" she asked them in the careful German that we had acquired in our Berliner pension.
"Yes, indeed, gracious young lady," returned the rosy-faced, dark-eyed German soldier. "It is much better here in the country. There is never anything going on in a town!" ”

“ Muriel, swinging her parasol, smiled graciously upon this compliment—from a German!
Standing there in that Welsh cornfield, watching this little interlude between that captured Hun and that pretty English girl, I couldn't help remembering the fate of other pretty girls, in countries less fortunate than ours, laid waste by these men.
Rosy girls of Flanders, neat black-haired girls of France, have been driven off into slavery and worse under the rule of the Germans. ”

“ Just as the women of Shakespeare and the women of Miss Austen are subtly kin to each other, inasmuch as they are English women, so Goethe's girl and the girl of the poor little schoolroom story are German in every pulse and fibre. ”

“ But the health of the German girls is commonly good except in the higher classes in the great capitals, where the same obnoxious agencies are to be found in Germany as in the whole world. But here also there is a very strong exception, or, better, a difference between America and Germany, as German girls are never accustomed to the free manners and modes of life of American girls. As a rule, in Germany, the mother directs the manner of living of the daughter entirely. ”

“ It is our habit to think that the American girl of English ancestry presents precisely the right modification of the—what shall I call it?—austerity of the purely English type, and which scorns the melancholy of Burne-Jones and Rossetti. The American girl of German parents is conspicuously with us, and very often is found supplying a fascinatingly fair phase without which our galaxy scarcely would be complete, adding a delightful sparkle to the demureness which we might not find so modified in Berlin or Bremen. ”

“ Miss Struhlenthal,—the pretty little Russ Prokofjefna,—Miss Julia,—and my own niece, my brother’s daughter, Charlotte Sander, consequently I have only to speak of the remaining three. But by the way, let me tell you,—not that the girl is my niece, my brother-german’s daughter, my near relative,—but you really should get a sight of her,—ascertain yourself what sort of a girl she is,—and then you will allow, that if your friend, the councillor, has eyes in his head at all, he would choose her in preference to any girl in Germany. ”

“ German girls are often charmingly pretty, with dazzling complexions, abundant beautiful hair, and clear lovely eyes; but the splendid matron, the sound, healthy, well-developed woman, who has lost no grain of beauty, and yet gained a certain magnificent maturity such as we in England see daily with daughters who might well be her youngest sisters—of such women the Fatherland has few specimens to show. ”

“ It has seemed to me, often, that the difference in the education of girls in America and in Germany, as regards their physical training, is, that in America it is marked by a great degree of recklessness; while in Germany, the erring, if it can be called erring, is on the side of anxious, extreme caution. Therefore beautiful American girls fade rapidly; while the German girls, who do not possess the same natural advantages, do possess, as a rule, good, permanent health, which goes hand-in-hand with happiness and enjoyment of life. ”

“ In Germany a woman does not arrive at her own gender till she marries and becomes somebody's Frau. Woman in general, girl, and miss are neuter; and the fried-fish girl is masculine. But if one little versed in German wished to tell you that he liked a fried sole, and said Ich liebe einen Backfisch, it might lead to misunderstandings. ”

“ I must add, that on the other hand she abstains from all physical exercise like gymnastics or dancing-lessons, protects herself most carefully against cold and wet, sleeps perhaps a little longer in the morning, and instead of taking a walk, lies down for an hour through the day. A party or ball at such a time would be looked upon by the mother with horror, and considered by the girl herself as a great impropriety. The care of her health is at all times, of importance to German women. ”

“ Grete Fromberg, Kurfürstenstrasse 132, Berlin, a German girl, would like to correspond with an English girl of good family, who takes great interest in music or painting, about sixteen or seventeen years of age; each writing in the language of the other, or both in English.
White Aster.—An English girl of fifteen would like to correspond in English with an Italian girl about her own age, or a year or two older.
Kate M. Buttifant, 49, Minet Avenue, Harlesden, London, N.W., aged fourteen and a half, desires to correspond with a well-educated French girl of about the same age. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII German Courtship
ONCE during the winter he tried on her a course of flirtation which he had learned very well in his Sophomore year. But German girls do not flirt. His arrows sank in feebly, impotently, as if her attention had the despairing resistance of a sandbag. Unperturbed she made nothing of it. He felt that she thought he was silly or had the rickets. So he speedily gave this up.
Thus he became aware how vastly different are courtship and other relations between young men and young women in America and in Germany. He asked himself.
"Are the German ways more civilized?" ”

“ Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print—I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:
“Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip?
“Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen.
“Gretchen. ”

“ It must be admitted, however, notwithstanding all these strictures, that there is much genuine Romantic Love in Germany, often differing in no wise from Anglo-American Love. At first sight it seems, indeed, as if chaperonage were as strict as in France; and no doubt many German girls are brought up on the spring-chicken-coyness system which regards every man as a hawk, and a signal for hiding away in a corner. But in general German girls have much more freedom than French girls. They may walk alone in the street in the daytime, go alone to the conservatory to attend a music-lesson. ”

“ I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence for this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that I was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the German Language. I was so impressed with this, that sometimes when she began to empty one of these sentences on me I unconsciously took the very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered; and if words had been water, I had been drowned, sure. She had exactly the German way; ”

“ Opposite, a family group sit discussing omelettes and a bottle of white wine. The father contented, good-humoured, and laughing; the small child grave and solemn, eating and drinking in business-like fashion; the mother smiling at both, yet not forgetting to eat.
I think one would learn to love these German women if one lived among them for long. There is something so sweet, so womanly, so genuine about them. They seem to shed around them, from their bright, good-tempered faces, a healthy atmosphere of all that is homely, and simple, and good. ”