German woman

“ Everything would be at an end long before there was any chance of her turning into a happy German woman.
Certainly with a German man she would be angry at once. She thought of the men she had seen—in the streets, in cafés and gardens, the masters in the school, photographs in the girls’ albums. ”

“ CHAPTER XIX THE WOMAN IN THE SHADOW The handling of the always difficult question of the eternal feminine was firmly tackled by the German Government almost immediately after the outbreak of war.
To understand the differences between, the situation here and in, Germany it is necessary first to have a little understanding of the German woman and her status. With us, woman is treated as something apart, something on a pedestal. In Germany and in Austria the situation is reversed. The German man uses his home as a place to eat and sleep in, and be waited upon. ”

“ Women contributed to the progress of the storm and stress evolution toward classicism and emancipation; women inspired the bloom of literature; women gave Germany a stage and adorned it with their genius as actresses; women fostered the arts; women on the throne ruled Germany; a German woman, withal the greatest and vilest, Katharine the Great, raised Russia to the rank of a world power; women dominated the nobility and the courts; women elevated the bourgeoisie to higher standards of living and thinking; women strove to emancipate themselves and their peasant husbands from servitude. ”

“ In fact she was of that type of New German woman, taken all too little into account by our Press at the time of the War. There were many like her of the upper middle class, the professorial class, the lesser nobility to be found not only in Leipzig but in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfort, Halle, Bonn, München, Hannover, Bremen, Jena, Stuttgart, Cologne—nice to look at, extremely modern in education and good manners, tasteful in dress, speaking English marvellously well, highly accomplished in music or with some other art, advocates of the enfranchisement of women. ”

“ Those who have not lived in Germany have not even an inkling of the deep slow secret revolt against the insolent and inconsiderate attitude of the German male that had been growing among its women for some fifteen years before the outbreak of the war. They ventured no public meetings or militant acts of any sort, for men were far too strong for them yet, and the German woman is by nature retiring, however individualistic her ego. ”

“ That high exterior polish, those brilliant conversational talents, which I have seen in many English and French women, must be rare among the Germans: they are too simple, and too much in earnest. The trifling of a polished French woman is often most graceful; the trifling of an Englishwoman gracious and graceful; but the trifling of a German woman is, in comparison, heavy work; to use a common expression, it is not in them. ”

“ It is alien to the Teutonic feminine mind, because in Germany the spheres of men and women are so far apart and so unlike that the ideal of imitating men fails to present itself to a German woman's mind. The delay, moreover, in the arrival of the woman's movement in Germany had given time for a clearer view of that movement and a criticism of its defects to form even in the lands of its origin, so that the German woman can no longer be caught unawares by the cry for woman's rights. ”

“ If anything change the German character, it will be the German woman. She herself is changing rapidly—advancing, as we call it. Ten years ago no German woman caring for her reputation, hoping for a husband, would have dared to ride a bicycle: to-day they spin about the country in their thousands. The old folks shake their heads at them ”

“ There is, therefore, none of that striving, that vying with each other, which so often exhausts the nerves of the American woman and the purse of the husband. The German women give their time and attention to the "Four K's" that, in a German's eyes, should bound a woman's world, "Kaiser, Kinder, Kirche, Kuche" (Emperor, children, church and kitchen) .
The successful business man of New York or Chicago or San Francisco is surprised to find how docile and domestic the German woman is—no foolish extravagance, but a real devotion to husband and home, a real mother to her many children. ”

“ There has been a great change in the status of women in the last twenty-five years. The apophthegm of Pericles, or rather of Thucydides, “that woman is best who is least spoken of among men, either for good or evil,” is not so rigidly enforced. Increased wealth throughout Germany has left the German woman more leisure from the drudgery of the home. ”

“ But, of course, whatever you say about German women of the present day can be contradicted by anybody who chooses to describe one at either end of the scale, for the contrasts there are violent. You will find in the same street a woman who exercises a profession, lives more or less at her club, and is as independent as her brother; and women who are household drudges, with neither leisure nor spirit for any occupation that would enrich their minds. ”

“ Even love should have a deal of toughness of fibre in it to be worth much.
I must leave it to my readers to guess what I think of the German woman; indeed, it is of little consequence what any individual opinion is, if matter is given for the formation of an opinion by others. Truth cannot afford to be either gallant or merciless. There are women in Germany whom no man can know without respect, without admiration, without affection. ”

“ It was not long before Gard was saying to himself that if [127] Americans could be made to realize the status of womankind in Deutschland, they would not be so lured by the idea of sending their young folk thither for education. There would be a marked decline in their generous enthusiasm for all things German. In what civilized land does woman lead less in lofty, sublimated power or put a fainter stamp on the talents of the race? German art, music, poetry, language, politics, education, all are distinctively masculine. ”

“ German men, on the whole, treat their womenfolk kindly, but never as their equals. Over and over again German women have told me they envied the wives of Englishmen, and I should say that it is impossible for an English woman to be in Germany without feeling, if she understands what is going on around her, that she has suddenly lost caste. ”

“ I believe that, in the first place, the German girl and the German woman can make yet a further contribution. Millions of German women are on the land, in the fields, and performing the hardest work possible; they have to replace the men. ”

“ Women have always worked harder in Germany and at more kinds of work than in Britain or the States, and what, judging by London illustrated papers, seems to be a novelty—the engagement of women in agricultural and other pursuits—is just the natural way of things in Germany. It should always be remembered, when estimating German man-power and German ability to hold out, that the bulk of the work of civil life is being done by prisoners and women. A German woman and a prisoner of war, usually a Russian, working side by side in the fields is a common sight throughout 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. ”

“ A German woman's face, if beautiful at all, is exquisitely beautiful; but it depends mainly on the thoughtfulness of the eyes, and the bright hair. It rarely depends much upon the nose, which has perhaps a tendency to be—if anything—a little too broadish and flattish—perhaps one might even say in some cases, knobbish. (The Hartz mountains, I see, looking at them from Brunswick, have similar tendencies, less excusably and more decidedly.) ”

“ The Anglo-Saxon conception of feminine progress—beneficial as it has undoubtedly been in many respects—makes little impression in Germany, partly because it fails to appeal to the emotional Teutonic temperament, and partly because the established type of German life and civilization offers very small scope for its development. When Miss Susan Anthony, the veteran pioneer of woman's movements in the United States, was presented to the German Empress she expressed a hope that the Emperor would soon confer the suffrage on German women ”

“ It was the origin of all their heroines who inspirited men to brave deeds and encouraged the faint-hearted, from the Maid of Orleans onwards, they were nothing but men split in half; the authors personified their own grand qualities and then contrasted them with their own weaknesses in the person of the woman.
The century advanced, and woman in German literature was and remained the superior being, the exalted being, the more loving being; it was always she who was the most energetic in love and who led the way to action. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since the time of Hroswitha, Gertrude, the Matildas and Hildegard, the learned woman has never been the ideal woman in Germany. When Olympia Morati was on her way from Ferrara to Heidelberg to take the chair of Greek, she found the daughters of professors and humanists devoting themselves to sewing and embroidery instead of art and literature. Anna, the eldest daughter of Melanchthon, was almost alone among the German women of the Renaissance who had a knowledge of Latin. ”

“ I call on her once a year, and she returns the call a fortnight later; they ask us to dinner in the summer, and we ask them to dinner in the winter. By strictly keeping to this, we avoid all danger of that closer friendship which is only another name for frequent quarrels. She is a pattern of what a German country lady should be, and is not only a pretty woman but an energetic and practical one, and the combination is, to say the least, effective. ”

“ But suppose it begins to dawn upon her that a woman need not sacrifice her whole existence to household drudgery any more than a man need make himself nothing else than a business machine. Suppose she develop an ambition to take part in the social and national life. Then the influence of such a partner, healthy in body and therefore vigorous in mind, is bound to be both lasting and far-reaching.
For it must be borne in mind that the German man is exceptionally sentimental, and most easily influenced by his women folk. ”

“ But as regards the less personal arguments about woman, old-world Germany here speaks through the mouth of Nietzsche, as through that of Hartmann; the Germany whose women, in contrast to those of France and England, have for centuries been relegated to the domestic and strictly private life. We may recognise in these German writers generally that they have an eye for the profound antagonism and perpetual war between the sexes, which Stuart Mill neither saw nor understood. ”

“ She claims that in this way a woman is able to exercise a far more important and beneficial influence than by endeavoring to supplant men in professions essentially masculine, and certainly she herself constitutes a striking illustration of the truth of her contention, for the influence of the present German empress is felt throughout the length and breadth of the land—a gracious womanly influence in every sense of the word. ”

“ Ein junges Mädchen muss immer heiter sein, they would say reproachfully. But it does not follow that you are always heiter just because you are not twenty yet; especially in Germany, where girls are often anæmic and have headaches. However, perhaps the modern German maiden does not allow her elders to be so silly.
There are some other ways, too, in which my Backfisch of thirty years ago is typical of German womanhood both then and now. She is as good as gold, she is devoted to duty not to pleasure, and she is as guileless as a child. ”

“ Whilst they affected to emulate the stern virtues of man, they must have resigned that attractive softness in which principally consist the charm and weakness of woman. Conscious pride taught the German females to suppress every tender emotion that stood in competition with honour, and the first honour of the sex has ever been that of chastity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”