Other nations are proud of their great men even before they are dead; not so the Germans. Nor are the Germans really a literary nation, as a whole. Many books are written there, but they rarely come under the head of literature; and their circulation, on the average, is not one-tenth that of English, French, and American books. Beer is more popular than books.
No, the pedantic erudition, which alone is officially honoured in Germany, is not synonymous with Mental Culture. It does not vivify the features sufficiently to mould them into plastic shape. Hence the prevalence of the “spongy features” and Teutonic “potato-faces” referred to by a German artist quoted in the chapter on Italian Beauty. “The true national character of the Germans is clumsiness,” says Schopenhauer; and again: “The Germans are distinguished from all other nations by the slovenliness of their style, as of their dress.” And the Swiss Professor, H. F. Amiel, remarks in his Journal Intime that “the notion of ‘bad taste’ seems to have no place in German æsthetics. Their elegance has no grace in it; they cannot understand the enormous difference there is between distinction (which is gentlemanly, ladylike) and their stiff Vornehmheit. Their imagination lacks style, training, education, and knowledge of the world; it has an ill-bred air even in its Sunday dress. The race is poetical and intelligent, but common and ill-mannered.”
It must be admitted, however, that the Germans have made great progress in external refinement and manners since their late war with France, one of the greatest advantages of which to them was that it destroyed the mystic halo which had for many generations surrounded the important Parisian Fashion Fetish. What the Germans need now is a period of Anglomania. They have already ceased to laugh at the Englishman for travelling with his bath-tub, and have found it worth while to provide him with that commodity in the hotels. In course of time bath-tubs in private German houses may be expected to become more common than they are now; and after a generation or two shall have given proper attention to skin-hygiene, freckles and other cutaneous blemishes will be less prevalent than at present. In their houses the Germans are really as tidy as any nation; but their indifference to the appearance of their collars and cuffs often leads one to suspect the contrary.
The next thing the Germans ought to learn of the English is greater gallantry toward the women, who are too apt to be looked upon as household drudges, whom it is not necessary to educate or amuse. Especially ruinous to female Beauty is the hard field labour required of the women who have the misfortune to belong to a nation which has not yet outgrown its condition of mediæval militarism. A German physician, quoted by Dr. Ploss, notes the fact that the beauty and bloom of youth last but a short time with the working classes of North Germany: “The hard labour performed before the body is fully developed too easily destroys the plumpness, which is an essential element of beauty, draws furrows in the face, and makes the figure stiff and angular. Often have I taken a mother who showed me her child for its grandmother.”
The author of German Home Life remarks in a similar vein: “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. The ‘pale unripened beauties of the North’ do not ripen, they fade.” And no wonder, for either the girls belong to the poorer classes and lose their beauty prematurely from overwork; or, if they are of the well-to-do classes, they get no Beauty-preserving exercise at all. “German girls,” the Countess Von Bothmer continues, “have no outdoor amusements, if we except skating when the winter proves favourable. Boating, riding, archery, swimming, croquet—all the active, healthy outdoor life which English maidens are allowed to share and to enjoy with their brothers is unknown to them.... Such diversions are looked upon by the girls themselves as bold, coarse, and unfeminine.... It is in vain that you tell them such exercises, far from unsexing them, fit them all the better for the duties of their sex; it is difficult for them to hear you out and not show the scorn they entertain for you.”
German men, as a rule, are much handsomer than their sisters, and they owe this superiority partly to the fact that their minds are not so vacant, and partly to the prolonged physical training which is the one redeeming feature of their military system. Nevertheless, especially in South Germany, the men too often lose their fine manly proportions in an enormous embonpoint, the penalty of drinking too much beer. Nor is the acquisition of a turnip shape the only bad result of the German habit of spending every evening in a tavern. The air in these beer-houses is so filthy, so soaked with vile tobacco smoke and nicotine, that after sitting in it for an hour the odour haunts one’s clothes for a week, and poisons the lungs for a month. It is this foul atmosphere, combined with the stupefying effect of the beer, that accounts for German heaviness and clumsiness in appearance, attitude, gait, and literary style.
These disadvantages might be to some extent neutralised if, on returning to his bedroom, the German would spend the rest of the night, at least, in fresh air. But no! He dreads the balmy night air as he would a dragon’s breath, although Professor Reclam and other great authorities on Hygiene have told him a million and sixty times that night air is more salubrious than day air, except in swampy regions.
Tourists in Switzerland often wonder why it is that the natives, notwithstanding their glorious Alpine air, are, with rare exceptions, so utterly devoid of Beauty. Partly this is due to the hard labour and scanty food to which most of them are condemned; but the main reason is that they enjoy their health-laden air only in the daytime and in summer. At night and in winter they close their windows hermetically, and in the morning the atmosphere in such a room is something which no one who has ever breathed it will ever forget.
When the Germans visit Switzerland they carefully imitate the example of these ignorant peasants, thus depriving themselves of all the benefits of an Alpine tour. An eye-witness last summer told me of the following encounter in a Swiss hotel between an English lady and a German. The dining-room being hot to suffocation, the English lady opened a window, whereupon the German immediately got up and closed it. The English lady opened it again, and again it was closed; whereupon she pushed her elbow through the glass, and thenceforth enjoyed the fresh, fragrant air, to the horror and indignation of the assembled Teutons.
All these remarks of course apply to the Germans only in a very general way. 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; and the most roguish blue eyes I have ever seen, to a Würtemberg girl. Regular Italian features are not uncommon in Bavaria, although snub-noses are most frequent there. The Bavarian complexion, though somewhat too pale, is beautifully clear; and I have almost come to the conclusion that this is in some way connected with the national habit of drinking beer three times a day. It might be worth while to inquire whether there is a beautifying ingredient in beer which might be obtained without its stupefying effects.