A minor cause of woman's degradation in this unhappy age of her history was the prevalence of drunkenness. An official map was once issued that showed drinking districts, places being marked as "ever drunk," "mostly drunk," "half drunk," etc. "No drunk" did not exist even as an imaginary geographical line.
From the lowest strata of society to the highest women were made miserable by this evil of intemperance. The intoxicated peasant knocked his wife down and kicked her. The cultured prince, inflamed by wine and anger, slapped my lady's face at the royal dinner table before the whole court.
Riehl, in his History of the Physical Development of the German People, devotes one chapter to the gradual "Divergence of the Sexes." He makes the interesting suggestion, which reflection and observation seem to confirm, that three hundred years ago woman was far more masculine in her personal appearance, even in her anatomy and physical strength, than now. He calls attention to the almost manly expression and cast of features shown in the portraits of bygone famous beauties like Marie Stuart and others.
Louisa of Orange-Nassau, wife of the great elector, Frederick William (1640-1688), was a remarkable woman. She was self-poised, loving, earnest, virtuous, pious in a helpful, practical fashion, founding girls' schools, hospitals, and similar institutions of ethical and civic value, and interested in every department of her husband's manifold activity. When he travelled, she journeyed with him, carefully watching to keep away from him both draughts and bores. On a long military march of four hundred miles from Berlin to the relief of Konigsberg she accompanied him, sharing all his hardships without a complaint.
Frederick William built for his wife a pretty country place north of Berlin, which they called Oranienburg (Orange Burg). Louisa made this place a genuine Dutch homestead. Much of Frederick William's youth was spent in Holland, where he wooed and won his bride. Theirs was a true love marriage. Louisa bore him two sons; the elder died young, the younger, Frederick, became the first king of Prussia.
Frederick William was often in a state of ebullition, and many women would have found life with him a hell upon earth. But Louisa of Orange had love, patience, and great good sense. She was happy in his love, and he in hers. "At the moment of her death," says Carlyle, "when speech had fled, he felt from her hand, which lay in his, three slight, slight pressures. 'Farewell!' thrice mutely spoken in that manner, not easy to forget in this world."
Reasons of state compelled the elector to contract another marriage. His second wife, Dorothea of Holstein, was a most practical housewife and gardener. Under her energetic direction the palace shone like a new pin. She took a great interest in the planting of trees. Unter den Linden, the now fashionable avenue of Berlin, was, primarily, a project of Dorothea's. Her dairy was wonderfully remunerative, and it was even rumored that she held a controlling interest in a brewery. Thrifty Dorothea certainly was; comfortable to live with, either as wife or stepmother, she evidently was not. She never filled the vacant place in Frederick William's heart. "Ah! my poor Louisa," the great elector, now growing to be the old elector, often exclaimed; "I have not my dear Louisa now. To whom shall I turn for help and comfort?"
Between Dorothea and her stepson, the crown prince Frederick, a constant state of warfare existed. Political enemies even accused Dorothea, without a shadow of truth, of attempting to poison him. At last Frederick withdrew entirely from his father's court, leaving his stepmother and his four stepbrothers in possession of the field. This wearing domestic friction, combined with much political opposition, embittered the last years of the elector's life. He died in 1688; but he had not lived in vain. His private life was honorable; his morals were above reproach. In his conjugal fidelity, he stands a solitary figure upon the threshold of a new and still more debased age.
War was not the sole cause of woman's degradation in this unhappy period. French influence, proceeding from the brilliant, evil court of Louis XIV. (1643-1715), debased her incalculably. Like a moral miasma, this influence permeated every stratum of German society. Upon the innocent and the guilty woman alike its effect was deadly. This destructive conquest over the brain and soul of Germany was not made in a single generation, for, in the beginning, men of the stamp of the great elector and women like his beloved Louisa fought against the subtle, poisonous influence.
For half a century a German princess lived at the very fountain head of corruption, the court of Louis XIV., and remained pure. Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate was a granddaughter of Elizabeth Stuart. Her father was Carl Ludwig, Prince of the Palatinate, to whom had been restored a part of his paternal inheritance the Rhine Palatinate. She was educated by her father's sister, Sophia, Electress of Hanover, whom she loved devotedly. To this aunt, through fifty years of life in a corrupt and foreign atmosphere, which to the end she hated, the exiled German princess poured out her heart in letters that, to the historian, have proved of priceless value. Ranke says: "Nowhere else is the uncleanness of French and German national spirit during this epoch so perfectly photographed as in the correspondence of Elizabeth of Orleans with her aunt, the Electress of Hanover."