Women of the Teutonic Nations

by Hermann Schoenfeld

The movements of the women of the burgher classes were much more restricted than are those of the women of to-day. They might not walk abroad, or visit theatres, concerts, or public places, without their natural male companions; their chambermaids accompanied them even to church and to stores. Their natural field of activity, their world, was the house. The reading of novels was held in low esteem. Book learning was of a rather elementary kind, but there was plenty of good sense and home happiness, and sensible rearing of large families. It is a painful fact that from Bavaria, a country which was under the fullest sway of the Church, quite different testimony comes to us. We may realize, however, from the base tone of characteristic sermons, communicated to us in Nicolai's works, how low must have been the standard of the clergy of that time. The author and traveller Risbeck describes the degradation of the burgher classes in Bavaria, "where all vie in drinking and immorality, where next to every church stands a tavern and a base house. There a priest touches a fair maiden's bosom, which is half-covered with a 'scapulier.' There one inquires whether you are of her religion, for she will have nothing to do with a heretic. Another discusses during her debauch her spiritual sodalities, her pilgrimages and absolutions, etc., etc."

Owing to their gradual enfranchisement by Frederick the Great and Joseph II., the peasantry had mightily progressed from the brutal feudal oppression. The French Revolution also had some beneficent results for the German peasantry. After the terrible downfall of Prussia and Austria because of Napoleon's onslaughts, a great step forward was taken through the reforms of the statesman Stein, and the Revolution of 1848 accomplished the rest. Therewith the elevation of the women of the peasantry went hand in hand. The many and varied popular festivals of the German peasantry, with their peculiar customs and gaieties, reveal the fact that there was no lack of those harmless social pleasures which are the delight of woman, inasmuch as they give scope to characteristics peculiarly feminine. The festivals of singers, riflemen, and gymnasts, which were then and are to-day observed in nearly every little German town and village, also contributed to the enrichment of the life of the lower classes.

The chapter of wealth and poverty, of overwork and enforced idleness, belongs but incidentally to our theme, in so far as it affects the life and morality of German womanhood. While the record is, on the whole, favorable for the time, yet we cannot conceal the fact that with the pauperism of certain sections of Germany, due to wars, drought, princely maladministration, and unjust taxation, the female vices and crimes which are instigated by poverty attained terrible proportions. The great romantic authoress Bettina von Arnim has given us painful insight into the lives of the poor women in the "family-houses" of Berlin, a sad anticipation of our tenement houses. The female youth of the God-forsaken proletariat then, as to-day, fell almost irretrievable victims to the blasting, soul-consuming vice of prostitution. The numberless examples of the brave, courageous, noble self-sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of pure women of the poorest classes, who through overwork staggered into an early grave, are not statistically reported; but the statistics of prostitution of German cities, which are conscientiously recorded, reveal a terrible state of affairs, not worse than that of other great civilized nations, yet painful enough for the historian of culture.

But let us return to the shadow of the thrones of the second half of the eighteenth century. Under Maria Theresa's father, Charles VI. (1711-1740), the last Habsburger, French morals had been domesticated in Vienna. The monarch officially kept a mistress, maitresse en Hire. Lady Montague, a distinguished British peeress, reported that "every lady of rank in Vienna had two men, one who gave her his name, the other, who fulfilled the duties of the husband." These alliances were so general that it would have been a grievous offence not to invite the two men with the lady to a feast. It is true that with Maria Theresa's ascent to the throne a different morality was forced upon the unwilling court circles. The empress was virtuous and religious in the extreme, an admirable wife and mother, and maintained toward vice an unrelenting attitude.

The political greatness of Empress Maria Theresa does not belong to our theme. To characterize her, however, in a nutshell, we cannot forgo quoting her famous note to Prime Minister Kaunitz, with which she accompanied the treaty of the first partition of Poland in 1772: "When all my States were assailed and I did not know where to bear my child, I insisted upon my right and the help of God. But in this affair, in which not only manifest justice cries to heaven against us, but also right and common reason is against us, I must confess that I have never in my life felt such an anguish and such a shame to allow myself to be seen. Consider, Prince, what an example we give to all the world when, for a miserable piece of Poland or of Moldavia and Wallachia, we throw to the dogs our honor and reputation! I notice well that I stand alone and am no Longer en vigueur, therefore I let things take their course, though not without my greatest grief."

The moral example of Maria Theresa did not, however, in any great degree affect her gallant husband, Francis of Lorraine. His mistress, Princess Auersperg-Neipperg, had all the noble vices of her exalted position. The prime minister, Kaunitz, was utterly immoral, and even dared to take with him in his equipage his mistresses, who waited till his audience with the empress was over. When the latter once ventured to remonstrate with him, he replied: "Madam, I have come here to speak with you about your affairs, not about my own." The so-called chastity commission established by the empress to supervise the morals of Vienna succeeded in compelling those who persistently indulged in vices at least to exercise more caution and discretion; for she remained inexorable against scandalous debauch and inflicted ignominious chastisement upon the offenders, according to the Draconic code of the time. The result was that Vienna had its "Messalinas in toned down colors," as the British traveller Wraxall says, and that "the superstition of Austrian women, though it be traditional and immense, is by no means an obstacle to excesses; they sin, pray, confess, and begin anew."

The brilliant court at Vienna found its counterpart in the frugal, economical bourgeois court of Berlin, while that of Dresden, as mentioned in the foregoing chapters, was sunk in a mire of moral corruption. The memoirs of Marquise Sophie Wilhelmine of Baireuth, sister of Frederick the Great, describe, with humor and sometimes with ingenuous malice, the condition of the court at Dresden. The wife and children of the coarse soldier-king were treated with great harshness and almost deprived of the necessities of life. The marquise tells of a visit to Dresden in 1738, where Frederick fell in love with Countess Orzelska, a natural daughter and mistress of August the Strong. The pen refuses to record the history of the incest practised at that court with and among the three hundred and fifty-four "natural" children of August. August was jealous of the Crown Prince of Prussia, and therefore substituted for Countess Orzelska the beautiful Italian Formera, who became Frederick's first mistress. Later, however, at the return visit of the Saxon court to Berlin, as Scherr reports, Frederick again met the Countess Orzelska, a meeting which did not remain without consequences. Other details of the court life of the time cannot be put on paper: we must refer the reader to Scherr's discussion of Eighteenth Century Court Society, to Lessing's Emilia Galotti, in which in Italian disguise the great classicist chastises German princely rape, and to Schiller's drama, Cabal and Love, which proves that, unfortunately, the victims of princely lust were not always the willing courtesans; but frequently victims chosen from the people.

The court of Berlin is said by some to have assumed a higher standard of morality when Frederick ascended the throne. His consort, Princess Elizabeth of Brunswick, though a noble and pure woman, had never won his love, for he had been forced into the marriage by his father; she did not reside with her royal husband, whose life was now filled with his world-stirring military and political deeds and, for recreation, with music, history, and philosophy. On the other hand, from the report of the British ambassador, Lord Malmesbury (1772), it seems that the great king had not succeeded in raising the standard of morality among the inhabitants of his residence, as the ambassador, perhaps owing to splenetic exaggeration, writes that "there is in that capital neither an honest man nor a chaste woman. An absolute moral corruption prevails among both sexes of all classes, to which must be added a general impoverishment due to the fiscal oppressions of the actual king, Frederick the Great, and their love of luxury since the times of the king's grandfather. The men are constantly occupied with limited means in leading an immoral life. The women are harpies who have sunk so low more from want of modesty than anything else. They sell themselves to him who pays best, and delicacy or true love are to them unknown things." The great traveller and naturalist George Foster confirms that statement at least as regards women, whom he describes as "generally corrupted."

Though Frederick of Prussia and Joseph II. of Austria lived purely, at least after their respective accessions, and were, politically, epoch makers in history, they were both succeeded by rulers who were morally and politically decadent. Leopold of Austria (1790-1792) died after a reign of but two years, his death being caused by sexual excesses and debauchery with his German and Italian concubines. His private cabinet was, after his death, found to be a true "arsenal of lust."

Still more disastrous to Prussia proved the sovereignty of Frederick William II., nephew of the great Frederick; for during his calamitous reign of eleven years (1786-1797) this monarch disorganized the solid forces of the realm to such an extent that, a few years later, at the battle of Jena (1806), Napoleon succeeded, as it were with one blow, in overturning the proud structure of Frederick's state.