Women of the Teutonic Nations

by Hermann Schoenfeld

That deeds of heroism were done by German women outside of the battlefield, appears from many sources and particularly from Goethe's song of praise for the glory of Johanna Sebus, a maiden of seventeen years, who, during the flooding of the Rhine, January 13, 1809, saved first her mother, then returned to save a neighbor and her children, and then was herself swept away by the flood.

In the face of such proofs of heroism, we count but lightly against German womanhood a number of degraded women of noble, even princely birth, who helped to make such courts as that of Jerôme of Westphalia abodes of licentiousness. In German cities, especially in Berlin, where the conquerors were quartered, German ladies conducted themselves "with much dignity, and such reserve as was becoming them toward the enemies of their fathers, husbands, and brothers." Only the dregs of society were at the disposal of the invaders. Voss reports that "the frequentation of the temples of lust was so great that the number of Venus's priestesses was found to be too small." The shamelessness of vile women became intolerable. Unnatural vices arose, and continued despite the severity of the law, which the police strove to enforce rigidly.

During the years of reconstruction, however, which carried with them the social liberation of the peasant-serfs and the Jews, the autonomy of the communes unavoidably produced a mighty advance in the emancipation of women. The frivolity and immorality of Romanticism, which appeared barefaced in Schlegel's Lucinde and in the lives of almost all the romanticists in their intercourse with women, was indignantly rejected in those troubled times, and a return to simple virtue, chastity, and housewifely qualities was preached and inaugurated. German youths began to yearn for pure and pious women, such as had fought in male attire for the fatherland, or healed the wounded patriots in the hospitals, or worked, suffered, and sacrificed fortune, comfort, and personal interests for the holy cause.

In the thirties of the nineteenth century, however, there was again, in the so-called Young-German movement, a retrogression to the lax morality of the first romanticists. The moral code of abstinence was represented as an antiquated conventionality, and the emancipation of the flesh was preached. Naturally the emancipation of woman became a principle of the new doctrine. Again Rahel Levin, the spirited Jewess, and Bettina Brentano (wife of Arnim), the free patrician, led the campaign, and added to arts and letters the fields hitherto alone accessible to women politics and religion. Freedom from the bonds of convention, liberation from social limitations, was the aim of the advanced women. They preached the extreme cultivation of their own individuality. They recognized only the perfection of love and beauty. The most earnest exponent of that exaggerated doctrine was Charlotte Stieglitz, who, to arouse her weakling husband from his indifference, committed suicide. By her voluntary death she wished to elevate him to activity, to heroism; desiring greatness for him, she thought she must inflict upon him a profound pain. Such exaltation and unnaturalness proves what an abyss threatens even the noblest woman when she once leaves the path of the normal. But to the Young Germans Charlotte Stieglitz became the heroine of the movement in which she had part. Theodor Mundt (died 1861) became the principal exponent of that unsound movement in Berlin. He was an author of repute, but is to us more important as the husband of the celebrated authoress Luise Muhlbach, a serene, active, inspiring hostess, whose house became in the forties a centre of literary sociability in Berlin. She was also the writer of many historical novels, all of which are of great interest, though some are of doubtful value.

How confused the moral code of that time was appears, for instance, from Gutzkow's recommendation of a reform. He says: "Be not ashamed of passion, and do not take morality as an institution of the State!... The sole priest who shall bind the hearts, shall be a moment of rapture, not the Church with its ceremonies and well-groomed servants...."

Saint-Simonism carried those licentious maxims to the extreme. Thus, the legitimate aspirations of woman to be freed from the fetters of the Middle Ages were, from the beginning, severely injured by lack of moderation. Instead of a claim for a systematic raising of the standards of education, impossible demands were made: immediate admission of women to the universities (without preparatory training), political equality with men, participation in the administration of the state, and even abolition of the fetters of marriage. Of course, opposition arose everywhere, and has neutralized or delayed even rightful claims to this day. The aspirations for material independence on the basis of free work succeeded to a certain extent: women entered many walks of life hitherto closed to them.

The most thoughtful and impressive champion of a reasonable emancipation of woman was Fanny Lewald. High moral earnestness and a clear intelligence pervade her writings, which are, however, lacking in poetic feeling. But she is a truly patriotic German woman who sees the need of a practical evolution of woman's education and activity in the interest of the entire nation. Her doctrine is the assurance that the spread of culture will wipe out all artificial differences of caste, religion, and sex, and thus solve all the questions of a genuine, legitimate emancipation.

Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn illustrates an opposite tendency in the emancipation of woman. Born in a high sphere and miseducated by a perverse father in the prejudices of her station, she has a perverted view of her sisters of the people, of their struggles and desires and possibilities. Only the "noblesse," which is free from the cares of physical needs, is to her worthy of higher endeavors. The world of highborn womanhood alone attracts her attention. Her study of this world culminates in her opposition to marriage, which is to her an oppressive fetter, handicaps the enjoyment of life, and, therefore, is in almost all her novels the object of ridicule, and its abolition is recommended. Her heroines are, therefore, sensuous egotists who according to her own words seek nothing, wish for nothing, desire nothing but their own satisfaction, without regard to others. Thus, her novels, with their gospel of barefaced selfishness, are frequently offensive, but the atmosphere of "high society" has never been depicted with such masterly and many-colored vivacity as by Ida Hahn-Hahn.

The revolutionary year of 1848, which shattered many cherished idols which she had formerly deemed eternal, made a profound impression upon her. Under the influence of the eloquent Baron von Kettler, later Bishop of Mainz, who explained to her the great social questions of that stirring time, she became converted to Catholicism. The haughty spoiled child of the world became an expiating Magdalena; her work From Babylon to Jerusalem (Mainz, 1851) presents a wonderfully interesting revelation of a forceful and original heart. Instead of liberating woman from the yoke of man, she now endeavors, through the influence of the Catholic Church, to liberate sinful, passionate mankind from earthly shackles. When she died, in 1880, she left an immense amount of literature, more or less valuable, but always intensely interesting to the searcher of woman's soul and achievements.

Ida von Duringsfeld was a poet and novelist of considerable force. Her novels present strong characters and fine descriptions of landscape and architecture; her translations of Czech and Italian popular songs are excellent; her work on Proverbs of the Germanic and Romance Peoples, published by her in collaboration with her husband (Leipzig, 1875), is very meritorious. What type of woman she must have been appears from the fact that when she died suddenly on a journey, her husband, unable to live without her, killed himself the next day, to be buried beside her.