Women of the Teutonic Nations

by Hermann Schoenfeld

The changes in industrialism which began in the middle of the nineteenth century began to produce the mass misery of machinery with which the state was unable to cope. Crises were inevitable. The workingmen, grouped in industrial circles, deprived of the right of association for common protection, were often abused by employers, who had them entirely at their mercy. Wages were entirely insufficient; Hungerlohne became a technical term; women and children were forced to work in the factories to supply the deficit in the amount needed for the support of the family. Acute misery led to outbreaks like that of the Silesian weavers, whose misery inspired the modern social drama of Hauptmann; typhoid fever and diseases of starvation raged among the sufferers.

For the first time women entered the arena of the political movement. Societies of women were formed in many German cities. Names of gifted women sprang up everywhere. The social and political struggles of the time are reflected in the memoirs of an idealistic woman, Malwida von Meysenbug. Though reared in narrow aristocratic prejudices, she struggled through them to a democratic association with her suffering sisters of a lower social status. She bore the painful breach with her family which, owing to her liberalism, became inevitable. She demanded economic independence for woman, not only because labor ennobles, but because only the economically independent woman is free to live according to her convictions, "liberated from the threefold tyranny of dogmatism, convention, and the ignoble bonds of forced marriage." Woman is to cooperate in the great work of the regeneration of the nation. "How could," says she, "a nation regenerate itself and become free, if one-half of it is excluded from the careful, all-around preparation which true liberty demands for a nation as well as for individuals." An institution was already founded which was to accomplish this ideal. A university for females, at Hamburg, was to give to young women the necessary preparation for a higher mission than had been theirs. Energetic Emilie Wustenfeld was the soul of the foundation, Professor Karl Froebel its head. Its aim was to embrace "all the sciences which practical, social, and intellectual life in its highest spheres may require on the part of cultured women." It is a matter of regret that, owing to the lack of material support, the enterprise failed. Fraulein Meysenbug was, after the dissolution of the university, exiled from Berlin, whither she had turned, and went to England. Yet all traces of her influence are not lost in Germany. Small, slow, and painful attempts, an advance measured by steps, interposition of legitimate and illegitimate obstacles, appear everywhere in the movement.

Another eminent woman, Luise Otto, of Meissen, Saxony, a strong and able champion in prose and poetry for woman's rights, developed a definite programme for the movement: she demanded a profounder, a more national education, a closer connection of the German maiden with the affairs of the fatherland, through instruction in history, her education in schools of a high order, if possible leading up to the university standard, a training giving "solid moral strength, a religious mind, German depth of feeling." And these qualities must be instilled in the maidens of the people, of the proletariat as well as in those of the middle and upper classes. Luise Otto demanded that education to the very highest point be given to those able to receive it; that woman be raised to economic independence, that she may escape the necessity of a degrading marriage "for material caretaking only," or downright shame, to which so many daughters of the people have fallen. In a similar way did Luise Btichner attempt the solution of the all-important question of woman's independence. The active Central Union for the Welfare of the Working Classes, under Lette's presidency, was founded to extend the field of female activity, but it excluded explicitly the aims of political emancipation and equality of woman with man. The Universal German Woman's Association, founded in Leipzig, proposed to itself a broader scope, namely, the raising of the moral status of the sex. Admission to the universities and participation in communal or municipal service were first mooted upon the initiative of Frau Henriette Goldschmidt, Marie Calm, Auguste Schmidt. Hundreds of other collective societies followed, and entered upon the discussion of the entire range of sex problems with marked results.

To protect the poor, especially the women and children, whose supporters went to the wars, the so-called "popular kitchens" (Volkskucheri) were founded. This great service was rendered to Berlin by Frau Lina Morgenstern, aided by noble men like Virchow, Lette, and Holtzendorff.

Intellectual needs came to be supplied by excellent schools of a high grade: the Victoria School for higher studies, presided over by Frau Ulrike Henschke; the Victoria Lyceum, founded by a Scotch lady, Miss Georgina Archer, in 1868, to give courses parallel to those of the university. These institutions derive their names from the late empress, then Crown Princess of Prussia, who was their protector.

It was a matter of course that the woman's movement, which was rooted in liberalism, and which combined the aspects of psychological, physiological, ethical, and sociological problems, aroused many and varied opponents, especially in the conservative camp. The greatest names appear in opposition, even that of one important woman, Mathilde Reichardt-Stromberg. The discussions of the medical faculties of Germany for and against (mostly against) the admission of women to the study of medicine, which would be "an insult and sin against nature," would "destroy delicacy, modesty, shame" in woman, are to-day, now that women have attained their desire, of high value to the student of cultural history. On the basis of "the right to work, the right to free personality," the privilege was demanded, especially by Hedwig Dohm, who says: "Woman shall study, because she wants to study, because the unlimited choice of a vocation is the main factor of individual liberty, of individual happiness."

The contest for the intellectual and economic advancement of women went on, almost side by side, with the contest for the moral regeneration of society. The fight against the cancer of prostitution, the darkest and sorest spot in the movement, was most arduous and discouraging. The demand of an equal morality for man with that incumbent upon woman was tacitly resisted. The puritanical regulations, issued by the German Culture Alliance, against alleged immorality in art, literature, and fashion conflicted frequently with the legitimate rights of artistic presentation. Frau Gertrude Guillaume, née Countess Schack, was the soul of the movement for social purity, and she boldly attacked the true cause of prostitution; she accused the authorities not only of indifference to the social evil, but of direct connivance with it. She came into conflict with the police, who considered her activity pernicious and accused her of socialistic tendencies, into which she was forced in 1885 by the chicaneries of the police. The fact of the matter is that her mission is diametrically opposed to that of socialism, which, according to Bebel's Woman and Socialism, considers "prostitution a necessary institution for civic society, as police, army, and church." It is the misery which wrecks so many families of the lower classes that drives thousands of hungry girls into the arms of prostitution. The statistics of the Berlin police authorities of a few years ago prove that of 2,224 registered prostitutes, 1,015 (47.9 per cent) came from petty artisan families, 467 (22 per cent) from factories, 305 (14.4 per cent) from poor clerks. In the Union for the Interests of Working Girls, founded in 1885, the alpha and omega of the discussion of the girls was again and again "the correlation between hunger-wages and prostitution, and the necessity of raising the economic condition of the working girls as a conditio sine qua non for the elevation of morality." Efforts to abolish prostitution, then as now, were the objects of bitter opposition on the part of the civil authorities. Frau Guillaume-Schack, unable to continue her work unhampered by constant police interference, emigrated to England.

The reactionary spirit which in 1851 prohibited by ministerial decree Frobel's kindergartens of Prussia as socialistic and atheistic exists even to-day in the German parliament, especially through the conservative and clerical parties. These stigmatize many of the most legitimate aspirations of women as "unwomanly." The word of Saint Paul, "woman shall be silent in church matters," is applied to her most appropriate activities. Yet, superior women, foremost among them Frau Henriette Schrader, Frau Marie Loeper-Housselle, and the eminent sociological writer Helene Lange, against great odds, forced the government to make provision for the higher education of girls. Not that the Ministry of Public Instruction was favorable to the demand, but that the extensive discussion by the daily press, the interest taken by the Crown Princess Victoria in the movement, and the formation of the Universal Women Teachers' Association, which has more than sixteen thousand members, compelled the powers that be to consider the movement as elemental and irrepressible. The first public "gymnasium" (Latin school) for girls was founded in Carlsruhe, Baden, in 1893; later another was established in Leipzig, and the higher courses for girls that had been established in Berlin by Helene Lange, were also consolidated into a gymnasium.

On the other hand, the Bavarian ministry refused its consent for such a school in Munich, and Dr. Bosse, former Minister of Public Instruction in Prussia, rejected a similar petition from the Breslau magistrate. Upon an interpellation in the Prussian Diet (Landtag) he declared himself "against any step in the direction of the modern woman's movement; the aspirations of women to appear as rivals of men are wrong; this was the opinion of the entire Prussian Ministry of State." Elsewhere the movement was branded as a mere "matter of fashion." But the aspirations of women are too genuine and deep-rooted to be disposed of by ridicule and abuse. New fields of labor open before women, the domains of letters and sciences lie before them, even though the honor of state recognition is withheld from the treasures of knowledge and thought which they have acquired. Reformers of both sexes, who have the influence and the will to bring the issue to a successful conclusion, are not wanting. All the divisions and sections of the movement for morality, temperance, legal protection, right of coalition, girls' homes, march separately, but fight with a united front in the campaign. The Society for Ethical Culture, led by the late Professor von Gizycki and his wife Lily, of Berlin, realized within the society the idea of absolute equality of the sexes. Excellent women, as Jeanette Schwerin, Minna Cauer, and many others worked for woman's economic improvement as a basis for their enfranchisement; others, like Frau Hanna Bieber-Bohm, for the protection of young homeless girls by the foundation of homes, and by assistance in cases of need. Several periodicals edited by women for women also carry on a lively and successful propaganda for enlightenment and progress. That the various religious denominations participate in the movement more or less successfully, according to their various dogmatic or liberal standards, goes without saying. That there is frequently a painful exaggeration on the part of the women who stand in the midst of the struggle is but natural. Revolution is preached instead of evolution. Passionate cries too often are heard against men in general, as if the war were raging between brutal and oppressive men and oppressed and abused women. The ridiculous Utopia of emancipation from men, the foundation of a "manless" Amazon empire is being preached by some radical women crazed by their mad prejudices. Womanliness is lost all too often; manly garb imitated, the customs of male students, which are not always aesthetic, and which are downright disgusting in woman, are aped. Some women try to force their way by elbow power, by loud screaming for their alleged rights; some "literary" women without tact, training, or moderation, create prejudices against their judicious sisters who try to win their way by the peculiarly womanly, refined and aesthetic qualities in literature. No wonder that thousands of the very best women instinctively shrink back from the movement, and thus withdraw their support from what is legitimate and needful and desirable to woman.

In similar circles, with equal difficulties and drawbacks, moved the progress of women in Holland and the Scandinavian countries. Multatuli (pseudonym for E. Douwes Dekker, 1820-1887), through his genius and originality, attained in Holland well-nigh the importance of a Goethe for his nation. He considered the prevailing opinion regarding the inferiority of woman as the result of her long oppression, and preached her self-determination to the point of free love. He is the father of the movement for the liberation of woman in conservative Holland, and Mina Kruseman and her friend Betsy Perk, the first champions of the woman's movement, are his direct disciples. Frau Storm van der Chijs (1814-1895) attempted to introduce educational reforms and higher scientific culture into Holland. Fraulein W. Drucker sought and obtained the support of the Dutch women in the agitation against the abuse of woman, and child labor in the factories, as hod-carriers; for the protection of illegitimate children, and for a higher training of women for skilled labor. Frau Klerck, née Countess Hogendofp, profoundly touched by the social misery of fallen women, founded with the aid of a number of noble women, the Woman's League for the Elevation of Morality. About five hundred societies are scattered through the kingdom and exert their beneficent influence in all the domains of female activity. The Netherlandish universities opened their doors wide to female students after the graduation of the first woman, Alletta Jacobs, as "M. D." in 1879. Many Dutch women are active and successful in arts and letters; Minka Bosch Reitz is favorably known as a sculptor, Theresa Schwarze as a painter, Fraulein Oosterzee as the composer of an oratorio, and Catharina van Rennes as a composer of children's songs.