Women of the Teutonic Nations

by Hermann Schoenfeld

An exposition of the works of Dutch women at The Hague in 1898, planned by Frau Pekelharing-Doijer, presided over by Frau Goekoop, gave an admirable survey of the entire domain of the activity of Dutch women. The exposition aroused the feeling of solidarity among women, which resulted in the formation of associations composed wholly of women; the nation, the government, and the queen took a lively interest in the achievements of the Dutch women, whose enfranchisement, though just begun, is moving rapidly to completeness.

The same progress is visible everywhere in the other Teutonic countries, Denmark, Sweden, Norway. Excellent abstracts of that progress are given by Kirstine Frederiksen, Maria Cederschioeld, and Gina Krog, respectively, and in Helene Lange and Gertrude Baumer's admirable Handbook of the Woman's Movement (two volumes, Berlin, 1901). We must, however, regretfully forego the pleasure of enumerating even the foremost of the thousands of women with their varied talents, many of the highest order, who belong to the knighthood of the spirit, and who labor bravely in the realm of advancement of the human race in general, and of the Teutonic family in particular.

This chapter would, however, be incomplete and unsatisfactory were we to conclude it without mentioning a few German women who, preeminent and royal, have wielded an immense influence, and in whom, as it were, are crystallized German virtues, German qualities, and German intellect.

The first German empress, Augusta, the daughter of Carl Frederick of Saxe-Weimar and of a Russian princess, was reared in the atmosphere of the Court of the Muses at Weimar; so that the image of Goethe hovered around her throughout her life, and influenced her artistic, literary, and humanistic tastes. At the age of eighteen, in 1829, she was married to Prince William of Prussia, little dreaming at that time of the great future in store for Germany and for herself. By her intellectual qualities, her humanity, and her charity, she soon acquired a highly privileged position at the Prussian court. It was she who inculcated into the soul of her only son, later Emperor Frederick III., those qualities which secured for him the historic title "Frederick the Noble." After her consort ascended the throne in 1861, and especially after the great wars, she became the soul of the great charitable movements of Germany. She took an active part in bringing about the establishment of the Geneva Convention, a most beneficial event in its effects upon the humanization of war and its consequences. She was an angel of mercy to the wounded soldiers of both friend and foe, and to their widows and orphans, and was active in the Society of the Red Cross, founded in 1864, and the Patriotic League of Women, founded after the Austrian war in 1866. The Augusta Hospital, the Langenbeck House in Berlin, named after the great surgeon of that name, and the Augusta Foundation in Charlottenburg, were created by her. She was deeply religious and broadly tolerant; so that the so-called Kulturkampf, i. e., the struggle between the Prussian state and the Roman Catholic Church, was profoundly distasteful to her, a fact which precipitated a silent, but bitter, feud between the empress and her party, on the one hand, and Prince Bismarck, on the other. While her political influence cannot at all times be considered to have been beneficent, her cultivation of the arts certainly enriched the national life of Berlin, and indeed of Germany. She was a cultured musician, and composed several marches, an overture and the music to a ballet The Masquerade. She died in January, 1890, in Berlin, and was buried beside her great consort in the Mausoleum of Charlottenburg. Beautiful monuments have been erected in her honor at Baden-Baden, at Berlin, and at Coblenz, her favorite resort. The memory of the noble empress is engraved upon the hearts of her people.

Victoria, princess royal of England, born November 21, 1840, daughter of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort Albert, became eighteen years later the wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, finally, for ninety-nine days, Emperor Frederick III. (1888). She came to Prussia when the dawn of its future greatness was scarcely visible. The king, Frederick William IV., was hopelessly ill, his mind affected; her father-in-law, Prince William of Prussia and in 1861 king, was regent for him. The times were gloomy: constitutional conflict, political struggles threatening the monarchy itself, then a seven years' war as it were with Denmark, Austria, and France until 1871, agitated the country and tried the soul of its rulers. This was the time when Victoria appeared greatest and dearest to the German people. From the royal palace to the poorest cottage, there was no household then that had not sent its best and bravest to defend hearth and home and fatherland. The heir to the throne, following the traditions of his race, had gone forth ready to yield up his life, if need were, for the safety and honor of his country. The princess, waiting wearily in her home, shared the anguish of every German woman during that autumn and winter. With her clear insight into political complications, she could realize more vividly than those who were less well informed the frightful contingencies that might arise. She felt deeply her obligations toward the support of her countrywomen. The crown princess as such, in her own name, addressed an appeal to Germans all over the world, in behalf of the families that sacrificed their supporting fathers, brothers, sons:

"Once more has Germany called her sons to take arms for her most sacred possessions, her honor, and her independence. A foe, whom we have not molested, begrudges us the fruits of our victories, the development of our national industries by our peaceful labor. Insulted and injured in all that is most dear to them, our German people for they it is who are our army have grasped their well-tried arms, and have gone forth to protect hearth, and home, and family. For months past, thousands of women and children have been deprived of their bread-winners. We cannot cure the sickness of their hearts, but at least we can try to preserve them from bodily want. During the last war, which was brought to so speedy, and so fortunate a conclusion, Germans in every quarter of the globe responded nobly when called upon to prove their love of the Fatherland by helping to relieve the suffering. Let us join hands once more, and prove that we are able and willing to succor the families of those brave men who are ready to sacrifice life and limb for us! Let us give freely, promptly, that the men who are fighting for our sacred rights may go into battle with the comforting assurance that at least the destinies of those who are dearest to them are confided to faithful hands.

"VICTORIA, Crown Princess."

A truly German woman and princess indeed! She was worthy to be the consort of Frederick the Noble, and the mother of William II., who has imbibed her genius, her versatility of mind, her fine artistic feeling. Politically she was broad-minded and strictly constitutional; in her home, a true German housewife and mother. She loved the arts, sciences, and letters, and was herself no mean painter. Charity was her chosen domain; the education of the lowly her passion. The Pestalozzi-Froebel House is her monument; the Museum of Industrial Arts in the Koniggratzer Strasse is perhaps more representative of her artistic efforts than any other institution in Berlin. It is said that the princess chose, if she did not design, each of its sculptured groups, its metal castings, its fine mosaics and ornaments. Hans Holbein the Younger and Peter Visher, the famous brass founder, stand at its portal; life-sized figures round the building represent the mechanical arts: the loom, the printing press, the potter's wheel, the student's desk; the frieze above represents the great epochs of art and sculpture. The Victoria Lyceum, which we have mentioned above, testifies to her great interest in the higher culture of women. Space forbids us to follow the years of peace, of achievements, of joys and griefs in the princely household, the loss of the beloved young Prince Waldemar; the political controversies which followed the princess's disapproval of many measures, in the inner policy of Prussia, taken by Bismarck; and at last the long and hopeless illness of her consort, her touching sympathy and devoted care of him until his death on June 15, 1888, and certain medical altercations that disturbed her years of sorrow and mourning.

It would hardly be proper to speak at length of Augusta Victoria, the present Empress of Germany, who stands now in the prime of her life and activity for her nation and her own family. She is a princess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, who became the consort of the ruler of the German Empire instead of becoming a ruling princess of a petty grand duchy, the rightful inheritance of her house, which became part and parcel of the empire by two great wars. Married in February, 1881, to the present emperor, she is the mother of six sons and one daughter, all of whom are worthy scions of the Hohenzollern race, which has furnished the world with more great rulers than perhaps any other dynasty that ever ruled over the fate of a great nation. The empress is the crystallized type of a noble German wife and mother on the throne. She is profoundly religious and especially active in the duties of a devout Christian; she has built many churches; she is the protectress of the Elizabeth Children's Hospital, of several great Evangelical missions, and of the Patriotic Women's League. It is difficult to emphasize sufficiently the great influence upon the morality of the entire nation of an empress so womanly and pure in her simple greatness, just as we cannot estimate the influence for evil by bad examples on the throne on every woman in the land during the eras of the Catherines of Russia, the Pompadours and the Dubarrys in France, the Lichtenaus in Prussia.

In contrast to the happiness of the present Empress of Germany stands the fate of the late martyred Empress of Austria (1837-1898). A daughter of Duke Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria, she became the consort of the present Emperor of Austria under the happiest auspices. Exceedingly beautiful and intelligent, a Greek scholar of a high order, a lover of nature and of all that is beautiful, fond of horseback riding and of every sport tending to produce that symmetry of intellectual and physical beauty called by the Greeks kalokagathia; the happy mother of daughters and of one son, the ill-fated crown prince, Rudolf, she adorned the Habsburg throne with beauty and brilliancy instead of the ancient formal etiquette and Spanish grandest. But sorrow came to her in its most terrible form: the tragic and mysterious death, while on a hunting expedition, of her son Rudolf and Countess Vetsera, whom he loved, though he was married to Stephanie of Belgium, broke her heart. Her entire life changed, she hid herself in her Greek palace on the Island of Corfu, or travelled restlessly through Europe. On a visit to Geneva, while walking from her hotel to the ship, she was assassinated by a miscreant Luccheni, an Italian anarchist (September 10, 1898). One of the vilest deeds in the history of criminology ended the brilliant life of the greatest woman martyr on a throne since the Austrian archduchess Marie Antoinette who shed her royal blood on the guillotine, as Queen of France in 1793, for the crimes of preceding royal generations.