Home Life in Germany

by Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

You do not see much of a German landlady, as she does not cater for you. She is often a widow, and when you know the rent of a flat you wonder how she squeezes a living out of what her lodgers pay her. She cannot even nourish herself with their scraps, or warm herself at a kitchen fire for which they pay. Some of them perform prodigies of thrift, especially when they have children to feed and educate. At the end of a long severe winter, when the Alster had been frozen for months, I found out by chance that my landlady, a sad aged widow with one little boy, had never lighted herself a fire. She let every room of her large flat, except a kitchen and a Kammer opening out of it. The little food she needed she cooked on an oil stove, at night she had a lamp, and of course she never by any chance opened a window. She said she could not afford coals, and that her son and she managed to keep warm. The miracle is that they both kept alive and well. Another German landlady was of a different type, a big buxom bustling creature, who spent most of the day in her husband's coal sheds, helping him with his books and taking orders. Although she was so busy she undertook to cook for me, and kept her promise honourably; and she cooked for herself, her husband, and their work-people. She used sometimes to show me the huge dishes of food they were about to consume, food that was cheap to buy and nourishing to eat, but troublesome to prepare. She did all her own washing too, and dried it in the narrow slip of a room her husband and she used for all purposes. I discovered this by going in to see her when she was ill one day, and finding rows of wet clothes hung on strings right across her bed. I made no comment, for nothing that is an outrage of the first laws of hygiene will surprise you if you have gone here and there in the byways of Germany. An English girl told me that when she was recovering from a slight attack of cholera in a Rhenish Pension, they were quite hurt because she refused stewed cranberries. "Das schadet nichts, das ist gesund," they said. I could hear them say it. Only the summer before a kindly hotel-keeper had brought me a ragoût of Schweinefleisch and vanilla ice under similar circumstances. The German constitution seems able to survive anything, even roast goose at night at the age of three.

A Pension in Germany costs from £3 a month upwards. That is to say, you will get offers of a room and full board for this sum, but I must admit that I never tried one at so low a rate, and should not expect it to be comfortable. Rent and food are too dear in the big towns to make a reasonable profit possible on such terms, unless the household is managed on starvation lines. To have a comfortable room and sufficient food, you must pay from £5 to £7 a month, and then if you choose carefully you will be satisfied. The society is usually cosmopolitan in these establishments, and the German spoken is a warning rather than a lesson. It is not really German life that you see in this way, though the proprietress and her assistants may be German. In most of the university towns some private families take "paying guests," and when they are agreeable people this is a pleasanter way of life than any Pension.

Before you have been in Germany a fortnight the police expects to know all about you. You have to give them your father's Christian and surname, and tell them how he earned his living, and where he was born; also your mother's Christian and maiden name, and where she was born. You must declare your religion, and if you are married give your husband's Christian and surname; also where he was born, and what he does for a living. If you happen to do anything yourself, though, you need not mention it. They do not expect a woman to be anything further than married or single. But you must say when and where you were last in Germany, and how often you have been, and why you have come now, and what you are doing, and how long you propose to stay. They tell you in London you do not need a passport in Germany, and they tell you in Berlin that you must either produce one or be handed over for inquiry to your Embassy. Last year when I was there I produced one twenty-three years old. I had not troubled to get a new one, but I came across this, quite yellow with age, and I thought it might serve to make some official happy; for I had once seen my husband get himself, me, and our bicycles over the German frontier and into Switzerland, and next morning back into Germany, by showing the gendarmes on the bridge his C.T.C. ticket. I cannot say that my ancient passport made my official exactly happy. Twenty-three years ago he was certainly in a Steckkissen, and no doubt he felt that in those days, in a world without him to set it right, anything might happen.

"Twenty-three years," he bellowed at the top of his voice, for he saw that I was fremd, and wished to make himself clear. We are not the only people who scream at foreigners that they may understand. "Twenty-three years. But it is a lifetime."

It was for him no doubt. I admitted that twenty-three years was—well, twenty-three years, and explained that I had been told at a Reisebureau that a passport was unnecessary.

"They know nothing in England," he said gloomily. "With us a passport is necessary; but what is a passport twenty-three years old?"

I admitted that, from the official point of view, it was not much, and he made no further difficulties. As a rule you need not go to the police bureau at all. The people you are with will get the necessary papers, and fill them in for you; but I wanted to see whether the German jack-in-office was as bad as his reputation makes him. Germans themselves often complain bitterly of the treatment they receive at the hands of these lower class officials.

"I went to the police station," said a German lady who lived in England, and was in her own country on a visit. "I went to anmelden myself, but not one of the men in the office troubled to look up. When I had stood there till I was tired I said that I wished someone to attend to me. Every pen stopped, every head was raised, astounded by my impertinence. But no one took any notice of my request. I waited a little longer, and then fetched myself a chair that someone had left unoccupied. I did not do it to make a sensation. I was tired. But every pen again stopped, and one in authority asked in a voice like thunder what I made here. I said that I had come to anmelden myself, and he began to ask the usual questions with an air of suspicion that was highly offensive. You can see for yourself that I do not look like an anarchist or anything but what I am, a respectable married woman of middle age. I told the man everything he wanted to know, and at every item he grunted as if he knew it was a lie. In the end he asked me very rudely how long a stay I meant to make in Germany.

"Not a day longer than I can help," I said; "for your manners do not please me."

All the pens stopped again till I left the office, and when I got back to my mother she wept bitterly; for she said that I should be prosecuted for Beamtenbeleidigung and put in prison.