ODDS AND ENDS
The most amusing columns in German daily papers are those devoted to family advertisement. There you find the prolix intimate announcements of domestic events compared with which the first column of the Times is so bare, so nichtssagend.
"The birth of a second son is announced with joy by Dr Johann Weber and Wife Martha, born Hansen."—Dresden, 22 May 1907.
"Emil Harzdorf and wife Magdalene, born Klaus, have the honour to announce the birth of a strong girl."—Hamburg, 26 May 1907.
Boy babies are nearly always stramm, the girl babies are kräftig, and the parents are hocherfreut, as they should be. Engagements and marriages are advertised more simply, and your eye is not caught by them as it is by the big black bordered paragraphs that inform the world that someone has just left it.
"To-day, in consequence of a stroke of apoplexy, my deeply loved husband, our dear father, grandfather, father-in-law, brother, and uncle fell asleep. In the name of the survivors, Olga Wagner, born Richter.—Leipzig, 23 May 1907."
This is a curt announcement compared with many. When the deceased has occupied any kind of official post, or has been an employer of labour, a long register of his many virtues accompanies the advertisement of his death. "He who has just passed away was an exemplary chief, a fatherly friend and adviser, who by his benevolence erected an everlasting monument to himself in the hearts of his colleagues and subordinates." He who had just passed away had been the head of a small soap factory, and this advertisement was put in by the factory hands just beneath the one signed by all the family. Another advertisement on the same page expresses thanks for sympathy, "on the death of my dear wife, our good mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, aunt, sister-in-law, and cousin, Frau Angelika Pankow, born Salbach."
A German friend who had to undergo an operation last year wrote just before to tell me she expected to come through safely. "If not," she said, "you'll receive a card like this"—
"Yesterday passed away
Adelaide Deminski, born Weigert,
Her heart-broken
Husband
Grandmother
Father
Mother
Sons
Daughters
Sons-in-law
Daughters-in-law
Brothers
Sisters
Brothers-in-law
Sisters-in-law
Uncles
Aunts
Cousins";
for Germans themselves laugh at these advertisements, and assure the inquiring foreigner that their vogue has had its day. But if the inquiring foreigner looks at the right papers he will find as many as ever. You will also find matrimonial advertisements in papers that are considered respectable.