Women of the Teutonic Nations Part 19

Women's love bore, from the first, quite a different character in the case of Schiller. He also had a good mother who believed in his genius and his future greatness, but born and raised in needy circ.u.mstances, and struggling with poverty all her life, she stood at an immense distance from the patrician and a.s.sociate of princes, Frau Aja, the mother of Goethe.

Three widely differing women especially affected Schiller's life and works. The influence upon his youth of Charlotte von Kalb, an extraordinary, demoniacal woman, was, according to his own confession, not beneficent. In later years, this highly gifted and unhappy woman had the misfortune of affecting the lives of two other great poets: Jean Paul and Holderlin. The former escaped from the grasp of the "t.i.tanide"

whom he immortalized, nevertheless, in his "_t.i.tan_"; the latter, the G.o.d-gifted poet of "Hyperion," the singer of the pa.s.sionate, soul-stirring lyric poems in honor of another love, Diotima, died early in the darkness of insanity. Schiller's love for Caroline and Charlotte von Lengefeld, the former of whom was married to Wilhelm von Wolzogen, presaged a terrible danger, similar to that to which Burger succ.u.mbed, but which was averted by Caroline, who saved Schiller by smoothing the path to a lawful and happy marriage with her young sister. The correspondence between the three, Schiller and the Lengefeld sisters, published by Schiller's daughter Emilie, Baroness von Gleichen-Russwurm, sheds much light upon the thought and life of Germany's greatest dramatist and of two n.o.ble women. Caroline's biography of Schiller, which appeared in 1830, collected from reminiscences of the family, his own letters, and information furnished by his friends, still breathes her love and admiring affection for her immortal friend. The greatest record, however, of the powerful influence women exerted upon Schiller is to be found in his works, not only in the dramas, but especially in the lyric poems, wherein a wonderful galaxy of n.o.ble women appear, and in which there is not one chord untouched that ever vibrated through man's heart.

Romanticism, the reaction against Cla.s.sicism which had become icy and petrified in the "epigons," or weak successors of the great cla.s.sical poets, entered upon its victorious course at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The group of women-authors, who stand, as it were, in the second zone from cla.s.sicism, Amalie von h.e.l.lwig, Elisa von der Recke, Louise Brachmann, Agnes Franz, Helmina von Chezy, Johanna Schopenhauer, all authors of considerable talent and grace, are nevertheless far surpa.s.sed by the versatility and poetic impressiveness of the literary women of Romanticism. They are the inspirers and coworkers of the founders of the movement, the brothers Schlegel, Tieck, Novalis, Brentano, Arnim, Kleist, and others. It is true that the "blue flower of Romanticism" was not conducive to virtue in love. Romanticists respected marriage the least of all sacred things, and a marriage _a trois_, says Theobald Ziegler, was quite a common thing, and the question only remained whether a marriage _a quatre_ was not even a pleasanter thing. In this, however, Romanticism was but a reaction against the Philistinism and prudery of the opposite pole of civilization at that period, where woman was oppressed, and a different standard of morality, and even of religion, was demanded from her than from man. Frederick Schlegel is not far wrong when he says that in the ordinary wedded life of the time both parties "live on, side by side, in a relation of mutual contempt." As, at the time of Pericles the great and superior hetaira, Aspasia, raised the social status of woman in general, and succeeded in elevating her in culture to the standard of the most intellectual men, so, during the first decades of the nineteenth century woman was raised to a higher plane through a long series of moral aberrations. Emanc.i.p.ation was frequently misunderstood, and liberty degenerated into the license of the will of the flesh. It would be impossible to absolve Romanticism from the reproach of license in thought and life. We owe it to Caroline Schlegel and to Dorothea Schlegel not to unveil their antecedents, and the way in which they became the wives of the two romanticists. Their share in the movement of liberation and in the work of their respective husbands is very considerable, and, mayhap, is meritorious enough to cover their sins.

Tieck's sister Sophie wrote perhaps the finest novel of the romanticists, Evremont (published in 1836 in Breslau), and his daughter Dorothea was a cla.s.sical translator of Shakespeare.

Bettina von Arnim (died 1859), Brentano's sister, is one of the most ingenuous of poets. She possessed a rich imagination, but upon her was the common curse of womanly genius, eccentricity, and inconstancy. These frustrated her intense desire to attain a lasting fame. Her daughter, Gisela von Arnim, wife of Hermann Grimm, is a notable writer of fairy tales, and a dramatist of considerable merit. Another romanticist, Caroline von Gunderode, who evinces much talent in her Poems and Fancies, had no time for the development of her genius. An unhappy love caused her to commit suicide at an early age. Such was also the end of Heinrich von Kleist, the greatest romanticist, who died with Henriette Vogel, the wife of another man, whom he killed at her own desire, in 1811. Theodor Korner, the patriot and soldier-poet of _Lyre and Sword_, died young, on the battlefield, with a pure and n.o.ble love in his heart for Toni Adamberger, a charming actress in Vienna, who was worthy of him in every respect. Korner's letter of 1812 to his father, Schiller's friend, characterizes this n.o.ble type of German womanhood: "I may confess without blus.h.i.+ng, that without her I should indeed have perished in the whirlpool beside me (_i.e._, in Vienna). You know me, my warm blood, my strong const.i.tution, my wild imagination; imagine this impetuous soul of mine in this garden of delight and intoxicating joy, and you will understand that only the love for this angel helped me to be able to step forth boldly from the crowd and to say: Here is one who has preserved a pure heart."

In spite of the many eminent women who arose during the first third of the nineteenth century, there is nowhere in Germany anything like the salon which has made French society so brilliant, the literary circles and centres so compact, and the great French auth.o.r.esses and epistolographers so world-famed.

Schleiermacher, the philosopher-theologian of that transition period, said once that society on a grand scale could at that time be found only in the houses of the Jews. Though still disfranchised in many respects, their admission to all the rights of citizens.h.i.+p being accorded first in 1812 on account of Stein's reforms, some eminent Jewish families possessed sufficient wealth and aspirations for culture to form such social and intellectual circles. Marianne Meyer became the wife of Prince Reuss, and as such a.s.sembled an aristocratic literary society in her house at Berlin. But the climax of a German salon was realized by two brilliant women of Jewish origin, Henriette Herz and Rahel Levin.

The former, wife of the famous physician and philosopher Marcus Herz, formed the first Goethe community in Berlin and scattered his fame broadcast through Berlin society. Without original talent, she exercised, nevertheless, great influence by her beauty, her social skill, and her ability in presenting the intellectual treasures of others. She was attractive to all. Jean Paul and Schiller came to her salon when in Berlin; famous foreigners, like Mirabeau, Madame de Stael, etc., visited her; the celebrities of Berlin were her constant guests, e.g., the brothers Humboldt, the poet Arndt, Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, the d.u.c.h.ess of Courland; foremost among all, Schleiermacher, who had a fantastic devotion and friends.h.i.+p for her; and Borne, who for a time loved her pa.s.sionately.

The same personages and many others, especially foreign diplomats, artists, and n.o.blemen, enlivened also the house of Rahel Levin, who in 1814 became the wife of the author Varnhagen von Ense. Rahel was not beautiful, or especially scholarly, but she was n.o.ble, helpful, and good; she was original, attractive, had the charm of "Attic salt" in her conversation, and understood how to listen as well as how to talk. As she had in her youth studied the poet Novalis and the patriot-philosopher Fichte, so later she studied Hegel's philosophy. She won the friends.h.i.+p of such men as Ranke and Prince Puckler. Her attractiveness did not depend upon her youth, for, according to the word of a lady of highest n.o.bility, Jenny von Gustedt, "she touched with her philosophy life itself, her thought became deed, as she aroused with her spirit the spark of soul-life in others, as she tried to destroy pettiness in all hearts, as she awakened great things in the hearts of men without abandoning the delicacy of womanliness, thus she stood with full practical knowledge in the midst of practical life, helping, counselling, comforting, careless of thanks or ingrat.i.tude, the genuine, pure, German woman."

Such was the origin of the modern German salon, and its origin explains its complex character. The German salon became a permanency; and even though it never attained the brilliancy of the French salon, yet it was more intellectual and had greater literary effect. The house of Amalie von h.e.l.lwig was a centre for courtiers, scholars, and artists, one of whom, A. B. Marx, wrote an interesting account of social life in Berlin.

Other distinguished circles are reported, in which music, a never failing charm in Berlin, was the princ.i.p.al attraction. The opera pa.s.sed through a period of bloom. Spontini's and Weber's masterpieces were performed by excellent singers, like Anna Milder-Hauptmann, who, in Berlin, created the role Of _Fidelio_. The theatre brought into popular prominence the works of the great German dramatists; great actresses arose, like Sophie Muller, who played in a masterful way Emilia Galotti and roles from the works of Calderon and Shakespeare; Amalie Wolff, trained in Goethe's school, a masterly exponent of Iphigenie; Louise Rogee, later Holtei's wife, the incomparable performer of Kleist's Katchen von Heilbronn; Charlotte von Hagen (1809-1891), a beautiful woman and true artist, who celebrated immense triumphs, and was adored by the great and beloved by the women. The greatest of all, however, was Auguste During (1795-1865), who for fifty years ruled the German stage, "in the world of boards that signify life." Henriette Sonntag (1803-1854) was considered the most beautiful and most gifted singer. By the charm of her voice and the perfection of her acting she conquered all hearts. In no other fields has Germany produced so many and so great women as she has in those of the stage, of music, and of song.

To appreciate, however, the ethical character of German woman we must return once more to the years of Germany's greatest political degradation.

At no time did the character of German womanhood s.h.i.+ne in a more glorious light than in the sorrowful years of political upheaval and the trials of the years of humiliation at the beginning of the nineteenth century. When Germany lay prostrate under the heel of Napoleon, the standard of national honor was upheld by princely women, like the never forgotten Louisa of Prussia, and the other Louisa of Saxe-Weimar, Goethe's friend, who changed Napoleon's plan of crus.h.i.+ng out the existence of her duchy, and concerning whom Napoleon himself confessed to his suite: "This is a woman whom our two hundred cannons could not frighten!" The years of trial, distress, and again the rising of the nation, the struggle for liberation, saw genuine heroism, superhuman sacrifices by German women of all estates and of all cla.s.ses. Nothing but the enthusiasm and the patriotism of the women at that epoch could have inspired the men to their heroism, self-abnegation, and suffering.

Niebuhr, the great historian, calls the conduct of the German women admirable. All pleasures were given up, tender and distinguished women exposed their lives to the lazaretto, washed, cooked, mended, laid down their money, their jewels, nay, even their beautiful hair on the altar of the fatherland. Mothers sent their sons, sisters their brothers, brides their bridegrooms, to the holy war. Many, forgetting their s.e.x, seized rifle and sword, and fought against the oppressor. Scherr gives many names: Johanna Stegen, Johanna Luring, Lotte Kruger, Dorothea Sawosch, Karoline Petersen, and the heroine Prohaska, who, in male attire, bravely fought in Lutzow's famous corps of volunteers. Lutzow and the heroic Prohaska were severely wounded in the victorious battle of the Gorde (September 16, 1813). When she was to be bandaged on the battlefield, she for the first time revealed her s.e.x so that her modesty might be spared. She died three days later, and was buried amid a concourse of citizens and maidens in the town of Danneberg, where a monument was erected at the church in her honor.

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 n.o.ble, even princely birth, who helped to make such courts as that of Jerome 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 l.u.s.t 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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, chast.i.ty, 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 emanc.i.p.ation of the flesh was preached. Naturally the emanc.i.p.ation 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. .h.i.therto 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 n.o.blest 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 princ.i.p.al 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 auth.o.r.ess 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 pa.s.sion, and do not take morality as an inst.i.tution 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, partic.i.p.ation 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 emanc.i.p.ation of woman was f.a.n.n.y 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 a.s.surance that the spread of culture will wipe out all artificial differences of caste, religion, and s.e.x, and thus solve all the questions of a genuine, legitimate emanc.i.p.ation.

Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn ill.u.s.trates an opposite tendency in the emanc.i.p.ation 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 "n.o.blesse," 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, pa.s.sionate 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.

The poisonous plant of the exaggerated emanc.i.p.ation movement appears in the works and life of Luise Aston, who impetuously demanded that all the barriers which custom, tradition, and artificial social contracts had erected should be broken down, for woman could fulfil her mission only in free love. When she tried to turn her theories into practice, she was successively exiled from seven German cities, and finally emigrated to Russia in 1855.

Besides this academic propaganda for woman's emanc.i.p.ation, a practical agitation of the question was carried on by a great number of pure-hearted and clear-headed women. They strove only for the possible.

They began to teach that woman cannot emanc.i.p.ate herself by opposing natural laws, by becoming a _Mann-weib_ (man-wife), as it is adequately expressed in German; but that she must retain all the peculiarly womanly traits, charms, and qualities, adding to them some art or science, trade or profession, by which she can support herself independently without being absolutely forced into marriage, good or bad, with or without her will. The leaders of this movement are consequently no fantastic dreamers or theorists, but energetic, earnest women. The novels of Julie Burow, Louise Otto, and others of their school, greatly influenced and aided the movement. Since their day the agitation has become universal: thousands and thousands of strong and earnest champions have arisen; we stand in the midst of the movement, in the smoke of the battlefield; yet, great things have been achieved; able women, like Luise Buchner, Lina Morgenstern, Hedwig Dohm, have not striven in vain. Breaches have been made in the walls of the sanctuaries heretofore reserved for men.

Incited especially by American and Russian women, the women of Germany knock, and knock successfully, at the doors of the universities and academies. Even though they do not yet occupy academic chairs in German universities, as they do in America, they will do so in time. A Swedish university was the first to appoint a woman, Sonya Kovalevski, the great Russian mathematician, to a full professors.h.i.+p of this manliest of all sciences.

Thus far the outcome of the entire movement, however successful it has been, is yet undecided, especially owing to the modest reserve and conservatism of millions of women. This conservatism seems to be deeply rooted in the hearts of the vast majority of German women. They are, after all, happy in the old, primeval, original royalty of wifehood and motherhood, in the sweet leaning upon their complement, the beloved husband. Do they fear, perchance, lest their warlike sisters might drag them to the front, to unnatural battle, deprive them of their sweet, foreordained inheritance of man's love, protection, and fostering care?

Has not their quiet, calm, and holy circle of activity, upon which all that is eternal in creation rests, which has been sanctified by custom, tradition, morality, and experience for thousands of years, blessed thousands, nay, millions of women, generation after generation? Had Saint Mary any other mission on earth or in heaven but love, infinite love, for the Christ, her Son? Has art ever been able to produce anything more beautiful, more divine, more touching, more powerful, than the Mother of G.o.d and the Christ-child, the symbol of every mother and every child? Do not the heavens in glorious constellations perpetuate the memory of great women? Is not the galaxy of women saints rich enough, and can it not be enriched still further for generation after generation to the end of the world? Is not well-nigh all the poetry that flows directly from the heart founded upon love, and indeed upon that love which is spontaneous, original, eternal? Forsooth, if there must be a change, it is a sorrowful change, due to the unnatural, complicated conditions of modern social life, but by no means due to the unanimous will of German women. The demon "physical hunger," the fear that there are not enough good men to go around, are the true motives of the emanc.i.p.ation movement with the ma.s.ses of German women. The motives of the Ida Hahn-Hahns and the like are potent only with a few of the vast number of the women of Germany.

Thus it is but natural that the dangers of premature and ill-conceived emanc.i.p.ation soon aroused great and good German women who loved the best in the glorious past of Germany, the many models of German virtue, sacred simplicity, and blissful womanhood and motherhood, from Thusnelda to Queen Louisa of Prussia, and who were not eager for untried innovations. The very sight of the habits and nature of the new prophetesses, all of whom were abnormal in some respect, gave food for reflection. The strongest opposition to the movement was formed among women. It was women who warned against the modern gospel, who tried to divert attention from the loud and boisterous street, rostrum, and salon to the innermost recesses of the heart where woman's happiness secretly dwells, and to the bosom of family life where the children enliven the little world which is, after all, the great world in nucleo.

Foremost among the intellectual guardians of the n.o.ble traditions of old German life was Annette von Droste-Hiilshoff. Simplicity and an ardent religious feeling permeate her poetry, which she produced in abundance in spite of many obstacles put in the way of her intellectual pursuits by a prejudiced, bigoted, aristocratic family. Her poetry is rooted in the desire to induce the new "stormers" to cling to the old and tried German traditions of morality, faith, and patriarchal inst.i.tutions.

"Cling to thy friend, cling to thy word, cling to thy faith, cling to thyself," is her creed. "Who would exchange his blood for strange ichor (even though it were the blood of the G.o.ds)! Do not reject the Cherub of thy cradle; his wing will rustle to thee from every leaf! Do not suck dry the blood of thy heart, to animate therewith a b.a.s.t.a.r.d of thy soul."

Next important in her n.o.ble mission is Betty Paoli (Elizabeth Gluck).

Her thesis was: Church and society, fame and honor are the proper domain of man; woman can find her supreme happiness only in true, faithful, pure love for one man, and only once in life. Betty Paoli writes: "G.o.d has not sent me out, and has not given me the strength to aspire gloriously with a consecrated hand for the palm of victory. Let him be immortalized in marble and in bra.s.s who won them: I am nothing but a heart that has loved much and suffered much; and all my poetry is but an audible revelation of all the quiet pains of which a woman's soul is capable." According to her it is woman's destiny to subject her life to the magic charm of love, to sacrifice all her desires and inclinations to love: "My proud head defied boldly the lightning of the storm; but when thou saidst: 'I love thee!', I sank quiet and weeping at thy feet How weak am I!" In reality her happiness in love was short; the beloved one betrayed and deserted her; the deep sorrows of her heart find eloquent expression in touching and pa.s.sionate melodies.

Luise Hensel's poems are simple and melodious, and are filled with a childlike humility. G.o.d and heaven are the motives of her song. There is a long series of women poets and novelists, who are defenders of the old faith, and whose works, though frequently insignificant, are yet n.o.ble monuments for German women of our own time who have offered a bold front to emanc.i.p.ation gone mad.

The impossibility of mentioning even the most eminent names of the German authors and poets is manifest when we consider the vast array of German women writers of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, catalogued by Schindel in a biographical work, published in Leipzig in 1823-1825; and in the two volumes of a Lexicon of German Women of the Pen by Sophie Pataky, which was issued in Berlin in 1898. A. Ungherini's Biography of Famous Women (Turin and Paris, 1892), also furnishes thousands of names of famous German women.

The inexhaustibleness of our theme leads us thus to abandon, even in the most general manner, the attempt at defining the impulses given by women to the poetry of the pure Suabian school of poets, to Uhland's veneration for woman, to Justinus Kerner's idealization of his wife Rickele, a model type of German hostess in whose vine-covered cottage many a weary poet's soul rested, as the deeply gifted, but profoundly unhappy Nicolaus Lenau. We forego to discuss the return of Mysticism which appears in Friederike Hauffe, the Seer of Prevorst; in the lives and loves of Heine, who was tossed on the storm waves of life by woman's love and hate, of Platen, of Immermann, whose pa.s.sionate love for Elisa von Lutzow was finally converted to an almost ideal and platonic friends.h.i.+p; in the philosophy of Schopenhauer, who, though an atheist himself, was led by his argumentation well-nigh to Saint Augustine's doctrine of woman being the vessel of sin.

We have to descend to the lower grades of society, and observe woman in poverty and degradation, to learn of the need of the endeavors to elevate her, to free her, and to put her on her own feet intellectually, socially, and morally. When the Revolution of 1848 knocked at the gates of absolutism in Germany, German women began to a.s.sert their inalienable rights. The struggles of men in higher domains were shared by many women, among them Frau Struve and Frau Herwegh, the wife of the pa.s.sionate poet of the revolution. Johanna Kinkel, wife of the excellent poet and university professor Gottfried Kinkel, who was incarcerated as a revolutionist and clad in the striped clothing of a criminal, until rescued by his faithful student Karl Schurz, now a great American statesman, endured with her husband the martyrdom of want and exile.

Johanna Scherr, wife of the historian of culture Johannes Scherr, is also one of the n.o.blest types of able and modest women and heroines, who are strong in endurance and even in encouragement of their husbands.

The changes in industrialism which began in the middle of the nineteenth century began to produce the ma.s.s 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociation 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 enn.o.bles, 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 ign.o.ble 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 inst.i.tution 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 cla.s.ses. 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 Cla.s.ses, under Lette's presidency, was founded to extend the field of female activity, but it excluded explicitly the aims of political emanc.i.p.ation and equality of woman with man. The Universal German Woman's a.s.sociation, founded in Leipzig, proposed to itself a broader scope, namely, the raising of the moral status of the s.e.x. Admission to the universities and partic.i.p.ation in communal or munic.i.p.al 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 s.e.x 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 n.o.ble 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 inst.i.tutions 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 prost.i.tution, the darkest and sorest spot in the movement, was most arduous and discouraging. The demand of an equal morality for man with that inc.u.mbent upon woman was tacitly resisted. The puritanical regulations, issued by the German Culture Alliance, against alleged immorality in art, literature, and fas.h.i.+on conflicted frequently with the legitimate rights of artistic presentation. Frau Gertrude Guillaume, nee Countess Schack, was the soul of the movement for social purity, and she boldly attacked the true cause of prost.i.tution; 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 "prost.i.tution a necessary inst.i.tution for civic society, as police, army, and church."

It is the misery which wrecks so many families of the lower cla.s.ses that drives thousands of hungry girls into the arms of prost.i.tution. The statistics of the Berlin police authorities of a few years ago prove that of 2,224 registered prost.i.tutes, 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 prost.i.tution, 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 prost.i.tution, 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' a.s.sociation, 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 pet.i.tion 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 fas.h.i.+on." 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 s.e.xes, 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 s.e.xes. Excellent women, as Jeanette Schwerin, Minna Cauer, and many others worked for woman's economic improvement as a basis for their enfranchis.e.m.e.nt; others, like Frau Hanna Bieber-Bohm, for the protection of young homeless girls by the foundation of homes, and by a.s.sistance 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 partic.i.p.ate 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. Pa.s.sionate 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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"