Home Life in Germany. Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
When the glasses are filled, at the word of command they are rubbed on the table; at the word of command they are raised and emptied; and again at the word of command every man rubs his glass on the table, the second time raises it and brings it down with a crash. Anyone who brought his glass down a moment earlier or later than the others would spoil the Salamander and be in disgrace. In Ekkehardt Scheffel describes a similar ceremonial in the tenth century. "The men seized their mugs," he says, "and rubbed them three times in unison on the smooth rocks, producing a humming noise, then they lifted them towards the sun and drank; each man set down his mug at the same moment, so that it sounded like a single stroke."
A Kommers is not always a gay festival. It may be a memorial ceremony in honour of some great man lately dead. Then speeches are made in his praise, solemn and sacred music is sung, and the Salamander, an impressive libation to the dead man's Manes, is drunk with mournful effect.
In small university towns—and it must be remembered that there are twenty-two universities in Germany—the students play a great part in the social life of the place. German ladies have often told me that the balls they looked forward to with most delight as girls were those given by students, when one "corps" would take rooms and pay for music, wine, and lights. For supper, tickets are issued on such occasions, which the guests pay themselves. The small German universities seem full of the students in term time, especially in those places where people congregate for pleasure and not for work. Even in a town as big as Leipsic they are seen a good deal, filling the pavement, occupying the restaurants, going in gangs to the play. But in Berlin the German student of tradition, the beer person, the duellist, the rollicking lad with his big dog, is lost. He is there, you are told, but if you keep to the highway you never see him; and, to tell the truth, in Germany you miss him. He stands for youth and high spirits and that world of ancient custom most of us would be loth to lose. In Berlin, if you go to the Universität when the working day begins, you see a crowd of serious, well-mannered young men, most of them carrying books and papers. They are swarming like bees to the various lecture-rooms; they are as quiet as the elderly professors who appear amongst them. They have no corps caps, no dogs, no scars on their scholarly faces. By their figures you judge that they are not Beer Persons. They have worked hard for twelve years in the gymnasiums of Germany, they have no idle habits, no interests so keen as their interest in this business of preparing for the future. They are the men of next year's Germany, and will carry on their country's reputation in the world for efficiency and scholarship.
CHAPTER VIIToC
RIEHL ON WOMEN
Not long ago I heard a German professor say that anyone who wanted to speak with authority about the German family must read Die Familie by W.H. Riehl. He said that, amongst other things, this important work explained why men went to the Kneipe, because they were fond of home life; and also what was the sphere of women. I thought it would be useful to have both these points settled; besides, I asked several wise Germans about the book, and they all nodded their heads and said it was a good one. So I got it, and was surprised to find it came out in 1854. I thought ideas about women had advanced since then, even in Germany, though a German friend had warned me just before my last visit not to expect much in this way. She made a movement with her lips as if she was blowing a bit of thistledown from her. "Remember," she said, "that is what you will be directly you get there … nothing at all." But I had been to Germany so often that I was prepared to be "nothing at all" for a time, and not to mind it much. What I wanted to discover was how far German women had arrived at being "something" in the eyes of their men. In my eyes they had always been a good deal: admirable wives and mothers, for instance, patient, capable, thrifty, and self-sacrificing. At first I thought that my friend was wrong, and that women of late years had made great strides in Germany. I met single women who had careers and homes of their own and were quite cheerful. When you are old enough to look back twenty or thirty years, and remember the blight there used to be on the "old maid," and the narrow gossiping life she was driven to lead, you must admit that these contented bachelor women have done a good deal to emancipate themselves. In England they have been with us for a long time, but formerly I had not come across them in Germany. On the contrary, I well remember my amazement as a girl at hearing a sane able-bodied single woman of sixty say she had naturally not ventured on a summer journey to Switzerland till some man who looked after her money affairs, but was in no way related, had given her his consent. I did once hear a German boast of having struck his wife in order to bring her to submission. He was not a navvy either, but a merchant of good standing. He was not a common type, however. German men, on the whole, treat their womenfolk kindly, but never as their equals. Over and over again German women have told me they envied the wives of Englishmen, and I should say that it is impossible for an English woman to be in Germany without feeling, if she understands what is going on around her, that she has suddenly lost caste. She is "nothing at all" because she is a woman: to be treated with gallantry if she is young and pretty, and as a negligible quantity if she is not. That perhaps is a bitter description of what really takes place, but after reading Herr Riehl, and hearing that his ideas are still widely accepted in Germany, I am not much afraid of being unjust. His own arguments convict the men of the nation in a measure nothing I could say would. They are in extreme opposition to the ideas fermenting amongst modern women there, and the strange fact that they are not regarded as quite out of date makes them interesting.
Herr Riehl's theory, to put it in a nutshell, is that the family is all-important, and the individual, if she is a woman, is of no importance at all. He does not object to her being yoked to a plough, because then she is working for the family, but he would forbid her, if he could, to enter any profession that would make her independent of the family. She is not to practise any art, and if she "commences author" it is a sure sign that she is ugly, soured, and bitter. In any country where they are allowed to rule, and even in any country where they distinguish themselves in art and literature, civilisation as well as statecraft must be at a standstill. Queen Elizabeth and Maria Theresa were evidently awkward people for a man laying down this theory to encounter, so he goes out of his way to say that they were not women at all, but men in women's clothes. Moreover, he has no doubt that the Salic law must ultimately prevail everywhere.
A woman has no independent existence: he says she is taught from childhood to be subordinate to others; she cannot go out by herself with propriety; she is not a complete creature till she finds a mate. The unlucky women who never find one (more than 400,000 in Germany) are not to make any kind of career for themselves, either humble or glorious. Each one is to search carefully for relatives who will give her a corner in their house, and allow her to work for them. If no one wants her she may live with other women and bring up poor children. He would allow women some education. Far be it from him to think that women are to remain in compulsory ignorance. But their education is to be "womanly," and carried on in the family. Women teachers in public schools he considered a danger to the State, and he would send all girls till they reach their twelfth or fourteenth year to the elementary schools, where they would be taught by men and associate with bare-footed children. Woman, in short, is to learn how to be woman at home, and how not to be superwoman in school. She may even have some instruction in art and science, but only a limited instruction that will not encroach on her duty to the family.
The fate of lonely single women is much on Herr Riehl's mind. What are we to do with them? he asks despairingly. "What is to become of the army of innocent creatures, without means, without a craft, doomed to an aimless, disappointed life. Shall we shut them up in convents? Shall we buy them into Stifts? Shall we send them to Australia? Shall we put an end to them?" Quite in the manner of Dogberry, he answers his own questions. Let them go their ways as before, he says. He knows there is no short cut to social regeneration, and he will not recommend one, not even extirpation. He points out that the working women of Germany have never asked to be on an equality with men. The lower you descend in the social scale the less sharply women are differentiated from men, and the worse time women have in consequence. The wife of a peasant is only his equal in one respect: she works as hard as he does. Otherwise she