There is no association between the officers, the nobility, the
officials, the cultured classes, and the middle and lower classes. The
public schools and universities are learning shops; they do not train
youths in character, manners, or in the ways of the world. They do not
play together, or work together, or amuse themselves together. The
creeds and codes, habits and manners of the better classes are,
therefore, not allowed to percolate and permeate those less
experienced. There is no word for gentleman in German. The words
gebildeter and anstaendiger are used, and it is significant to notice
that the stress is thus laid on mental development or upon obedience
to formal rules. A man may be a very great gentleman and a true
gentleman and not be a scholar. The late Duke of Devonshire cared more
for horses than for books and pictures, and Abraham Lincoln was one of
the greatest gentlemen of all time.
In Homburg one day I saw a tall, fine-looking, elderly man step aside
and off the sidewalk to let two ladies pass. It was for Germany a
noticeable act. He turned out to be a famous general then in waiting
upon the Emperor. There are not a few such courtly gentlemen in
Germany, not a few whose knightliness compares with that of any
gentleman in the world. Alas for the great bulk of the Germans, they
never come into contact with them, their example is lost, their leaven
of high breeding and courtesy does not lighten the bourgeois loaf! In
America and in England we are all threading our way in and out among
all classes. We are much more democratic. Men of every class are in
contact with men of every other, we play together and work together,
and consequently the level of manners and habits is higher. This state
of things is less marked in south Germany than in Prussia, but is more
or less true everywhere.
But how can this be possible, I hear it replied, in that land where
every officer clacks his heels together with a report like an
exploding torpedo, ducks his head from his rigid vertebrae, and then
bends to kiss the lady's hand; and where every civilian of any
standing does the same? I am not writing of the nobility and of the
corps of officers in this connection. No doubt there are black sheep
among them, though I have not met them. Of the many scores of them
whom I have met, whom I have ridden with, dined with, romped with,
drunk with, travelled with, I have only to say that they are as
courteous, as unwilling to offend or to take advantage, as are brave
men in other countries I know. I am writing of the average man and
woman, of those who make up the bulk of every population, of those
upon whom it depends whether a national life is healthy or otherwise.
The very stiffness of these mannerisms, the clacking of heels, the
ducking of heads, the kissing of hands, the countless grave
formalities among the men themselves, are all indicative of social
weakness. They are afraid to walk without the crutches of certain
formulae, of certain hard-and-fast rules, of certain laws that they
worship and fall down before. Slavery is still upon them. Escaped from
a bodily master they fly to the refuge of a moral and spiritual one.
These formalities are prescribed forms which they wear as they wear
uniforms; they are not the result of innate consideration.
Uniform-wearing is a passion among the Germans, and may be included as
still another indication of the universal desire to take refuge behind
forms, and laws, and fixed customs, the universal desire to shrink
from depending upon their own judgment and initiative. They will not
even bow or kiss a lady's hand, without a prescription from a social
physician whom they trust.
The German officials are always officials, always addressed and
addressing others punctiliously by their titles. They do not throw off
officialdom outside their duties and their offices as we do, but they
glory in it. We throw off our uniforms as soon as may be; we feel
hampered by them. This leads to a feeling on the part of the Germans
that we are too free and easy, and not respectful enough toward our
own dignity or toward theirs. We feel, on the other hand, that it is a
farce to go to the every-day markets of life, whether for daily food
or for daily social intercourse, with the bullion and certified checks
of our official dignity; we go rather with the small change that
jingles in all pockets alike, and is ready to be handed out for the
frequent and unimportant buying and selling of the day and hour. We
look upon this grallatory attitude toward life as artificial and
hampering, and prefer to walk among our neighbors as much as possible
upon our own feet.
I am not pretending to fix standards of etiquette. I can quite
understand that when we grab the hand of the German's wife and shake
it like a pump-handle instead of bowing over it; that when we nod
cheerfully to him in the street with a wave of the hand or a lifting
of a cane or umbrella instead of taking off our hat; that when we fail
to address both him and his lady with the title belonging to them, no
matter how commonplace that title, we shock his prejudices and his
code of good manners.
If there is a stranger, a lady, in the drawing-room before dinner the
German men line up in single file and ask to be presented to her. If
the lady is tall and handsome and the party a large one, it looks
almost like an ovation. If you go to dine at an officers' mess the men
think it their duty to come up and ask to be presented to you. They
wear their mourning bands on the forearm instead of the upperarm; they
wear their wedding-rings on the fourth finger of the right hand; many
of them wear rather more conspicuous jewelry than we consider to be in
good taste.
The sofa, too, plays a role in German households and offices for which
I have sought in vain for an explanation. Not even German archaeology
supplies a historical ancestry for this sofa cult. It is the place of
honor. If you go to tea you are enthroned on the sofa. Even if you go
to an office, say of the police, or of the manager of the city
slaughter-house, or of the hospital superintendent, you are manoeuvred
about till they get you on the sofa, generally behind a table. I soon
discovered that this was the seat of honor. Sofas have their place in
life, I admit. There are sofas that we all remember with tears, with
tenderness, with reverence. They have been the boards upon which we
first appeared in the role of lover perhaps; or where we have fondled
and comforted a discouraged child; or where we have pumped new
ambitions and larger life into a weaker brother; or where we have
tossed in the agony of grief or disappointment; or where we have
waited drearily and alone the result of a consultation of moral or
physical life and death in the next room. Indeed, this all reminds me
that I could write an essay on sofas that would be poignant, touching,
autobiographical, luminous, as could most other men, but this would
not explain the position of the sofa in Germany in the least. "Travels
on a Sofa"--I must do it one day, and perhaps, with more serious study
of the subject, light may be thrown upon this question of the sofa in
Germany.
Even at large and rather formal dinner-parties the host bows and
drinks to his guests, first one and then another. At the end of the
meal, in many households, it is the custom to bow and kiss your
hostess's hand and say "Mahlzeit," a shortened form of "May the meal
be blessed to you." You also shake hands with the other guests and say
"Mahlzeit." In some smarter houses this is looked upon as old-
fashioned and is not done. I look upon it as a charming custom, and
think it a pity that it should be done away with.
Young unmarried girls and women courtesy to the elder women and kiss
their hands, also a custom I approve. On the other hand, where a
stalwart officer appears in a small drawing-room and seats himself at
the slender tea-table for a cup of afternoon tea, holding his sword by
his side or between his legs, that seems to me an unnecessary
precaution, even when Americans are present, for many of us nowadays
go about unarmed.
Except on official or formal occasions it seems a matter of
questionable good taste to appear, say in a hotel restaurant, with
one's breast hung with medals or with orders on one's coat or in the
button-hole. Let 'em find out what a big boy am I without help from
self-imposed placards seems to me to be perhaps the more modest way.
The method in vogue in Japanese temples, where the worshippers jangle
a bell to call the attention of the gods to their prayers or
offerings, seems out of place where the god is merely the casual man
in the street, in a Berlin restaurant.
At more than one dinner the soup is followed by a meat course, after
which comes the fish. This does not mean that the dinners are not
good. I fondly recall a dish of sauerkraut boiled in white wine and
served in a pineapple. I may not give names, but the dinners of Mr.
and Mrs. Fourth of December, of Mrs. Twenty-first of January, of Mr.
and Mrs. Thirtieth of January, and of Mr. and Mrs. February First, and
others rank very high in my gastronomic calendar. Do not imagine from
what I have written that Lucullus has left no disciples in Germany. I
could easily add a page to the list I have mentioned, and because we
look upon some of these customs of the German as absurd is no reason
for forgetting that he often, and from his stand-point rightly, looks
upon us as boors. I like the Germans and I pretend to have learned
very much from them. To sneer at superficial differences is to lose
all profit from intercourse with other peoples. Goethe is right,
"Uberall lernt man nur von dem, den man liebt!" The argument is only
all on our side when we are impervious to impressions and to other
standards of manners and morals than our own.
"Am Ende hangen wir doch ab
Von Kreaturen die wir machten"
are two lines at least from the second part of "Faust" that we can all
understand.
It is sometimes thrown at us Americans that we love a title, and that
we are not averse to the ornamentation of our names with pseudo and
attenuated "Honorables" and "Colonels" and "Judge" and so on; and I am
bound to admit the impeachment, for I blush at some of my
be-colonelled and becaptained friends, and wonder at their rejoicing over
such effeminate honorifics, especially those colonelcies born of
clattering behind a civilian governor, on a badly ridden horse, a
title which may be compared with that most attenuated title of all,
that of a Texan, who when asked why he was called "colonel" replied,
that he had married the widow of a colonel!
I prefer "Esqr." to "Mr." merely because it makes it easier to assort
the daily mail; "Mr.," "Mrs.," and "Miss" are so easily taken for one
another on an envelope, and particularly at Christmas time this more
distinctly legible title avoids, the deplorable misdirection of the
secrets of Santa Claus; aside from that I am happy to be addressed
merely by my name, like any other sovereign.
We are, too, somewhat overexcited when foreign royalties appear among
us. "What wud ye do if ye were a king an' come to this counthry?"
asked Mr. Hennessy.
"Well," said Mr. Dooley, "there's wan thing I wuddent do. I wuddent r-read
th' Declaration iv Independence. I'd be afraid I'd die laughin'."
In Germany not only are titles showered upon the populace, but it is
distinctly and officially stated by what title the office-holder shall
be addressed.
In a case I know, a certain lady failed to sign herself to one of the
small officials working upon her estate as, let us say, "I remain very
sincerely yours," or its German equivalent; whereupon the person
addressed wrote and demanded that communications addressed to him
should be signed in the regulation manner. A lawyer was consulted, and
it was found that a similar case had been taken to the courts and
decided in favor of the recipient of wounded vanity.
In hearty and manly opposition to this attitude toward life is the
example of Admiral X. He had served long and gallantly, and just
before he retired a friend said to him: "I hear that they're going to
knight you." "By God, sir, not without a court-martial!" was the
prompt reply. Indeed, things have come to such a pass in England that
the offer of a knighthood to a gentleman of lineage, breeding, and
real distinction, has been for years looked upon as either a joke or
an insult.
Not so among my German friends; they have a ravenous appetite for
these flimsy tickets of passing commendation. At many, many hospitable
boards in Berlin I have been present where no left breast was barren
of a medal, and where the only medal won by participation in actual
warfare, belonging to one of the guests, was safely packed away in his
house. And as for the titles, there is no room in a small volume like
this to enumerate them all; and the women folk all carry the titles of
the husband, from Frau Ober-Postassistent, Frau Regierungs Assessor,
up to the Chancellor's lady, who, by the way, wears a title in her
mere face and bearing. Not long ago I saw in a provincial sheet the
notice of the death of a woman of eighty, who was gravely dignified by
her bereaved relatives with the title, and as the relict of, a
veterinary.
Upon a certain funicular at a mountain resort, where the cars pass one
another up and down every twenty minutes, the conductors salute one
another stiffly each time they pass.
Of the army of people with titles of Ober-Regierungsrat, Geheimer
Regierungsrat, Wirklicher Geheimer Regierungsrat, Wirklicher Geheimer
Ober-Regierungsrat, Wirklicher Geheimerat, who also carries the
additional title of "Excellenz" with his title; Referendar, Assessor,
Justizrat, Geheimer Justizrat, Gerichts-Assessor, Amtsrichter,
Amtsgerichtrat, Oberamtsrichter, Landgerichtsdirector,
Amtsgerichtspraesident, Geheimer Finanzrat, Wirklicher Geheimer Ober
Finanzrat, Legationsrat, Wirklicher Geheimer Legationsrat, Vice Konsul,
Konsul, General Konsul, Commercienrat, Wirklichercommercienrat,
Staatsanwalt, Staatsanwaltschaftsrat, Herr Erster Staatsanwalt, where
the "Herr" is a legal part of the title; of those who must be addressed
as "Excellenz," and in addition military and naval titles, and the horde
of handles to names of those in the railway, postal, telegraph, street-
cleaning, forestry, and other departments, one must merely throw up
one's hands in despair, and bow to the inevitable disgrace of being
quite unable to name this Noah's-ark procession of petty dignitaries.
In the department of post and telegraph a new order has gone forth,
issued during the last few months, by which, after passing certain
examinations, the employees may take the title of Ober-Postschaffner
and Ober-Leitungsaufseher. After thirty years' service the postman is
dignified with the title of Ober-Brieftraeger. It is difficult to
understand the type of mind which is flattered by such infantile
honors. At any rate, it is a cheap system of rewards, and so long as
men will work for such trumpery ends the state profits by playing upon
their childish vanity. During the year 1912 more than 7,000
decorations were distributed, and some 1,500 of these were of the
three classes of the Order of the Red Eagle. On the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the reign of the present Emperor, in 1913, still
another medal is to be struck, to be given to worthy officials and
officers.
All the professions and all the trades, too, have their pharmacopoeia
of tags and titles, and you will go far afield to find a German woman
who is not Frau Something-or-other Schmidt, or Fischer,
or Miller. Every day one hears women greeting one another as Frau
Oberforstmeister, Frau Superintendent, Frau Medicinalrat, Frau
Oberbergrat, Frau Apothekar, Frau Stadt-Musikdirektor, Frau Doktor
Rechtsanwalt, Frau Geschaeftsfuehrer, and the like. All these titles,
too, appear in the hotel registers and in all announcements in the
newspapers. Even when a man dies, his title follows him to the grave,
and even beyond it, in the speech of those left behind.
These uniforms and titles and small formalities do make, I admit, for
orderliness and rigidity, and perhaps for contentment; since every man
and woman feels that though they are below some one else on the ladder
they are above others; and every day and in every company their vanity
is lightly tickled by hearing their importance, small though it be,
proclaimed by the mention of their titles.
It pleases the foreigners to laugh and sometimes to jeer at the
universal sign of "Verboten" (Forbidden) seen all over Germany. They
look upon it as the seal of an autocratic and bureaucratic government.
It is nothing of the kind. The army, the bureaucracy, the autocratic
Kaiser at the helm, and the landscape bestrewn with "Verboten" and
"Nicht gestattet" (Not allowed), these are necessities in the case of
these people. They do not know instinctively, or by training or
experience, where to expectorate and where not to; where to smoke and
where not to; what to put their feet on and what not to; where to walk
and where not to; when to stare and when not to; when to be dignified
and when to laugh; and, least of all, how to take a joke; how, when,
or how much to eat, drink, or bathe, or how to dress properly or
appropriately. The Emperor is almost the only man in Germany who knows
what chaff is and when to use it.
The more you know them, the longer you live among them, the less you
laugh at "Verboten." The trouble is not that there are too many of
these warnings, but that there are not enough! When you see in flaring
letters in the street-cars, "In alighting the left hand on the left-hand
rail," when you read on the bill of fare in the dining-car brief
instructions underlined, as to how to pour out your wine so that you
will not spill it on the table-cloth; when you see the list of from
ten to fifteen rules for passengers in railway carriages; when you see
everywhere where crowds go and come, "Keep to the right"; when you see
hanging on the railings of the canals that flow through Berlin a life-buoy,
and hanging over it full instructions with diagrams for the
rescue of the drowning; when you see over a post-box, "Aufschrift und
Marke nicht vergessen" (Do not forget to stamp and address your
envelope); when you see in the church entrances a tray with water and
sal volatile, and the countless other directions and remedies and
preventives on every hand, you shrug your Saxon shoulders and smile
pityingly, if you do not stand and stare and then laugh outright, as I
was fool enough to do at first. But you soon recover from this
superficial view of matters Teutonic. In one cab I rode in I was
cautioned not to expectorate, not to put my feet on the cushions, not
to tap on the glass with stick or umbrella, not to open the windows,
but to ask the driver to do it, and not to open the door till the
auto-taxi stopped; one hardly has time to learn the rules before the
journey is over.
In April, 1913, more laws are to come into effect for the street
traffic. People may not walk more than three abreast; they may not
swing their canes and umbrellas as they walk; they may not drag their
garments in the street; they may not sing, whistle, or talk loudly in
the street, nor congregate for conversation; there will follow, of
course, a regulation as to the length of women's dresses to be worn in
the street, and no doubt the police commissioner, an amiable bachelor,
will decree that the shorter the better. All these fussy regulations
are ridiculous to us, but in reality they are horrible and give one a
feeling of suffocation when living in Germany. In the days when
everybody rode a bicycle, each rider was obliged to pass an
examination in proficiency, paid a small tax, and was given a number
and a license. Women who persisted in wearing dangerous hat-pins have
been ejected from public vehicles.
After April 1, 1913, no shop in Berlin can advertise or hold a bargain
sale without permission of the police. The changed prices must be
affixed to the goods four days before the sale for inspection by the
police, and only two such sales are permitted a year, and these must
take place either before February 15, or between June 15 and August
1st. All particulars of the sale must be handed to the police a week
in advance. In a carriage on the Bavarian railroad, a husband who
kissed and petted his tired wife was complained of by a fellow-
passenger. The husband was tried, judged guilty, and fined. There was
no question but that the woman was his wife; thus there is no loop-hole
left for the legally curious, and thousands of male Germans hug
and kiss one another on railway-station platforms who surely ought to
be fined and imprisoned or deported or hanged! All this may be a relic
of Roman law. Cato dismissed Marilius from the Senate because he
kissed his own wife by daylight in the presence of their own daughter.
Shortly after leaving Germany, I returned from a few weeks' shooting
in Scotland. We bundled out of the train onto the station platform in
London. Dogs, gun-cases, cartridge-boxes, men and maid servants,
trunks, bags, baskets, bunches of grouse, and the passengers seemed in
a chaotic huddle of confusion. In Germany at least twenty policemen
would have been needed to disentangle us. I was so torpid from having
been long Teutonically cared for, that I looked on momentarily
paralyzed. There was no shouting, not a harsh word that I heard; and
as I was almost the last to get away, I can vouch for it that in ten
minutes each had his own and was off. I had forgotten that such things
could be done. I had been so long steeped in enforced orderliness,
that I had forgotten that real orderliness is only born of individual
self-control. I forgot that I was back among the free spirits who
govern a quarter of the habitable globe and whose descendants are
making America; and even if here and there one or more, and they are
often recently arrived immigrants, are intoxicated by freedom and
shoot or steal like drunken men; I realized that I am still an
Occidental barbarian, thank God, preferring liberty, even though it is
punctuated now and then with shots and screams and thefts, to official
guardianship, even though I am thus saved the shooting, the screaming,
and the thieving.
In the nine years ending 1910, our Fourth of July
celebrations cost America in killed, 18,000; in wounded, 35,000; but
even that is better than the civic throttling of the German method. It
seems to be forgotten that the men who keep the world fresh with their
saline vigor, love risks as they love fresh air. They should be
curbed, but not strangled!
You read their history, you watch closely
their manners, you prowl about among them, in their streets, their
shops, their houses, their theatres; you accompany the crowds on a
holiday in the trains, in the forests, in the summer resorts, at their
concerts or their picnics, in their beer-gardens and restaurants, and
you soon see that the orderliness is all forced upon them from
without, and not due to their own knowledge of how to take care of
themselves.
In a recent volume by a distinguished German prison
official he writes that, after a careful study of the figures from
1882 to 1910, he has discovered that one person now living in every
twelve in Germany has been convicted of some offence. Doctor
Finkelnburg shows that the number of "criminals" in Germany is
3,869,000, of whom 3,060,000 are males, and 809,000 females. Every 43d
boy and every 213th girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen has
been punished by fine or imprisonment. This does not mean that the
Germans are criminal or disorderly, but, on the contrary, it shows how
absurdly petty are the violations of the law punished by fine or
imprisonment.