Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Jeannie Howse and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
* * * * *
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber's Note: |
| |
| Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has |
| been preserved. |
| |
| Superscripted text is marked with ^{} for example: S^{ce} |
| |
| Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For |
| a complete list, please see the end of this document. |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
* * * * *
HOME LIFE IN
GERMANY
BY
MRS. ALFRED SIDGWICK
The Chautauqua Press
CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK
MCMXII
_First Published May 1908_
_Second Edition June 1908_
_Third Edition 1912_
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. CHILDREN 7
III. SCHOOLS 15
IV. THE EDUCATION OF THE POOR 28
V. THE BACKFISCH 36
VI. THE STUDENT 47
VII. RIEHL ON WOMEN 59
VIII. THE OLD AND THE NEW 68
IX. GIRLHOOD 78
X. MARRIAGES 92
XI. THE HOUSEHOLDER 103
XII. HOUSEWIVES 113
XIII. HOUSEWIVES (_continued_) 123
XIV. SERVANTS 138
XV. FOOD 153
XVI. SHOPS AND MARKETS 167
XVII. EXPENSES OF LIFE 177
XVIII. HOSPITALITY 196
XIX. GERMAN SUNDAYS 205
XX. SPORTS AND GAMES 217
XXI. INNS AND RESTAURANTS 225
XXII. LIFE IN LODGINGS 237
XXIII. SUMMER RESORTS 250
XXIV. PEASANT LIFE 267
XXV. HOW THE POOR LIVE 286
XXVI. BERLIN 297
XXVII. ODDS AND ENDS 307
Translations of foreign words and phrases in this book will be found
in the Appendix at the back of the volume.
HOME LIFE IN GERMANY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
I was once greatly impressed by a story of an officer in the German
army, who told his English hostess that he knew the position of every
blacksmith's forge in Yorkshire. I wondered at the time how many
officers in the English army had learned where to find the
blacksmiths' forges in Pomerania. But those are bygone days. Most of
us know more about Germany now than we do about our own country.[1] We
go over there singly and in batches, we see their admirable public
institutions, we visit their factories, we examine their Poor Laws, we
walk their hospitals, we look on at their drill and their manoeuvres,
we follow each twist and turn of their politics, we watch their
birth-rate, we write reams about their navy, and we can explain to any
one according to our bias exactly what their system of Protection does
for them. We are often sufficiently ignorant to compare them with the
Japanese, and about once a month we publish a weighty book concerning
various aspects of their flourishing empire.
Some of these books I have read with ardent and respectful interest;
and always as I read, my own little venture seemed to wither and
vanish in the light of a profounder knowledge and a wider judgment
than I shall ever attain. For I have not visited workhouses and
factories, I know little more about German taxes than about English
ones, and I have no statistics for the instruction and entertainment
of the intelligent reader. I can take him inside a German home, but I
can give him no information about German building laws. I know how
German women spend their days, but I know as little about the exact
function of a Bürgermeister as about the functions of a Mayor. In
short, my knowledge of Germany, like my knowledge of England, is based
on a series of life-long, unclassified, more or less inchoate
impressions, and the only excuse I have for writing about either
country I find in my own and some other people's trivial minds.
When I read of a country unknown or only slightly known, I like to be
told all the insignificant trifles that make the common round of life.
It is assuredly desirable that the great movements should be watched
and described for us; but we want pictures of the people in their
homes, pictures of them at rest and at play, as well as engaged in
those public works that make their public history. For no reason in
the world I happen to be interested in China, but I am still waiting
for just the gossip I want about private life there. We have Pierre
Loti's exquisite dream pictures of his deserted palace at Pekin, and
we have many useful and expert accounts of the roads, mines, railways,
factories, laws, politics, and creeds of the Celestial Empire. But the
book I ask for could not be written by anyone who was not of Chinese
birth, and it would probably be written by a woman. It might not have
much literary form or value, but it would enter into those minutiæ of
life that the masculine traveller either does not see or does not
think worth notice. The author of such a small-beer chronicle must
have been intimate from childhood with the Chinese point of view,
though her home and her friends were in a foreign land. She would
probably not know much about her ancestral laws and politics, but she
would have known ever since she could hear and speak just what Chinese
people said to each other when none but Chinese were by, what they
ate, what they wore, how they governed their homes, the relationship
between husband and wife, parents and children, master and servant; in
what way they fought the battle of life, how they feasted and how they
mourned. If circumstances took her over and over again to different
parts of China for long stretches of time, she would add to her
traditions and her early atmosphere some experience of her race on
their own soil and under their own sun. What she could tell us would
be of such small importance that she would often hesitate to set it
down; and again, she would hesitate lest what she had to say should be
well known already to those amongst her readers who had sojourned in
her father's country. She would do well, I think, to make some picture
for herself of the audience she could hope to entertain, and to fix
her mind on these people while she wrote her book. She would know that
in the country of her adoption there were some who never crossed their
own seas, and others who travelled here and there in the world but did
not visit China or know much about its people. She would write for the
ignorant ones, and not for any others; and she would of necessity
leave aside all great issues and all vexed questions. Her picture
would be chiefly, too, a picture of the nation's women; for though
they have on the whole no share in political history, they reckon
with the men in any history of domestic life and habit.
Germans often maintain that their country is more diverse than any
other, and on that account more difficult to describe: a country of
many races and various rules held loosely together by language and
more tightly of late years by the bond of empire. But the truth
probably is, that in our country we see and understand varieties,
while in a foreign one we chiefly perceive what is unlike ourselves
and common to the people we are observing. For from the flux and
welter of qualities that form a modern nation certain traits survive
peculiar to that nation: specialities of feature, character, and
habit, some seen at first sight, others only discovered after long and
intimate acquaintance. It is undoubtedly true that no one person can
be at home in every corner of the German Empire, or of any other
empire.
There are many Germanys. The one we hear most of in England nowadays
is armed to the teeth, set wholly on material advancement, in a
dangerously warlike mood, hustling us without scruple from our place
in the world's markets, a model of municipal government and
enterprise, a land where vice, poverty, idleness, and dirt are all
unknown. We hear so much of this praiseworthy but most unamiable
_Wunderkind_ amongst nations, that we generally forget the Germany we
know, the Germany still there for our affection and delight, the dear
country of quaint fancies, of music and of poetry. That Germany has
vanished, the wiseacres say, the dreamy unworldly German is no more
with us, it is sheer sentimental folly to believe in him and to waste
your time looking for him. But how if you know him everywhere, in the
music and poetry that he could not have given us if they had not
burned within him, and in the men and women who have accompanied you
as friends throughout life,--how if you still find him whenever you go
to Germany? Not, to be sure, in the shape of the wholly unpractical
fool who preceded the modern English myth; but, for instance, in some
of the mystical plays that hold his stage, in many of his toys and
pictures, and above all in the kindly, lovable, clever people it is
your pleasure to meet there. You may perhaps speak with all the more
conviction of this attractive Germany if you have never shut your eyes
and ears to the Germany that does not love us, and if you have often
been vexed and offended by the Anglophobia that undoubtedly exists.
This Germany makes more noise than the friendly element, and it is
called into existence by a variety of causes not all important or
political. It flourished long before the Transvaal War was seized as a
convenient stick to beat us with. In some measure the Anglicised
Germans who love us too well are responsible, for they do not always
love wisely. They deny their descent and their country, and that
justly offends their compatriots. I do not believe that the Englishman
breathes who would ever wish to call himself anything but English;
while it is quite rare for Germans in England, America, or France to
take any pride in their blood. The second generation constantly denies
it, changes its name, assures you it knows nothing of Germany. They
have not the spirit of a Touchstone, and in so far they do their
country a wrong.
In another more material sense, too, there are many Germanys, so that
when you write of one corner you may easily write of ways and food and
regulations that do not obtain in some other corner, and it is
obviously impossible to remind the reader in every case that the part
is not the whole. Wine is dear in the north, but it has sometimes
been so plentiful in the south that barrels to contain it ran short,
and anyone who possessed an empty one could get the measure of wine it
would hold in exchange. Every town and district has its special ways
of cooking. There is great variety in manner of life, in
entertainments, and in local law. There are Protestant and Catholic
areas, and there are areas where Protestants, Catholics, and Jews live
side by side. The peasant proprietor of Baden is on a higher level of
prosperity and habit than the peasant serf of Eastern Prussia; and the
Jews on the Russian frontier, those strange Oriental figures in a
special dress and wearing earlocks and long beards, have as little in
common with the Jews of Mannheim or Frankfort as with the Jews of the
London Stock Exchange. It would, in fact, be impossible for any one
person to enter into every shade and variety of German life. You can
only describe the side you know, and comment on the things you have
seen. So you bring your mite to the store of knowledge which many have
increased before you, and which many will add to again.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Throughout the book, although I am of German parentage, I have
spoken of England as my country and of the English as my
country-people. I was born and bred in England, and I found it more
convenient for purposes of expression to belong to one country than to
both.