GIRLHOOD
In the _Memoiren einer Idealistin_, those genuine and interesting
Memoirs that have been so widely read in Germany of late, Malvida von
Meysenbug, the daughter of a highly placed official at a small German
Court, describes her confirmation day and the long period of
preparation and the spiritual struggle that preceded it.
"During a whole year my sister and I went twice a week to the pastor's
house to be instructed in the dogma of the Protestant Church," she
says.... "The ceremony was to be on Sunday. The Friday before we had
our last lesson. Our teacher was deeply moved; with tears in his eyes
he spoke to us of the holiness and importance of the act we were about
to perform.... According to the German custom amongst girls of the
better classes, we put on black silk dresses for the first time for
our confirmation, and this ceremonial attire calmed me and did me
good. Our maid took special pains with our toilet, as if we were going
to a worldly entertainment, and chattered more than usual. It jarred
on me, but it helped to distract my thoughts. When it was time to
start I said Good-bye to my mother with deep emotion, and asked her to
forgive me my faults. My sister and I were to go to the pastor's house
on our way to church. There we found everything strewn with flowers.
Our teacher received us in his priestly robes, and spoke to all of us
so lovingly and earnestly that the most indifferent were moved. When
the church bells began to peal our procession set out, the pastor at
its head, and we following two by two. The way from the rectory to the
church was strewn with flowers, and the church was decked with them.
The Choral Society of the town, to which some of our best friends
belonged, received us with a beautiful hymn. I felt on wings, I prayed
to God that this hour might be blessed to me throughout my life. The
sermon preached by the voice that had so often affected me made me
calm. When the preacher required us to make our confession of faith, I
uttered my 'Yes' with firm assurance. Then I knelt before him with the
rest to receive his blessing. He put his hands on our heads, accepted
us as members of the Protestant Church, and blessed each one
separately, and with a special verse from the Bible. To me he said,
'Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.'
My heart echoed the solemn vow: Faithful unto death. The choir greeted
the young Christians with a song of victory. We did not return to the
seats reserved for candidates, but sat with our parents and relatives
waiting with them until everyone had left the church, except those who
wished to partake of the Holy Communion."
Malvida von Meysenbug is too much absorbed in her intense spiritual
experiences to describe the lighter side of confirmation in Germany,
which celebrates it with presents and a gathering of friends. A girl
gets her first black silk gown for the occasion, and both boys and
girls get as many presents as they do at Christmas or on a birthday.
These are all set out for the inspection of the friends who assemble
at the house after the religious ceremony, to congratulate the
parents and the youngest member of their church. There is an
entertainment of coffee, chocolate, and cakes; and a few days later
both boys and girls return these visits of congratulation in the
company of their parents. Some years ago, when a girl had been
confirmed, she was considered officially grown up and marriageable,
and entered straight away into the gaieties that are supposed to lead
to marriage. But the modern tendency in Germany is to prolong
girlhood, and the wife of sixteen is as rare there amongst the
educated classes as it is here.
Amongst the Jews in Germany marriages are still arranged for the young
people by their elders; often, as in France, through the intervention
of friends, but also by the business-like office of the marriage
broker. It need hardly be said, perhaps, that the refined and
enlightened Jews refuse to marry in this way. They insist on choosing
their own mate, and even on overlooking some disparity of fortune.
Unorthodox Jews marry Christian women, and the Jewish heiress
constantly allies herself and her money with a title or a uniform. In
the latter case, however, the nuptials are just as business-like as if
the _Schadchan_ had arranged them and received his commission. The
Graf or the Major gets the gold he lacks, and the rich Jewess gets
social prestige or the nearest approach to it possible in a
Jew-baiting land. An ardent anti-Semite told me that these mixed
marriages were not fertile, and that if only everyone of Jewish blood
would marry a Christian, the country would in course of time be
cleared of a race that, she solemnly assured me, is as great a curse
to it, and as inferior as the negro in America. But as she was an
anti-Semite with a sense of humour she admitted that the remedy was a
slow one and difficult to enforce. As a matter of fact, the Jews
marry mostly amongst themselves in Germany, and men are still living
in Frankfurt and other large cities who have made comfortable fortunes
by the brokerage they charged on their matchmaking. Formerly a
prosperous unmarried Jew used to be besieged by offers from these
agents; and so were men who could give their daughters a good dowry.
The better-class Jews do not employ them nowadays, but their marriages
are suggested and arranged much as marriages are in France. A young
merchant of Berlin thinks it is time to settle down, or perhaps wants
a little capital to enlarge his business. He consults an uncle in
Frankfurt. The uncle tells his old friend, the father of several
daughters, that the most handsome, industrious, and accomplished man
the world has ever seen, his own nephew, in fact, thinks of marriage,
and that his conditions are this and that; he tells his nephew that
the most beautiful and amiable creature in Germany, a brilliant
musician, a fluent linguist, a devoted daughter, and a person of
simple housewifely tastes, lives next door to him, the uncle. Except
for the housewifely tastes, it sounds, and in fact is, rather like a
courtship in the _Arabian Nights_ so far. The prince hears of the
princess, and without having seen her sets out to seek her hand. The
young merchant pays a flying visit to Frankfurt, is presented to the
most beautiful creature in Germany, finds her passable, has a talk to
her father as business-like as a talk between two solicitors,
proposes, is accepted, and at once becomes the most ardent lover the
world has ever seen.
Amongst Christians marriages are certainly not arranged for girls in
this matter-of-course way, and so "old maids" abound. Girls without
money have far less chance of marriage in Germany than in England,
where young people mate as they please and where a man expects to
support his wife entirely; while the spectacle, quite common here, of
girls with a good deal of money remaining single from various reasons,
sometimes actually from want of opportunity to marry, this every-day
occurrence amongst the English better classes is unknown on the
continent. In her powerful novel _Aus guter Familie_, Gabrielle Reuter
describes the life of a German girl whose parents cannot give her a
dowry, and who is doomed in consequence to old maidhood and to all the
disappointments, restrictions, and humiliations of unsought women.
While women look to marriage and nothing else for happiness, there
must be such lives in every monogamous country, where they outnumber
the men; but in England a woman's marriage is much more a matter of
chance and charm than of money. If she is poor and misses her chance
she is worse off than the German, for she has no _Stift_ provided for
her; but if she is attractive she is just as likely to marry without a
fortune as with one. Those German women who consider their ideas
"progressive" have taken up a new cry of late, a cry about every
woman's "right" to motherhood; but they do not seem to have found a
satisfactory way of securing this right to the 400,000 women who
outnumber the men. One learned professor wrote a pamphlet advocating
polygamy, but his proposal did not have the success he no doubt felt
it deserved. The women who discuss these questions, in magazines they
edit and mostly write themselves, said that his arguments were all
conducted from the man's point of view, and were most reprehensible.
Their own chief aim at present is to protect the mothers of
illegitimate children, and this seems a natural and proper thing for
the women of any community to do. Otherwise they are not a united
body. There are moderates and immoderates amongst them, and as I am a
moderate myself in such matters, I think those who go all lengths are
lunatics. It makes one open one's eyes to go to Germany to-day with
one's old-fashioned ideas of the German Frau, and hear what she is
doing in her desire to reform society and inaugurate a new code of
morals. She does not even wait till she is married to speak with
authority. On the contrary, she says that marriage is degrading, and
that temporary unions are more to the honour and profit of women.
"Dear Aunt S.," I heard of one girl writing to a venerable relative,
"I want you to congratulate me on my happiness. I am about to be
united with the man I love, and we shall live together (_in freier
Ehe_) till one of us is tired of it." A German lady of wide views and
worldly knowledge told me a girl had lately sent her a little volume
of original poems that she could only describe as unfit for
publication; yet she knew the girl and thought her a harmless
creature. She was presumably a goose who wanted to cackle in chorus.
This same lady met another girl in the gallery of an artist who
belonged to what Mr. Gilbert calls the "fleshly school." "Ah!" said
the girl to my friend, "this is where I feel at home." One of these
immoderates, on the authority of Plato, recommended at a public
meeting that girls should do gymnastics unclothed. Some of them are
men-haters, some in the interests of their sex are all for free love.
None of them accept the domination of men in theory, so I think that
the facts of life in their own country must often be unpleasantly
forced on them. I discussed the movement, which is a marked one in
Germany at present, with two women whose experience and good sense
made their opinion valuable. But they did not agree. One said that the
excesses of these people were the outcome of long repression, and
would wear out in time. The other thought the movement would go on and
grow; which was as much as to say that she thought the old morals were
dead. Undoubtedly they are dead in some sets in Germany to-day. You
hear of girls of good family who have asserted their "right to
motherhood" without marriage; and you hear of other girls who refuse
to marry because they will not make vows or accept conditions they
consider humiliating. These views do not attract large numbers;
probably never will. But they are sufficiently widespread to express
themselves in many modern essays, novels, and pamphlets, and even to
support several magazines. The women holding them are of various types
and quality, and are by no manner of means agreed with each other;
while those women who are working steadily and discreetly for the
progress of their sex condemn the extreme party, and consider them a
check on all real advancement.
The German girl, then, is not always the simple creature tradition
paints her. At any rate she reads novels and sees plays that would
have been forbidden to her mother. Nevertheless she is as a rule just
as happy as a girl should be when the man of her dreams asks her to
marry him. In other days a proposal of marriage was a ceremonial in
Germany. A man had to put on evening dress for the occasion, and carry
a bouquet with him. "Oh yes," said a German friend of mine, "this is
still done sometimes. A little while ago a cousin of mine in Mainz was
seen coming home in evening dress by broad daylight carrying his
bouquet. The poor fellow had been refused." But in these laxer times a
man is spared such an ordeal. It is more usual in Germany than in
England to speak to a girl's father before proposing to her, but even
this is not invariable nowadays. Young people make their own
opportunities. "Last year my brother proposed to his present wife in
the woods near Baden while they gathered Waldmeister," said a young
German to a girl he ardently admired. "It will be in flower next week,
and your parents have just arranged that I may meet them at the _Alte
Schloss_ in time for dinner. After dinner we will walk in the
woods--_nicht wahr_?" But the girl, as it happened, did not wish to
receive a proposal of marriage from this young man, so she took care
not to walk in the woods and gather Waldmeister with him. It is often
said that the sexes herd separately in Germany, and do not meet each
other much. But this always seems to me one of the things said by
people who have looked at Germans and not lived amongst them. A nation
that has such an intimate home life, and is on the whole poor,
receives its friends in an intimate informal way. Young men have
different occupations and interests from girls, but when they are
admitted to a family they are often admitted on terms of easy
friendship. In London you may ask a young man with others to dinner at
intervals, and never get to know him; in Berlin you ask him without
others to supper, and soon get to know him very well. Besides, a
German cannot endure life long without an _Ausflug_ or a _Landpartie_,
and when the family plans one it includes one or two of its friends.
When two Germans do get engaged they let their world know of it. A
betrothal there is not the informal flimsy contract it often is with
us. They begin by publishing the event in their newspapers, and
sending round printed forms announcing it to their friends. In the
newspaper the announcement is rather bare compared with the
advertisement of other family events. "Engaged. Frl. Martha Raekelwitz
mit Hrn. Ingenieur Julius Prinz Dresden-Hamburg" is considered
sufficient. But the printed intimations sent round on gilt-edged paper
or cardboard to the friends of the contracting parties are more
communicative. On one side the parents have the honour to announce the
engagement of their daughter Anna to Mr. So-and-So, and on the other
side Mr. So-and-So announces his engagement to Miss Anna. Here is a
reproduction of such a form, with nothing altered except the actual
names and addresses. On the left-hand side of the double sheet of
cartridge paper the parents of the _Braut_ have their say--
"Die Verlobung ihrer Tochter Pauline mit Herrn Referendar Dr.
jur. Heinrich Schmidt in Berlin beehren sich ergebenst
anzuzeigen.
Geh. Regierungsrat Dr. EUGEN BRAND
Königl. Gymnasialdirektor und
FRAU HELENE, geb. ENGEL
STUTTGART, _im Juni 1906_
Tiergarten 7"
Then on the opposite page the future bridegroom speaks for himself--
"Meine Verlobung mit Fräulein Pauline Brand, Tochter des
Königl. Gymnasialdirektors Herrn Geh. Regierungsrat Dr. Eugen
Brand und seiner Frau Gemahlin Helene, geb. Engel, in
Stuttgart, beehre ich mich ergebenst anzuzeigen.
Dr. jur. HEINRICH SCHMIDT
Referendar
BERLIN, _im Juni 1906_
Kurfürstendamm 2000"
Directly these forms have been circulated, all the friends who have
received one and live near enough pay a visit of congratulation to the
bride's parents, and soon after the betrothed couple return these
visits with some ceremony. It is quite impossible, by the way, to talk
of Germans who are officially engaged without calling them the bride
and bridegroom. They plight their troth with the plain gold rings that
will be their wedding rings, and this stage of their union is
celebrated with as much ceremony and merrymaking as the actual
wedding. The Germans are giving up so many of their quaint poetical
customs that the girl of to-day probably wears a fine diamond
engagement ring instead of the old-fashioned gold one. But the ring
with which her mother and grandmother plighted their troth was the
ring with which they were wedded, and when Chamisso wrote _Du Ring an
meinem Finger_ he was not writing of diamonds. All the tenderness and
poetry of Germany go out to lovers, and the thought of a German bride
and bridegroom flashes through the mind with thoughts of flowers and
moonlight and nightingales. At least, it does if you can associate
them with the poems of Heine and Chamisso, with the songs of Schumann,
and with the caressing intimate talk of the German tongue unloosed by
love. But your experience is just as likely to play you the unkindest
trick, and remind you of German lovers whose uncouth public
endearments made everyone not to the manner born uncomfortable.
When the bride and bridegroom live in the same town, and know a large
number of people, they are overdone with festivities from the moment
of betrothal to the day of marriage. The round of entertainments
begins with a gala dinner given by the bride's father, and this is
followed by invitations from all the relatives and friends on either
side. When you receive a German _Brautpaar_ they should be the guests
of honour, and if you can hang garlands near them so much the better.
You must certainly present the _Braut_ with a bouquet at some stage of
the proceedings, and you will give pleasure if you can manufacture one
or two mottoes in green stuff and put them in conspicuous places. For
instance, I knew of a girl who got engaged away from home. Do you
suppose that she was allowed to return to a bare and speechless front
door as her English cousin would? Nothing of the kind. The whole
family had set to work to twine laurel wreaths and garlands in her
honour, and she was received with _Wilkommen du glückseliges Kind_
done in ivy leaves by her grandmother. It was considered very
_rührend_ and _innig_. At some time during the engagement the
betrothed couple are sure to get photographed together, and anyone who
possesses a German family album will bear me out that the lady is
nearly always standing, while her bearded lover is sitting down. When
they are both standing they are arm in arm or hand in hand. I remember
a collection possessing two photographs of a married daughter with her
husband. One had been taken just before the wedding in the orthodox
pose; he in an easy chair and she standing meekly by his side: the
other represented them a year after marriage, when Heaven had sent
them twins. They were both standing then, and they each had a baby in
a _Steckkissen_ in their arms.
If the bridegroom is not living in the same town with his bride her
life is supposed to run rather quietly in his absence. She is not
expected to dance with other men, for instance; but rather to spend
her time in embroidering his monogram on every conceivable object he
might use: on tobacco pouches, or slippers, on letter cases, on
braces, on photograph frames, on luggage straps, on fine pocket
handkerchiefs. If she is expert and possesses the true sentiment she
will embroider things for him with her hair. In these degenerate days
she does not make her own outfit. Formerly, when a German girl left
school she began to make stores of body and house linen for future
years. But in modern cities the _Braut_ gets everything at one of the
big "white" shops, from her own laces and muslins to the saucepan
holders for the kitchen, and the bread bags her cook will hang outside
the flat for the baker's boy. In Germany it is the bride, or rather
her parents, who furnish the house and provide the household linen;
and the linen is all embroidered with her initials. This custom
extends to all classes, so that you constantly hear of a servant who
is saving up for her _Aussteuer_, that is, the furniture and linen of
a house as well as her own clothes. If you ask whether she is engaged
you are told that the outfit is the thing. When the money for that is
there it is easy to provide the bridegroom. In higher spheres much
more is spent on a bride's trousseau than in England, taking class for
class. Some years ago I had occasion to help in the choice of a
trousseau bought in Hamburg, and to be often in and out of a great
"white ware" business there. I cannot remember how many outfits were
on view during those weeks, but they were all much alike. What some
people call "undies" had been ordered in immense quantities, sometimes
heavily trimmed with Madeira work, sometimes with a plain scollop of
double linen warranted to wash and wear for ever. The material was
also invariably of a kind to wear, a fine linen or a closely woven
English longcloth. How any one woman could want some six dozen
"nighties" (the silly slang sounds especially silly when I think of
those solid highly respectable German garments) was a question no one
seemed to ask. The bride's father could afford six dozen; it was the
custom to have six dozen if you could pay for them, and there they
were. The thin cambric garments French women were beginning to wear
then were shown to you and tossed contemptuously aside as only fit for
actresses. But this has all been changed. If you ask for "undies" in
Berlin to-day, a supercilious shoplady brings you the last folly in
gossamer, decolletée, and with elbow sleeves; and you wonder as you
stare at it what a sane portly German housewife makes of such a
garment. In this, as in other things, instead of abiding by his own
sensible fashions, the German is imitating the French and the
Americans; for it is the French and the Americans who have taught the
women of other nations to buy clothes so fragile and so costly that
they are only fit for the purse of a Chicago packer.
When the outfit is ready and the wedding day near, the bride returns
all the entertainments given in her honour by inviting her girl
friends to a Bride-chocolate or a Bean-coffee. This festivity is like
a _Kaffee-Klatsch_, or what we should call an afternoon tea. In
Germany, until quite lately, chocolate and coffee were preferred to
tea, and the guests sat round a dining-table well spread with cakes.
At a Bean-coffee the cake of honour had a bean in it, and the girl who
got the bean in her slice would be _Braut_ before the year was out.
Another entertainment that takes place immediately before the marriage
is given by the bride's best friend, who invites several other girls
to help her weave the bridal wreath of myrtle. The bride does not help
with it. She appears with the bridegroom later in the afternoon when
the wreath is ready. It is presented to her with great ceremony on a
cushion, and as they bring it the girls sing the well-known song from
the _Freischütz_--
"Wir winden dir den Jungfernkranz
Mit veilchenblauer Seide;
Wir führen dich zu Spiel und Tanz
Zu Glück und Liebesfreude!
Lavendel, Myrt' und Thymian
Das wächst in meinen Garten;
Wie lang bleibt doch der Freiersmann?
Ich kann es kaum erwarten.
Sie hat gesponnen sieben Jahr
Den goldnen Flachs am Rocken;
Die Schleier sind wie Spinnweb klar,
Und grün der Kranz der Locken.
Und als der schmucke Freier kam,
War'n sieben Jahr verronnen:
Und weil sie der Herzliebste nahm
Hat sie den Kranz gewonnen."
The bridegroom receives a buttonhole, but no one sings him a song. In
the opera he is not on the stage during the bridesmaids' chorus. I
have not been able to find out whether the quaint pretty verses are by
Friedrich Kind, who founded the libretto of the opera on a story by
August Apel, or whether he borrowed them from an older source. German
brides wore myrtle and their friends wove a wedding wreath for them
long before 1820, when _Der Freischütz_ appeared.