It is during the latter part of the present century that a general
movement has arisen to give women their rights in business life and
in political and social affairs. It is the intention of this article
to treat of this movement, especially in its relation to education,
in Germany, where, of all civilized lands, it has had apparently
the smallest results. Progress in the direction indicated has been,
however, far greater than appears on the surface, and the movement is
slowly taking shape in a form that will gain official recognition and
support, and the way is being prepared for scholarly attainments among
the women of Germany, superior, possibly, to those of the women of
other nations.
There is, moreover, an ideal side to this movement in Germany not
altogether found in other lands. The motive for advanced study is more
largely joy in the study itself, and desire to supply the spiritual
needs of an idle life. In order to understand this ideal tendency it is
necessary to cast a glance backward over nearly three hundred years.
Let us begin with the contest which was waged so successfully for the
development and protection of the German language, first against the
Latin and later against the French. In this struggle women took a
prominent part, especially through membership in the society called
the “Order of the Palms,” which, before the beginning of the Thirty
Years’ War, united the strongest spirits of Germany for this purpose.
The first woman to join this society was Sophie Elizabeth, Princess of
Mecklenburg, married in 1636 to the Herzog of Braunschweig. She was
followed by many others, both of the nobility and the common people,
and was named by virtue of this leadership “The Deliverer.”
In the eighteenth century we have the founder of the German theater,
Caroline Neuber. In the artistic sense she was the first director of
the German stage, the first to turn the attention of the greatest
actors of her day to the ideal side of dramatic presentation. Early
in the eighteenth century women began to take up university studies.
A certain Frau von Zingler received a prize from the University of
Wittenberg for literary work, and the wife of Professor Gottscheds
entered upon a contest for a prize in poetry with her husband.
We find some old verses published in Leipsic, in a book of students’
songs, in 1736, recognizing the fact that women attended lectures in
the university there, although the reference is rather sarcastic,
speaking of “beauty coming to listen in the halls of learning.”
In 1754 the first woman received her degree of Doctor of Medicine
in Halle--Dorothea Christine Erxleben, _née_ Leborin, a daughter of
a physician, who attained to this result only after many years of
painstaking effort. With her father’s help she studied the classics
and medicine, and gradually, in spite of the objections of his
brother physicians, began to practice as a doctor under her father’s
protection. She is said to have cured her patients _cito tuto_,
_jucunde_, and in 1742 she published a book on the right of women to
study, the title of which, according to the custom of the day, included
the full table of contents. This book passed through two editions, and
enabled her to gain the attention of Frederick II, who was persuaded to
order the University of Halle to grant her the privilege of taking her
examination there. The day arrived, and the hall was crowded for the
occasion; the candidate passed the ordeal in a brilliant manner, and
took the oath for the doctor’s degree amid a storm of applause from the
listeners present.
In the present century the germ of the movement for educational rights
for women came into consciousness in Germany in the stormy year
1848, and first found expression and life through the work of two
women--Louise Otto Peters and Auguste Schmidt. The former founded the
Universal Association for Women in Germany, and through this society
both these women worked for thirty years and did much toward preparing
the way for the broader efforts of the present time.
It is a fact granted by all the educational world that scholarship
attains a depth and thoroughness in Germany not found in other lands,
and this very perfection has been in part the cause of the backwardness
of the educational movement among the women, for a high degree of
scholarship has often been acquired by the men at the expense of the
devoted service of the women connected with them. Yet when the women of
Germany demand their educational rights it will be to share also in the
rich intellectual inheritance of their land.
The majority of the men thus far regard the movement with distrust
and suspicion, but are powerless to crush it out. An amusing instance
occurred last year in the family of an official in one of the large
university towns. He was a conservative man who had his immediate
family in a proper state of subjection, but his mother-in-law, alas!
he could not control, and to his dismay she enrolled herself at the
university as a _Hospitant_, and, in spite of the protestations of her
son-in-law, she was a regular attendant upon the courses of lectures
that she had elected.
The regular schools for girls in Germany, above the common schools
attended by girls and boys together, are of two grades--the middle
schools and the high schools. The avowed object of these schools is to
fit girls for society and for the position of housewife, as Herr Dr.
Bosse, the Minister of Public Instruction for the German Empire, states
in his report on the condition of girls’ schools in Germany, and as
he publicly declared before the German Parliament in the discussion
regarding the establishment of a girls’ gymnasium in Breslau, referred
to later on in this paper.
The girls’ schools established by the Government provide well for the
study of the modern languages, and it is the exception to find women
in the upper classes who do not speak French and English. Literature,
religion, gymnastics, and needlework are also well taught. The course
of study in the high school includes a little mathematics, offered
under the name of reckoning, and sufficient to enable a woman to keep
the accounts of a household, and also a little science of the kind
that can be learned without a knowledge of mathematics. Let me quote
a paragraph from the report of the Minister of Public Instruction
for the year 1898 in regard to the aim of the mathematical course in
the girls’ high schools: “Accuracy in reckoning with numbers and the
ability to use numbers in the common relations of life, especially in
housekeeping. Great weight is laid upon quick mental computations, but
in all grades the choice of problems should be such as especially apply
to the keeping of a house.” This is the opportunity which is offered to
girls by the Government in the department of mathematics! In addition
to the two grades of schools mentioned there are seminaries in many
of the large cities for the purpose of educating women teachers. The
instructors in these seminaries are well prepared for their positions,
are mostly men, and the instruction given is very superior to that
given in the girls’ high schools. Latin and Greek are, however,
not studied in these seminaries, and mathematics and science are
expurgated, we might say, of points that might prove difficult for the
feminine intellect.
The ability to learn Latin and Greek seems in the German mind to
especially mark the dividing line between the masculine and feminine
brain. The writer was at one time studying a subject in Greek
philosophy, in the City Library of Munich, requiring the use of a
number of Greek and Latin books, and it was amusing to notice the
astonishment of the men present that a woman should know the classic
languages!
The women who hold certificates from the seminaries are allowed,
according to a new law passed in 1894, to continue their studies and
to take the higher teachers’ examinations. This is considered a great
step in advance, for a woman who has successfully passed this latter
examination can hold any position in the girls’ schools, and can even
be director of such a school.
That German women have long been discontented with the education
provided for them by the Government is proved by the fact that the
number of higher institutions offering private opportunities to girls
is constantly increasing. As far back as 1868 the Victoria Lyceum was
founded by a Scotch woman--Miss Georgina Archer--at her own expense and
on her own responsibility, and this institution was well sustained from
the beginning. It is now under the patronage of the Empress Frederick,
and offers courses to women that run parallel to a certain extent
with those given on the same subjects in the university. Professors
from the university lecture in the Victoria Lyceum, but a young woman
who had listened to the same professor in both places informed me
that he (perhaps unconsciously) simplified his lectures very much
for the Victoria Lyceum. Fraulein Anna von Cotta is the director of
the institution. Among the women who teach there we note the name of
the well-known Fraulein Lange, who lectures on psychology and German
literature.
There are several girls’ gymnasia in Germany which testify to the
demand for higher education. These institutions are all but one
private, and three of them--one in Leipsic, one in Berlin, and a third,
opened in October, 1898, in Königsberg--are called “gymnasial courses,”
and are for girls who have finished the girls’ high school, and who
must pass entrance examinations in order to be received into them.
There has been for some time a girls’ gymnasium which corresponds
exactly to those for boys in Carlsruhe, under the auspices of the
“Society for Reform in the Education of Women,” which receives girls
of twelve who must have finished the six lower classes of a girls’
school. This society, to which the girls of Germany owe much, is
planning to open another gymnasium in Hannover, to which girls will be
received from the junior class of the girls’ high school; the course
of study will occupy five years, and will fit girls for the same
official examinations as the boys’ gymnasia. The language courses in
the highest class will be elective, providing either for Greek or the
modern languages, but Latin is obligatory in all the classes. The girls
from all these gymnasia are debarred from taking any of the official
examinations for which their studies have prepared them.
The next step in the matter of gymnasial education for girls was
what might have been expected. The people of the wide-awake city of
Breslau voted, by an overwhelming majority, to establish a girls’
gymnasium under the same laws and furnishing the same advantages as
the boys’ gymnasia. The completed plan was sent to the Minister of
Public Instruction in Berlin in January, 1898, for approval, with the
intention of opening the gymnasium at Easter, for which twenty-six
girls were already enrolled. Herr Dr. Bosse, however, foreseeing
the results such an undertaking would involve, consulted the other
departments of the ministry, and two months later a decided refusal
came like a thunderbolt upon the people of Breslau. On the 30th of
April, 1898, Herr Dr. Bosse was called to account in the Reichstag
for his action in the matter, which he justified on the ground that
Government approval of girls’ gymnasia would mean the acceptance of
the diploma for matriculation in the universities and the opening
to women of all Government professional examinations, and that to
have granted it would have been to take a step in the direction of
the modern movement for women which could never have been recalled,
and would open the lecture rooms of Germany in general to women. He
contended, further, that the founding of official gymnasia for girls
would delegate the existing girls’ high school to a secondary place,
an institution which had been planned thoughtfully by the Government
for the purpose of educating women in the best manner, not to become
rivals of men, but help-meets and able housekeepers.
The demand of the people of Breslau, Dr. Bosse said, was an unnatural
one, and his refusal was founded on the fear that such a movement would
increase and threaten the social foundations of all Germany, as the
idea that women can compete with men in all careers is a false one.
The petition of the magistrate of Breslau was supported in the
discussion by some of the national-liberal, free-conservative, and
Polish representatives. These took the broad ground that girls have
a right to equal education with boys, and that the educational
institutions of Germany which have so long stood at the head of those
of the world should not, in the matter of education of women, leave the
question to be decided according to the whims of private individuals.
Some of the arguments of those who spoke in favor of the enterprise
were amusing. One said that the girls of Germany would be grateful if
the Minister of Public Instruction would furnish them with husbands,
but, as there were not enough to go around, the others should have some
career provided for them. Another, that about forty per cent of the
girls of the higher classes no longer marry, and they should not be
allowed to suffer the consequences of the fact that young men of the
present day do not care to marry, but they have a right that the way be
shown them to such careers as are suited to their feminine nature.
An objector said that he could not understand how any man of
pedagogical culture could approve of a girls’ gymnasium, for it is
evident that any such progress for women as that would imply must be at
the expense of the men, who would gain less on account of the increased
number of candidates for work of all kinds and would more seldom be
able to offer the best of all existences to a woman--that of wifehood.
The city of Breslau was obliged, therefore, to give up the undertaking
for the present, but the agitation of the question has probably
prepared the way for more extended plans in the future in the same
direction in Prussia.
A similar undertaking in Carlsruhe, in Baden, has met with better
success, and resulted in the opening of the first official gymnasium
for girls in Germany, in September, 1898. This gymnasium was planned
about the same time as that of Breslau, and as the permission of
the Minister of Public Instruction in Baden was obtained without
difficulty, the institution came into existence according to the
will of the people of Carlsruhe. Seventy-nine of the members of the
Bürgerauschuss voted in favor of the undertaking in the meeting in
which the final action was taken early in the summer of 1898. The
Christian-conservative party only decidedly opposed it. The leader of
this party was very much excited over the matter, and called out, when
the action was taken, “I ask you, gentlemen, on your honor, if any of
you would marry a girl from a gymnasium?”
The opening of the Government gymnasium will remove the necessity for
continuing the private one in Carlsruhe, under the society in charge of
it, and leave that society free to direct its efforts elsewhere.
There had already been several references to the general subject of
the education of women in the Reichstag before the question of the
gymnasium in Breslau came up. In January, 1898, Prince Carolath spoke
in favor of founding several girls’ gymnasia, and admitting women
legally to the universities and to pedagogical and to medical state
professional examinations, remarking that in all other civilized lands
the universities are more open to women than in Germany.
Coming now to the present attitude of the universities to the higher
education of women, we find that a great change has taken place during
the last few years. While it is still the fact that no German woman can
matriculate in any university in Germany, yet the problem of the stand
which the universities should take is working out its own solution in
the right direction.
The University of Berlin, the largest and in many respects the leading
one, has made progress in the matter, although women still work there
under great limitations. The cause was injured at the outset in Berlin
by the fact that women, often foreigners, who had not the required
preparation, rushed into lecture rooms which were open to them from
motives of curiosity. This caused such strong feeling among the
professors that in one instance a professor, on entering his classroom,
saw a lady sitting in the rear, walked up to her, offered her his arm,
and led her out of the room.
The first step in the right direction has been to demand either a
diploma from some well-known institution, or, as that could not be
complied with by German women, the certificate of the teachers’
examinations. The possessors of such credentials may attend lectures
in any course, where the professor is willing, as _Hospitants_. The
conditions under which women may attend the University of Berlin are
the following:
1. A written permission must be obtained from the curator of the
university on presentation of a satisfactory diploma, a passport, and,
by Russian applicants, a written permission from the police authorities
to study in Germany.