MRS. ALFRED 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OP THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
// 
 
 A 
 
HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
BV THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE KINSMAN 
 
 THE PROFESSOR'S LEGACY 
 THE BERYL STONES 
 THE THOUSAND EUGENIAS 
 CYNTHIA'S WAY 
 THE INNER SHRINE 
 COUSIN Ivo 
 
 A WOMAN WITH A FUTURE 
 THE GRASSHOPPERS 
 MRS. FINCH-BRASSEY 
 LESSER'S DAUGHTER 
 A SPLENDID COUSIN 
 ISAAC ELLER'S MONEY 
 

YOUNG GERMANY 
 
 l-'KOM I HE I'AINTINCi I>V C. HKK'TKL 
 
HOME LIFE IN 
 GERMANY 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. ALFRED SIDGWICK 
 
 WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1909 
 
First Published . . May /<yo8 
 Second Edition . June iqoS 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY ..... i 
 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 
 
 220886 
 
HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 XXII. LIFE IN LODGINGS . PAGB 
 
 XXIII. SUMMER RESORTS 
 
 VVTW . 250 
 
 XXIV. PEASANT LIFE 
 
 . 267 
 XXV. How THE POOR LIVE 
 
 XXVI. BERLIN 
 
 * 207 
 
 XXVII. ODDS AND ENDS 
 
 . 307 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 YOUNG GERMANY .... .Frontispiece 
 
 From the Painting by C. HERTEL. From a Photo- 
 graph by the Berlin Photographic Co. 
 
 FACING PACK 
 
 WASHING-DAY AT THE PESTALOZZI FROBEL HAUS . 13 
 
 By kind permission of the Berliner Verein fur Volkserziehung 
 
 THE SCHOOL IN THE FOREST, NEAR CHARLOTTENBURG . 34 
 
 By kind permission of HASSERODT & Co. 
 
 CONFIRMATION IN A CATHOLIC CHURCH . . .40 
 
 After the Painting by HERMANN BEHRENS. From a Wood 
 Engraving by RICHARD BONG, Berlin 
 
 BURSCHENHERRLICHKEIT (The Glory of Studentship) . 50 . 
 From the Painting by CH. HEYDEN. From a Photograph by 
 the Berlin Photographic Co. 
 
 BRIDAL GARMENTS . . . . . .88 
 
 From a Painting after H. BINDE. From a Wood Engraving 
 by RICHARD BONG, Berlin 
 
 A GERMAN KITCHEN . . . . . .134 
 
 From a Photograph by W. TITZENTHALER, Berlin 
 
 FREIBURG . . . . . . .172 
 
 From a Photograph 
 
 COTTBUS MARKET-PLACE AND TOWN HALL . .174 
 
 From a Photograph 
 
 SOLDIERS AT MESS ...... 220 
 
 From a Photograph by W. TITZENTHALER, Berlin 
 
 DANCING SCENE IN A SWABIAN VILLAGE INN . . 228 
 
 From the Painting by B. VAUTIER. From a Photograph by 
 the Berlin Photographic Co. 
 
 A GERMAN FORESTER AND HIS WIFE . . . 250 
 
 From a Photograph by F. MULLER 
 
viii HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 FACING PACK 
 
 A PEASANTS' WEDDING PARTY, WITH BRIDAL 
 
 WAGGON IN THE BACKGROUND. . . .269 
 
 From a Photograph by AUGUST SCHERL 
 CIVIL MARRIAGE ...... 270 
 
 From the Painting by B. VAUTIER. From a Photograph by 
 the Berlin Photographic Co. 
 
 THE ROYAL PALACE, BERLIN . . . .297 
 
 From a Photograph by ALBERT BRUNING, Berlin 
 
 CHANGING THE GUARD IN BERLIN . . . .300 
 
 From a Photograph by F. MULLER 
 
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 suffici- 
 ently ignorant to compare them with the Japanese, and 
 about once a month we publish a weighty book con- 
 cerning various aspects of their flourishing empire. 
 
 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. 
 I 
 
2 HO&E'LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 e ' of ' these ' bcpV 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 Burgermeister as 
 about the functions of a Mayor. In short, my know- 
 ledge 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 
 
INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 much literary form or value, but it would enter into 
 those minutiae 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 
 
4 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 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 acquaint- 
 ance. 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 war- 
 like mood, hustling us without scruple from our place 
 in the world's markets, a model of municipal govern- 
 ment 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 
 
INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 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 pre- 
 ceded 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 con- 
 venient stick to beat us with. In some measure the 
 Anglicised Germans who love us too well are respons- 
 ible, 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 English- 
 man breathes who would ever wish to call himself any- 
 thing 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 
 
6 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 it has sometimes been so plentiful in the south that 
 barrels to contain it ran short, and anyone who pos- 
 sessed 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 Frank- 
 fort 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. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CHILDREN 
 
 IN Germany the storks bring the children. " I 
 know the pond in which all the little children lie 
 waiting till the storks come to take them to their 
 parents," says the mother stork in Andersen's story. 
 " The stork has visited the house," people say to each 
 other when a child is born ; and if you go to a christen- 
 ing party you will find that the stork has come too : 
 in sugar on a cake, perhaps, or to be handed round 
 in the form of ice cream. Most of the kindly intimate 
 little jests about babies have a stork in them, and a 
 stranger might easily blunder by presenting an emblem 
 of the bird where it would not be welcome. The 
 house on which storks build is a lucky one, and people 
 regret the disappearance of their nests from the large 
 towns. 
 
 When the baby has come it is not allowed out of 
 doors for weeks. Air and sunlight are considered 
 dangerous at first, and so is soap and even an im- 
 moderate use of water. For eight weeks it lies day 
 and night in the Steckkissen, a long bag that confines 
 its legs and body but not its arms. The bag is lined 
 with wadding, and a German nurse, who was showing 
 me one with great pride, assured me that while a 
 child's bones were soft it was not safe to lift it in any 
 other way. These bags are comparatively modern, 
 
8 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 and have succeeded the swaddling clothes still used 
 in some parts of Germany. They are bandages wrap- 
 ping the child round like a mummy, and imprisoning 
 its arms as well as its legs. A German doctor told 
 me that as these Wickelkinder had never known free- 
 dom they did not miss it ; but he seemed to approve of 
 the modern compromise that leaves the upper limbs 
 some power of movement. 
 
 Well - to - do German mothers rarely nurse their 
 children. When you ask why, you hear of nerves and 
 anaemia, and are told that at any rate in cities women 
 find it impossible. I have seen it stated in a popular 
 book about Germany that mothers there are little more 
 than " aunts " to their children ; and the Steckkissen 
 and the foster-mother were about equally blamed for 
 this unnatural state of affairs. From our point of view 
 there is not a word to be said in favour of the Steck- 
 kissen, but it really is impossible to believe that a bag 
 lined with wadding can undermine a mother's affection 
 for her child. Your German friends will often show 
 you a photograph of a young mother holding her baby 
 in her arms, and the baby, if it is young enough, will 
 probably be in its bag. But unless you look closely 
 you will take the bag for a long robe, it hangs so 
 softly and seems so little in the mother's way. It will 
 be as dainty as a robe too, and when people have the 
 means as costly ; for you can deck out your bag with 
 ribbons and laces as easily as your robe. The objec- 
 tion to foster-mothers has reality behind it, but the evils 
 of the system are well understood, and have been much 
 discussed of late. Formerly every mother who could 
 afford it hired one for her child, and peasant women 
 still come to town to make money in this way. But 
 the practice is on the wane, now that doctors order 
 sterilised milk. The real ruler of a German nursery is 
 
CHILDREN 9 
 
 the family doctor. He keeps his eye on an inex- 
 perienced mother, calls when he sees fit, watches the 
 baby's weight, orders its food, and sees that its feet are 
 kept warm. 
 
 A day nursery in the English sense of the word is 
 hardly known in Germany. People who can afford it 
 give up two rooms to the small fry, but where the flat 
 system prevails, and rents are high, this is seldom 
 possible. One room is usually known as the Kinder- 
 stube, and here the children sleep and play. But it 
 must be remembered that rooms are big, light, and 
 high in Germany, and that such a Kinderstube will not 
 be like a night nursery in a small English home. 
 Besides, directly children can walk they are not as 
 much shut up in the nursery as they are in England. 
 The rooms of a German flat communicate with each 
 other, and this in itself makes the segregation to which 
 we are used difficult to carry out. During the first 
 few days of a sojourn with German friends, you are 
 constantly reminded of a pantomime rally in which 
 people run in and out of doors on all sides of the 
 stage; and if they have several lively children you 
 sometimes wish for an English room with one door 
 only, and that door kept shut. Even when you pay 
 a call you generally see the children, and possibly the 
 nurse or the Mamsell with them. But a typical middle- 
 class German family recognises no such foreign body 
 as a nurse. It employs one maid of all work, who 
 helps the housewife wherever help is needed, whether 
 it is in the kitchen or the nursery. The mother spends 
 her time with her children, playing with them when 
 she has leisure, cooking and ironing and saving for 
 them, and for her husband all through her busy day. 
 Modern Germans like to tell you that young women 
 no longer devote themselves to these simple duties, but 
 
io HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 if you use your eyes you will see that most women do 
 their work as faithfully as ever. There is an idle, 
 pleasure-loving, money-spending element in Germany 
 as there is in other countries, and it makes more noise 
 than the steady bulk of the nation, and is an attractive 
 target there as here for the darts of popular preachers 
 and playwrights. But it is no more preponderant in 
 Germany than in England. On the whole, the German 
 mother leaves her children less to servants than the 
 English mother does, and in some way works harder 
 for them. That is to say, a German woman will do 
 cooking and ironing when an Englishwoman of the 
 same class would delegate all such work to servants. 
 This is partly because German servants are less efficient 
 and partly because fewer servants are employed. 
 
 The fashionable nurses in Germany are either 
 English or peasant girls in costume. It is considered 
 smart to send out your baby with a young woman 
 from the Spreewald if you live in Berlin, or from one 
 of the Black Forest valleys if you live in the duchy 
 of Baden. In some quarters of Berlin you see the 
 elaborate skirts and caps of the Spreewald beside every 
 other baby-carriage, but it is said that these girls are 
 chiefly employed by the rich Jews, and you certainly 
 need to be as rich as a Jew to pay their laundry bills. 
 The young children of the poor are provided for in 
 Berlin, as they are in other cities, by creches, where the 
 working mother can leave them for the day. Several 
 of these institutions are open to the public at certain 
 times, and those I have seen were well kept and well 
 arranged. 
 
 The women of Germany have not thrown away 
 their knitting needles yet, though they no longer take 
 them to the concert or the play as they did in a less 
 sophisticated age. Children still learn to knit either at 
 
CHILDREN 1 1 
 
 school or at home, and if their mother teaches them 
 she probably makes them a marvellous ball. She does 
 this by winding the wool round little toys and small 
 coins, until it hides as many surprises as a Christmas 
 stocking, and is as much out of shape ; but the child 
 who wants the treasures in the stocking has to knit for 
 them, and the faster she secures them the faster she 
 is learning her lesson. The mother, however, who 
 troubles about knitting is not quite abreast of her 
 times. The truly modern woman flies at higher game ; 
 with the solemnity and devotion of a Mrs. Cimabue 
 Brown she cherishes in her children a love of Art. 
 .Her watchword is Die Kunst im Leben des Kindes, or 
 Art in the Nursery, and she is assisted by men who are 
 doing for German children of this generation what 
 Walter Crane and others did for English nurseries 
 twenty-five years ago. You can get enchanting 
 nursery pictures, toys, and decorations in Germany 
 to-day, and each big city has its own school of artists 
 who produce them : friezes where the birds and beasts be- 
 loved of children solemnly pursue each other ; grotesque 
 wooden manikins painted in motley ; mysterious land- 
 scapes where the fairy-tales of the world might any 
 day come true. Dream pictures these are of snow and 
 moonlight, marsh and forest, the real Germany lying 
 everywhere outside the cities for those who have eyes 
 to see. Even the toy department in an ordinary shop 
 abounds in treasures that never seem to reach England : 
 queer cheap toys made of wood, and not mechanical. 
 It must be a dull child who is content with a mechan- 
 ical toy, and it is consoling to observe that most 
 children break the mechanism as quickly as possible 
 and then play sensibly with the remains. Many of the 
 toys known to generations of children seemed to be 
 as popular as ever, and quite unchanged. You still 
 
12 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 find the old toy towns, for instance, with their red 
 roofed coloured houses and green curly trees, toys that 
 would tell an imaginative child a story every time they 
 were set up. It is to be hoped they never will change, 
 but in this sense I have no faith in Germany. The 
 nation is so desperately intent on improvement that 
 some dreadful day it will improve its toys. Indeed, I 
 have seen a trade circular threatening some such van- 
 dalism ; and in the last Noah's ark I bought Noah and 
 his family had changed the cut of their clothes. So 
 the whole ark had lost some of its charm. 
 
 Everyone who is interested in children and their 
 education, and who happens to be in Berlin, goes to 
 see the Pestalozzi Frobel Haus, the great model Kinder- 
 garten where children of the working classes are received 
 for fees varying from sixpence to three shillings a month, 
 according to the means of the parents. There are large 
 halls in which the children drill and sing, and there are 
 classrooms in which twelve to sixteen children are 
 taught at a time. Every room has some live birds or 
 other animals and some plants that the children are 
 trained to tend ; the walls are decorated with pictures 
 and processions of animals, many painted and cut out 
 by the children themselves, and every room has an 
 impressive little rod tied with blue ribbons. But the 
 little ones do not look as if they needed a rod much. 
 They are cheerful, tidy little people, although many of 
 them come from poor homes. In the middle of the 
 morning they have a slice of rye bread, which they eat 
 decorously at table on wooden platters. They can buy 
 milk to drink with the bread for 5 pf., and they dine 
 in school for 10 pf. They play the usual Kindergarten 
 games in the usual systematised mechanical fashion, 
 and they study Nature in a real back garden, where 
 there are real dejected-looking cocks and hens, a real 
 
t 
 
CHILDREN 1 3 
 
 cow, and a lamb. What happens to the lamb when he 
 becomes a sheep no one tells you. Perhaps he supplies 
 mutton to the school of cookery in connection with the 
 Kindergarten. Some of the children have their own 
 little gardens, in which they learn to raise small salads 
 and hardy flowers. There are carpentering rooms for 
 the boys, and both boys and girls are allowed in the 
 miniature laundry, where they learn how to wash, starch, 
 and iron doll's clothes. The illustration shows them 
 engaged in this business, apparently without a teacher ; 
 but, as a matter of fact, the children are always under 
 a teacher's eye, even when they are only digging in a 
 sand heap or weeding their plots of ground. Each 
 child has a bath at school once a week, and at first the 
 mothers are uneasy about this part of the programme, 
 lest it should give their child cold. But they soon 
 learn to approve it, and however poor they are they do 
 their utmost to send a child to school neatly shod and 
 clad. 
 
 As a rule German children of all classes are treated 
 as children, and taught the elementary virtue of obedi- 
 ence. Das Recht des Kindes is a new cry with some of 
 the new people, but nevertheless Germany is one of the 
 few remaining civilised countries where the elders still 
 have rights and privileges. I heard of an English- 
 woman the other day who said that she had never 
 eaten the wing of a chicken, because when she was 
 young it was always given to the older people, and 
 now that she was old it was saved for the children. If 
 she lived in Germany she would still have a chance, 
 provided she kept away from a small loud set, who in 
 all matters of education and morality would like to 
 turn the world upside down. v In most German homes 
 the noisy, spoilt American child would not be endured 
 for a moment, and the little tyrant of a French family 
 
14 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 would be taught its place, to the comfort and advantage 
 of all concerned. I have dined with a large family 
 where eight young ones of various ages sat at an over- 
 flow table, and did not disturb their elders by a sound. 
 It was not because the elders were harsh or the young 
 folk repressed, but because Germany teaches its youth 
 to behave. The little girls still drop you a pretty old- 
 fashioned curtsey when they greet you ; just such a 
 curtsey as Miss Austen's heroines must have made to 
 their friends. The little boys, if you are staying in the 
 house with them, come and shake hands at unexpected 
 times, when they arrive from school, for instance, and 
 before they go out for a walk. At first they take you by 
 surprise, but you soon learn to be ready for them. 
 They play many of the same games as English 
 children, and I need hardly say that they are brought 
 up on the same fairy stories, because many of our 
 favourites come from Germany. The little boys wear 
 sensible carpenters' aprons indoors, made of leather or 
 American cloth ; and the little girls still wear bib aprons 
 of black alpaca. Their elders do not play games with 
 them as much as English people do with their children. 
 They are expected to entertain and employ themselves ; 
 and the immense educational value of games, the train- 
 ing they are in temper, skill, and manners, is not 
 understood or admitted in Germany as it is here. 
 The Kindergarten exercises are not competitive, and 
 do not teach a child to play a losing game with effort 
 and good grace. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 SCHOOLS 
 
 ERMAN children go to day schools. This is not 
 to say that there are no boarding schools in 
 Germany; but the prevailing system throughout the 
 empire is a system of day schools. The German 
 mother does not get rid of her boys and girls for 
 months together, and look forward to the holidays as 
 a time of uproar and enjoyment. She does not 
 wonder anxiously what changes she will see in them 
 when they come back to her. They are with her all 
 the year round, the boys till they go to a university, 
 the girls till they marry. Any day in the streets of a 
 German city you may see troops of children going to 
 school, not with a maid at their heels as in Paris, but 
 unattended as in England. They have long tin satchels 
 in which they carry their books and lunch, the boys 
 wear peaked caps, and many children of both sexes 
 wear spectacles. 
 
 Except at the Kindergarten, boys and girls are 
 educated separately and differently in Germany. In 
 some rare cases lately some few girls have been 
 admitted to a boys' Gymnasium, but this is experi- 
 mental and at present unusual. It may be found that 
 the presence of a small number in a large boys' school 
 does not work well. In addition to the elementary 
 schools, there are four kinds of Public Day School for 
 
1 6 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 boys in Germany, and they are all under State super- 
 vision. There is the Gymnasium, the Real-Gymnasium, 
 the Ober-Real Schule, and the Real-Schule. Until 
 1870 the Gymnasiums were the only schools that 
 could send their scholars to the universities ; a system 
 that had serious disadvantages. It meant that in 
 choosing a child's school, parents had to decide whether 
 at the end of his school life he was to have a university 
 education. Children with no aptitude for scholarship 
 were sent to these schools to receive a scholar's train- 
 ing ; while boys who would have done well in one of 
 the learned professions could not be admitted to a 
 university, except for science or modern languages, 
 because they had not attended a Gymnasium. 
 
 A boy who has passed through one of these higher 
 schools has had twelve years' education. He began 
 Latin at the age of ten, and Greek at thirteen. He 
 has learned some French and mathematics, but no 
 English unless he paid for it as an extra. His school 
 years have been chiefly a preparation for the university. 
 If he never reaches the higher classes he leaves the 
 Gymnasium with a stigma upon him, a record of 
 failure that will hamper him in his career. The higher 
 official posts and the professions will be closed to him ; 
 and he will be unfitted by his education for business. 
 This at least is what many thoughtful Germans say of 
 their classical schools ; and they lament over the un- 
 suitable boys who are sent to them because their 
 parents want a professor or a high official in the 
 family. It is considered more sensible to send an 
 average boy to a Real-Gymnasium or to an Ober-Real 
 Sc/iule, because nowadays these schools prepare for the 
 university, and any boy with a turn for scholarship 
 can get the training he needs. The Ober-Real S chute 
 professedly pays most attention to modern languages ; 
 
SCHOOLS 17 
 
 and it is, in fact, only since 1900 that their boys are 
 received at a university on the classical side. They 
 still prepare largely for technical schools and for a 
 commercial career. 
 
 At a Real-Schule^ the fourth grade of higher school, 
 the course only lasts six years. They do not prepare 
 for the Abiturienten examination, and their scholars can- 
 not go from them to a university. They prepare for 
 practical life, and they admit promising boys from the 
 elementary schools. A boy who has been through any 
 one of these higher schools successfully need only serve 
 in the army for one year ; and that in itself is a great 
 ^incentive to parents to send their children. A Real- 
 Schule in Prussia only costs a hundred marks a year, 
 and a Gymnasium a hundred and thirty-five marks. 
 In some parts of Germany the fees are rather higher, 
 in some still lower. The headmasters of these schools 
 are all university men, and are themselves under State 
 supervision. In an entertaining play called Flacks- 
 mann als Erzieher the headmaster had not been doing 
 his duty, and has allowed the school to get into a bad 
 way. The subordinates are either slack or righteously 
 rebellious, and the children are unruly. The State 
 official pays a surprise visit, discovers the state of 
 things, and reads the Riot Act all round. The wicked 
 headmaster is dismissed, the eager young reformer is 
 put in his place, the slackers are warned and given 
 another chance. . . . Blessed be St. Bureaukrazius . . . 
 says the genial old god out of a machine, when by 
 virtue of his office he has righted every man's wrongs. 
 The school in the play must be an elementary one, 
 for children and teachers are of both sexes, but a 
 master at a Gymnasium told me that the picture of the 
 official visit was not exaggerated in its importance and 
 effect. There was considerable excitement in Germany 
 
i8 
 
 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 over the picture of the evil headmaster, his incompetent 
 staff, and the neglected children ; and I was warned 
 before I saw the play that I must not think such a 
 state of affairs prevailed in German schools. The 
 warning was quite unnecessary. An immoral, idle, 
 and ignorant class of men could not carry on the 
 education of a people as it is carried on throughout 
 the German Empire to-day. 
 
 I have before me the Annual Report of a 
 Gymnasium in Berlin, and it may interest English 
 people to see how many lessons the teachers in each 
 subject gave every week. There were thirty teachers 
 in the school. 
 
 SUBJECT 
 Religion 
 German 
 Latin 
 Greek 
 French 
 History and Geography 
 Mathematics and Arithmetic 
 Natural History 
 Physics 
 Hebrew 
 Law 
 Writing 
 Drawing 
 Singing 
 Gymnasium 
 Swimming 
 Handfertigkeit 
 
 LESSONS 
 PER WEEK 
 
 42 
 112 
 72 
 36 
 44 
 56 
 10 
 
 20 
 
 4 
 i 
 6 
 18 
 
 12 
 27 
 
 8* 
 3 
 
 502 J lessons 
 
 The headmaster took Latin for seven hours every 
 week, and Greek for three hours. A professor who 
 came solely for religious teaching came for ten hours 
 every week. But most of the masters taught from 
 sixteen to twenty-four hours, while one who is down 
 
SCHOOLS 19 
 
 for reading, writing, arithmetic, gymnastics, German, 
 singing, and Natur could not get through all he had 
 to do in less than thirty hours. On looking into the 
 hours devoted tc each subject by the various classes, 
 you find that the lowest class had three hours religious 
 instruction every week, and the other classes two hours. 
 There were 407 boys in the school described as 
 Evangelise^ 47 Jews, and 23 Catholics; but in 
 Germany parents can withdraw their children from 
 religious instruction in school, provided they satisfy the 
 authorities that it is given elsewhere. The two highest 
 classes had lessons on eight chapters of St. Paul's 
 Epistle to the Romans, on the Epistle to the Philippians, 
 and on the confessions of St. Augustine. Some classes 
 were instructed in the Gospel according to St. John, and 
 the little boys learned Bible History. So Germans 
 are not without orthodox theological teaching in their 
 early years, whatever opinions they arrive at in their 
 adolescence. 
 
 Every boy in the school spent two or three hours 
 each week on German composition, and, like boys in 
 other countries, handled themes they could assuredly 
 not understand, probably, like other boys, without a 
 scruple or a hesitation. 
 
 " Why does the ghost of Banquo appear to Macbeth, 
 and not the ghost of Duncan ? " 
 
 " How are the unities of time, place, and action 
 treated in Schiller's ballads ? " 
 
 " Discuss the antitheses in Lessing's Laokoon." 
 
 " What can you say about the representation of 
 concrete objects in Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea ? " 
 
 These examples are taken at random from a list 
 too long to quote completely; but no one need be 
 impressed by them. Boys perform wonderful feats of 
 this kind in England too. However, I once heard a 
 
20 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 German professor say that the English boy outdid 
 the German in gesunder Menschenver stand (sound 
 common sense), but that the German wins in the race 
 when it comes to the abstract knowledge ( Wisseri] that 
 he and his countryfolk prize above all the treasures of 
 the earth. No one who knows both countries can 
 doubt for a single moment that the professor was 
 right, and that he stated the case as fairly as it can 
 be stated. In an emergency or in trying circumstances 
 the English boy would be readier and more self- 
 reliant : but when you meet him where entertainment 
 is wanted rather than resource, his ignorance will make 
 you open your eyes. This, at any rate, is the kind of 
 story told and believed of Englishmen in Germany. 
 A student who was working at science in a German 
 university had been there the whole winter, and 
 though the city possessed many fine theatres he had 
 only visited a variety show. At last his friends told 
 him that it was his duty to go to the Schauspielhaus 
 and see a play by Goethe or Schiller. " Goethe ! 
 Schiller ! " said my Englishman, " Was ist das?" 
 
 The education of girls in Germany is in a transi- 
 tion state at present. Important changes have been 
 made of late years, and still greater ones, so the 
 reformers say, are pending. Formerly, if a girl was to 
 be educated at all she went to a Hbhere Tochterschule, 
 or to a private school conducted on the same lines, and, 
 like the official establishment, under State supervision. 
 When she had finished with school she had finished 
 with education, and began to work at the useful arts 
 of life, more especially at the art of cooking. What 
 she had learned at school she had learned thoroughly, 
 and it was considered in those days quite as much as 
 was good for her. The officials who watched and 
 regulated the education of boys had nothing to do with 
 
SCHOOLS 21 
 
 girls' schools. These were left to the staff that 
 managed elementary schools, and kept on much the 
 same level. Girls learned history, geography, ele- 
 mentary arithmetic, two modern languages, and a great 
 deal of mythology. The scandalous ignorance of 
 mythology displayed by Englishwomen still shocks 
 the right-minded German. If a woman asked for 
 more than this because she was going to earn her 
 bread, she spent three years in reading for an examina- 
 tion that qualified her for one of the lower posts in the 
 school. The higher posts were all in the hands of 
 men. Of late years women have been able to prepare 
 ' for a teacher's career at one of the Teachers' Seminaries, 
 most of which were opened in 1897. 
 
 More than forty years ago the English princess in 
 Berlin was not satisfied with what was done in 
 Germany for the education of women ; and one of the 
 many monuments to her memory is the Victoria Lyceum. 
 This institution was founded at her suggestion by Miss 
 Archer, an English lady who had been teaching in 
 Berlin for some years, and who was greatly liked and 
 respected there. At first it only aimed at giving some 
 further education to girls who had left school, and it 
 was not easy to get men of standing to teach them. 
 But as it was the outcome of a movement with life in it 
 the early difficulties were surmounted, and its scope and 
 usefulness have grown since its foundation thirty-eight 
 years ago. It is not a residential college, and it has no 
 laboratories. During the winter it still holds courses 
 of lectures for women who are not training for a definite 
 career ; but under its present head, Fraulein von Cotta, 
 the chief work of the Victoria Lyceum has become the 
 preparation of women for the Ober Lehrerin examination. 
 This is a State examination that can only be passed 
 five years after a girl has qualified as Lehrerin \ and two 
 
22 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 of these five years must have been spent in teaching at 
 a German school. To qualify as Lehrerin, a girl must 
 have spent three years at a Seminary for teachers after 
 she leaves school, and she usually gets through this 
 stage of her training between the ages of fifteen and 
 eighteen. Therefore a woman must have three years 
 special preparation for a subordinate post and eight 
 years for a higher post in a German girls' school. 
 
 The whole question of women's education is in a 
 ferment in Germany at present, and though everyone 
 interested is ready to talk of it, everyone tells you that 
 it is impossible to foresee exactly what reforms are 
 coming. There are to be new schools established, 
 Lyceen and Ober-Lyceen, and Ober-Lyceen will prepare 
 for matriculation. When girls have matriculated from 
 one of these schools they will be ready for the university, 
 and will work for the same examinations as men. 
 Baden was the first German State that allowed women 
 to matriculate at its universities. It did so in 1900, 
 and in 1903 Bavaria followed suit. In 1905 there 
 were eighty-five women at the universities who had 
 matriculated in Germany ; but there are hundreds 
 working at the universities without matriculating first. 
 At present the professors are free to admit women or 
 to exclude them from their classes; but the right of 
 exclusion is rarely exercised. Before long it will pre- 
 sumably be a thing of the past. 
 
 An Englishwoman residing at Berlin, and engaged 
 in education, told me that in her opinion no German 
 woman living had done as much for her countrywomen 
 as Helene Lange, the president of the Allgemeine 
 deutsche Frauenverein. Nineteen years ago she began 
 the struggle that is by no means over, the struggle to 
 secure a better education for women and a greater 
 share in its control. In English ears her aim will 
 
SCHOOLS 23 
 
 sound a modest one, but English girls' schools are not 
 entirely in the hands of men, with men for principals 
 and men to teach the higher classes. She began in 
 1887 by publishing a pamphlet that made a great 
 sensation, because it demanded, what after a mighty 
 tussle was conceded, women teachers for the higher 
 classes in girls' schools, and for these women an 
 academic education. In 1890 she founded, together 
 with Auguste Schmidt and Marie Loeper-Housselle, 
 the Allegemeine deutsche Lehrerinnen- Verein, which now 
 has 80 branches and 17,000 members. But the 
 pluckiest thing she did was to fight Prussian officialdom 
 and win. In 1889 she opened Real-Kurse fur 
 Mddchen und Frauen> classes where women could work 
 at subjects not taught in girls' schools, Latin for instance, 
 and advanced mathematics ; for the State in Germany 
 has always decided how much as well as how little 
 women may learn. It would not allow people as 
 ignorant as Squeers to keep a school because it offered 
 an easy livelihood. It organised women's education 
 carefully and thoroughly in the admirable German way ; 
 but it laid down the law from A to Z, which is also the 
 German way. When, therefore, Helene Lange opened 
 her classes for women, the officials came to her and 
 said that she was doing an illegal thing. She replied 
 that her students were not schoolgirls under the 
 German school laws, but grown-up women free to learn 
 what they needed and desired. The officials said that 
 an old law of 1837 would empower them to close the 
 classes by force if Helene Lange did not do so of her 
 own accord. After some reflection and in some 
 anxiety she decided to go on with them. By this time 
 public opinion was on her side and came to her 
 assistance ; for public opinion does count in Germany 
 even with the officials. The classes went on, and were 
 
24 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 changed in 1893 t Gymnasialkurse. In 1896 the 
 first German women passed the Abiturienten examina- 
 tion, the difficult examination young men of eighteen 
 pass at the end of a nine years' course in one of the 
 classical schools. Even to-day you may hear German 
 men argue that women should not be admitted to 
 universities because they have had no classical training. 
 Helene Lange was the first to prove that even without 
 early training women can prepare themselves for an 
 academic career. Her experiment led to the establish- 
 ment of Gymnasialkurse in many German cities ; and 
 even to the admission of girls in some few cases to boys' 
 Gymnasium schools. 
 
 To-day Helene Lange and her associates are con- 
 tending with the schoolmasters, who desire to keep the 
 management of girls' schools in their own hands. She 
 calls the Hohere Tochterschule the failure of German 
 school organisation, and she says that the difference of 
 view taken by men and women teachers as to the proper 
 work of girls' schools makes it most difficult to come 
 to an understanding. Consciously or not, men form an 
 ideal of what they want and expect of women, and try 
 to educate them up to it ; while women think of the 
 claims life may make on a girl, and desire the full 
 development of her powers. " The Higher Daughter," 
 she says, " must vanish, and her place must be taken by 
 the girl who has been thoroughly prepared for life, who 
 can stand on her own feet if circumstances require it, 
 or who brings with her as housewife the founda- 
 tions of further self-development, instead of the 
 pretentiousness of the half educated. In one ot 
 her many articles on the subject of school reform she 
 points to three directions where reform is needed. 
 What she says about the teaching of history is so 
 characteristic of her views and of the modern move- 
 
SCHOOLS 25 
 
 ment in Germany, that I think the whole passage is 
 worth translation : 
 
 " All those subjects that help to make a woman a 
 better citizen must be taken more seriously," she says. 
 " It can no longer be the proper aim of history teaching 
 to foster and strengthen in women a sentimental at- 
 tachment to her country and its national character : its 
 aim must be to give her the insight that will enable her 
 to understand the forces at work, and ultimately play an 
 active part in them. Many branches of our social life 
 await the work of women, civic philanthropy to begin 
 with ; and as our public life becomes more and more con- 
 stitutional, it demands from the individual both a ripe 
 insight into the good of the community and a living sense 
 of duty in regard to its destiny ; and, on the other hand, 
 the foundations of this insight and sense of duty must 
 be in our times more and more laid by the mother, since 
 the father is often entirely prevented by his work from 
 sharing in the education of his children. Therefore, 
 both on her own account and in consideration of the 
 task before her, a woman just as much as a man should 
 understand and take a practical interest in public life, 
 and it is the business of the school to see that she does 
 so. Over and over again those who are trying to 
 reform girls' schools insist that history teaching should 
 lead the student to understand the present time ; that it 
 should recognise those economic conditions on which 
 the history of the world, especially in our day, depends 
 in so great a measure ; that it should pay attention not 
 only to dates and events, but also to the living process 
 of civilisation, since it is only from the latter inquiry 
 that we can arrive at the principles of individual effort 
 in forwarding social life." 
 
 Nowadays in Germany Helene Lange is considered 
 
26 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 one of the " Moderates," but it will be seen from the 
 above quotation that she has travelled far from the 
 old ideals which invested women with many beautiful 
 qualities, but not with the sense and knowledge re- 
 quired of useful public citizens. She proceeds in the 
 same article to say that scientific and mathematical 
 teaching should reach a higher standard in girls' schools ; 
 and thirdly, that certain branches of psychology, phy- 
 siology, and hygiene should receive greater attention, 
 because a woman is a better wife and mother when 
 she fulfils her duties with understanding instead of by 
 mere instinct. Nor will education on this higher plane 
 deprive women of any valuable feminine virtues if it 
 is carried out in the right way. But to this end women 
 must direct it, and in great measure take it into their 
 own hands. She would not shut men out of girls' 
 schools, but she would place women in supreme authority 
 there, and give them the lion's share of the work. 
 
 It seems to the English onlooker that this contest 
 can only end in one way, and that if the women of 
 Germany mean to have the control of girls' schools 
 they are bound to get it. Some of the evils of the 
 present system lie on the surface. " It is a fact," said a 
 schoolmaster, speaking lately at a conference, " it is a 
 fact that a more intimate, spiritual, and personal relation- 
 ship is developed between a schoolgirl and her master 
 than between a schoolgirl and her mistress." This 
 remark, evidently made in good faith, was received with 
 hilarity by a large mixed audience of teachers; and 
 when one reflects on the unbridled sentiment of some 
 " higher daughters " one sees where it must inevitably 
 find food under the present anomalous state of things. 
 But the schoolmaster's argument is the argument 
 brought forward by many men against the reforms 
 desired by Helene Lange and her party. They insist 
 
SCHOOLS 27 
 
 that girls would deteriorate if they were withdrawn 
 throughout their youth from masculine scholarship 
 and masculine authority in school. They talk of the 
 emasculation of the staff as a future danger. They 
 do not seem to talk of their natural reluctance to cede 
 important posts to women, but this must, of course, 
 strengthen their pugnacity and in some cases colour 
 their views. 
 
 Meanwhile many parents prefer to send their daughters 
 to one of the private schools that have a woman at the 
 head, and where most of the teaching is done by women ; 
 or to a S tift t a residential school of the conventual type, 
 which may be either Protestant or Catholic. A girl who 
 had spent some years at a well-known Protestant Stiff 
 described her school life to me as minutely as possible, 
 and it sounded so like the life in a good English 
 boarding-school thirty years ago that it is difficult to 
 pick out points of differences. That only means, of 
 course, that the differences were subtle and not apparent 
 in rules and time-tables. The girls wore a school 
 uniform, were well fed and taught, strictly looked after, 
 taken out for walks and excursions, allowed a private 
 correspondence, shown how to mend their clothes, made 
 to keep their rooms tidy, encouraged in piety and 
 decorum. In these strenuous times it sounds a little 
 old-fashioned, and as a matter of fact a school of this 
 kind fits a girl for a sheltered home but not for the 
 open road. For everyone concerned about the education 
 of women the interesting spectacle in Germany to-day 
 is the campaign being carried on by Helene Lange 
 and her party, the support they receive from the official 
 as well as from the unofficial world, and the progress 
 they make year by year to gain their ends. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE POOR 
 
 THERE are no people in the world who need 
 driving to school less than the Germans. There 
 are no people in the world who set so high a value on 
 knowledge. In the old days, when they lived with Jove 
 in the clouds, they valued knowledge solely for its own 
 sake, and did not trouble much about its practical use 
 in the world. It is absurd to say, as people often do 
 now, that this spirit is dead in the nation. You cannot 
 be long in the society of Germans without recognising 
 that it survives wherever the stress of modern life leaves 
 room for it. You see that when a German makes money 
 his sons constantly enter the learned and the artistic 
 professions with his full approval, though they are most 
 unlikely to make a big income in this way. You are 
 told by people who work amongst the poor, that parents 
 will make any sacrifices year after year in order to send 
 a boy to one of the higher schools. You know that 
 the Scotsmen who live on oatmeal while they acquire 
 learning have their counterparts in the German univer- 
 sities, where many a student would not dine at all if 
 private or organised charity did not give him a dinner 
 so many days a week. Sometimes you have heard it 
 said of such and such a great German, that he was so 
 poor when he was young that he had to accept these 
 free dinners given in every German university town to 
 
THE EDUCATION OF THE POOR 29 
 
 penniless students. The fact would be remembered, but 
 it would never count against a man in Germany. The 
 dollar is not almighty there. 
 
 To say, therefore, that education is compulsory 
 throughout the empire is not to say that it is unpopular. 
 A teacher in an elementary school was once telling me 
 how particular the authorities were that every child, 
 even the poorest, should come to school properly clothed 
 and shod. " For instance," she said, " if a child comes 
 to school in house-shoes he is sent straight home again." 
 " But do the parents mind that ? " I asked from my 
 English point of view, for the teacher was speaking of 
 people who in England would live in slums and care 
 little whether their children were educated or not. But 
 in Germany even the poorest of the poor do care, and 
 to refuse a child admission to school is an effective 
 punishment. At any rate, you may say this of the 
 majority. No doubt if school was not compulsory the 
 dregs of the nation would slip out of the net, especially 
 in those parts of the empire where the prevalent char- 
 acter is shiftless and easy going. " When you English 
 think that we hold the reins too tight, it is because you 
 do not understand what a mixed team we have to 
 drive," a north German said to me. " We should not 
 get on, we should not hold together long, if our rule was 
 slack and our attention careless." 
 
 At the last census only one in 10,000 could not 
 read or write, and these dunces were all Slavs. But 
 how even a Slav born under the eye of the Eagle can 
 remain illiterate is a mystery. In 1905 there were 59,348 
 elementary schools in the empire, and their organisation 
 is as elaborate and well planned as the organisation of 
 the army. In Berlin alone there are 280. All the 
 teachers at these schools have been trained to teach 
 at special seminaries, and have passed State examina- 
 
30 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 tions that qualify them for their work. In Germany 
 many men and women, entitled both by class and 
 training to teach in the higher grade schools, have taken 
 up work in the elementary ones from choice. I know 
 one lady whose certificates qualify her to teach in a 
 Hbhere Tocliterschule, and who elects to teach a large 
 class of backward children in a Volkschule. Her 
 ambition is to teach those children described in 
 Germany as nicht vb'llig normal', children we should 
 describe as " wanting." She says that her backward 
 children repay her for any extra trouble they give by 
 their affection and gratitude. She knows the circum- 
 stances of every child in her class, and where there is 
 real need she can get help from official sources or from 
 philanthropic organisations, because a teacher's recom- 
 mendation carries great weight in Germany. This 
 lady gets up every day in summer at a quarter past 
 five, in order to be in school by seven. Her school 
 hours are from seven to eleven in summer, and from 
 eight till twelve in winter ; but she has a great deal of 
 work to prepare and correct after school. Her salary 
 is raised with every year of service, and when she is 
 past work she will be entitled to a State pension of 
 thirty pounds. 
 
 Children have to attend school from the age of six 
 and to stay till they are fourteen ; and in their school 
 years they are not allowed to work at a trade without 
 permission. They do not learn foreign languages, but 
 they are thoroughly grounded in German, and they 
 receive religious instruction. Of course, they learn 
 history, geography, and arithmetic. In the new schools 
 every child is obliged to have a warm bath every week, 
 but it is not part of a teacher's duties to superintend it. 
 Probably the women who clean the school buildings do 
 so. In the old schools, where there are no bathrooms, 
 
THE EDUCATION OF THE POOR 31 
 
 the children are given tickets for the public bathing 
 establishments. The State does not supply free food, 
 but there are philanthropic societies that supply those 
 children who need it with a breakfast of bread and 
 milk in winter. Everyone connected with German 
 schools says that no child would apply for this if 
 his parents were not destitute, and one teacher told me 
 a story of the headmaster's boy being found, to his 
 father's horror and indignation, seated with the starving 
 children and sharing their free lunch. He had brought 
 his own lunch with him, but it was his first week at 
 school, and he thought that a dispensation of bread 
 and milk in the middle of the morning was part of 
 the curriculum. 
 
 School books are supplied to children too poor to 
 buy them, and it seems that no trouble is given by 
 applications for this kind of relief by people not entitled 
 to it. Gymnastics are compulsory for both boys and 
 girls in the lower classes, and choral singing is taught 
 in every school. Teachers must all be qualified to 
 accompany singing on the violin. Most of the ele- 
 mentary schools in Prussia are free. Some few charge 
 sixpence a month. A child can even have free teaching 
 in its own home if it is able to receive instruction, but 
 not to attend school. Medical inspection is rigorously 
 carried out in German elementary schools. The doctor 
 not only watches the general health of the school, but 
 he registers the height, weight, carriage, state of 
 nourishment, and vaccination marks of each child on 
 admission ; the condition of the eyes and ears and 
 any marked constitutional tendency he can discover. 
 Every child is examined once a month, when necessary 
 once a fortnight. In this way weak or wanting 
 children are weeded out, and removed to other 
 surroundings, the short-sighted and the deaf are given 
 
32 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 places in the schoolroom to suit them. The system 
 protects the child and helps the teacher, and has had 
 the best results since it was introduced into Prussia 
 in 1888. 
 
 Attendance at continuation schools is now com- 
 pulsory on boys and girls for three years after leaving 
 the elementary school, where they have had eight years 
 steady education. They must attend from four to six 
 hours weekly ; instruction is free, and is given in the 
 evening, when the working day is over. Certain 
 classes of the community are free, but about 30,000 
 students attend these schools in Berlin. The subjects 
 taught are too many to enumerate. They comprise 
 modern languages, history, law, painting, music, mathe- 
 matics, and various domestic arts, such as ironing and 
 cooking. More boys than girls attend these schools, 
 as girls are more easily exempt. It is presumably not 
 considered so necessary for them as for their brothers 
 to continue their education after the age of fourteen. 
 
 One of the most interesting experiments being made 
 in Germany at present is the " open air " school, 
 established for sickly children during the summer 
 months. The first one was set up by the city of 
 Charlottenberg at the suggestion of their Schulrat and 
 their school doctor, and it is now being imitated in 
 other parts of Germany. From Charlottenberg the 
 electric cars take you right into the pine forest, far 
 beyond the last houses of the growing city. The soil 
 here is loose and sandy, and the air in summer so soft 
 that it wants strength and freshness. But as far out as 
 this it is pure, and the medical men must deem it 
 healing, for they have set up three separate ventures 
 close together amongst the pine trees. One belongs to 
 the Society of the Red Cross, and here sick and con- 
 sumptive women come with their children for the day, 
 
THE EDUCATION OF THE POOR 33 
 
 and are waited on by the Red Cross sisters. We saw 
 some of them lying about on reclining chairs, and some, 
 less sickly, were playing croquet. The second 
 establishment is for children who are not able to do 
 any lessons, children who have been weeded out by the 
 school doctor because they are backward and sickly. 
 There are a hundred and forty children in this school, 
 and there is a creche with twenty beds attached to it 
 for babies and very young children. One airy room 
 with two rows of neat beds was for rickety children. 
 
 The third and largest of the settlements was the 
 Waldschule, open every day, Sundays included, from 
 the end of April to the middle of October, and educating 
 two hundred and forty delicate children chosen from 
 the elementary schools of Charlottenberg. We arrived 
 there just as the children were going to sit down to 
 their afternoon meal of bread and milk, and each child 
 was fetching its own mug hanging on a numbered 
 hook. The meals in fine weather are taken at long 
 tables in the open air. When it rains they are served 
 in big shelters closed on three sides. Dotted about the 
 forest there were mushroom-shaped shelters with seats 
 and tables beneath them, sufficient cover in slight 
 showers ; and there were well lighted, well aired class- 
 rooms, where the children are taught for twenty-five 
 minutes at a time. 
 
 All the buildings are on the Doecker system, and 
 were manufactured by Messrs. Christoph & Unmark 
 of Niesky. This firm makes a speciality of schools 
 and hospitals, built in what we should call the bungalow 
 style. Of course, this style exactly suits the needs of 
 the school in the forest. There is not a staircase in 
 the place, there is no danger of fire, no want of 
 ventilation, and very little work for housemaids or 
 charwomen. The school furniture is simple and care- 
 3 
 
34 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 fully planned. Some of it was designed by Richard 
 Riemerschmid of Munich, the well-known artist. 
 
 Each child has two and a half hours' work each day ; 
 all who are strong enough do gymnastics, and all have 
 baths at school. Each child has its own locker and its 
 own numbered blanket for use out of doors on damp 
 or chilly days. The doctor visits the school twice a 
 week, and the weight of each child is carefully watched. 
 The busy sister who superintends the housekeeping 
 and the hygienic arrangements seemed to know how 
 much each child had increased already ; and she told 
 us what quantities of food were consumed every day. 
 The kitchen and larder were as bright and clean as such 
 places always are in Germany. When the children 
 arrive in the morning at half-past seven they have 
 a first breakfast of Griesbrei. At ten o'clock they 
 have rolls and butter. Their dinner consists of one 
 solid dish. The day we were there it had been 
 pork and cabbage, a combination Germans give more 
 willingly to delicate children than we should ; the 
 next day it was to be Nudelsuppe and beef. At four 
 o'clock they have bread and milk, and just before 
 they go home a supper like their early breakfast of 
 milk-soup, and bread. 260 litres of milk are used every 
 day, 50 to 60 Ibs. of meat, 2 cwts. potatoes, 30 big rye 
 loaves, 280 rolls, and when spinach, for instance, is given, 
 80 Ibs. of spinach. We asked whether the children paid, 
 and were told that those who could afford it paid from 
 25 to 45 pf. a day. The school is kept open through- 
 out the summer holidays, but no work is done then, 
 and two-thirds of the teachers are away. Although 
 the children are at play for the greater part of the day 
 in term time, and all day in the holidays, the head- 
 master told us that they gave no trouble. There was 
 not a dirty or untidy child to be seen, nor one with rough 
 
THE EDUCATION OF THE POOR 35 
 
 manners. They are allowed to play in the light, sandy 
 soil of the forest, much as English children play at the 
 seaside, and we saw the beginning of an elaborate 
 chain of fortresses defended by toy guns and decorated 
 with flowers. We heard a lesson in mental arithmetic 
 given in one of the class-rooms, the boys sitting on 
 one side of the room and the girls on the other ; and 
 we found that these young sickly children were admirably 
 taught and well advanced for their age. To be a teacher 
 in one of these open-air schools is hard work, because 
 the strain is never wholly relaxed. All day long, and 
 a German day is very long, the children must be watched 
 and guarded, sheltered from changes in the weather 
 and prevented from over-tiring themselves. Many of 
 them come from poor cramped homes, and to spend 
 the whole summer in the forest more at play than 
 at work makes them most happy. I met Germans 
 who did not approve of the Waldschule^ who considered 
 it a fantastic extravagant experiment, too heavy for 
 the rate-payers to bear. This is a side of the question 
 that the rate-payers must settle for themselves ; but 
 there is no doubt about the results of the venture on 
 the children sent to school in the forest. They get a 
 training that must shape their whole future, moral and 
 physical, a training that changes so many unsound 
 citizens into sound ones every year for the German 
 Empire. If the rate-payers can survive the strain it 
 seems worth while. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE BACKFISCH 
 
 THE word is untranslatable, though my dictionary 
 translates it. Backfisch, m. fried fish ; young 
 girl ; says the dictionary. In Germany a woman does 
 not arrive at her own gender till she marries and becomes 
 somebody's Frau. Woman in general, girl, and miss 
 are neuter; and the fried-fish girl is masculine. But 
 if one little versed in German wished to tell you that 
 he liked a fried sole, and said Ich Hebe einen Backfisch, 
 it might lead to misunderstandings. The origin of 
 the word in this application is dubious. Some say it 
 means fish that are baked in the oven because they 
 are too small to fry in pans ; but this does not seem 
 a sensible explanation to anyone who has seen white- 
 bait cooked. Others say it means fish the anglers 
 throw back into the water because they are small. 
 At any rate, the word used is to convey an impression 
 of immaturity. A Backfisch is what English and 
 American fashion papers call a " miss." You may see, 
 too, in German shop windows a printed intimation 
 that special attention is given to Backfisch Moden. It 
 is a girl who has left school but has not cast off her 
 school-girl manners ; and who, according to her nation 
 and her history, will require more or less last touches. 
 
 Miss Betham-Edwards tells us that a French girl 
 is taught from babyhood to play her part in society, 
 
THE BACKFISCH 37 
 
 and that the exquisite grace and taste of Frenchwomen 
 are carefully developed in them from the cradle. An 
 English girl begins her social education in the nursery, 
 and is trained from infancy in habits of personal clean- 
 liness and in what old-fashioned English people call 
 "table manners." An Englishwoman, who for many 
 years lived happily as governess in a German country 
 house, told me how on the night of her arrival she tried 
 out of politeness to eat and drink as her hosts did ; and 
 how the mistress of the house confided to her later that 
 she had disappointed everyone grievously. There 
 were daughters in the family, and they were to learn 
 to behave at table in the English way. That was why 
 the father, arriving from Berlin, had on his own initiative 
 brought them an English governess ; for the English 
 are admitted by their continental friends to excel in 
 this special branch of manners, while their continental 
 enemies charge them with being " ostentatiously " well 
 groomed and dainty. The truth is, that if you have 
 lived much with both English and Germans, and desire 
 to be fair and friendly to both races, you find that 
 your generalisations will not often weigh on one side. 
 The English child learns to eat with a fork rather than 
 with a spoon, and never by any chance to put a knife 
 in its mouth, or to touch a bone with its fingers. The 
 German child learns that it must never wear a soiled 
 or an unmended garment or have untidy hair. I have 
 known a German scandalised by the slovenly wardrobe 
 of her well-to-do English pupil, and I have heard 
 English people say that to hear Germans eat soup 
 destroyed their appetite for dinner. English girls 
 are not all slovens, and nowadays decently bred 
 Germans behave like other people at table. But 
 untidiness is commoner in England than in Germany, 
 and you may still stumble across a German any day 
 
38 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 who, abiding by old customs, puts his knife in his 
 mouth and takes his bones in his hands. He will 
 not only do these things, but defend them vociferously. 
 In that case you are strongly advised not to eat a dish 
 of asparagus in his company. 
 
 Your modern German Backfisch may be a person of 
 finish and wide culture. You may find that she insists 
 on her cold tub every morning, and is scandalised by 
 your offer of hot water in it. She has seen Salome as 
 a play and heard Salome as an opera. She has seen 
 plays by G.B.S. both in Berlin and L.ondon. She does 
 not care to see Shakespeare in London, because, as she 
 tells you, the English know nothing about him. Besides, 
 he could not sound as well in English as in German. 
 She has read Carlyle, and is now reading Ruskin. 
 She adores Byron, but does not know Keats, Shelley, or 
 Rossetti. Tennyson she waves contemptuously away 
 from her, not because she has read him, but because she 
 has been taught that his poetry is " bourgeois." Her 
 favourite novels are Dorian Gray and Misunderstood. 
 She dresses with effect and in the height of fashion, 
 she speaks French and English fluently, she has travelled 
 in Italy and Switzerland, she plays tennis well, she can 
 ride and swim and skate, and she would cycle if it was 
 not out of fashion. In fact, she can do anything, and 
 she knows everything, and she has been everywhere 
 Your French and English girls are ignorant misses in 
 comparison with her, and you say to yourself as you 
 watch her and humbly listen to her opinions, de- 
 livered without hesitation and expressed without 
 mistakes : " Where is the German Backfisch of yester 
 year ? " 
 
 " Did you ever read Backfischcheris Leiden und 
 Freuden ? " you say to her ; for the book is in its 
 55th edition, and you have seen German girls de- 
 
THE BACKFISCH 39 
 
 vouring it only last week ; German girls of a different 
 type, that is, from your present glittering companion. 
 
 "That old-fashioned inferior thing," she says con- 
 temptuously. " I believe my mother had it. That is 
 not literature." 
 
 You leave her to suppose you could not have made 
 that discovery for yourself, and you spend an amusing 
 hour over the story again, for there are occasions when 
 a book that is not " literature " will serve your purpose 
 better than a masterpiece. The little book has enter- 
 tained generations of German girls, and is presumably 
 accepted by them, just as Little Women is accepted in 
 -America or The Daisy Chain in England. The picture 
 was always a little exaggerated, and some of its touches 
 are now out of date ; yet as a picture of manners it 
 still has a value. It narrates the joys and sorrows of 
 a young girl of good family who leaves her country 
 home in order to live with an aunt in Berlin, a facetious 
 but highly civilised aunt who uses a large quantity of 
 water at her morning toilet. All the stages of this 
 toilet are minutely described, and all the mistakes the 
 poor countrified Backfisch makes the first morning. 
 She actually gets out of bed before she puts on her 
 clothes, and has to be driven behind the bed curtains 
 by her aunt's irony. This is an incident that is either 
 out of date or due to the genius and imagination of the 
 author, for I have never seen bed curtains in Germany. 
 However, Gretchen is taught to perform the early stages 
 of her toilet behind them, and then to wash for the 
 first time in her life in a basin full of water. She is 
 sixteen. Her aunt presents her with a sponge, and 
 observes that the civilisation of a nation is judged by 
 the amount of soap it uses. " In much embarrassment 
 I applied myself to this unaccustomed task," continues 
 the ingenuous Backfisch^ " and I managed it so cleverly 
 
40 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 that everything around me was soon swimming. To 
 make matters worse, I upset the water-jug, and now 
 the flood spread to the washstand, the floor, the bed 
 curtains, even to my clothes lying on the chair. " If 
 only this business of dressing was over," she sighs as 
 she is about to brush her teeth, with brushes supplied 
 by her aunt. But it is by no means over. She is 
 just going to slip into a dressing-gown, cover her un- 
 brushed hair with a cap, and so proceed to breakfast, 
 when this exacting aunt stops her : actually desires 
 her to plait and comb her hair at this hour of the 
 morning, and to put on a tidy gown. Gretchen's 
 gown is extremely untidy, and on that account I will 
 not admit that the portrait is wholly lifelike. In fact, 
 the author has summed up the sins of all the Backfisch 
 tribe, and made a single Backfisch guilty of them. But 
 caricature, if you know how to allow for it, is instructive. 
 Mr. Stiggins is a caricature, yet he stands for failings 
 that exist among us, though they are never displayed 
 quite so crudely. " Go and brush your nails," says the 
 aunt to the niece when the girl attempts to kiss her 
 hand ; and the Backfisch uses a nail-brush for the first 
 time in her life. 
 
 Then the two ladies sit down to breakfast. Gretchen 
 fills the cups too full, soaks her roll in her coffee, and 
 drinks out of her saucer. Her aunt informs her that 
 " coffee pudding " is not polite, and can only be allowed 
 when they are by themselves ; also that she must not 
 drink out of the saucer. " But we children always did 
 it at home," says Gretchen. " I can well believe it," 
 says the aunt. " Everything is permitted to children? 
 The italics are mine. 
 
 An aunt who has such ideas about the education of 
 the young is naturally not surprised when at dinner- 
 time she has to admonish her niece not to wipe her 
 
f 
 
 CONFIRMATION IN A CATHOLIC CHURCH 
 
 AFTER THE 1'AINTING BY HERMANN BEHRENS 
 
THE BACKFISCH 41 
 
 mouth with her hand, not to speak with her mouth full, 
 to eat her soup quietly, to keep her elbows off the table, 
 not to put her fingers in her plate or her knife in her 
 mouth, and not to take her chicken into her hands on 
 ceremonial occasions. 
 
 " My treasure," says the aunt, " as you know, we are 
 going to dinner with the Bunkers to-morrow. Be good 
 enough not to take your chicken into your hands. Here 
 at home I don't object to it, but the really correct way 
 is to separate the meat from the bone with the knife 
 and fork." 
 
 The docile Backfisch says Jawohl, liebe Tante, and 
 feels that this business of becoming civilised is full of 
 pitfalls and surprises. Never in her life has she eaten 
 poultry without the assistance of her fingers. When 
 she gets to the dinner-party she is fortunate enough 
 to sit next to her bosom frienc, who starts in horror 
 and whispers " With a knife, Gretchen," when Gretchen is 
 just about to dip her fingers in the salt. The Backfisch 
 is truly anxious to learn, but she feels that the injunc- 
 tions of society are hard, and says it is poor sport to 
 eat your chicken with a knife and fork, because the best 
 part sticks to the bones. Then her friend stops her 
 from drinking fruit syrup out of her plate, and her 
 neighbour on the other side, a stout guzzler who has 
 not been taught by his aunt to eat properly, encourages 
 Gretchen to drink too much champagne. 
 
 After these early adventures the education of the 
 Backfisch proceeds quickly. She has to learn at her 
 aunt's tea-parties not to fill cups to overflowing in 
 sheer exuberance of hospitality ; and she is also in- 
 structed not to press food on people. " In good 
 society," says the aunt, " people decline to eat because 
 they have had enough, and not because they require 
 pressing." She is obliged also to discourage Gretchen 
 
42 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 from waiting too attentively on the young men who 
 visit at the house ; and Gretchen, who does not care 
 about young men, but only yearns to be serviceable, 
 devotes herself in future to the old ladies, their foot- 
 stools, their knitting, and their smelling bottles. This 
 touch is one of many that makes the book, in spite of 
 its obvious shortcomings, valuable as a picture of 
 German character and manner. It is impossible to 
 imagine Gretchen in a French or English story of the 
 same class. The French girl would be more adroit 
 and witty; the English girl would expect young men 
 to wait on her; and neither of them would gush as 
 Gretchen did about her old ladies. " My readiness 
 to serve them knew no bounds. To arrange their 
 seats to their liking, to give them stools for their feet 
 and cushions for their backs, to rush for their shawls 
 and cloaks, to count the rows in their knitting, to help 
 them pick up their stitches, to thread their needles, to 
 wind silk or wool, to peel fruit, to run for smelling 
 bottles and cold water, all these things I did with 
 delight the instant my watchful eye discovered the 
 smallest wish, and I was always cordially thanked." 
 
 Tastes differ. Some old ladies would be made quite 
 uncomfortable by such fussy attentions. The Backfisch 
 goes on to say that she was equally assiduous i 
 waiting on the old gentlemen, She picked up anything 
 they dropped, polished their spectacles for them, and 
 listened to their dull stories when no one else would. 
 I consider the portrait of Gretchen in this story a 
 literary triumph. I can see the girl ; I can hear her 
 voice and laugh. I know exactly how she behaved 
 and what the old ladies and gentlemen said to her, how 
 she dressed and how she did her hair ; not because the 
 author tells me just these things, but because her type 
 is as true to life to-day as it was thirty years ago. As 
 
THE BACKFISCH 43 
 
 a contrast to her, a fine young lady from the city 
 presently joins the household, and the aunt does not 
 have to provide her with a tooth-brush. The new 
 arrival wears blue satin slippers, drinks her chocolate 
 in bed, and cannot dress without the help of a maid. 
 In this way the author shows you that girls brought up 
 in cities are superfine rather than savage, and that you 
 are not to suppose the ordinary German Backfisch is 
 like her little heroine from the provinces. 
 
 The truth of the matter is, that no one nowadays 
 has such manners as the Backfisch had when she first 
 came from the wilds ; at least, no one of her class, even 
 irthey have grown up in Hinter-Pommern. But if you 
 travel in Germany next week and stay in small towns 
 and country places, you will still meet plenty of people 
 who take their poultry bones in their fingers and put 
 their knives in their mouths. If they are men you 
 will see them use their fork as a dagger to hold the 
 meat while they cut it up ; you will see them stick their 
 napkins into their shirt collars and placidly comb their 
 hair with a pocket comb in public ; if they are women 
 and at a restaurant, they will pocket the lumps of 
 sugar they have not used in their coffee. But if you 
 are in private houses amongst people of Gretchen's type 
 you will see none of these things. A German host 
 still pulls the joint close to him sometimes or stands up 
 to carve, and a German hostess still presses you to eat, 
 still in the kindness of her heart piles up your plate. 
 But this embarrassing form of hospitality is dying out. 
 As Gretchen's aunt said, people in good society recognise 
 that a guest refuses food because he does not want it. 
 Some years ago, when you had satisfied your hunger 
 and declined more, your German friends used to look 
 offended or distressed, and say Sie geniren sich geiviss. 
 This is a difficult phrase to translate, because the idea is 
 
44 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 one that has never taken root in the English mind, 
 Sick geniren y however, is a reflective verb, a corruption 
 of the French verb se g^ner^ and what they meant was 
 that you really wanted a third potato dumpling but did 
 not like to say so. Whether your reluctance was 
 supposed to proceed from your distrust of your host's 
 hospitality or shame at your own appetite, is not clear ; 
 in either case it was taken, is even to-day still often taken, 
 for artificial. To accept a portion of an untouched dish 
 was considered a sign that you came from " a good 
 house " where no one grudged or wished to save the 
 food put on the table ; and formerly you could not 
 refuse sugar in your tea without being commended for 
 your economy. You are still invited to eat tarts and 
 puddings in Germany with what we consider the 
 insufficient assistance of a tea-spoon, but I have never 
 been in a private house where salt-spoons were not 
 provided. You never used to find them in inns of a 
 plain kind, and unless you were known to be English 
 and peculiar you were not provided with more than one 
 knife and fork for all the courses of a table (fhote 
 You would see your German neighbours putting theirs 
 aside as a matter of course when their plates were 
 removed. 
 
 On the whole, then, the celebrated picture of the 
 Backfisch^ though it is overloaded, bears some relation to 
 the facts of life in Germany : not only in the episodes 
 that make the early chapters entertaining, but all 
 through the story in atmosphere, in the little touches that 
 give a story nationality. When the excellent Gretchen 
 has been civilised she spends a great deal of time in the 
 kitchen, and soon knows all the duties of the complete 
 housekeeper ; while, when the frivolous Eugenie becomes 
 Braut she cannot cook at all. But frivolous as she is, 
 she recognises that marriage is unthinkable without 
 
THE BACKFISCH 45 
 
 cooking, and straightway sets to work to learn. Then, 
 too, the Backfisch is the ideal German maiden, cheerful, 
 docile, and facetious ; and constantly on the jump 
 (spring-en is the word she uses) to serve her elders. 
 Middle-aged Germans used to have a most tiresome 
 way of expecting girls to be like lambs in spring, 
 always in the mood to frisk and caper : so that a quiet 
 or a delicate girl had a bad time with some of them. 
 Bin junges Mddchen muss immer heiter sein, they would 
 say reproachfully. But it does not follow that you are 
 always heiter just because you are not twenty yet; 
 especially in Germany, where girls are often anaemic 
 and have headaches. However, perhaps the modern 
 German maiden does not allow her elders to be so 
 silly. 
 
 There are some other ways, too, in which my Backfisch 
 of thirty years ago is typical of German womanhood 
 both then and now. She is as good as gold, she is 
 devoted to duty not to pleasure, and she is as guileless 
 as a child. You know that when she marries she will 
 be faithful unto death ; you know that her husband and 
 her children will call her blessed. These things come 
 out quite naturally, almost unconsciously, in the little 
 story that is " not literature," and which for all that is 
 so truly and deeply German in its quality and tone. 
 This Gretchen of the schoolroom, this caricature of the 
 country cousin, is akin in her simplicity, sweetness, and 
 depth of nature to that other Gretchen whose figure 
 lives for ever in the greatest of German poems. Just 
 as the women of Shakespeare and the women of Miss 
 Austen are subtly kin to each other, inasmuch as they 
 are English women, so Goethe's girl and the girl of the 
 poor little schoolroom story are German in every pulse 
 and fibre. And this national essence, the honesty, 
 goodness, and sweetness of the girl, are the real things, 
 
46 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 the things to remember about her. Those little matters 
 of the toilet and the table will soon be out of date, are 
 out of date already in the greater part of Germany. 
 As a picture of forgotten manners they will always be 
 amusing, just as it is amusing to read an eighteenth- 
 century English story of school life, in which the young 
 ladies fought and bit and scratched each other and 
 were whipped and sent to bed. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE STUDENT 
 
 WHEN an English lad goes to the university he 
 usually goes there from a public school, where 
 out of school hours he has been learning for years past 
 to be a man. In these strenuous days he may have 
 learned a little in school hours too, but that is a new 
 departure. Cricket and character are what an English 
 boy expects to develop at school, and if there is stuff 
 in him he succeeds. He does not set a high value on 
 learning. Even if he works and brings home prizes he 
 will not be as proud of them as of his football cap, 
 while a boy who is head of the school, but a duffer at 
 games, will live for all time in the memory of his 
 fellows as a failure. But the German boy goes to 
 school to acquire knowledge, and he too gets what he 
 wants. The habit of work must be strong in him 
 when at the age of eighteen he goes to one of his 
 many universities. But when he gets there he is free 
 for the first time in his life, and the first use he for the 
 most part makes of his freedom is to be thoroughly, 
 happily idle. This idleness, if he has a backbone and 
 a call to work, only lasts a term or two ; and no one 
 who knows how a German boy is held to the grind- 
 stone for twelve years of school life can grudge him 
 a holiday. But the odd fact is, that the Briton who 
 leaves school a man is more under control at Oxford 
 
 47 
 
48 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 or Cambridge than the German at Heidelberg who 
 leaves school a boy. 
 
 A German university is a teaching institution which 
 prepares for the State examinations, and is never 
 residential. There are no old colleges. The professors 
 live in flats like other people, and the students live in 
 lodgings or board with private families. There is one 
 building or block of buildings called the Universitdt 
 where there are laboratories and lecture-rooms. The 
 State can decline a professor chosen by the university ; 
 but this power is rarely exercised. The teachers at 
 a German university consist of ordinary professors, 
 extraordinary professors, and Privatdocenten men who 
 are not professors yet, but hope to be some day. An 
 Englishman in his ignorance might think that an 
 extraordinary professor ought to rank higher than an 
 ordinary one ; but this is not so. The ordinary pro- 
 fessors are those who have chairs ; the extraordinary 
 ones have none. But all professors have a fixed 
 salary which is paid to the day of their death, though 
 they may cease work when they choose. The salaries 
 vary from 240 to 350, and are paid by the State, 
 but this income is increased by lecturing fees. Whether 
 it is largely increased depends on the popularity of the 
 lecturer and on his subject. An astronomer cannot 
 expect large classes, while a celebrated professor of 
 Law or Medicine addresses crowds. I have found 
 it difficult to make my English friends believe that 
 there are professors now in Berlin earning as much 
 as 2500 a year. The English idea of the Ger- 
 man professor is rudely disturbed by such a fact, 
 for his poverty and simplicity of life have played as 
 large a part in our tradition of him as his learning. 
 The Germans seem to recognise that a scholar cannot 
 want as much money as a man of affairs ; therefore, 
 
THE STUDENT 49 
 
 when one of their professors is so highly esteemed by 
 the youth of the nation that his fees exceed 225, half 
 of the overflow goes to the university and not to him 
 at all. In this way Berlin receives a considerable 
 sum every year, and uses it to assist poorer pro- 
 fessors and to attract new men. As a rule a German 
 professor has not passed the State examinations. These 
 are official, not academic, and they qualify men for 
 government posts rather than for professorial chairs. 
 A professor acquires the academic title of doctor by 
 writing an original essay that convinces the university 
 of his learning. The title confers no privileges. It is 
 an academic distinction, and its value depends on the 
 prestige of the university conferring it. 
 
 Germans say that our English universities exist to 
 turn out gentlemen rather than scholars, and that the 
 aim of their own universities is to train servants for the 
 State and to encourage learning. I think an English- 
 man would say that a gentleman is bred at home, but 
 he would understand how the German arrived at his 
 point of view. When a German talks of an English 
 university he is thinking of Oxford and Cambridge, 
 and he knows that, roughly speaking, it is the sons of 
 well-to-do men who go there. Perhaps he does not 
 know much about the Scotch and Irish and Welsh 
 universities, or London, or the north of England ; 
 though it is never safe to build on what a German 
 does not know. I once took for granted that a man 
 talking to me of some point in history would no more 
 remember all the names and dates of the Kings of 
 Scotland than I remember them myself. But he knew 
 every one, and was scandalised by my ignorance. So 
 perhaps the average German knows better than I do 
 what it costs a man to graduate at Edinburgh or at 
 Dublin. Anyhow, he knows that three or four years 
 4 
 
50 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 at Oxford or Cambridge cost a good deal ; and he 
 knows that in Berlin, for instance, a student can live 
 on sixty pounds a year, out of which he can afford 
 about five pounds a term for academic fees. If he is 
 too poor to pay his fees the authorities allow him to 
 get into their debt, and pay later in life when he has 
 a post. There are cases where a man pays for his 
 university training six years after he has ended it. 
 But a German university comes to a man's help still 
 more effectively when there is need for it, and will grant 
 him partial or even entire support. Then there are 
 various organisations for providing hungry men with 
 dinners so many days a week ; sometimes at a public 
 table, sometimes with families who arrange to receive 
 one or more guests on certain days every week. The 
 Jewish community in a university always looks after its 
 poor students well, and this practice of entertaining 
 them in private houses is one that gives rises to many 
 jests and stories. The students soon find out which of 
 their hosts are liberal and which are not, and give 
 them a reputation accordingly. 
 
 A German comparing his universities with the 
 English ones will always lay stress on the fact that his 
 are not examining bodies, and that his professors are 
 not crammers but teachers. A student who intends to 
 pass the State examinations chooses his own course of 
 reading for them, and the lectures that he thinks will 
 help him. He does not necessarily spend his whole 
 time at the same university, but may move from one to 
 the other in pursuit of the professors he wants for his 
 special purpose. He is quite free to do this ; and he 
 is free to work night and day, or to drink beer night 
 and day. He is under no supervision either in his 
 studies or his way of life. 
 
 English people who have been to Germany at all 
 
BURSCHENHERRLICHKEIT 
 
 FROM THE PAINTING BY CH. HEYUEN 
 
THE STUDENT 51 
 
 have invariably been to Heidelberg, and if they have 
 been there in term time they have been amused by the 
 gangs of young men who swagger about the narrow 
 streets, each gang wearing a different coloured cap. 
 They will have been told that these are the " corps " 
 students, and the sight of them so jolly and so idle 
 will confirm their mental picture of the German 
 student, the picture of a young man who does nothing but 
 drink beer, fight duels, sing Volkslieder and Trinklieder, 
 and make love to pretty low-born maidens. When 
 you see a company of these young men clatter into 
 the Schloss garden on a summer afternoon, and drink 
 vast quantities of beer, when you observe their 
 elaborate ceremonial of bows and greetings, when you 
 hear their laughter and listen to the latest stories of 
 their monkey tricks, you understand that the student's 
 life is a merry one, but except for the sake of tradition 
 you wonder why he need lead it at a seat of learning. 
 Anything further removed from learning than a 
 German corps student cannot be imagined, and the 
 noise he makes must incommode the quiet working 
 students who do not join a corps. Not that the 
 quiet working students would wish to banish the others. 
 They are the glory of the German universities. In 
 novels and on the stage none others appear. The 
 innocent foreigner thinks that the moment a young 
 German goes to the Alma Mater of his choice he 
 puts on an absurd little cap, gets his face slashed, 
 buys a boarhound, and devotes all his energies to 
 drinking beer and ragging officials. But though the 
 " corps " students are so conspicuous in the small 
 university towns, it is only the men of means who 
 join them. For poorer students there is a cheaper 
 form of union, called a Burschenschaft. When a 
 young German goes to the university he has probably 
 
52 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 never been from home before, and by joining a Corps 
 or a Burschenschaft he finds something to take the 
 place of home, companions with whom he has a 
 special bond of intimacy, and a discipline that carries 
 on his social education ; for the etiquette of these 
 associations is most elaborate and strict. The 
 members of a corps all say " thou " to each other, and 
 on the Alte Herren Abende, when members of an older 
 generation are entertained by the young ones of to-day, 
 this practice still obtains, although one man may be a 
 great minister of State and the other a lad fresh from 
 school. The laws of a "corps" remind you of the 
 laws made by English schoolboys for themselves, 
 they are as solemnly binding, as educational, and as 
 absurd. If a Vandal meets a Hessian in the street he 
 may not recognise him, though the Hessian be his 
 brother ; but outside the town's boundary this prohibi- 
 tion is relaxed, for it is not rooted in ill feeling but in 
 ceremony. One corps will challenge another to meet 
 it on the duelling ground, just as an English football 
 team will meet another in friendly rivalry. All 
 the students' associations except the theological require 
 their members to fight these duels, which are really 
 exercises in fencing, and take place on regular days of 
 the week, just as cricket matches do in England. 
 The men are protected by goggles and by shields and 
 baskets on various parts of their bodies, but their 
 faces are exposed, and they get ugly cuts, of which 
 they are extremely proud. As it is quite impossible 
 that I should have seen these duels myself, I will 
 quote from a description sent me by an English friend 
 who was taken to them in Heidelberg by a corps 
 student. " They take place," he says, " in a large 
 bare room with a plain boarded floor. There were 
 tables, each to hold ten or twelve persons, on three 
 
THE STUDENT 53 
 
 sides of the room, and a refreshment counter on the 
 fourth side, where an elderly woman and one or two 
 girls were serving wine. The wine was brought to the 
 tables, and the various corps sat at their special tables, 
 all drinking and smoking. The dressing and undressing 
 and the sewing up of wounds was done in an adjoining 
 room. When the combatants were ready they were 
 led in by their seconds, who held up their arms one 
 on each side. The face and the top of the head were 
 exposed, but the body, arms and neck were heavily 
 bandaged. The duellists are placed opposite each 
 other, and the seconds, who also have swords in their 
 hands, stand one on each side, ready to interfere and 
 knock up the combatant's sword. They say l Auf die 
 Mensurl and then the slashing begins. As soon as 
 blood is drawn the seconds interfere, and the doctor 
 examines the cut. If it is not bad they go on fighting 
 directly. If it needs sewing up they go into the next 
 room, and you wait an endless time for the next 
 party. I got awfully tired of the long intervals, 
 sitting at the tables, drinking and smoking. While 
 the fights were going on we all stood round in a ring. 
 There were only about three duels the whole morning. 
 There was a good deal of blood on the floor. The 
 women at the refreshment counter were quite uncon- 
 cerned. They didn't trouble to look on, but talked 
 to each other about blouses like girls in a post office. 
 The students drove out to the inn and back in open 
 carriages. It is a mile from Heidelberg. The duels 
 are generally as impersonal as games, but sometimes 
 they are in settlement of quarrels. I think any 
 student may come and fight on these occasions, but I 
 suppose he has to be the guest of a corps." 
 
 A German professor lecturing on university life 
 constantly used a word I did not understand at first. 
 
54 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 The word as he said it was Commang, with a strong 
 accent on the second syllable. The word as it is 
 written is Comment, and means the etiquette set up and 
 obeyed by the students. The Germans have taken 
 many French words into their language and corrupted 
 them, much as we have ourselves : sometimes by 
 Germanising the pronunciation, sometimes by con- 
 jugating a French verb in the German way as they 
 do in raisonniren and geniren. The Commang, said 
 the professor, was a highly valuable factor in a young 
 man's education, because it helped more than anything 
 else to turn a schoolboy into a man of the world. So 
 when I saw a little book called Der Bier Comment 
 for sale I bought it instantly, for I wanted to know how 
 beer turned a schoolboy into a man of the world. It 
 began with a little preface, a word of warning to 
 anyone attempting to write about the morals, customs, 
 and characteristics of the German nation. No one 
 undertaking this was to forget that the Germans had 
 an amazing Bierdurst, and that they liked to assuage 
 this thirst in company, to be cheerful and easy, and to 
 sing while they were drinking. Then it goes on to give 
 the elaborate ceremonial observed at the Kneiptafel. 
 One of my dictionaries, although the German-English 
 part has 24 1 2 pages, translates Kneipe as " any instru- 
 ment for pinching." I never yet found anything I 
 wanted in those 2412 pages. Another dictionary, one 
 that cost ninepence, and is supposed to give you all 
 words in common use, does not include Kneipe at all. 
 As an instrument for pinching, Kneipe is certainly not 
 common, except possibly amongst people who use tools. 
 As a word for a sort of beer club it is as common as 
 beer. It is not only students who go to the Kneipe. 
 In some parts of Germany men spend most of the 
 evening drinking beer and smoking with their friends, 
 
THE STUDENT 55 
 
 while the womenfolk are by themselves or with the 
 children at home. But the beer Commang that the 
 professor thought had such educational value is the 
 name for certain intricate rites practised by university 
 students at the Kneiptafel. Those who sit at the table 
 are called Beer Persons, and they are of various ranks 
 according to the time of membership and their position 
 in the Kneipe. Every Beer Person must drink beer 
 and join in the songs, unless he has special permission 
 from the chairman. The Beer Persons do not just sit 
 round the table and drink as they please. If they did 
 there would be no Comment, and I suppose no educa- 
 tional value. They have to invite their fellows to drink 
 with them, and the quantity drunk, the persons who 
 may have challenged, and the exact number of minutes 
 that may elapse before a challenge is accepted and 
 returned, is all exactly laid down. Then there are 
 various festive and ingenious ways of drinking together, 
 so as to turn the orgy into something like a game. 
 For instance, the glass " goes into the world," that is, it 
 circulates, and any Beer Person who seizes it with a 
 different hand or different fingers from his neighbour 
 is fined. Or the glasses are piled one on the top of 
 another while the Beer Persons sing, and some one man 
 has to drink to each glass in the pile at the word of 
 command. Or the president orders a " Beer Galop " 
 with the words " Silentium fur einen Biergalopp : ich 
 bitte den notigen Stoff anzuschaffen" At the word of 
 command everyone, beginning with the president, 
 passes his glass to his left-hand neighbour and 
 empties the one he receives. Then the glasses are 
 refilled, passed to the right, and emptied again as soon 
 as possible. The president, it seems, has to exercise a 
 good deal of discretion and ingenuity, for if the Kneipe 
 seems flat it lies with him to order the moves in the 
 
56 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 game that will make it lively and stimulate beer, song, 
 and conversation. There are various fines and 
 punishments inflicted according to strict rule on those 
 who transgress the code of the Kneipe, but as far as I 
 can make out they all resolve themselves into drinking 
 extra beer, singing extra songs, or in really serious 
 cases ceasing to be a Beer Person for whatever length 
 of time meets the offence. An Englishman who was 
 present at some of these gatherings in Heidelberg, told 
 me that the etiquette was most difficult for a foreigner 
 to understand, and always a source of anxiety to him 
 all the evening. He was constantly invited to drink 
 with various members, and the German responsible for 
 him explained that he must not only respond to the 
 invitation at the moment, but return it at the right 
 time: not too soon, because that would look like 
 shaking off an obligation, and not too late, because that 
 would look like forgetting it. 
 
 A Kommers is a students' festival in which the 
 professors and other senior members of a university 
 take part, and at which outsiders are allowed to look 
 on. The presiding students appear in vollem Wichs, 
 as we should say in their war paint, with sashes and 
 rapiers. Young and old together drink beer, sing 
 songs, make speeches, and in honour of one or the 
 other they " rub a Salamander," a word which is 
 said to be a corruption of Sauft alle mit einander. 
 This is a curious ceremony and of great antiquity. 
 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 STUDENT 57 
 
 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 re- 
 membered 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 
 
58 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 of us would be loth to lose. In Berlin, if you go to 
 the Universitat 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 VII 
 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 
 
 59 
 
60 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 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 
 
RIEHL ON WOMEN 61 
 
 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 
 ariy 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 
 
 te .' 
 
62 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 from him to think that women are to remain in com- 
 pulsory 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 con- 
 sequence. The wife of a peasant is only his equal in 
 one respect : she works as hard as he does. Other- 
 wise she is his serf. The sole public position allowed 
 to a woman in a village is that of gooseherd ; while 
 those original minds who in other circumstances would 
 take to authorship or painting have to wait, if they are 
 
RIEHL ON WOMEN 63 
 
 peasants, till they are old, when they can take to fortune- 
 telling and witchcraft. Herr Riehl admits that the lot 
 of women when they are peasants is not a happy one. 
 He does not make the admission because he thinks it 
 of much consequence, but because it illustrates his 
 argument that the less " feminine " women are the less 
 power they exercise. He has no great fault to find 
 with the peasant's household, where the wife is a beast 
 of burden in the field and a slave indoors, bears 
 children in quick succession, is old before her time, and 
 sacrifices herself body and soul to the family. But 
 he points out that on a higher social plane, where 
 women are more unlike men, more distinctively 
 feminine, the position they take is more honourable. 
 Yet it is these same " superfeminine " women who are 
 foolishly claiming equality with men. 
 
 Herr Riehl's views expressed in English seem a little 
 behind the times, here and there more than a little 
 brutal. He speaks with sympathy of suttee, and he 
 quotes the Volga-Kalmucks with approval. This tribe, 
 it seems, " treat their wives with the most exquisite 
 patriarchal courtesy; but directly the wife neglects a 
 household duty courtesy ceases (for the genius of the 
 house is more important than the personal dignity of 
 the wife), and the sinner is castigated (wird tUchtig 
 durchgepeitscht). The whip used, the household 
 sword and sceptre, is handed down from generation to 
 generation as a sacred heirloom." I have translated 
 this passage instead of alluding to it, because I thought 
 it was an occasion on which Herr Riehl should literally 
 speak for himself. 
 
 It is, however, fair to explain that modern men as 
 well as modern women come under his censure. All 
 the tendencies and all the habits of modern life afflict 
 him, and he lashes out at them without discrimination, 
 
64 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 and with such an entire lack of prophetic insight that 
 I have found him consoling. For this book was 
 published sixteen years before the Franco-Prussian War, 
 when Germany, the world must admit, proved that it 
 was not decadent. Yet every page of it is a Jeremiad, 
 an exhortation to his countryfolk to stop short on the 
 road to ruin. He does not see that the whole nation 
 is slowly and patiently girding its loins for that mighty 
 effort ; he believes it is blind, weak, and flighty. If he 
 had lived in England, and a little later, he would 
 certainly have talked about the Smart Set, Foreign 
 Financiers, and the Yellow Press. As he lived in 
 Germany fifty years ago, he scolds his countryfolk for 
 living in flats. He wants to know why a family cannot 
 herd in one room instead of scattering itself in several. 
 As for a father who cannot endure the cry of children, 
 that man should never have been a father, says Herr 
 Riehl. He cannot approve of the dinner hour being 
 put off till two o'clock. Why not begin work at five 
 and dine at eleven in the good old German way ? He 
 praises the ruinous elaborate festivals that used to 
 celebrate family events, and considers that the police 
 help to destroy family life by fining people who in 
 their opinion spend more than they can afford on a 
 wedding or a christening. He objects to artificial 
 Christmas trees, and points out that other nations set 
 a tree in the drawing-room, but that Germans have it 
 in the nursery, the innermost sanctum of family life. 
 He arrives at some curious conclusions when he dis- 
 cusses the German's habit of turning the beer-house 
 into a sort of club that he calls his Kneipe. Other 
 races can drink, he says ; aber bloss die germanischen 
 konnen kneipen only the Germanic peoples can make 
 themselves at home in an inn. What does the Stamm- 
 gast> the regular guest, ask but the ways of homef 
 
RIEHL ON WOMEN 65 
 
 the same chair every night, the same corner, the same 
 glass, the same wine ; and where there is a Stammtisch 
 the same companions. He sees that family life is 
 more or less destroyed when the men of the household 
 spend their leisure hours, and especially their evenings, 
 at an inn, but he says that the homelike surroundings 
 of the Kneipe prove the German's love of home. In 
 fact, he suggests that even the habitual drunkard is 
 often a weak, amiable creature cut out for family life ; 
 only, he has sought it at the public-house instead of 
 on his own hearth. 
 
 Herr Riehl is, in fact, deeply concerned to see amongst 
 his countryfolk a gradual slackening of family ties, 
 a widespread selfish individualism amongst women, an 
 abdication of duty and authority amongst men. His 
 views about women sound outrageous to-day, chiefly 
 because he wants to apply them to all women without 
 distinction ; and also because they display a total want 
 of consideration for the welfare and the wishes of women 
 themselves. But his position is interesting, because with 
 some modifications it is the position still taken by the 
 majority of German men ; naturally, not by the most 
 advanced and intelligent, but by the average German 
 from the Spree to the Danube. He thinks that woman 
 was made for man, and that if she has board, lodging, 
 and raiment, according to the means of her menfolk, she 
 has all she can possibly ask of life. When her menfolk 
 are peasants, she must work in the fields; when they 
 belong to the middle or upper classes, her place is in the 
 kitchen and the nursery. Unless he is exceptionally 
 intelligent he does not understand that this simple rule 
 is complicated by modern economic conditions, and by 
 the enormous number of women thrown on their own 
 resources. He would send them as Herr Riehl did, to 
 the kitchens and nurseries of other people ; or he would 
 5 
 
66 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 give up the problem in despair, as Herr Riehl did, 
 admitting with a sigh that modern humanitarianism 
 forbids the establishment of a lethal chamber for the 
 superfluous members of a weaker sex. 
 
 The most modern German women are in direct op- 
 position to Herr Riehl, and it must be said that some of 
 their leaders are enthusiastic rather than sensible. They 
 are drunk with the freedom they claim in a country 
 where women are not even allowed to attend a political 
 meeting except with the express consent of the police. 
 In their ravings against the tyranny of men they lose 
 all historical sense, just as an American does when he 
 describes a mediaeval crime as if it had been committed 
 by a European with a twentieth-century conscience. 
 They charge men with keeping half humanity in a de- 
 grading state of slavery, and attribute all the sins of 
 civilisation to the enforced ignorance and helplessness 
 of women. Their contempt for their masters is almost 
 beyond the German language to express, eloquently as 
 they use it. They demand equality of education and 
 opportunity, but they do not want to be men. Far be 
 such a desire from their minds. They mean to be some- 
 thing much better. To what a pass have men brought 
 the world, they ask ? How much better would manners 
 and morals and politics be in the hands of women ! 
 They repel with indignation the taunt that women have 
 no right to govern the State because their bodies are 
 too weak to defend it. They point out with a gleam 
 of sense and justice that the mother of children does 
 serve the State in a supremely important way ; and for 
 that matter they are willing to take many State duties 
 on their shoulders, and to train for them as arduously 
 and regularly as men train for the wretched business of 
 killing each other. They will not mate with those poor 
 things modern men under the existing marriage 
 
RIEHL ON WOMEN 67 
 
 laws. They refuse to be household beasts of burden a 
 day longer. Life, life to the dregs with all its joys 
 and all its responsibilities, is what they want, and love 
 if it comes their way. But not marriage. Young 
 Siegfrieds they ask for, young lions. Here one be- 
 wildered reader rubbed her eyes ; for she had just heard 
 Siegfried and the Gotterdammerung again, and some- 
 times she reads in the Nibelungenlied\ and if ever a 
 man won a woman with his club, by muscle seemingly, 
 by magic really, but anyhow by sheer bodily strength, 
 was not that man Siegfried ? and was not the woman 
 Briinnhilde ? And what does the Siegfried of the Lied 
 say when his wife has failed to keep a guard on her 
 tongue 
 
 "Man soil so Frauen ziehen," sprach Siegfried, " der Degen, 
 
 Das sie tippig Reden lassen unterwegen. 
 
 Verbiet es deinem Weibe ; der meinen thu' ich's auch. 
 
 Ich scha'me mich, wahrlich um solchen iibermuthigen Brauch." 
 
 And then, just as if he was one of those Volga- 
 Kalmucks admired by Herr Riehl, he beats poor 
 Kriemhilde black and blue. 
 
 "Das hat mich bald gereuet," so sprach das edle Weib; 
 " Auch hat er so zerblaiiet deswegen meinen Leib ! 
 Dass ich es je geredet, beschwerte ihm den Muth : 
 Das hat gar wohl gerochen der Degen tapfer und gut." 
 
 Yet here is the last development in women, the 
 woman who refuses as an outrage both the theory of 
 masculine superiority and the fact so evident in Germany 
 of masculine domination, here is the self-constituted 
 superwoman calling as if she was Eve to the primaeval 
 male. It may be perverse of me, but my imagination 
 refuses to behold them mated. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW 
 
 ERMANY stands midway between France and 
 England in its care for its womenfolk. French 
 parents consider marriage the proper career for a 
 woman, and with logical good sense set themselves 
 from the day of a girl's birth to provide a dowry for 
 her. When she is of a marriageable age they provide 
 the husband. They will make great sacrifices to 
 establish a daughter in prosperity, and they leave 
 nothing to chance. We leave everything to chance, 
 and the idea of marriage made by bargain and without 
 love offends us. Such marriages are often enough 
 made in England, but they are never admitted. Some 
 gloss of sentiment or of personal respect is considered 
 decent. But on the whole in this country a girl shifts 
 for herself. If she marries, well and good ; if she 
 remains single, well and good too, provided she can 
 earn her living or has means. When she has neither 
 means nor craft and fails to marry, she is one of the 
 most tragic figures in our confused social hierarchy, 
 difficult to help, superfluous. She sets her hand to 
 this and that, but she has no grip on life. To think of 
 her is to invoke the very image of failure and incom- 
 petence. She flocks into every opening, blocking and 
 depressing it ; as a " help " she becomes a byword, for 
 she has grown up without learning to help herself or 
 
 68 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW 69 
 
 anybody else. If she is a Protestant she has no haven. 
 Only people who have set themselves to help poor 
 ladies know the difficulties of the undertaking, and the 
 miseries their prot^g^es endure. 
 
 Even in the Middle Ages the conscientious German 
 was doing more for this helpless element of his popula- 
 tion than England and America are doing to-day. He 
 saw that some of his daughters would remain unmarried, 
 and that if they were gently bred he must provide for 
 their future, and he did this by founding Stifle. The 
 old Stiff was established by the gentlemen of some one 
 district, who built a house and contributed land and 
 money for its maintenance, so that when they died their 
 unmarried daughters should still have a suitable home. 
 Some of these old Stifle are very wealthy now, and 
 have buildings of great dignity and beauty ; they still 
 admit none but the descendants of the men who founded 
 them, and when they have more money than they need 
 to support the Stift itself, they use it to pension the 
 widows and endow the brides belonging to their group 
 or families. In Hesse-Cassel, for instance, there is an 
 ancient Stift formed by the Ritterschaft of the Duchy 
 and it is so well off that it can afford to pension every 
 widow and fatherless child, and buy an outfit for every 
 bride whose name either by marriage or descent entitles 
 her to its protection. The example set by the noble 
 families of the Middle Ages was followed in time by 
 other classes, and Stifle were established all over 
 Germany for the daughters of the bourgeoisie. They 
 grew in number and variety ; some had a school 
 attached to their endowment and some an orphanage. 
 In some the rule was elastic, in others binding. There 
 are Stifle from which a woman may absent herself for 
 the greater part of the year, and yet draw an income 
 from its funds and have a room or rooms appointed 
 
70 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 to her use ; there are others where residence, is com- 
 pulsory. Some are only open to descendants of the 
 founders ; some sell vacancies. A woman may have 
 to wait year after year for a chance of getting in ; or 
 she may belong to one that will admit her at a certain 
 age. In many there is a presiding lady, the Domina 
 or Abbess ; and when the present Emperor visited a 
 well-known Stiff lately he gave the Abbess a shepherd's 
 crook with which to rule her flock. Some are just sets 
 of rooms with certain privileges of light and firing 
 attached. Their constitution varies greatly, according 
 to the class provided for and the means available. But 
 you cannot be much amongst Germans without meeting 
 women who have been educated, endowed, helped in 
 sickness, or supported in old age by one of these 
 organisations. You come across girls of gentle birth 
 but with no means who have been brought up in a 
 Stiff, or you hear of well-to-do girls whose parents 
 have paid high for their schooling in one. You know 
 the elderly unmarried daughter of an official living on 
 his pension, and you find that though she has never 
 been taught to earn her bread she looks forward to old 
 age with serenity, because when she was a child her 
 relations bought her into a Stiff that will give her at 
 the age of fifty free quarters, fire, light, and an income 
 on which, with her habits of thrift, she can live com- 
 fortably. Another woman engaged in private teaching 
 and a good deal battered by the struggle for life, comes 
 to you some day more radiant than you have ever seen 
 her, and you find that influential friends have put her 
 case before a Stiff, and that it has granted her two 
 charming rooms with free fire and light. I heard of a 
 cook the other day who, after many years of faithful 
 service, left her employers to spend her old age in a 
 Stift. No social stigma attaches to the women living 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW 71 
 
 in one, and they are as free, in some cases as well placed 
 and well born, as the English women living at Hampton 
 Court. Some friction and some gossip is presumably 
 inevitable wherever women herd together in an unnatural 
 segregation from men and children. But at any rate 
 the German Stiff saves many a woman from the tragic 
 struggle with old age and poverty to which the penniless 
 incapable spinster is condemned in our country. It 
 may not be a paradise, but it is a haven. As I said at 
 the beginning, the Frenchman dowers and marries his 
 girl, the German buys her a refuge, the Englishman 
 leaves her to fate. 
 
 On the whole, the German believes that the woman's 
 province is within the limits of the household. He 
 wants her to be a home-maker, and in Germany what 
 " he " wants her to be still fixes the standard. But as 
 the census reveals the existence of large numbers of 
 single women, and as " he " often has a thoughtful and 
 benevolent mind, more and more is done there every 
 year to prepare those women who must earn their living 
 to earn it capably. It has been understood for some 
 time past that Herr Riehl's plan of finding a family roof 
 for every woman without one presents difficulties where 
 there are 400,000 odd women to provide for in this 
 way. One of the people who first saw this clearly, and 
 supported every sensible undertaking that came to 
 the assistance of women, was the Empress Frederick ; 
 and one of the institutions that she encouraged and 
 esteemed from the beginning was the Lette-Verein in 
 Berlin. 
 
 The Lette-Verein, named after its originator, Dr. A. 
 Lette, was founded, says its prospectus, to further the 
 education of women and to increase the efficiency of 
 women dependent on themselves for support. What 
 it actually does is to train for housekeeping and office 
 
72 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 work, and for some trades. Its interest lies in the 
 ordered and thoughtful provision it makes both for the 
 woman who means to devote herself body and soul to 
 the family ; and for the woman who prefers, or who is 
 driven, to stand in the market-place and compete with 
 men. The Lette-Verein does not train servants or 
 admit servants to its classes. It occupies a large block 
 of buildings in the west of Berlin, for its various schools 
 and hostels require a great deal of room. Students 
 who live in the city can attend daily classes ; but those 
 who come from a distance can have board and residence 
 for 1 a week or less. Once a week strangers are 
 allowed to see the Lette-Haus at work, and when I 
 went there we were taken first to the kitchens, where 
 the future housewives of Germany were learning to 
 cook. The stoves were the sensible low closed-in ones 
 used on the continent, and the vessels were either 
 earthenware or metal, kept brightly polished both 
 inside and out. The students were preparing and 
 cooking various dishes, but the one that interested me 
 was the Leipziger Allerlei^ because I compared it with 
 the " herbage " an English plain cook throws into water 
 and sends up half drained, half cold, and often enough 
 half clean. I could not stop to count the vegetables 
 required for Leipziger Allerlei, but there seemed to be 
 at least six varieties, all cooked separately, and after- 
 wards combined with a properly made sauce. The 
 Englishman may say that he prefers his half-cooked 
 cabbage, and the English woman, if she is a plain cook, 
 will certainly say that the cabbage gives her as much 
 trouble as she means to take ; but the German woman 
 knows that when she marries her husband will want 
 Leipziger Allerlei, so she goes to the Lette-Haus and 
 learns how to make it. Even the young doctors of 
 Berlin learn cooking at the Lette-Haus. Special 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW 73 
 
 classes for invalid cookery are held on their behalf, 
 and are said to be popular and extremely useful. 
 Certainly doctors whose work is amongst the poor or 
 in country places must often wish they understood 
 something about the preparation of food. The girls 
 who go to the Lette-Haus are taught the whole art of 
 housekeeping, from the proper way to scour a pan 
 or scrub a floor to fine laundry work and darning, 
 and even how to set and serve a table. An intelligent 
 girl who had been right through the courses at the 
 Lette-Haus could train an inexperienced servant, because 
 'she would understand exactly how things ought to be 
 done, how much time they should take, and what 
 amount of fatigue they involve. If her servants failed 
 her she would be independent of them. Some students 
 at the Lette-Haus do, as a matter of fact, form a 
 household that is carried on without a single servant, 
 and is on this account the most interesting branch of 
 the organisation. The girls are from fourteen to 
 sixteen years of age, and they pay 2$ a year for 
 instruction, board, and lodging. Some of them are 
 the daughters of landed proprietors, and some will 
 eventually earn a living as " supports of the housewife," 
 an honourable career shortly referred to by Germans 
 as eine Stiitze. They were a happy, healthy looking 
 lot of girls. They wear neat serviceable gowns while 
 they are at work, aprons, linen sleeves to protect their 
 stuff ones, and pretty blue handkerchiefs tied like tur- 
 bans over their hair. Some of them were busy at the 
 wash-tub, and this seemed heavy work for girls of that 
 age. The various kinds of work are done in turn, and 
 the student when her washing week comes round is 
 employed in this way three hours every morning. On 
 alternate days she mangles clothes, and in the after- 
 noons she sews. Our guide would not admit that three 
 
74 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 hours at the wash-tub could be too great a strain on a 
 half-developed girl, and it is a question for medical 
 wisdom to decide. The cooking and ironing looked 
 hot work, but these young German girls were cheerfully 
 and thoroughly learning how to do them, and whether 
 they marry or stay single their knowledge of these arts 
 will be of inestimable use in later years. I heard of 
 an able-bodied Englishwoman the other day who took 
 to her bed in tears because her maids left her suddenly. 
 She could not have roasted a leg of mutton or made 
 the plainest pudding. This is the school of the future, 
 said our enthusiastic guide when we went to see the 
 "children" at work at the Lette-Haus\ and I, 
 remembering my helpless Englishwoman, agreed with 
 her. The children's afternoons are mostly given to 
 needlework, and they are instructed in the prospectus 
 not to bring new clothes with them, because it is 
 desired that they should learn how to mend old ones 
 neatly and correctly. They are taught to darn and 
 patch so finely that the repair cannot easily be 
 discovered ; they make sets of body linen for themselves, 
 three finely sewn men's linen shirts, a gown for work- 
 days, and some elaborate blouses. In another part of 
 the Lette-Haus, where students were being trained as 
 expert embroiderers and dressmakers, we were shown 
 pieces of flowered brocade into which patches had been 
 so skilfully inserted that you could only find them by 
 holding them up to the light. In the bookbinding 
 department there were amateur and professional 
 students. The professionals apprentice themselves for 
 three years, and from the first receive a small weekly 
 wage. The length of their apprenticeship is determined 
 by the length of time prescribed for men, and not by 
 what is necessary for their training. I asked if they 
 easily found regular work later, and was told that at 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW 75 
 
 present the demand for expert women bookbinders 
 exceeded the supply. The Lette-Haus trains women 
 to be photographers, printers, and clerks. In fact, with 
 German thoroughness and foresight it does all one big 
 institution can to save the women of the nation from 
 the curse of incompetence. It turns them out efficient 
 housewives or efficient craftswomen, according to their 
 needs. 
 
 The German woman of to-day has travelled far from 
 the ideal set up by Herr Riehl, and still upheld by his 
 disciples. Women have found that the realities of life 
 'clash with that particular ideal, and rudely upset it. 
 Just like any man, a woman wants bread when she is 
 hungry, and when there is no man to give it to her she 
 must raven for it herself. She has been driven from a 
 family hearth that has no fire on it, and from a family 
 roof that cannot afford her shelter. On the whole, if 
 I may judge from personal observation, it has done 
 her good. The traditional old maid is dying out in 
 Germany as assuredly as she is dying out in England, 
 and who shall regret her? Her outlook was narrow, 
 her temper often soured. She had neither self-reliance 
 nor charm. She was that sad, silly spectacle, a clinging 
 plant without support. Now that she is learning to 
 grow on her own account, she finds that there is a good 
 deal in life a sensible plant can enjoy without clinging. 
 The German " old maid " of the twentieth century has, 
 like her English sister, transformed herself into a 
 " bachelor," a person who for this reason or that has 
 not married, and who nevertheless has a cheerful time. 
 She has her own work, she often has her own flat, and 
 if she lives in one of the big cities she has her own club. 
 
 There are at present three Ladies' Clubs in Berlin 
 all flourishing. The subscription to the Berliner 
 Frauenklub is only six marks a year, yet it provides 
 
76 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 the members with comfortably furnished rooms and 
 well cooked meals at low prices. A member of this 
 club can dine for ninepence, and have a hot dish from 
 fourpence to sevenpence. She has access to a library 
 of 1 300 volumes, to the leading papers and reviews, 
 and to magazines in four languages. She can entertain 
 women at the club, but not men ; though she can meet 
 men there at certain hours of the day. Social gather- 
 ings of various kinds are arranged to meet the various 
 needs and ages of the members ; and one night a week 
 four or five card-tables are set out, so that the older 
 members can have a quiet game of skat or whist. 
 We wonder what Herr Riehl would say if he could 
 see them. 
 
 Another German Ladies' Club in Berlin is the 
 Deutscher Frauenklub, and it is nicknamed the 
 Millionaire's Club because the subscription is twenty- 
 five shillings. It is a rather smarter club than the 
 other, and has a charming set of rooms. There are 
 about 450 members. The Third Club is a branch of 
 the London Lyceum, and it has aroused great interest 
 and attention in Berlin, not only because it is on a more 
 magnificent scale than the other clubs, but because of 
 the brave effort it makes to unite the women of all 
 nations and help them. Most of the women distin- 
 guished in art and literature have joined it. 
 
 I began this chapter by saying something of the 
 Stift, the refuge for unmarried women that Germany 
 established in the Middle Ages and still preserves. I 
 end it with the Lyceum Club, that latest manifestation 
 of a modern woman's desire to help her own sex. The 
 character of these institutions and their history are 
 both significant. In other days men helped women ; 
 in these days women try to help themselves. The 
 Stiff gives a woman bread and shelter in idleness ; the 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW 77 
 
 aim of the Lyceum Club is not to give, but to bring 
 women together and to encourage good work. The 
 Stifte are still crowded and the Lyceum flourishes, for 
 in our time the old woman jostles the new. But the 
 new woman has arrived, and is making herself felt ; with 
 amazing force and swiftness, you must admit when you 
 reflect on the position of women in Germany thirty 
 or forty years ago. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 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. 
 
 78 
 
GIRLHOOD 79 
 
 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 
 
8o HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 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 sup- 
 posed 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 over- 
 looking 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. 
 
GIRLHOOD 8 1 
 
 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, 
 
 6 
 
82 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 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, some- 
 times 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 Stiff 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 out- 
 number 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 
 
GIRLHOOD 83 
 
 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 
 
84 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 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 con- 
 sider 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 
 
GIRLHOOD 85 
 
 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, 
 
86 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 Ingenieur Julius Prinz Dresden- Hamburg" is con- 
 sidered 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 
 Konigl. Gymnasialdirektor und 
 FRAU HELENE, geb. ENGEL 
 
 STUTTGART, imjuni 1906 
 Tiergarten 7 " 
 
 Then on the opposite page the future bridegroom 
 speaks for himself 
 
 "Meine Verlobung mit Fraulein Pauline Brand, 
 Tochter des Konigl. Gymnasialdirektors Herrn Geh. 
 Regierungsrat Dr. Eugen Brand und seiner Frau Ge- 
 mahlin Helene, geb. Engel, in Stuttgart, beehre ich 
 mich ergebenst anzuzeigen. 
 
 Dr. jur. HEINRICH SCHMIDT 
 
 Referendar 
 BERLIN, im /uni 1906 
 
 Kurfurstendamm 2000 " 
 
GIRLHOOD 87 
 
 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 Ger- 
 many 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 experi- 
 ence 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 
 
88 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 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 
 gliickseliges Kind done in ivy leaves by her grand- 
 mother. It was considered very riihrend 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, 
 
T 
 
 BRIDAL GARMENTS 
 
 I-KOM A PAINTING AFTER H. BINDE 
 
 In some districts bunches of flowers are brought by friends and relations of ihe bride on the day the "Aussteu 
 is hung on the line. This pretty custom expresses the wish that the beautiful and graceful shall go hana 
 hand with the useful and practical in the married state 
 
GIRLHOOD 89 
 
 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 em- 
 broider 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 
 
po HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 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 begin- 
 ning 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, decollete'e, and with elbow 
 sleeves ; and you wonder as you stare at it what a 
 sane portly German housewife makes of such a gar- 
 ment. 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 
 
GIRLHOOD 91 
 
 great ceremony on a cushion, and as they bring it the 
 girls sing the well-known song from the Freischiltz 
 
 "Wir winden dir den Jungfernkranz 
 Mit veilchenblauer Seide ; 
 Wir fuhren dich zu Spiel und Tanz 
 Zu Gliick und Liebesfreude ! 
 
 Lavendel, Myrt' und Thymian 
 
 Das wachst 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 griin 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 Freischiitz appeared. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 MARRIAGES 
 
 E was a pompous, stiff-jointed man," said my 
 friends, "an official in a small town, who 
 would go to the stake rather than break the letter of 
 the law. But when he came to Berlin to attend a 
 niece's marriage he thought he would have some fun. 
 He arrived late on Polterabend, and he brought with 
 him an enormous earthenware crock. Instead of ring- 
 ing he hurled the crock against the outside door of the 
 flat, so that it smashed to atoms with a noise like 
 thunder. The inhabitants of that flat came forth like 
 a swarm of bees, but they were not laughing at the fun, 
 because it was not their Polterabend." He had broken 
 crockery on the wrong floor. 
 
 In cities this ancient German custom of breaking 
 crockery at the bride's door on Polterabend (the night 
 before the wedding) has died out, but it has not long 
 been dead. I have talked with people who remembered 
 it in full force when they were young. I believe that 
 the idea was to appease the Poltergeist, who would 
 otherwise vex and disturb the young couple. My 
 dictionary, the one that has 2412 pages, says that a 
 Poltergeist is a " racketing spectre," probably what we 
 who are not dictionary makers would call a hobgoblin. 
 In Brands' Antiquities I find reference to this old 
 custom at the marriage of a Duke of York in Germany, 
 when great quantities of glass and china were smashed 
 at the palace doors the night before the wedding. 
 
 93 
 
MARRIAGES 93 
 
 Polterabend is still celebrated by Germans, although 
 they no longer consider it polite to smash crockery. 
 There is always a large entertainment, sometimes at 
 the bride's house, sometimes at the house of a near 
 relative ; there are theatricals with personal allusions, or 
 recitations of home-made topical poetry, some good 
 music, and the inevitable evergreens woven into senti- 
 ments of encouragement and congratulation. The bride's 
 presents are set out much as they are in England, and 
 perhaps class for class more valuable presents are given 
 in Germany than in England. Electro-plate, for instance, 
 Was considered impossible a few years ago. A 
 wedding present, if it was silver at all, must he real 
 silver. But it is not so much the custom as with us to 
 give presents of money. 
 
 The civil marriage takes place either the day before 
 or early on the same day as the religious ceremony. 
 The bride used to wear black silk, and still wears a 
 dark plain costume for this official function. Her 
 parents go with her and the necessary witnesses. The 
 religious ceremony often used to take place in the 
 house, but that is no longer customary. The anonymous 
 author of German Home Life, a book published and 
 a good deal read in 1879, says that marriage is a 
 troublesome and expensive ceremony in Germany, and 
 that this accounts for the large number of illegitimate 
 children. Mr. O. Eltzbacher, the author of Modern 
 Germany published in 1905, confirms what was said 
 in 1877 as to the number of illegitimate children born 
 in Germany and Austria, for he says that in Germany 
 itself they are 9 per cent., while in those districts of 
 Austria where the Germans form about nine-tenths of 
 the population, from 20 per cent, to 40 per cent, of the 
 children are born out of wedlock. In France statistics 
 give 9 per cent, in Scotland 7.4 per cent., and in 
 
94 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 England and Wales 4.2 per cent. Nevertheless in 
 modern Germany children are not illegitimate because 
 their parents are too poor to pay their marriage fees. 
 The civil marriage is obligatory everywhere, and costs 
 nothing. The religious ceremony need cost nothing 
 at all. In the porch of every church in Prussia 
 there is a notice stating on which days Freie 
 Trauungen are conducted. Several couples are married 
 at the same time, but they have the full liturgy and 
 the marriage sermon. A small charge is made for 
 the organist and for the decoration of the church. A 
 friend whose husband has a large poor parish in Berlin 
 tells me that the Social Democrats object to the 
 religious ceremony, and will stand guard outside the 
 house on the day of the civil marriage, to make sure 
 that the newly made husband and wife do not leave 
 together to go to church. Sometimes an artisan will 
 wait a fortnight after the civil ceremony before he 
 ventures to have the religious one. Every artisan in 
 Berlin has to belong to the Sozialdemokratischer 
 Verbund, because if he did not his fellow-workmen 
 would destroy his tools and ruin his chances of work. 
 Apparently they interfere with his private affairs as well. 
 The marriage service is not to be found in the 
 prayer-book Germans take to church, but I have both 
 read it and listened to it. The vows made are much 
 the same as here ; but in Germany great importance is 
 attached to the homily or marriage sermon. This is 
 often long and heavy. I have heard the pastor preach 
 to the young couple for nearly half an hour about their 
 duties, and especially about the wife's duty of submission 
 and obedience. His victims were kept standing before 
 him the whole time, and the poor little bride was shak- 
 ing from head to foot with nervousness and excitement 
 In some cities the carriage used by a well-to-do bride 
 
MARRIAGES 95 
 
 and bridegroom is as big as a royal coach, and up- 
 holstered with white satin, and on the wedding day 
 decorated inside and out with garlands of flowers. 
 The bridegroom fetches his bride in this coach, and 
 enters the church with her. When a pretty popular 
 girl gets married all her admirers send flowers to the 
 church to decorate it. The bride and bridgroom 
 exchange rings, for in Germany men as well as women 
 wear a plain gold wedding ring, and it is always worn 
 on the right hand. The bridegroom and all the male 
 guests wear evening dress and silk hats. The women 
 wear evening clothes too, and no hats. The bride 
 wears the conventional white silk or satin and a white 
 veil, but her wreath must be partly of myrtle, for in 
 Germany myrtle is the bride's emblem. 
 
 After the wedding dinner the bride slips away 
 unnoticed and changes her gown, and is presently 
 joined by the bridegroom, but not by any of the guests. 
 No rice and no old slippers are thrown in Germany, 
 and no crowd of friends assembles to see the young 
 pair start. The bride bids her parents farewell, and slips 
 away with her husband unseen and unattended. After 
 the wedding dinner there is often dancing and music. 
 
 A hundred years ago wedding festivities lasted for 
 many days after the wedding, and the bride and bride- 
 groom did not go till they were over. When the 
 celebrated and much married Caroline Schlegel married 
 her first husband, George Bohmer, in 1 784, the ceremony 
 took place at her own home in Gottingen, where her 
 father was a well-known professor. " It would be un- 
 natural if a young wife did not begin with an account 
 of her wedding day," she says in one of her letters. 
 " Mine was delightful enough. Bohmer breakfasted 
 with me, and the morning hours passed gaily, and yet 
 with quietness. There was no trepidation only an 
 
96 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 intercourse of souls. My brother came. We were 
 together till four, and when he left us he gave us his 
 blessing with tears. . . . Lotte and Friederike wove 
 the bridal wreath. . . . Then I had a talk with my 
 father and dressed myself. . . . Meanwhile those 
 dear Meiners sent me a note, with which were some 
 garters they had embroidered themselves. Several of 
 my friends wrote to me, and last of all I got a silhouette, 
 painted on glass, of Lotte and Friederike weaving my 
 bridal wreath. When I was dressed I was a pretty 
 bride. The room was charmingly decorated by my 
 mother. Soon after four o'clock Bbhmer arrived, and 
 the guests, thirty-eight in number. Thank Heaven, 
 there were no old uncles and aunts, so the company 
 was of a more bearable type than is usual on such 
 occasions. I stood there surrounded by my girl friends, 
 and my most vivid thought was of what my condition 
 would be if I did not love the man before me. My 
 father, who was still far from well, led me to the clergy- 
 man, and I saw myself for life at Bohmer's side and 
 yet did not tremble. During the ceremony I did not 
 cry. But after it was over and Bohmer took me in 
 his arms with every expression of the deepest love, 
 while parents, brothers, sisters, and friends greeted me 
 with kind wishes as never a bride was greeted before, 
 my brother being quite overwhelmed then my heart 
 melted and overflowed out of sheer happiness." 
 
 A week later Caroline and her husband are still at 
 Gottingen, and still celebrating their marriage. At one 
 house, under pretence of the heat, the bride was led 
 into the garden, and beheld there an illuminated motto: 
 " Happy the man who has a virtuous wife : his life will 
 be doubly long." Another friend arrayed her son as 
 Hymen, and taught him to strew flowers in Caroline's 
 path, leading her thus to an arbour where there was a 
 
MARRIAGES 97 
 
 throne of moss and flowers, with high steps ascending 
 to it, a canopy and a triumphal arch. Concealed 
 behind a bush were musicians, who sang an appropriate 
 song, while the bride and bridegroom mounted the 
 throne and sank in each other's arms before a crowd 
 of sympathising and tearful spectators. 
 
 This took place more than a hundred and twenty 
 years ago, but I have in my possession what I can only 
 describe as the " literature " of a marriage celebrated 
 three years ago between a North and a South German, 
 both belonging to commercial families of old standing ; 
 and it supplies me, if I needed it, with documentary 
 evidence that Germans enjoy now what they enjoyed 
 then. The marriage took place in winter and from a 
 flat, so that the bride's friends could not build grottoes 
 or hide musicians behind a bush ; but for weeks before 
 both sides of the family must have been busy composing 
 the poems sung at the wedding feast, the music that 
 accompanied them, and the elaborate humorous verses 
 containing allusions to the past history of the bride and 
 bridegroom. To begin with, there is a dainty book of 
 picture postcards, the first one giving portraits of a very 
 handsome and dignified bridegroom with his dainty 
 bride. Then there is a view of Dresden where the 
 bridegroom was born, another of the Rhenish town in 
 which he found his bride, and one of Berlin where she 
 used to stay with a married sister and deal " baskets " 
 right and left to would-be admirers. In Germany, when 
 a girl refuses a man she is said to give him a " basket," 
 and a favourite old figure in the cotillon used to put 
 one in a girl's hands and then present two men to her. 
 She danced with the one she liked best, and the rejected 
 man had to dance round after them with the basket. 
 
 Besides the book of postcards, each guest at this 
 wedding was presented with printed copies of the 
 7 
 
98 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 Tafel-Lieder composed by members of the family. 
 One of these has eight verses and each verse has eight 
 lines. It relates little events in the life of the bridegroom 
 from babyhood onwards. You learn that he was a clever 
 child, that he lived at home with his mother instead of 
 going abroad to learn his work, that when he was young 
 he ardently desired to go on the stage, that he is a fine 
 gymnast and musician, but that he needs a wife because 
 he is a dreamy person capable of putting on odd boots. 
 Another Taf el-Lied describes the courtship step by step, 
 and even the assistance given by the poet's wife to bring 
 the romance to its present happy conclusion. 
 
 "At last Frau Sophie stirred in the affair, 
 Her eyes had pierced to his heart's desire, 
 With fine diplomacy she coaxed Miss Clare 
 To own her maiden heart was set on fire. 
 On all the words and sighs there follow deeds: 
 He comes, he woos her, and at last succeeds." 
 
 The songs are not all sentiment. They are jocular, 
 and contain puns and play upon names. Three out 
 of the five end with an invitation to everyone to raise 
 their glasses with a Hoch to the married pair. This is 
 done over and over again at German weddings, and as 
 all the guests want to clink glasses with the bride and 
 bridegroom, there is a good deal of movement as well 
 as noise. Besides the Tafel-Lieder^ each of which made 
 a separate booklet with its own dedication and illus- 
 tration, every guest received an elaborate book of 
 samples : samples of the various straws used that 
 summer for ladies' hats. The bridegroom's family had 
 manufactured hats for many generations ; they were 
 wealthy, highly considered people, and extremely proud 
 of their position in their own industry. I am sure that 
 when an Englishman in the same trade and of the same 
 standing gets married, the last thing that would be 
 
MARRIAGES 99 
 
 mentioned at his wedding would be hats. It would be 
 considered in the highest degree indecorous. But the 
 German is still guileless enough to be satisfied with his 
 station in life when it is sufficiently honourable and 
 prosperous, and for this wedding two little nieces had 
 prepared this card of samples and composed a rhyme 
 for each different colour 
 
 "Wie 1st doch der Onkel hoch begluckt 
 Das Tantchen heute der 'Brautkranz' schmiickt" 
 
 went with " myrtle green." 
 
 "Liebe Gaste, mit Genuss, 
 Wollet alle Euch erheben 
 Hoch das Brautpaar 
 Es soil leben!" 
 
 went with the " champagne " straw at the end ; and one 
 accompanying the " silver " straw contained an allusion 
 to the " silver " wedding twenty-five years hence, when 
 the bride's golden hair would be silver-grey. 
 
 Here is the menu, mostly in French, to which all the 
 Tafel-Lieder were sung, and all the toasts drunk and 
 congratulatory speeches made. You will observe that 
 it is none of your light cup, cake, and ice entertainments 
 that you have substituted for the solid old wedding 
 breakfast in this country. 
 
 HOCHZEITS-TAFEL. 
 
 Caviar- Schnitten 
 Potage Douglas 
 Saumon-S ce Bernaise 
 Pommes Naturelles 
 Selle de Chevreuil 
 
 k la Chipolata 
 Ris de Veau en demi Deuil 
 Poularde 
 
 Salade & Compote 
 Asperges en Branches 
 
 S ce Mousseline 
 Glace Napolitaine 
 
 Patisserie 
 Fruits & Dessert 
 Fromage 
 
 Scharzberger Mousseux 
 ipooer Caseler 
 i896er St. Emilion 
 
 Schloss Johannisberg 
 
 Moet et Chandon 
 White Star 
 
100 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 And that no guest should depart hungry 
 
 Kaltes Abendbrot | Bier 
 
 Germans celebrate both silver and golden weddings 
 with as much ceremony and rejoicing as the first 
 wedding. The husband and wife receive presents from 
 all their friends, and entertain them according to the 
 best of their circumstances. Children will travel across 
 the world and bring grandchildren with them to one of 
 these anniversaries, and they are of course a great 
 occasion for the topical poetry, theatricals, and tableaux 
 that Germans enjoy. If the grandmother by good 
 luck has saved a gown she wore as a girl, and 
 the grandchild can put it on and act some little 
 episode from the old lady's youth, everyone will ap- 
 plaud and enjoy and be stirred to smiles and tears. 
 There is as much feasting as at a youthful wedding, 
 and perhaps more elaborate performances. Silver- 
 grey is considered the proper thing for the silver 
 bride to wear. 
 
 It seems like a want of sentiment to speak of divorce 
 in the same breath with weddings ; but as a matter of 
 fact, divorce is commoner in Germany than in England, 
 and more easily obtained. Imprisonment for felony is 
 sufficient reason, and unfaithfulness without cruelty, 
 insanity that has lasted three years, desertion, ill treat- 
 ment or any attempt on the other's life. You hear 
 divorce spoken of lightly by people whose counterparts 
 in England would be shocked by it; people, I mean, 
 of blameless sequestered lives and rigid moral views. 
 Some saintly ladies, who I am sure have never harboured 
 a light thought or spent a frivolous hour, told me of a 
 cousin who played whist every evening with her present 
 husband and his predecessor. My friends seemed to 
 think the situation amusing, but not in any way to be 
 
MARRIAGES 101 
 
 condemned. At the same time, I have heard Germans 
 quote the saying " Geschiedene Leute scheiden fort 
 und fort? and object strongly to associate with anyone, 
 however innocent, who had been connected with a 
 matrimonial scandal. 
 
 A woman remains in possession of her own money 
 after marriage even without marriage settlements; but 
 the husband has certain rights of use and investment. 
 Her clothes, jewels, and tools are her own, and the 
 wages she earns by her own work. A man's creditors 
 cannot seize either these or her fortune to pay his debts. 
 Both in Germany and England the wife must live in 
 the house and place chosen by the husband, but in 
 Germany she need not follow him to unwirtlichen 
 countries against her will. He can insist on her doing 
 the housework and helping him in his business when 
 he has no means to pay substitutes ; but she can insist 
 on being maintained in a style proper to their station 
 in life. He is responsible for her business debts if he 
 has consented to her undertakings ; but he can forbid 
 her to carry on a business if he prefers that she should 
 be supported by him and give her time and strength 
 to the administration of their home. When they are 
 legally separated he must make her an allowance, but 
 it need only be enough for the bare necessaries of life 
 if the separation is due to her misconduct. The father 
 and mother have joint control of the children, but during 
 the father's lifetime his rule is paramount. When he 
 is dead or incapacitated parental authority remains in 
 the mother's hands. It is her right and duty to care 
 for the child's person, to decide where it shall live, and 
 to superintend its education. She can claim it legally 
 from people who desire to keep it from her. A child 
 born in wedlock is legitimate unless the husband can 
 prove otherwise, and he must establish proof within a 
 
102 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 1 , " i ' . ." 
 
 year of the birth coming to his knowledge. But a 
 
 woman is not allowed to prove that a child born in 
 wedlock is illegitimate. 
 
 If a man dies intestate and leaves children or grand- 
 children, his widow inherits a fourth of his property; 
 if he only has more distant relatives, half; if he has 
 none, the whole. A man cannot cut his wife off with 
 a shilling. He must leave her at least half of what 
 would come to her if he died intestate. All the laws 
 relating to husband and wife are to be found in the 
 Biirgerliches Gesetzbuch^ which can be bought for a 
 mark. As far as the non-legal intelligence can grasp 
 them, they seem according to our times to be just to 
 women, except when they give the use of her income 
 to the husband. This is a big exception, however. I 
 remember hearing a German say that his sister's 
 quarterly allowance, which happened to be a large one, 
 was always sent to her husband, as it was right and 
 proper that important sums of money should be in the 
 man's hands and under his control. This undoubtedly 
 is the general German view. After the moonshine, the 
 nightingales, the feasting, the toasts, and the family 
 poetry come the realities of life: and the realities in 
 German make the man the predominant partner. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE HOUSEHOLDER 
 
 RENTS are high in Germany. At least, the 
 Germans say so, and so do the people whose 
 books about Germany are crammed with soul-satisfying 
 statistics and elaborate calculations. Over-crowding, 
 too, is said to be worse in Germany than in English 
 cities. But I have always seen the rent and the 
 crowding judged by the number of rooms and not by 
 their size. This is really misleading, because you could 
 put the whole of a small London flat into many a 
 German middle-class dining-room or Wohnzimmer. 
 You could bring up a family in a single room I once 
 had for a whole summer in Thiiringen for 5s. a week. 
 It was as big as a church, and most light and airy. 
 One camped in bits of it. I think rent for rent rooms 
 in Germany are quite twice as large as in London. In 
 Berlin, where rent is considered wickedly high, you can 
 get a flat in a good quarter for 80, and for that sum 
 you will have four large rooms, three smaller ones, a 
 good kitchen, an attic that serves as a lumber-room, and 
 a share in a laundry at the top of the house. There will 
 even be a bathroom with a trickle of cold water, but it 
 is only in the very newest and most expensive German 
 flats that you find hot and cold water laid on. Your 
 drawing and dining-rooms will be spacious, and one of 
 
 them is almost sure to have a balcony looking on the 
 
 103 
 
104 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 street and the pleasant avenue of trees with which it 
 is planted. For this rent you must either make your- 
 self happy on the third or fourth floor in a house 
 without a lift, or you must find one of the delightful 
 " garden " dwellings behind the Hof\ but you will have 
 a better home for your money than you could get in 
 a decent part of London. In fact, it comes to this, in 
 spite of all the statistics in favour of London. If you 
 can only spend 80 on your rent you can live in a 
 good quarter of Berlin, near enough to the Tiergarten, 
 close to the Zoological Gardens, and within a tram-ride 
 of the delightful woods at Halensee. In London you 
 can get a small house for 80, but it will either be in 
 an unattractive quarter or in a suburb. A flat, wherever 
 it is, must always seem a dwelling place rather than a 
 home, but the Germans have elected to live in flats 
 and accept their disadvantages. In and around all the 
 great cities there are villas, but their number hardly 
 counts in comparison with the masses of tall white 
 houses, six storeys high for the most part, and holding 
 within their walls all degrees of wealth and poverty. 
 The German villa is florid, and likes blue glass balls and 
 artificial fountains in its garden. It is often a villa in 
 appearance and several flats in reality. Its most 
 pleasant feature is the garden-room or big verandah, 
 where in summer all meals are served. Outside Ham- 
 burg, on the banks of the Elbe, the merchant princes of 
 the city have built themselves palaces surrounded by 
 splendid park-like gardens. But Hamburg, though it 
 does not love the English, is always accused by the rest 
 of Germany of being English. It certainly has beauti- 
 ful gardens. So have other German cities in some 
 instances, but well kept gardens are not the matter of 
 course in Germany that they are here. You see more 
 bare and artificial ones and more neglected overgrown 
 
THE HOUSEHOLDER 105 
 
 ones in an afternoon's walk than you do all the year 
 round in England. But I wish we could follow the 
 German fashion of planting all our streets with double 
 avenues of healthy trees. Berlin in spring seems to be 
 set in a wood ; it is so fresh and green. The flowering 
 shrubs, on the other hand, are not to be compared with 
 ours. Everyone rushes to see a few lilac bushes, and 
 Gueldres roses trimmed to a stiff snowball of flowers, and 
 everyone says Wie Herrlich ! but you miss the profu- 
 sion of lilac, hawthorn, and laburnum that runs riot all 
 about London in every residential road and every garden. 
 Above all, you miss the English lawns. In Berlin 
 wherever grass is grown it looks either thin or coarse. 
 The majority of Germans do not dream of wanting a 
 garden. They are content with a few palms in their 
 sitting-room or window boxes on their balcony. They 
 are proud of their window-gardening in Berlin, but I 
 think London windows in June are gayer and more 
 flowery. The palms kept in German rooms attain to 
 a great size and number, and a palm is a favourite 
 present. Nursery gardeners undertake the troublesome 
 business of repotting them every spring, so the owners 
 have nothing to do but water them and keep them from 
 draughts. There are usually so many windows in a 
 German sitting-room that those near the plants need 
 never be opened in winter ; and even when the tempera- 
 ture sinks several degrees below zero outside, the air of 
 the flat is kept artificially warm, so warm that English 
 folk gasp and flag in it. At the first sign of winter 
 the outside windows, removed for the summer, are 
 brought back again. Our windows are unknown on the 
 continent, and disliked by continentals who see them 
 here. They call them guillotine windows, and consider 
 them dangerous. Theirs all open like doors, so that 
 you have four doors to each window, and until you get 
 
io6 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 used to them you find they make a pretty clatter 
 whenever you set them wide. But in winter they are 
 only opened for a few minutes every morning when the 
 room is " aired." It is considered extravagant to open 
 them at other times, because the heat would escape and 
 more fuel would be required. I suppose everyone in 
 England understands that our open fireplaces are 
 almost unknown in Germany. They have enclosed 
 stoves of iron or porcelain that make little work or dirt 
 and give no pleasure. There is no gathering round 
 the hearth. You sit about the room as you would in 
 summer, for it is evenly heated. All the beauty and 
 poetry of fire are wanting ; you have nothing but an 
 atmosphere that will be comfortable or asphyxiating, 
 according to the taste of your hosts. Years ago in 
 South Germany you burnt nothing but logs of wood 
 in the old-fashioned iron stoves, and there was some 
 faint pleasure in listening to their crackle. You could 
 just see the flames too, if you stooped low enough and 
 opened the little stove door. But the wood burnt so 
 quickly that it was most difficult to keep a big room 
 warm. Nowadays you always find the porcelain 
 stove that Mark Twain says looks like the family 
 monument. In some of these coal is burnt, or a 
 mixture of coal and peat. Some burn anthracite, and 
 are considered economical. A Filllofen of this kind 
 is kept burning night and day during the worst of the 
 winter. It requires attention two or three times in 
 twenty-four hours; it is easily regulated, and if the 
 communicating doors are left open it warms two or 
 three rooms. A friend who has a large flat in Berlin 
 told me that there was one of these stoves in her 
 husband's study, and that her drawing-room which 
 opens out of it, and which they constantly use, had only 
 had a fire in it five times last winter. I find on look- 
 
THE HOUSEHOLDER 107 
 
 ing at this friend's budget that she spends 16 a year 
 on turf and other fuel, and this seems high for a flat 
 where so few fires were lighted. But fuel is dear in 
 German towns. Briquettes are largely used in cities, 
 small slabs of condensed coal that cost one pfennig each. 
 It takes about twenty-four slabs to keep a stove in 
 during the day. The great advantage of the Fullofen 
 over the ordinary stove is that it keeps in all night. 
 There are dangerous variations of temperature in a 
 German flat that is kept as hot as an oven all day, and 
 allowed to sink below zero during the night. But you 
 hear complaints on all sides in Germany, both of incon- 
 siderate English people who waste fuel by opening 
 windows in cold weather ; and of the sufferings endured 
 by Germans who have been in England in winter. They 
 do not like our open fireplaces at all, because they say 
 they wish to be warm all over and not in bits. " In 
 England," they tell you solemnly, " you can be warm 
 either in front or at the back ; but you cannot be warm 
 on both sides as we are here. Besides, your fireplaces 
 make dirt and work and are extravagant. They 
 would not suit us." In fact, they imply that for the 
 French and the English they are well enough, but not 
 for the salt of the earth. The German kitchen stoves 
 are certainly more practical and economical than ours, 
 and I never can understand why we do not fetch a few 
 over and try them. They are entirely enclosed, and 
 much lower than ours. The Berlin kitchener has one 
 fire that is lighted for a short time to roast a joint, and 
 another using less fuel that heats water and does light 
 cooking. The sweep, who is bound by the etiquette of 
 his trade to wear a tall hat in Germany, does not come 
 into your flat at all. You hear him shout through the 
 courtyard that he will visit the house next day, and he 
 works from the garrets and cellars. The police regulate 
 
io8 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 his visits as they regulate everything else in Germany. 
 Chimneys must be swept every six weeks in summer, 
 and every four weeks in winter in Berlin. Dustbins 
 are emptied every day, and in some towns the police 
 make most troublesome regulations with regard to them. 
 The householder has to set his outside to be emptied, 
 and the police insist on this being done at a certain 
 hour, neither earlier nor later, so that if your servant 
 happens to be careless or unpunctual you will be 
 repeatedly fined. 
 
 Staircases vary greatly according to the date and 
 rent of the house. The most modern houses in 
 Berlin have broad front staircases with thick carpets, 
 and in some cases seats of " Nouveau Art " design on 
 the landings. In such houses you are always met on 
 the threshold by printed requests to wipe your feet 
 and shut the door gently. They don't tell you to 
 do as you're bid. That is taken for granted, or the 
 police will know the reason why. There is always 
 an uncarpeted back staircase for servants and trades- 
 people, and for the tenants who inhabit the poorer 
 parts of the building. In houses where all the tenants 
 belong to the poorer classes, you find notices that forbid 
 children to play in the Hof, and command people not 
 to loiter or to make any noise on the stairs. Carpet- 
 beating and shaking, which is constantly and vigorously 
 carried on, is only allowed on certain days of the week 
 and at certain hours. When there is a house porter 
 he is not as important and conspicuous as the French 
 concierge. In my experience he has usually gone out 
 and thoughtfully left the front door ajar. He is not 
 a universal institution even in Berlin. 
 
 Taxes vary in different parts of Germany. In 
 Saxony a man spending $oo a year pays altogether 
 60 for Income tax, Municipal rates, Water, School, 
 
THE HOUSEHOLDER 109 
 
 and Church rates. In Berlin the Income tax is not an 
 Imperial (Reichs) tax, but a Landes tax, and amounts 
 to 15 on an income of 500. Smaller incomes pay 
 less and larger ones more, in proportion varying from 
 about 2 to 4 per cent. Besides this Staats tax 
 there is a municipal tax of exactly the same amount 
 in Berlin and Charlottenberg. But there are towns 
 in Prussia where it is less ; others, mostly in the 
 Western Provinces, where it is more, considerably 
 more in some cases. The water rate is paid by the 
 house owners, and the tenant pays it in his rent. There 
 are no school taxes. The church tax is compul- 
 sory on members of the Landeskirche. When a 
 man has no capital his income tax is levied on his 
 yearly expenses ; but the man whose income is derived 
 from capital pays a higher tax than the man who has 
 none. The German, too, pays a great deal to the State 
 indirectly ; for nearly everything he requires is taxed. 
 But the three things he loves best, tobacco, beer, and 
 music, he gets cheap cheaper than he can in this 
 Free Trade country ; so he pays for everything else 
 as best he can, and tries to look pleasant. " But the 
 burden is almost more than we can bear," said one 
 thoughtful German to me when I told him how greatly 
 English people admired their municipal enterprise, and 
 the admirable provision made in Berlin for the very 
 poor. 
 
 Last time I went to Germany I actually made 
 the acquaintance of one German who did not smoke, 
 and on various occasions I was in the society of 
 others who did not smoke for some hours. In the 
 Berlin tramcars smoking is strictly forbidden, but I did 
 not observe that this rule was strictly enforced. In 
 fact, my attention was drawn to it one day by rinding 
 my neighbour's cigar unpleasantly strong. One cigar 
 
no HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 in a tramcar, however, is nothing at all, and should not 
 be mentioned. It is when a railway carriage beauti- 
 fully upholstered with crimson velvet holds you, six 
 Germans, and one Englishman, for eight hours on a 
 blazing summer day, that you begin to wonder whether, 
 after all, you do mind smoke. To be sure, you might 
 have travelled in a Nichtraucher or a Damen-Coupe\ 
 but changes are a nuisance on a journey. Besides, 
 you know that a Damen-Coupt is always crowded, and 
 that the moment you open a window someone will 
 hold a handkerchief tearfully to her neck and say, 
 " Aber ich bitte meine Dame: eszieht!" and all the 
 other women in the carriage will say in chorus, "/#/ 
 ja I es zieht ! " and if you don't shut the window 
 instantly the conductor will be summoned, and he will 
 give the case against you. So you travel all day long 
 with seven cigars, most of them cheap strong ones, that 
 their owners smoke very slowly and replace directly 
 they are finished. And after a time the conversation 
 turns on smoking, and your neighbour admits that he 
 always lights his first cigar when he gets up in the 
 morning and smokes it while he is dressing. His 
 wife dresses in the same room and does not like it, 
 but ... It is unnecessary to say more. Five cigars 
 out of six are in sympathy with him, while you amuse 
 yourself by wondering what revenge a wife could take 
 in such circumstances. A bottle of the most offensive 
 scent in the market suggests itself, but you look at 
 your neighbour's profile, and see that he is the kind 
 of man to pitch scent he did not like out of the 
 window. You have heard of one German husband 
 who did this when his wife brought home perfumes 
 that did not please him. And then your memory 
 travels back and back along the years, arriving at last 
 at the picture of an English nursery, in the household 
 
THE HOUSEHOLDER in 
 
 where a German guest had arrived the night before. 
 The nurses and the children are sitting peacefully at 
 breakfast, when there enters to them a housemaid, 
 scornful, scandalised, out of breath with her hurry to 
 impart what she had seen. 
 
 " He's a-smoking in bed," she says, " that there Mr. 
 Hoggenheimer ! He's a-smoking in bed ! " 
 
 " Some of them do," says nurse, who is a travelled 
 person, and refuses to be taken by surprise. 
 
 " Well, of all the nasty . . ." 
 
 " Sh ! " says nurse, pointing to the children, all eyes 
 ,and ears. 
 
 So that is all you can remember about the house- 
 maid and Mr. Hoggenheimer. But you remember 
 him a little dark man who sent you books you could 
 not read at Christmas, and brought you enchanting 
 gingerbreads covered with hundreds and thousands. 
 You thought him rather funny, but you liked him, 
 and if he wanted to smoke in bed why not? You 
 liked toys in bed yourself, and you would have taken 
 the dog there if only it had been allowed. Then 
 you come back again to the present hour, nearly all 
 the years of your life later, and you are in a railway 
 carriage with six German householders who, like Mr. 
 Hoggenheimer, want cigars in and out of season. 
 
 " To-morrow," you say to your Englishman ; " to- 
 morrow I shall travel in a Nichtraucher? 
 
 " But then I can't smoke," he says quite truly. 
 
 " We shall not travel together." 
 
 " But that is so unsociable." 
 
 " I would rather be unsociable than suffocated," you 
 explain. " I have suffered tortures to-day." 
 
 " Have you ? But you always say you don't mind 
 smoke." 
 
 " In reason. Seven cigars and one woman are not 
 
H2 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 reasonable. Never again will I travel with seven 
 cigars." 
 
 " I thought we had a pleasant journey," says the 
 Englishman regretfully. " That little man next to 
 you " 
 
 " Mr. Hoggenheimer ? " 
 
 "Was that his name? I couldn't understand all 
 he said, but he had an amusing face." 
 
 "A face can be misleading," you say; "that man 
 bullies his wife." 
 
 " How do you know ? " 
 
 " He told us so. He smokes before breakfast . . . 
 while he is dressing, . . . and he has no dressing 
 room. . . ." 
 
 The Englishman looks calm. 
 
 " They do take one into their confidence," he 
 remarks. " My neighbour told me that he never 
 could eat mayonnaise of salmon directly after roast 
 pork, because it gave him peculiar pains. I was afraid 
 you'd hear him describe his symptoms ; but I believe 
 you were asleep." 
 
 " No, I wasn't," you confess ; " I heard it all, and I 
 shut my eyes, because I knew if I opened them he'd 
 address himself to me. I shut them when he began 
 talking to you about your Magen and what you ought 
 to do to give it tone. You seemed interested." 
 
 " It's quite an interesting subject," says the English- 
 man, who makes friends with every German he meets. 
 " He is not in the least like an Englishman," they say 
 to you cordially, " he is so friendly and amiable." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 HOUSEWIVES 
 
 RENCH WOMEN are the best housewives in 
 Europe," said a German lady who knew most 
 European countries well ; " the next best are the 
 English; Germans come third." The lady speaking 
 was one whose opinions were always uttered with much 
 charm, but ex-cathedra ; so that you found it impossible 
 to disagree with her . . . until you got home. But to 
 hear the supreme excellence of the Hausfrau contested 
 takes the breath away ; to see her deposed from the 
 first place by one of her own countrywomen dazzles 
 the eyes. It was a new idea to me that any women 
 in the world except the Germans kept house at all. If 
 you live amongst Germans when you are young you 
 adopt this view quite insensibly and without argument. 
 
 " My son is in England," you hear a German mother 
 say. " I am uneasy about him. I fear he may marry 
 an Englishwoman." 
 
 " They sometimes do," says her gossip, shaking her 
 head. 
 
 "It would break my heart. The women of that 
 nation know nothing of housekeeping. They sit in 
 their drawing-rooms all day, while their husband's hard- 
 earned money is wasted in the kitchen. Besides . . , 
 mein armer Karl he loves Nudelsuppe and Kuken mit 
 SpargeL What does an Englishwoman know of such 
 8 
 
H4 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 things? She would give him cold mutton to eat, and 
 he would die of an indigestion. I was once in England 
 in my youth, and when I got back we had a Frikassee 
 von Hdhnchen mit Krebsen for dinner, and I wept with 
 pleasure." 
 
 " Perhaps," says the gossip consolingly, " your Karl 
 will remember these things and fetch himself a German 
 wife." 
 
 " Poor girl ! " says Karl's not-to-be-consoled mother, 
 " she would have to live in England and keep house 
 there. It happened to my niece Greta Lohring. She 
 had a new cook every fortnight, and each one was 
 worse than the one before. In England when a cook 
 spoils a pudding she puts it in the fire and makes 
 another. Imagine the eggs that are used under such 
 circumstances." 
 
 I remember this little dialogue, because I was young 
 and ignorant enough at the time to ask what a German 
 did when she spoilt a pudding, and was promptly 
 informed that in Germany such things could not happen. 
 A cook was not allowed to make puddings unless her 
 mistress stood by and saw that she made them 
 properly; "unless she is ^perfekte Kochin" added Karl's 
 mother, " and then she does not spoil things." 
 
 A German friend, not the travelled one, but a real 
 home-baked domestic German, took me one hot after- 
 noon this summer to pay a call, and at once fell to 
 talking to the mistress of the house about the washing 
 of lace curtains. There were eight windows in front 
 of the flat, and each window had a pair of stiff spotless 
 lace curtains, and each curtain had been washed by 
 the lady's own hands. My friend had just washed 
 hers, and they both approached the subject as keenly 
 as two gardeners will approach a question of bulbs or 
 Alpines. There are different ways of washing a white 
 
HOUSEWIVES 1 1 5 
 
 curtain, you know, and different methods of rinsing and 
 drying it, and various soaps. Starch is used too at 
 some stage of the process ; at least, I think so. But 
 the afternoon was hot and the argument involved. 
 The starch I will not swear to, but I will swear to ten 
 waters ten successive cleansings in fresh water before 
 the soul of the housewife was at rest. 
 
 " And how do you wash yours ? " said one of them, 
 turning to me. 
 
 " Oh I ! " I stammered, taken aback, for I had been 
 nearly asleep ; " I send a post-card to Whiteley's, and 
 'they fetch them one week and bring them back the 
 next. They cost is. a pair." 
 
 The two German ladies looked at each other and 
 smiled. Then they politely changed the subject. 
 
 This trivial story is not told for its intrinsic merits, 
 but because it illustrates the difference of method 
 between English and German women. The German 
 with much wear and tear of body and spirit washes 
 her own lace curtains. She saves a little money, and 
 spends a great deal of time over them. The English- 
 woman, when she possibly can, likes to spend her time 
 in a different way. In both countries there are 
 admirable housekeepers, and middlmg housekeepers, 
 and extremely bad ones. The German who goes the 
 wrong way about it sends her husband to the Kneipe 
 by her eternal fussing and fidgeting. She is not his 
 companion mentally, but the cook's, for her mind has 
 sunk to the cook's level, while her temper through 
 constant fault-finding is on a lower one. The English- 
 woman sends her husband to the club or the public 
 house, according to his social station, because she is 
 incapable of giving him eatable food. But the English 
 belief that German housewives are invariably dull and 
 stodgy is not a whit more ignorant and untrue than 
 
n6 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 the German belief that all Englishwomen are neglectful, 
 extravagant housekeepers. The Englishwoman keeps 
 house in her own way, and it is different from the 
 German way, but it is often admirable. The comfort, 
 the organisation, and the unbroken peace of a well- 
 managed English household are not surpassed, in some 
 details not equalled, anywhere in the world. 
 
 The German ideal (for women) is one of service and 
 self-sacrifice. Let her learn betimes to serve, says 
 Goethe, for by service only shall she attain to command 
 and to the authority in the house that is her due. 
 
 " Dienen lerne bei Zeiten das Weib nach ihrer Bestimmung, 
 Denn durch Dienen allein gelangt sie endlich zum Herrschen 
 Zu der verdienten Gewalt, die doch ihr im Ilause gehoret, 
 Dienet die Schwester dem Bruder doch friih, sie dienet den Eltern ; 
 Und ihr Leben ist immer ein ewiges Gehen und Kommen, 
 Oder ein Heben und Tragen, Bereiten und Schaffen fiir Andre; 
 Wohl ihr, wenn sie daran sich gewohnt, dass kein Weg ihr zu sauer 
 Wird, und die Stunden der Nacht ihr sind wie die Stunden des Tages : 
 Dass ihr niemals die Arbeit zu klein und die Nadel zu fein diinkt, 
 Dass sie sich ganz vergisst, und leben mag nur in Andern ! " 
 
 She is to serve her brothers and parents. Her 
 whole life is to be a going and coming, a lifting and 
 carrying, a preparing and acting for others. Well for 
 her if she treads her way unweariedly, if night is as 
 day to her, it no task seems too small and no needle 
 too fine. She is to forget herself altogether and live 
 in others. 
 
 It is a beautiful passage, and an unabashed 
 magnificent masculine egotism speaks in every line of 
 it. Whenever I read it I think of the little girl in 
 Punch whose little brother called to her, " Come here, 
 Effie. I wants you." And Effie answered, " Thank 
 you, Archie, but I wants myself! " Herr Riehl quotes 
 the passage at the end of his own exhortations to his 
 
HOUSEWIVES 117 
 
 countrywomen, which are all in the same spirit, and 
 were not needed by them. German women have 
 always been devoted to their homes and their families, 
 and they are as subservient to their menfolk as the 
 Japanese. They do not actually fall on their knees 
 before their lords, but the tone of voice in which a 
 woman of the old school speaks of die Herren is enough 
 to make a French, American, or Englishwoman think 
 there is something to be said for the modern revolt 
 against men. For any woman with a spice of feminine 
 perversity in her nature will be driven to the other 
 camp when she meets extremes ; so that in Germany 
 she feels ready to rise against overbearing males ; whilst 
 in America she misses some of the regard for masculine 
 judgment and authority that German women show in 
 excess. At least, it seems an excess of duty to us 
 when we hear of a German bride who will not go 
 down to dinner with the man appointed by her hostess 
 till she has asked her husband's permission ; and when 
 we hear of another writing from Germany that, although 
 in England she had ardently believed in total absten- 
 tion, she had now changed her opinion because her 
 husband drank beer and desired her to approve of it. 
 But it was an Englishwoman who, when asked about 
 some question of politics, said quite simply and honestly, 
 " I think what Jack thinks." 
 
 The truth is, that the women of the two great 
 Germanic races are kin. There are differences, chiefly 
 those of history, manners, and environment. The 
 likeness is profound. 
 
 " Par une rencontre singuliere," says M. Taine, " les 
 femmes sont plus femmes et les hommes plus hommes 
 ici qu'ailleurs. Les deux natures vont chacune a son 
 extreme ; chez les uns vers 1'audace, 1'esprit d'entreprise 
 et de resistance, le caractere guerrier, imp<rieux et 
 
n8 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 rude ; chez les autres vers la douceur, Tabne'gation, la 
 patience, 1'affection ine'puisable ; chose inconnue dans 
 les pays lointains, surtout en France, la femme ici se 
 donne sans se reprendre et met sa gloire et son devoir 
 a obeir, a pardonner, a adorer, sans souhaiter ni pre- 
 tendre autre chose que se fondre et s'absorber chaque 
 jour davantage en celui qu'elle a volontairement et pour 
 toujours choisi. C'est cet instinct, un antique instinct 
 Germanique, que ces grands peintres de I'instinct 
 mettent tous ici en lumiere ! . . . L'ame dans cette 
 race, est a la fois primitive et serieuse. La candeur 
 chez les femmes y subsiste plus longtemps qu'ailleurs. 
 Elles perdent moins vite le respect, elles pesent moins 
 vite les valeurs et les caracteres : elles sont moins 
 promptes a deviner le mal et a mesurer leurs maris. . . . 
 Elles n'ont pas la nettete, la hardiesse d'ide'es, 1'assurance 
 de conduite, la pre'cocite' qui chez nous en six mois font 
 d'une jeune fille une femme d'intrigue et une reine de 
 salon. La vie enferme'e et I'ob&ssance leur sont plus 
 faciles. Plus pliantes et plus se'dentaires elles sont en 
 meme temps plus concentre'es, plus inte'rieures, plus 
 disposers a suivre des yeux le noble rve qu'on nomme 
 le> devoir. . . ." 
 
 I cannot imagine what M. Taine means by saying 
 that Englishwomen lead a more sedentary and se- 
 questered life than Frenchwomen, but the rest of his 
 description presents a well-known type in England 
 and Germany. " Voir la peinture de ce caractere dans 
 toute la litte'rature anglaise et allemande," he says in a 
 footnote. " Le plus grand des observateurs, Stendhal 
 tout impre'gne' des moeurs et des ide*es Italiennes et 
 franchises, est stupefait a cette vue. II ne comprend rien 
 a cette espece de deVouement, ' a cette servitude, que les 
 maris Anglais, sous le nom de devoir, ont eu 1'esprit d'im- 
 poser a leurs femmes,' Ce sont ' rios moeurs de s^rail.' " 
 
HOUSEWIVES 119 
 
 Here the " greatest of all observers " seems to talk 
 nonsense, for marriage in the seraglio does not hinge 
 on the submission of one wife to one husband, but on 
 a plurality of wives that English and German women 
 have only endured in certain historic cases. In both 
 western countries marriage has its roots in the fidelity 
 of one man and one woman to each other. A well- 
 known English novelist once said quite truly that an 
 Englishman very rarely distrusts his wife, and never 
 by any chance distrusts the girl who is to become his 
 wife ; and just the same may be said of the German of 
 the better classes. In both countries you will find 
 sections of society above and below where morals are 
 lax and manners corrupt. German professors write 
 sketches of London in which our busy grimy city is 
 held up to a virtuous Germania as the modern Sodom 
 and Gomorrah ; and the Continental Anglophobe likes 
 nothing better than to entertain you with pictures of 
 our decadent society, pictures that really do credit to 
 the vividness and detail of his imagination. Meanwhile 
 our press assures the respectable Briton that Berlin is 
 the most profligate city in Europe, and that scurrilous 
 German novels about the German army will show him 
 what the rotten state of things really is in that much over- 
 rated organisation. But these national amenities are 
 misleading. The bulk of the nation in both countries 
 is sound, and family life still flourishes both here and 
 there. The men of the race, in spite of Herr Riehl's 
 prognostications, still have the whip hand, as much as 
 is good for them in England, a little more than is good 
 for them in Germany. If you go to Germany you 
 must not expect a man to open a door for you, or to 
 wait on you at afternoon tea, or to carry a parcel for 
 you in the street. He will kiss your hand when he 
 greets you, he will address you as gracious lady or 
 
120 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 gracious miss, he will put his heels together and make 
 you beautiful bows, he will pay you compliments that 
 are manifestly, almost admittedly, artificial. That at 
 least is one type of man. He may leave out the kisses 
 and the bows and the compliments and be quite un- 
 disguisedly bearish ; or he may be something betwixt 
 and between, kindly, concerned for your pleasure and 
 welfare. But whatever he is he will never forget for a 
 moment that you are " only a woman." If you marry 
 him he will expect to rule everywhere except in the 
 kitchen, and as you value a quiet life you had better 
 take care that the kitchen produces what pleases him. 
 On occasion he will assert his authority with some 
 violence and naivete*. No one can be long amongst 
 Germans, or even read many German novels, without 
 coming across instances of what I mean. For example, 
 there was once a quarrel between lovers that all turned 
 upon a second glass of champagne. The girl did not 
 want it, and the man insisted that she should drink it 
 whether she wanted it or not. What happened in the 
 end is forgotten and does not matter. It is the com- 
 ment of the historian that remains in the memory. 
 
 " Her family had spoilt her," said he. " When they 
 are married and my friend gets her to himself she will 
 not behave so." 
 
 " But why should she drink a second glass of cham- 
 pagne if she did not want it ? " I asked. 
 
 " Because he commanded her to," said this Petruchio, 
 beginning to bristle at once ; and he straightway told 
 me another story about a man who threw his lady-love's 
 dog into a pond, not because the dog needed a bath, 
 but in assertion of his authority. The lady had wished 
 to keep her dog out of the water. 
 
 " Did she ever forgive the man ? " said I. 
 
 " Forgive ! What was there to forgive ? The man 
 
HOUSEWIVES 121 
 
 wished to put the dog in the pond. A man must know 
 how to enforce his will ... or he is no man." 
 
 I nearly said "Lor!" like Mr. Tweddle in The 
 Tinted Venus, but in Germany it's a serious matter, 
 a sort of lese majesty to laugh at the rightful rule of 
 man. You must expect to see them waited on hand 
 and foot, and to take this service as a matter of course. 
 I have known Englishmen embarrassed by this state 
 of affairs, 
 
 " They will get me chairs," complained one, " and at 
 table the daughters jump up and wait on me. It's 
 horrid." 
 
 " Not at all," said I. " It's your due. You must 
 behave as if you were used to it." 
 
 " I can't. The other day I got the daughters of the 
 house to sit still while I handed about cups of tea, and 
 if some of the old boys didn't jump down their throats 
 and tell them they'd no business to let me forget my 
 dignity. Bless my dignity ... if it's such a tender 
 plant as that. ..." 
 
 " Sh ! " I said. " They must have been old-fashioned 
 people. In some houses young men hand cups." 
 
 " They look jolly self-conscious while they're doing 
 it, ... as if they didn't half like it. You bet, they 
 take it out of their womenfolk when they get home. 
 Look at that chap Miiller ! " 
 
 "Where is he?" 
 
 " In Dresden, where I lived last winter. He stormed 
 the house down because his wife took up his glass of 
 beer and drank before he did. Nearly had a fit. Said 
 his dignity as a husband was damaged. Then he 
 turned to me and asked whether even in England a 
 wife would be so bold and bad ? " 
 
 " What did you say ? " 
 
 " I didn't say anything. I looked sick." 
 
122 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 " That's no use. You should say a great deal, and 
 wave your arms about and hammer on the table. You 
 don't know how to show emotion." 
 
 " I should hope not," says the Englishman. " But 
 German women are always telling me they envy the 
 women in our country." 
 
 " That's their politeness," I assure him. " They 
 don't mean it. They're as happy as the day is long. 
 Besides, Germans don't get drunk and beat their wives 
 with pokers. You know perfectly well that most 
 Englishmen " 
 
 But, of course, whatever you say about German 
 women of the present day can be contradicted by 
 anybody who chooses to describe one at either end of 
 the scale, for the contrasts there are violent. You will 
 find in the same street a woman who exercises a 
 profession, lives more or less at her club, and is as 
 independent as her brother; and women who are 
 household drudges, with neither leisure nor spirit for 
 any occupation that would enrich their minds. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 HOUSEWIVES (Continued) 
 
 IN Germany the home is furnished by the bride's 
 parents, and the household linen forms part of her 
 trousseau and is marked by her monogram. In 
 describing the furniture of a German flat, you must 
 first decide whether you are going to choose one 
 furnished to-day by a fashionable young woman in 
 Berlin or Hamburg ; or one furnished by her parents 
 twenty to twenty-five years ago. Modern German 
 furniture is quite easily suggested to the English 
 imagination, because some of it looks as if the artist 
 had visited our Arts and Crafts Exhibitions and then 
 made his own designs in a nightmare ; while some has 
 accepted English inspiration and adapted itself wisely 
 and cleverly to German needs. To-day a German 
 bride will have in her bedroom a wardrobe with a big 
 mirror, a toilet table or chest, a marble-topped wash- 
 stand and two narrow bedsteads, all of fumed wood. 
 If she has money and understanding the things have 
 probably come from England, not from an emporium, 
 but from one of our artists in furniture whom the 
 Germans know better and value more highly than we 
 do ourselves. But if she has money only she can buy 
 florid pretentious stuff that outdoes in ugliness the 
 worst productions of our " suite " sellers. Her mother, 
 
 however, probably did without any kind of toilet table 
 
 123 
 
124 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 or glass in her wardrobe. Twenty years ago you 
 occasionally saw such things in the houses of rich 
 people, but they were quite unusual. A small hanging 
 glass behind the washstand was considered enough for 
 any ordentliche Frau. Nowadays in rare cases the 
 ordentliche Frau actually has silver brushes and powder 
 pots and trinket boxes. But as a rule she still does 
 without such things ; she brushes her beautiful hair 
 with an ivory or a wooden brush, and leaves paint and 
 powder to ladies who are presumably not ordentlich. At 
 one time narrow brass or iron bedsteads were introduced 
 from England, and were used a great deal in Germany. 
 I remember seeing one all forlorn in a vast magnificent 
 palace bedroom where a fourposter hung with brocade 
 or tapestry would have looked more at home. But 
 the real old-fashioned bedstead, still much liked and 
 formerly seen everywhere was always of wood, single 
 and with deep sides to hold the heavy box mattress. 
 In Mariana Starcke's Travels in Europe, published in 
 1833, she says of an inn in Villach, " tall people cannot 
 sleep comfortably here or in any part of Germany ; 
 the beds, which are very narrow, being placed in 
 wooden frames or boxes, so short that any person 
 who happened to be above five feet high must 
 absolutely sit up all night supported by pillows ; 
 and this, in fact, is the way in which the Germans 
 sleep." 
 
 I think this is a statement that will be as surprising 
 to any German who reads it as the statements made 
 by Germans about England have often been to me. 
 It is true, however, that tall people do find the old- 
 fashioned German bedsteads short ; and it is true that 
 the big square downy pillows are supported by a 
 wedge-shaped bolster called a Keilkissen. But the 
 Plumeau is what the German loves, and the Briton 
 
HOUSEWIVES 125 
 
 hates above all things : the mountain of down or 
 feathers that tumbles off on cold nights and stays on 
 on hot ones. You hate it all the year round, because 
 in winter it is too short and in summer it is an 
 oppression. Sometimes the sheet is buttoned to it, and 
 then though you are a traveller you are less than ever 
 content. At the best you never succumb to its 
 attractions. Every spring the good German housewife 
 takes her maid and her Plumeaux to a cleaner and sits 
 there while the feathers are purified by machinery and 
 returned to their bags. In this way she makes sure 
 of getting back her own feathers both in quality and 
 quantity. Except for the Plumeaux and the want of a 
 dressing-table and proper mirror, an ordinary German 
 bedroom is very comfortable and always very clean. 
 However plain it is you can use it partly as a sitting- 
 room, because a sofa and a good sized table in front of 
 it are considered an indispensable part of its furniture. 
 When Germans come to England and have to live in 
 lodgings or poorly furnished inns, the bedrooms seem 
 to them most comfortless and ill provided. The poor 
 Idealist who lived as an exile in London in the early 
 Victorian age describes her forlorn room with nothing 
 in it but a " colossal " bed, a washstand, and a chest of 
 drawers, and though she does not describe them, you 
 who know London from that side can see the half- 
 dirty honey-combed counterpane, the untempting 
 cotton sheets, the worn uncleanly carpet, the grained 
 or painted furniture with doors and drawers that will 
 not shut ; and if you know Germany too you must in 
 honesty compare with it the pleasant rooms you have 
 inhabited there for less rent than she paid her Mrs. 
 Quickly, rooms with cool clean painted floors, solid 
 old dark elm cupboards, and bedsteads that when you 
 had pitched the Plumeau on the floor or the sofa were 
 
126 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 inviting because they were made with spotless home- 
 spun linen. 
 
 What we call the drawing-room used to be extremely 
 chill and formal in Germany, but it has never been 
 as hideously overloaded as English drawing-rooms 
 belonging to people who do not know better. The 
 " suite " of furniture covered with rep or brocade was 
 everywhere, and the rep was frequently grass-green or 
 magenta. There was invariably a sofa and a table in 
 front of the sofa, and a rug or a small carpet under the 
 table. Even in these days this arrangement prevails 
 and must continue to do so while the sofa is considered 
 the place of honour to which the hostess invites her 
 leading guest. If you go to Germany in ignorance of 
 the social importance attached to the sofa, you may 
 blunder quite absurdly and sit down uninvited or when 
 your age or your sex does not entitle you to a seat 
 there. I was once present when an English girl 
 innocently chose a corner of the sofa instead of a chair, 
 though there were older women in the room. The 
 hostess promptly and audibly told her to get up, for 
 she knew it was not an affair to pass off as a joke. In 
 England the question of precedence comes up chiefly 
 at the dinner-table. The host and hostess must send 
 the right people together and place them correctly too. 
 In Germany you have to know as hostess who is to sit 
 on the sofa ; and your decision may be complicated by 
 the absurd titles of your guests. For instance, one 
 Frau Direktor may be the wife of a post office 
 official who had a university education, and in Germany 
 a university education counts ; while another Frau 
 Direktor, though she can afford better clothes, is 
 merely the wife of the man who manages the factory 
 in the next village. I have heard a story of a Frau 
 Kreisrichter and a Frau Actuar that ended in a life- 
 
HOUSEWIVES 127 
 
 long feud, and it all turned on a Kaffee Klatsch and 
 the wrong woman on the sofa. It it not easy to know 
 what to do about these ridiculous titles in Germany, 
 because some people insist on them and some laugh at 
 them as much as we do. I once asked a lady who had 
 the best right to know, about using military titles instead 
 of names : Herr Lieutenant, Herr Major, and so on. 
 She was quite explicit. " Mir ist es ein Greuel" she 
 said, and went on to tell me that it was only done as 
 one might expect by people who did not know better, 
 and of course by servants. All the same, it is well to 
 be careful and study the individual case. I know of 
 an American who addressed his professor as Professor 
 Lachs, 
 
 " Where are your manners, mein Herr ? " said the 
 professor in a fury, " I am Herr Professor Dr. Lachs to 
 every student in this laboratory." 
 
 But when it comes to Mrs. Tax-Collector and Mrs. 
 Organist and Mrs. Head Master, and it does come to 
 this quite seriously, it is difficult for the foreigner to 
 appraise values. The length of the titles, too, is a 
 stumbling-block. You may marry a harmless Herr 
 Braun, and in course of time become Frau Wirklicher- 
 geheimeroberregierungsrath. In this case I don't 
 think your friends would use the whole of your title 
 every time they addressed you ; but you would 
 undoubtedly have a seat on the sofa before all the 
 small fry. 
 
 On the table in front of the sofa there used always 
 to be a heavy coloured cloth, and then put diamond- 
 wise a light embroidered or lace one. A vase of 
 artificial or real flowers, according to taste, stood 
 exactly in the middle, and a few books in ornamental 
 bindings on either side. There would be very few 
 ornaments, but these few would be good of their kind, 
 
128 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 though probably hideous. Luckily the family did not 
 assemble here on State occasions. For every-day use 
 there was a Wohnzimmer soberly furnished with solid 
 well made chairs and cupboards. Here the mistress 
 of the house kept her palms, her work-table, and her 
 pet birds. Here her husband smoked his after-dinner 
 cigar and drank his coffee before going to his work 
 again. Here the elder children did their lessons for 
 next day's school, and here at night the family sat 
 round one lamp, the father smoking, the mother 
 probably mending, the children playing games. For 
 German fathers do not live at the Kneipe. They are 
 occasionally to be found with their families. When 
 the flat was not large enough to furnish a third sitting- 
 room, the dining-room was used in this way. A modern 
 German family still lives in any room rather than the 
 drawing-room, but it has learned how to make a 
 drawing-room attractive. The odious "suite" has 
 been abolished or dispersed, and a lighter, less formal 
 scheme of decoration is making its way. You see 
 charming rooms in Germany nowadays, but they are 
 never quite like English ones, even when your friends 
 point to a wicker chair or an Eastern carpet and tell 
 you that they love everything English and have 
 furnished in the English fashion. In the first place, 
 you do not see piles of magazines and papers or of 
 library books in a German drawing-room. They would 
 be considered scandalously untidy, and put away in a 
 cupboard at once. If there are cut flowers they are 
 not arranged as they are here. On ceremonial occasions 
 and anniversaries great quantities of flowers are pre- 
 sented, but they are mostly wired and probably arranged 
 in a fanciful shape. The favourite shape changes with 
 the season and the fashion of the moment. One year 
 those who wish to honour you and have plenty of 
 
HOUSEWIVES 129 
 
 money, will send you lyres and harps made of violets, 
 pansies, pinks, cornflowers, any flower that will lend 
 itself meekly to popular design. The favourite design 
 in Berlin one spring was a large flat sofa cushion of 
 Guelder roses with tall sprays of roses or carnations 
 dancing from it. On ordinary occasions market bunches 
 are put into water as an English cottager puts in his 
 flowers, level and tightly packed. But on a festive 
 occasion in a rich man's house you hear of a long 
 dinner table strewn with branches of pink hawthorn 
 and peonies. In fact, a riot of flowers is now considered 
 dorrect by wealthy people, but you do not find them 
 here and there and everywhere, whether people are 
 wealthy or not, as you do in England. That is partly 
 because there are so few private gardens. 
 
 The extreme tidiness of German rooms is a constant 
 source of surprise. They are as guiltless of " litter " 
 as the showrooms of a furniture emporium. You 
 would think that the people who live in them were 
 never employed if you did not know that Germans 
 were never idle. Every bit of embroidery has its use 
 and its own corner. The article now being embroidered 
 is neatly folded inside the work-basket or work-table 
 when it is not in the lady's hands. The one book she 
 is reading will be near. Any other books she possesses 
 will be on shelves, and probably behind glass doors. 
 Each chair has its place, each cushion, each ornament. 
 Even where there are children German rooms never 
 look disarranged. I can truly say I have only once 
 seen a German room untidy and dusty, and that was 
 in a house with no one but a " Mamsell " in charge ; 
 and she apologised and explained that it was to be 
 spring cleaned next day. There is, by the way, a 
 curious litter of things kept on a German sideboard 
 in many houses, coffee machines, silver, useful and 
 9 
 
130 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 ornamental glass, great blue beer jugs, and suchlike ; 
 but they are kept there with intention and not by 
 neglectful accident. Then the narrow corridor of a 
 German flat is often uncomfortably choked with articles 
 of household use: lamps, for instance, and a re- 
 frigerator, and the safe in which the mistress locks her 
 food ; spare cupboards too, and neat piles of papers and 
 magazines. It will be inelegant, but it will be orderly 
 and clean. 
 
 It is the way in this country to laugh at the German 
 Hausfrau, and pity her for a drudge ; and it is the way 
 with many Germans to talk as if all Englishwomen 
 were pleasure loving and incompetent. The less people 
 know of a foreign nation the greater nonsense they 
 talk in general, and the more cocksure they are about 
 their own opinions. A year ago, when I was in 
 Germany, I asked a friend I could trust if there 
 really was much Anglophobia abroad except in the 
 newspapers. She reflected a little before she answered, 
 for she was honest and intelligent. 
 
 " There is none amongst people like ourselves," she 
 said, " people who know the world a little. But you 
 come across it ? " She turned to her husband. 
 
 "There are others like G.," she said. "He turns 
 green if anyone speaks of England, and he says 
 Shakespeare is dumm. You see, he has never been 
 out of Germany, and has never met any English people." 
 
 So I told her about my English cook, who snorted 
 with scorn when I assured her Germans considered 
 rabbits vermin and would not eat them. 
 
 " H . . . ph ! " she said, " I shouldn't have thought 
 foreigners were so particular." 
 
 The average German housewife has to keep the 
 house going on exceedingly small means and with 
 inefficient help. It is her pride and pleasure to make 
 
HOUSEWIVES 131 
 
 a little go a long way, and she can only achieve this by 
 working with her hands. Probably her servant cannot 
 cook, but she can, and it would never occur to her to 
 let her husband and children eat ill-prepared food 
 because servants do not like ladies in the kitchen. A 
 German lady, like a princess of ancient Greece, 
 considers that it becomes her to do anything she 
 chooses in her own house, and that the most convenient 
 household workshop is the kitchen. The Idealist from 
 whom I have quoted before was the daughter of a well- 
 known German diplomatist, and she had been used 
 since childhood to the atmosphere of Courts. She was 
 an accomplished well-born woman of the world, but she 
 had not been a week in her sordid London lodgings 
 with the woman she calls Mrs. Quickly, before she 
 blundered in her innocent German way into the 
 lodging-house kitchen. Figure to yourself the stupe- 
 faction and the indignation of Mrs. Quickly, probably 
 engaged, though the Idealist does not say so, in dining 
 off the foreign woman's beef. " I went down to the 
 kitchen," says Fraulein von Meysenbug, " with a 
 muslin gown on my arm to ask for an iron so that I 
 could iron my gown there. The kitchen was Mrs. 
 Quickly's true kingdom ; here she alone reigned at the 
 hearth, for the servant was not allowed to approach the 
 saucepans. Mrs. Quickly looked at me with uncon- 
 cealed astonishment as I came in, but when I proffered 
 my request her astonishment turned to wrath. * What ! ' 
 she shrieked, ' a lady ironing in the kitchen ? That is 
 impossible.' And with the mien of offended majesty 
 she snatched the gown from me, and ordered the little 
 maid servant to put an iron in the fire and to iron the 
 gown ; then she turned to me and said with tragic 
 emphasis, ' You are a foreigner. You don't understand 
 our English ways : we consider it extremely unladylike 
 
132 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 for a lady to enter the kitchen, and worse still if she 
 wants to iron her own gown. No, ma'am, please to 
 ring the bell when you require anything; otherwise 
 you will ruin my servants.' Much ashamed of my 
 ignorance on this higher plane of English custom," 
 continues the Idealist, " I crept back to my parlour and 
 laughed heartily as I looked round the dirty, wretchedly 
 furnished room, and reflected on the abyss set by pre- 
 judice between the ground-floor and the basement." 
 
 " How do you like your new German governess ? " I 
 once asked an English friend who lived in the country 
 and had just engaged a German lady for her only 
 daughter. 
 
 " Oh ! I like her," said my friend without enthusiasm. 
 " She is a brilliant musician and a fine linguist and all 
 that. But she has such odd ideas about what a girl 
 ought to know. The other day I actually caught her 
 teaching Patricia to dust" 
 
 "If you don't watch her," I said, "she'll probably 
 teach Patricia to cook." 
 
 My friend looked anxious first, and then relieved. 
 
 " I don't see how she could do that," she said. " The 
 cook would never have them in the kitchen for five 
 minutes. But now you mention it, I believe she can 
 cook. When things go wrong she seems to know what 
 has been done or not done." 
 
 " That might be useful," I suggested. 
 
 " I don't see it. I expect my cook to know her 
 work, and to do it and not to rely on me. I've other 
 fish to fry." 
 
 But the German housewife expects to have her 
 fingers literally in every pie even when by rights they 
 should be employed elsewhere. You hear, for instance, 
 of a great Court functionary whose wife is so devoted 
 to cooking that though she has a large staff of servants 
 
HOUSEWIVES 133 
 
 she cannot be persuaded to spend the day anywhere 
 but in her kitchen. Mistresses of this kind breed incap- 
 able servants, and you find, in fact, that German maids 
 cannot compare with our English ones in qualities 
 of self-reliance, method, and initiative. They mostly 
 expect to be told from hour to hour what to do, and 
 very often to lend a hand to the ladies of the house- 
 hold rather than to do the thing themselves. Indeed, 
 though the servants are on duty from morning till 
 night more than English servants are, in some ways 
 they have an easier time of it than ours, because they 
 are used so much to run errands and go to market. 
 Everyone who has been in German towns can remember 
 the hordes of servants with baskets and big umbrellas 
 strolling in twos and threes along the streets in the 
 early morning. They are never in any hurry to get 
 home to work again, and a good many doubtless know 
 that what they leave undone will be done by their 
 mistress. The German kitchen with its beautiful 
 cleanliness and brightly polished copper pans I have 
 described, but I have not said anything yet about the 
 fidgety housewife who carries her Tuchtigkeit to such a 
 pitch that she ties every wooden spoon and twirler with 
 a coloured ribbon to hang by against the wall. In 
 England you hear of ladies who tie every bottle of 
 scent on the toilet table with a different ribbon, and 
 that really has more sense in it, because it must be try- 
 ing to a cook's nerves to use spoons tied with delicate 
 ribbons that must not be spoiled. Every housewife 
 has dainty little holders for the handles of saucepans 
 when they are hot. You see them, all different shapes 
 and sizes, on view with the piles of kitchen cloths and 
 the various aprons that form part of every lady's 
 trousseau, and if you have German friends they 
 probably present you with a few from time to time. 
 
134 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 I have never noticed any pictures in a German 
 kitchen, but there are nearly always Spriiche both 
 in the kitchen, and the dining-room and sometimes 
 in the hall : rhyming maxims that are done in poker 
 work or painted on wood and hung in conspicuous 
 positions 
 
 "Wie die Kuche so das Haus, 
 Reinlich drinnen, reinlich draus" 
 
 is a nice one ; and so is 
 
 "Trautes Heim 
 Gluck allein." 
 
 There was one in the Lette-Haus or some other big 
 institution about an hour in the morning being worth 
 several hours later in the day, which would prick our 
 English consciences more sharply than it can most 
 German ones, for they are a nation of early risers. 
 Schools and offices all open so early that a household 
 must of necessity be up betimes to feed its menfolk 
 and children with bread and coffee before their day's 
 work. In most German towns the tradespeople do 
 not call for orders, but they do in Hamburg ; and a 
 friend born there told me in a whisper, so that her 
 husband should not hear the awful confession, that she 
 would never be a good " provider " in consequence. 
 She went to market regularly, for many housewives 
 will not delegate this most important business to a 
 cook, but she had not the same eye for a tough goose 
 or a poor fish, perhaps not the same backbone for a 
 bargain, as a housewife used from childhood to these 
 sorties. In some towns the butcher calls over night 
 for orders. The baker's boy brings rolls before any- 
 one is up, and hangs them outside the flat in one of 
 two bags every household possesses. After the early 
 
A GERMAN KITCHEN 
 
HOUSEWIVES 135 
 
 breakfast either the mistress or the cook fetches what 
 is required for the day. 
 
 When the good German housewife is not in her 
 kitchen, English tradition believes her to be at her 
 linen cupboard. 
 
 " I am going to write a humble little gossiping book 
 about German Home Life," I said to a learned but 
 kindly professor last spring. 
 
 " German Home Life," he said, rather aghast at my 
 daring, for we had only just made each other's acquaint- 
 ance, and I believe he thought that this was my first 
 Visit to Germany and that I had been there a week. 
 " It is a wide field," he went on. " However ... if 
 you want to understand our Home Life . . . just look 
 at that. . . ." 
 
 We were having tea together in the dining-room in his 
 wife's absence, and he suddenly got up from table and 
 threw back both doors of an immense cupboard occupy- 
 ing the longest wall in the room. I gazed at the sight 
 before me, and my thoughts were too deep for words. 
 It was a small household, I knew. It comprised, in 
 fact, the professor, his beautiful young wife, and one 
 small maid-servant; and for their happiness they 
 possessed all this linen : shelf upon shelf, pile upon 
 pile of linen, exactly ordered, tied with lemon coloured 
 ribbons, embroidered beyond doubt with the initials of 
 the lady who brought it here as a bride. The lady, 
 it may as well be said, is a celebrated musician who 
 passes a great part of each winter fulfilling engagements 
 away from home. " But what happens to the linen 
 cupboard when you are away ? " I asked her, later, for 
 it was grievous to think of any servant, even a " pearl," 
 making hay of those ordered shelves. " I come home 
 for a few days in between and set things to rights 
 again," she explained ; and then, seeing that I was 
 
136 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 interested, she admitted that she had put up and made 
 every blind and curtain, and had even carpentered and 
 upholstered an empire sofa in her drawing-room. She 
 showed me each cupboard and corner of the flat, and I 
 saw everywhere the exquisite order and spotlessness 
 the notable German housewife knows how to main- 
 tain. We even peeped into the professor's dressing- 
 'room. 
 
 " He must be a very tidy man," I said, sighing and 
 reflecting that he could not be as other men are. " Do 
 you never have to set things to rights here ? " 
 
 " Every half hour," she said. 
 
 These enormous quantities of linen that are still the 
 housewife's pride used to be necessary when house and 
 table linen were only washed twice a year. A German 
 friend who entertained a large party of children and 
 grandchildren every week, pointed out to me that she 
 used eighteen or twenty dinner napkins each time they 
 came, and that when washing day arrived at the end 
 of six months even her supply was nearly exhausted. 
 The soiled linen was stored meanwhile in an attic at 
 the top of the house. The wash itself and the drying 
 and ironing all took place up there with the help of a 
 hired laundress. In most German cities this custom of 
 washing at home still prevails, but in these days it is 
 usually done once a month. The large attics that 
 serve as laundries are engaged for certain days by the 
 families living in the house, and one servant assisted 
 for one day by a laundry woman washes and irons all 
 the house and body linen used by her employers and 
 herself in four weeks. It sounds impossible, but in 
 Germany nothing involving hard work is impossible. 
 All the differences of life between England and Germany, 
 in as far as expenses are concerned, seem to come to 
 this in the end : that over there both men and women 
 
HOUSEWIVES 137 
 
 will work harder for less money. On the monthly 
 washing day the ladies of the household do the cook- 
 ing and housework, and on the following day they help 
 to fold the clothes and iron them. 
 
 " I am very tired," confessed a little maid-servant 
 who had been sent out at night to show me where to 
 find a tram. " We got up at four o'clock this morning, 
 and have been ironing all day. My mistress gets up 
 as early, and works as hard as I do. She is very 
 tuchtig, and where there are four children and only one 
 servant there is a good deal to do." 
 
 Yet her mistress had asked me to supper, I reflected, 
 and everything had been to time and well cooked and 
 served. The rooms had looked as neat and orderly as 
 usual. The Hausfrau had entertained me as pleasantly 
 as if she had no reason to feel tired. We had talked 
 of English novels, and of the invasion of England by 
 Germany ; for her husband was a soldier, and another 
 guest present was a soldier too. The men had talked 
 seriously, for they were as angry with certain English 
 newspapers as we are over here with certain German 
 ones. But the Hausfrau and I had laughed. 
 
 " When they come, I'm coming with them," she said, 
 
 " We will receive you with open arms," said I. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 SERVANTS 
 
 r I ^HE first thing that English people notice about 
 A German servants is, that they are allowed to 
 dress anyhow, and that the results are most unpleasing. 
 In Hamburg, the city that gives you ox-tail soup for 
 dinner and has sirloins of beef much like English sirloins, 
 the maids used to wear clean crackling, light print gowns 
 with elbow sleeves. This was their full dress in which 
 they waited at table, and fresh looking country girls 
 from Holstein and thereabouts looked very well in it. 
 This costume is being superseded in Hamburg to-day 
 by the English livery of a black frock with a white cap 
 and apron. But in other German cities, in the ordinary 
 middle-class household, the servants wear what they 
 choose on all occasions. In most places they are as 
 fond of plaids as their betters, and in a house where 
 everything else is methodical and well arranged, you 
 will find the dishes plumped on the table by a young 
 woman wearing a tartan blouse decidedly decollete'e, and 
 ornamented with a large cheap lace collar. I have 
 dined with people whose silver, glass, and food were all 
 luxurious ; while the girl who waited on us wore a red 
 and white checked blouse, a plaid neck-tie with floating 
 ends, and an enormous brooch of sham diamonds. In 
 South Germany the servants wear a great deal of indigo 
 
 blue : stuff skirts of plain blue woollen, with blouses 
 
 138 
 
SERVANTS 139 
 
 and aprons of blue cotton that has a small white 
 pattern on it. Seme ladies keep smart white aprons 
 to lend their servants on state occasions, but the laciest 
 apron will not do much for a girl in a sloppy coloured 
 blouse with a plaid neck-tie. But these same girls who 
 look such slovens usually have stores of tidy well-made 
 body linen and knitted stockings. In England a ser- 
 vant of the better class will not be seen out of doors in 
 her working-dress. " In London," says the Idealist in 
 her Memoirs, " no woman of the people, no servant-girl 
 will stir a step from the house without a hat on her 
 head, and this is one of the ugliest of English prejudices. 
 While the clean white cap worn by a French maid looks 
 pretty and suitable, the Englishwoman's hat which 
 makes her " respectable " is odious, for it is usually 
 dirty, out of shape, and trimmed with faded flowers 
 and ribbons." It gives me pleasure to quote this criticism 
 made by an observant German on our English servants, 
 partly because it is true, and it is good for us to hear 
 it, and partly because it encourages me to continue 
 my criticism of German as compared with English 
 servants. For it ought to be possible to criticise 
 without giving offence. The Idealist has a very poor 
 opinion of English lodging-house bedrooms and lodging- 
 house keepers, and she states her opinion quite plainly, 
 but I cannot imagine that anyone in this country 
 would be hurt by what she says. On the contrary, 
 it is amusing to find the ills from which most of us 
 have suffered at times recognised by the stranger 
 within our gates. None of us admire the battered 
 tawdry finery we see in our streets every day, and I 
 cannot believe that German ladies admire the shock- 
 ing garments in which their servants will come to the 
 door and wait at table. But though these clothes are 
 sloppy looking and unsuitable, they are never ragged ; 
 
I 4 o HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 and the girl who puts on an impossible tie and blouse 
 will also wear an impeccable long white apron with an 
 embroidered monogram you can see across the room. 
 In most towns servants go shopping or to market with 
 a large basket and an umbrella. They do not consider 
 a hat or a stuff gown necessary, for they are not in the 
 least ashamed of being servants. Some years ago they 
 made no attempt to dress like ladies when they went 
 out for themselves, and even now what they do in this 
 way is a trifle compared to the extravagant get-up of 
 an English cook or parlour-maid on a Sunday afternoon. 
 A German girl in service is always saving with might 
 and main to buy her Aussteuer, and as she gets very 
 low wages it takes her a long time. She needs about 
 30, so husbands are not expensive in Germany in 
 that class. German servants get less wages than ours, 
 and work longer hours. Speaking out of my own 
 experience, I should say that they were indefatigable, 
 amiable, and inefficient. They will do anything in the 
 world for you, but they will not do their own work in 
 a methodical way. A lady whose uncle at one time 
 occupied an important diplomatic post in London, told 
 me that her aunt was immensely surprised to find that 
 every one of her English servants knew his or her work 
 and did it without supervision, but that none of them 
 would do anything else. The German lady, not know- 
 ing English ways, used to make the mistake at first of 
 asking a servant to do what she wanted done instead 
 of what the servant had engaged to do ; but she soon 
 found that the first housemaid would rather leave than 
 fill a matchbox it was the second housemaid's " place " 
 to fill ; and what surprised her most was to find that 
 her English friends sympathised with the housemaids 
 and not with her. " We believe in everyone minding 
 his own business," they said. 
 
SERVANTS 141 
 
 " We believe that it is the servant's business to do 
 what his employer wants," says the German. 
 
 " You must tell him what you want when you engage 
 him," you say. " Then he can take your place or 
 leave it." 
 
 " But that is impossible . . . Unsinn . . . Quatsch 
 . . ." says the German indignantly. " How can I tell 
 what I shall want my servant to do three months hence 
 on a Monday morning. Das hat keinen Zweck? 
 
 " I know exactly what each one of my servants will 
 do three months hence on a Monday morning," you 
 say. " It is quite easy. You plan it all out. . . ." 
 
 But you will never agree. The German has his or 
 rather her own methods, and you will always think 
 her unmethodical but thrifty and knowledgable, and 
 she will always think you extravagant and ignorant, 
 but " chic," and on these terms you may be quite 
 good friends. In most German households there is 
 no such thing as the strict division of labour insisted 
 on here. Your cook will be delighted to make a 
 blouse for you, and your nurse will turn out the 
 dining-room, and your chambermaid will take the 
 child for an airing. They are more human in their 
 relation to their employers. The English servant fixes 
 a gulf between herself and the most democratic 
 mistress. The German servant brings her intimate 
 joys and sorrows to a good Herrschaft, and expects 
 their sympathy. When a girl has bad luck and 
 engages with a bad Herrschaft she is worse off than 
 in England, partly because when German housekeeping 
 is mean it sounds depths of meanness not unknown, 
 but extremely rare here ; and also because a German 
 servant is more in the power of her employers and of 
 the police than an English one. Anyone who has 
 read Klara Viebig's remarkable novel, Das Tagliche 
 
I 4 2 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 Brod (a story of servant life in Berlin) will remember 
 the mistress who kept every bit of dainty food under 
 lock and key, and fed the kitchen on soup-meat all 
 the year round. The chambermaid gives way in a 
 moment of hunger and temptation, manages to get 
 the key, and is discovered by the worthless son of the 
 house stealing cakes. He threatens her with exposure 
 if she will not listen to his love-making. Even if there 
 was no son and no love-making, a girl who once steals 
 cakes in Germany may go from place to place branded 
 as a thief. Because every servant has to have a 
 Dienstbuch) which is under the control of the police, 
 and has to be shown to them whenever she leaves 
 her situation. There is no give and take of personal 
 character in Germany. Ladies do not see the last lady 
 with whom a girl has lived. They advertise or they 
 go to a registry office where servants are waiting to 
 be engaged. In Berlin every third house seems to be 
 a registry office, and you hear as many complaints of 
 the people who keep them as you hear here. So the 
 government has set up a large Public Registry in 
 Charlottenberg, where both sides can get what they 
 want without paying fees. But servants are not as 
 scarce in Germany yet as they are here and in America. 
 German ladies tell you they are scarce, but it is only 
 true in comparison with a former state of things. In 
 comparison with London, servants are still plentiful in 
 Germany. When a lady finds a likely looking girl 
 at an office, she either engages her at once on the 
 strength of the good character in her Dienstbuch, or, 
 if she is very particular, she takes her home and dis- 
 cusses things with her there. The engagement is not 
 completed until the lady has filled in several forms 
 for police inspection; while the servant has to take 
 her Dienstbuch to the police station both when she 
 
SERVANTS 143 
 
 leaves and when she enters a situation. It is hardly 
 necessary to say that when a girl does anything 
 seriously bad, and her employers record it in the 
 book, the book gets " lost." Then the police interfere 
 and make things extremely disagreeable for the girl. A 
 friend told me that in the confusion of a removal her 
 own highly valued servant lost her Dienstbuch, or 
 rather my friend lost it, for employers usually keep it 
 while a girl is in their service; and though she took 
 the blame on herself, and explained that the book was 
 lost, the police were most offensive about it. In the 
 end the book was found, so I am not in a position 
 to say what penalties my friend and her maid would 
 have incurred if they had never been able to produce 
 it. But Germans have often told me that servants as 
 a class have real good reason to complain of police 
 insolence and brutality. Here is an entry from a 
 German servant's Dienstbuch, with nothing altered but 
 the names. On the first page you found the following 
 particulars : 
 
 GESINDE-DIENSTBUCH 
 
 FUr 
 
 Aus 
 Alt 
 Statur 
 Augen 
 
 Anna Schmidt. 
 
 Rheinbeck. 
 
 Geb. 20 Juni 1885. 
 
 Schlank. 
 
 Grau. 
 
 Nase 'k 
 
 Mundj' ' Gewohnlich. 
 
 Haare .... Dunkelblond. 
 Besondere Merkmale , 
 
 Official stamp. 
 
 (^Official signature of 
 
144 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 Then came the record of her previous situations 
 
 Q 
 
 Y. '. '~ 
 
 & W Q 
 
 Q <* 
 
 O :0 
 
 25 ^5 M 
 
 D 2 Cd 
 
 
 & M 
 
 Z Q Q 
 W Z H 
 
 gsi 
 
 "5 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 5 & 
 S5 O * 
 
 S g H 
 
 
 
 W "W'-iS V C'o^ 
 
 S |-| 8 |-| 
 
 3 
 
 it 
 
 i* 
 
 
 H 
 
 I 
 
 
 n=.i; .JT3 
 
 ^s^ 
 
 g 
 
 C rt 
 
 S S 
 
 Q 
 
 u 
 
SERVANTS 145 
 
 It will be seen that the characters given tell nothing 
 about a servant's qualities and knowledge ; while the 
 vague complaint that Anna Schmidt's behaviour no 
 longer suited her mistress might mean anything or 
 nothing. In this case it meant that a son of the 
 house had annoyed the girl with his attentions, and 
 she had in consequence treated him with some brus- 
 querie. But ten minutes' talk with a lady who knows 
 the best and the worst of a servant is worth any Dienst- 
 buch in Germany. And when English servants write 
 to the Times and ask to have the same system here, I 
 always wonder how they would like their failings sent 
 with them from place to place in black and white ; every 
 fresh start made difficult, and every bad trait recorded 
 against them as long as they earn their daily bread. 
 
 Wages are much lower in Germany than here. 
 Some years ago you could get a good cook for from 
 7 to 12, but those days are past. Now you hear 
 of a general servant getting from 10 to 12, and 
 a good plain cook from 1$ upwards. These are 
 servants who would get from 22 to 30 in England, 
 and more in America. But the wages of German 
 servants are supplemented at Christmas by a system 
 of tips and presents that has in course of time become 
 extortionate. Germans groan under it, but every 
 nation knows how hard it is to depart from one of 
 these traditional indefinite customs. The system is 
 hateful, because it is neither one of free gift nor of 
 business-like payment, but hovers somewhere between 
 and gives rise to much friction and discontent. In a 
 household account book that a friend allowed me to 
 see I found the following entry. " Christmas present 
 for the servant. 30 marks in money. Bed linen, 9.50. 
 Pincushion, 1.5. Five small presents. In all 42 marks. 
 Was not contented? This was a general servant in a 
 10 
 
146 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 family of two occupying a good social position, but 
 living as so many Germans do on a small income. But 
 then the servant's wages for doing the work of a large 
 well-furnished, well-kept flat was 14, and these same 
 friends told me that servants now expect to get a 
 quarter of their wages in money and presents at 
 Christmas. A German servant gets a great deal 
 more help from her mistress, and is more directly 
 under her superintendence, than she would be in a 
 household of the same social standing in this country. 
 I have heard an English lady say that when she had 
 asked people to dinner she made it a rule to go out 
 all day, because if she did not her servants worried 
 her with questions about extra silver and other tire- 
 some details. All the notable housewives in England 
 will say that this lady was a " freak," and must not 
 be held up to the world as an English type. But I 
 think there is something of her spirit in many English- 
 women. They engage their servants to do certain 
 work, and hold them responsible. The German holds 
 herself responsible for every event and every corner in 
 her husband's house, and she never for a moment 
 closes her eyes and lets go the reins. The servants 
 are used to working hand in hand with the ladies of 
 the household, and do not regard the kitchen as a 
 department belonging exclusively to themselves after 
 an early hour in the morning. 
 
 " Why did you leave your last place ? " you say to 
 an English cook applying for yours. 
 
 " Because the lady was always in the kitchen," she 
 replies quite soberly and civilly. " I don't like to see 
 ladies in my kitchen at all hours of the day. It is 
 impossible to get on with the work." 
 
 But in Germany the kitchen is not the cook's kitchen. 
 It belongs to the people who maintain it, and they 
 
SERVANTS 147 
 
 enter it when they please. It is always so spick and 
 span that you sigh as you see it, because you think of 
 your own kitchen at home with its black pans and 
 unpleasant looking sink. There are no black pans in a 
 German kitchen ; you never see any grease, and you 
 never by any chance see a teacloth or a duster with a 
 hole in it. An English kitchen in a small household 
 is furnished with more regard to the comfort of the 
 servants than a German one, and with less concern for 
 the work to be done there. We supply comfortable 
 chairs, a coloured table-cloth, oil-cloth, books, hearth- 
 rug, pictures, cushions, inkstand, and a roaring fire. 
 The German kitchen lacks all these things. It does 
 not look as if the women who live in it ever expected 
 to pursue their own business, or rest for an hour in an 
 easy chair. But the shining brightness of it rejoices 
 you, every vessel is of wood, earthenware, enamel, or 
 highly polished metal, and every one of them is scrupul- 
 ously clean. The groceries and pudding stuffs are 
 kept in fascinating jars and barrels, like those that 
 come to children at Christmas in toy kitchens made in 
 Germany. The stove is a clean, low hot table at which 
 you can stand all day without getting black and greasy. 
 In this sensible spotless workshop a German servant 
 expects to be busy from morning till night. Neither 
 for herself nor for her fellow-servants will she ever set 
 a table for a tidy kitchen meal. She eats anywhere 
 and anywhen, as the fancy takes her and the exigencies 
 of the day permit. Her morning meal will consist of 
 coffee and rye bread without butter. In the middle of 
 the morning she will have a second breakfast, rye 
 bread again with cheese or sausage. In a liberal 
 household she will dine as the family dines ; in a stingy 
 one she will fare worse than they. In an old-fashioned 
 household her portion will be carved for her in the 
 
1 48 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 dining-room, because the joint will not return to the 
 kitchen when the family has done with it, but be placed 
 straightway in the Speiseschrank under lock and key. 
 In the afternoon she will have bread and coffee again, 
 and for supper as a rule what the family has, sausage 
 or ham or some dish made with eggs. One friend 
 who goes out so much with her husband that they are 
 rarely at home to supper, told me that she made her 
 servant a monthly allowance to buy what she liked for 
 supper. German servants are allowed coffee and 
 either beer or wine, but they are never given tea. 
 Except for the scarcity of butter in middle-class house- 
 holds, they live very well. 
 
 They go out on errands and to market a great deal, 
 but they do not go out as much for themselves as our 
 servants do. A few hours every other Sunday still 
 contents them in most places. Their favourite amuse- 
 ment is the cheap public ball, and the careful German 
 householder is actually in the habit of trusting the key 
 of the flat to his maid-of-all-work, and allowing her to 
 return at any hour of the night she pleases. This at 
 any rate is the custom in Berlin and some other large 
 German towns, and the evil results of such a system 
 are manifold. Over and over again burglaries have 
 been traced to it. One beguiling man engages your 
 maid to dance and sup with him, while his confederate 
 gets hold of her key and comfortably rifles your rooms. 
 On the girls themselves these entertainments are said 
 to have the worst possible influence, and most sensible 
 Germans would put a stop to them if they could. 
 
 You must not expect in Germany to have hot water 
 brought to you at regular intervals as you do in every 
 orderly English household. The Germans have a 
 curious notion that English life is quite uniform, and 
 all English people exactly alike. One man, a notably 
 
SERVANTS 149 
 
 wise man too, said to me that if he knew one English 
 family he knew ten thousand. Another German told 
 me that this account of German life would be impossible 
 to write, because one part of Germany differed from 
 the other part ; but that a German could easily write 
 the same kind of book about England, because from 
 Land's End to John o' Groats we were so many peas 
 in a pod. To us who live in England and know the 
 differences between the Cornish and the Yorkshire 
 people, for instance, or the Welsh and the East 
 Anglians, this seems sheer nonsense. I have tried to 
 understand how Germans arrive at it, and I believe it 
 is by way of our cans of hot water brought at regular 
 intervals every day in the year in every British house- 
 hold. I remember that their machine-like precision 
 impressed M. Taine when he was in England, and 
 certainly miss them sadly while we are abroad. Gret- 
 chen brings you no hot water unless you ask for it; 
 but she will brush your clothes as a matter of course, 
 though she does all the work of the household. She 
 will, however, be hurt and surprised if you do not press 
 a small coin into her hand at the end of each week, 
 and one or two big ones at parting. One friend told 
 me that when she stayed with her family at a German 
 hotel her German relatives told her she should give the 
 chambermaid a tip that was equal to 20 pf. for each 
 pair of boots cleaned during their stay. It seems an 
 odd way of reckoning, because the chambermaid does 
 not clean boots. However, the tip came to 3, which 
 seems a good deal and helps to explain the ease with 
 which German servants save enough for their marriage 
 outfit on small wages. It is usual also to tip the 
 servant where you have supped or dined. Your 
 opportunity probably comes when she precedes you 
 down the unlighted stairs with a lantern or a candle to 
 
150 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 the house door. But you need not be at all delicate 
 about your opportunity. You see the other guests 
 make little offerings, and you can only feel that the 
 money has been well earned when you have eaten the 
 elaborate meal she has helped to cook, and has after- 
 wards served to you. 
 
 Domestic servants come under the law in Germany 
 that obliges all persons below a certain income to 
 provide for their old age. The Post Office issues cards 
 and 20 pf. stamps, and one of these stamps must be 
 dated and affixed to the card every Monday. Some- 
 times the employers buy the cards and stamps, and 
 show them at the Post Office once a month ; sometimes 
 they expect the servant to pay half the money required. 
 Women who go out by the day to different families 
 get their stamps at the house they work in on Mondays. 
 If a girl marries she may cease to insure, and may 
 have a sum of money towards her outfit. In that case 
 she will receive no Old Age Pension. But if she goes 
 on with her insurance she will have from 15 to 20 
 marks a month from the State after the age of 70. 
 In cases of illness, employers are legally bound to 
 provide for their domestic servants during the term of 
 notice agreed on. At least this is so in Prussia, and 
 the term varies from a fortnight to three months. In 
 some parts of Germany servants are still engaged by 
 the quarter, but in Berlin it has become unusual of late 
 years. The obligation to provide for illness is often a 
 heavy tax on employers, especially in cases when the 
 illness has not been caused by the work or the circum- 
 stances of the situation, but by the servant's own 
 carelessness and folly. Most householders in Berlin 
 subscribe 7.50 a year to an insurance company, a 
 private undertaking that provides medical help, and 
 when necessary sends the invalided servant to a. 
 
SERVANTS 1 5 i 
 
 hospital and maintains her there. It even pays for 
 any special food or wine ordered by its own doctor. 
 
 One cause of ill health amongst German servants 
 must often be the abominable sleeping accommodation 
 provided for them in old-fashioned houses. It is said 
 that rooms without windows opening to the air are no 
 longer allowed in Germany, and there may be a police 
 regulation against them. Even this cannot have been 
 issued everywhere, for not long ago I had a large well 
 furnished room of this kind offered me in a crowded 
 hotel. It had windows, but they opened on to a 
 narrow corridor. The proprietor was quite surprised 
 when I said I would rather have a room at the top of 
 the house with a window facing the street. I know a 
 young lady acting as Stutze der Hausfrau who slept 
 in a cupboard for years, the only light and air reaching 
 her coming from a slit of glass over the door. I 
 remember the consumptive looking daughter of a 
 prosperous tradesman showing us some rooms her 
 father wished to let, and suggesting that a cupboard 
 off a sitting-room would make a pleasant study. 
 She said she slept in one just like it on a higher 
 floor. Of course she called it a Kammer and not a 
 cupboard, but that did not make it more inviting. 
 Over and over again I have known servants stowed 
 away in holes that seemed fit for brooms and 
 brushes, but not for creatures with lungs and easily 
 poisoned blood. This is one of the facts of German 
 life that makes comparison between England and 
 Germany so difficult and bewildering. Everyone 
 knowing both countries is struck by the amount of 
 State and police surveillance and interference the 
 Germans enjoy compared with us. I do not say 
 " endure," because Germans would not like it. Most 
 of them approve of the rule they are used to, and they 
 
152 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 tell us we live in a horrid go-as-you-please fashion 
 with the worst results. I suppose we do. But I have 
 never known an English servant put to sleep in a 
 cupboard, though I have heard complaints of damp 
 fireless rooms, especially in old historical palaces and 
 houses. And I have never been offered a room in a 
 good English inn that had no windows to the open air. 
 These windowless rooms may be forbidden as bedrooms 
 by the German police, but it would take a bigger 
 earthquake than the empire is likely to sustain to do 
 away with those still in use. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 FOOD 
 
 A LTHOUGH the Germans as a nation are large 
 JL\. eaters, they begin their day with the usual light 
 continental breakfast of coffee and rolls. In house- 
 holds where economy is practised it is still customary 
 to do without butter, or at any rate to provide it only 
 for the master of the house and for visitors. In 
 addition to rolls and butter, you may, if you are a man 
 or a guest, have two small boiled eggs ; but eggs in a 
 German town are apt to remind you of the Viennese 
 waiter who assured a complaining customer that their 
 eggs were all stamped with the day, month, and year. 
 Home-made plum jam made with very little sugar is 
 often eaten instead of butter by the women of the 
 family ; and the servants, where white rolls are 
 regarded as a luxury, have rye bread. No one need 
 pity them on this account, however, as German rye 
 bread is as good as bread can be. Ordinary London 
 household bread is poor stuff in comparison with it. 
 The white rolls and butter are always excellent too, 
 and I would even say a good word for the coffee. To 
 be sure, Mark Twain makes fun of German coffee 
 in the Tramp Abroad-, says something about one 
 chicory berry being used to a barrel of water; but 
 the poorest German coffee is better than the tepid 
 
 muddy mixture you get at all English railway stations, 
 
 153 
 
154 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 and at most English hotels and private houses. Milk 
 is nearly always poor in Germany, but whipped cream 
 is often added to either coffee or chocolate. 
 
 The precision that is so striking in the arrangement 
 of German rooms is generally lacking altogether in the 
 serving of meals. The family does not assemble in 
 the morning at a table laid as in England with the 
 same care for breakfast as it will be at night for 
 dinner. It dribbles in as it pleases, arrayed as it 
 pleases, drinks a cup of coffee, eats a roll and departs 
 about its business. Formerly the women of the 
 family always spent the morning in a loose gown, and 
 wore a cap over their undressed hair. This fashion, 
 Germans inform you, is falling into desuetude; but 
 it falls slowly. Take an elderly German lady by 
 surprise in the morning, and you will still find her in 
 what fashion journals call a negligt, and what plain 
 folk call a wrapper. When it is of shepherd's plaid or 
 snuff-coloured wool it is not an attractive garment, 
 and it is always what the last generation but one, with 
 their blunt tongues, called " slummocking." Most 
 German women are busy in the house all the morning, 
 and when they are not going to market they like to 
 get through their work in this form of dress and make 
 themselves trim for the day later. The advantage 
 claimed for the plan is one of economy. The tidy 
 costume worn later in the day is saved considerable 
 wear and tear. The obvious disadvantage is the 
 encouragement it offers to the sloven. In England 
 whatever you are by nature you must in an ordinary 
 household be down to breakfast at a fixed hour, 
 presentably dressed ; at any rate, with your hair done 
 for the day, and, it is to be supposed, with your bath 
 accomplished. Directly you depart from this you 
 open the door to anything in the dressing-gown and 
 
FOOD 1 5 5 
 
 slipper way, to lying abed like a sluggard, and to a 
 waste of your own and the servants' time that under- 
 mines the whole welfare of a home. At least, this 
 is how the question presents itself to English eyes. 
 Meanwhile the continent continues to drink its' coffee 
 attired in dressing-gowns, and to survive quite comfort- 
 ably. In every trousseau you still see some of these 
 confections, and on the stage the young wife who has 
 to cajole her husband in the coming scene usually 
 appears in a coquettish one. But then it will not be 
 made of shepherd's plaid or snuff-coloured wool. 
 
 The dinner hour varies so much in Germany that it 
 is impossible to fix an hour for it. In country places 
 you will find everyone sitting down at midday, in 
 towns one o'clock is usual, in Hamburg five is the 
 popular hour, in Berlin you may be invited anywhen. 
 But unless people dine at twelve they have some kind 
 of second breakfast, and this meal may correspond with 
 the French dejeuner, or it may be even more informal 
 than the morning coffee. It consists in many places 
 of a roll or slice of bread with or without a shaving of 
 meat or sausage. Servants have it, children take it to 
 school, charitable institutions supply the bread without 
 the meat to their inmates. In South Germany all the 
 men and many women drink beer or wine with this 
 light meal, but in Prussia most people are content with 
 a belegtes Butterbrod, a roll cut in two, buttered, and 
 spread with meat or sausage or smoked fish. This 
 carries people on till one or two o'clock, when the 
 chief meal of the day is served. 
 
 All over Germany dinner begins with soup, and in 
 most parts the soup is followed by the Ochsenfleisch 
 that made it. At least Ochsenfleisch should make it by 
 rights. 
 
 " I know what this is," said an old German friend. 
 
156 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 prodding at a tough slice from a dish we all found 
 uneatable. " This is not Ochsenfleisch at all. This is 
 cow? 
 
 Good gravy or horseradish sauce is served with it, 
 whether it is ox or cow, and for a time you take a slice 
 day after day without complaining. It is the per- 
 sistence of the thing that wears you out in the end. 
 You must be born to Ochsenfleisch to eat it year in and 
 year out as if it was bread or potatoes. It does not 
 appear as regularly in North as in South Germany ; 
 and in Hamburg you may once in a way have dinner 
 without soup. People who know Germany find this 
 almost beyond belief, but Hamburg has many little 
 ways of its own, and is a city with a strong individual 
 character. It is extremely proud of its cooking and 
 its food, and it has every right to be. I once travelled 
 with two Germans who in a heated way discussed the 
 comparative merits of various German cities. They 
 could not agree, and they could not let the matter drop. 
 At last one man got the best of it. " I tell you that 
 Hamburg is the finest city in Germany," he said. " In 
 a Hamburg hotel I once ate the best steak I ever ate 
 in my life." The other man had nothing to say to that. 
 Hamburg has a splendid fish supply, and Holstein 
 brings her quantities of fruit and of farm produce. 
 Your second breakfast there is like a French dejeuner, 
 a meal served and prepared according to your means, 
 but a regular meal and not a mere snack. You drink 
 coffee after it, and so sustain life till five o'clock, when 
 you dine. Then you drink coffee again, and as your 
 dinner has probably been an uncommonly good one 
 you only need a light supper at nine o'clock, when a 
 tray will arrive with little sandwiches and slender 
 bottles of beer. In North Germany, where wine is 
 scarce and dear, it is hardly ever seen in many house- 
 
FOOD 157 
 
 holds, so that a young Englishman wanting to describe 
 his German friends, divided them for convenience into 
 wine people and beer people. The wine people were 
 plutocrats, and had red or white Rhine wine every day 
 for dinner. I probably need not tell my well-informed 
 country people that Germans never speak of hock. 
 
 In households where the chief meal of the day is at 
 one or two o'clock there is afternoon tea or coffee. It 
 used invariably to be coffee, good hot coffee and fresh 
 rusks and dainty little Hornchen and Radankuchen, an 
 excellent light cake baked in a twisty tin. German 
 cakes want a whole chapter to themselves to do them 
 justice, and they should have it if it were not for a 
 dialogue that frequently takes place in a family well 
 known to me. The wife is of German origin, but as 
 she has an English husband and English servants she 
 keeps house in the English way. Therefore mutton 
 cold or hashed is her frequent portion. 
 
 " How I hate hashed mutton," she sometimes says. 
 
 " Why do you have it, then ? " says the husband, who 
 has a genius for asking apparently innocent but really 
 provoking questions. 
 
 " What else can I have ? " says the wife. 
 
 " Eel in jelly," says the husband. He once tasted it 
 in Berlin, and it must have given him a mental shock ; 
 for whenever his wife approaches him with a domestic 
 difficulty, asks him, for instance, what he would like for 
 breakfast, he suggests this inaccessible and uninviting 
 dish. 
 
 " There is never anything to eat in England except 
 mutton and apple-tart," says the wife. " Your plain 
 cooks can't cook anything else. They can't cook those 
 really. Think of a German apple-tart " 
 
 " Why should I ? I don't want one." 
 
 " That's the hopeless part of it. You are all content 
 
158 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 with what Daudet called your abominable cuisine. \ 
 thank him for the phrase. It is descriptive." 
 
 " Oh, well," says the husband, " we're not a greedy 
 nation." 
 
 So if this is the English point of view the less said 
 about cakes the better. And anyhow, it is in this 
 country that afternoon tea .is an engaging meal. Berlin 
 offers you tea nowadays, but it is never good, and 
 instead of freshly cut bread and butter they have horrid 
 little chokey biscuits flavoured with vanilla. Old- 
 fashioned Germans used to put a bit of vanilla in the 
 tea-pot when they had guests they delighted to honour, 
 but they all know better than that nowadays. The 
 milk is often boiled milk, but even that scarcely ex- 
 plains why tea is so seldom fit to drink in Germany. 
 Supper is a light meal in most houses. The English 
 mutton bone is never seen, for when cold meat is eaten 
 it is cut in neat slices and put on a long narrow dish. 
 But there is nearly always something from the nearest 
 Delikatessen shop with it, slices of ham or tongue, or 
 slices of one or two of the various sausages of Germany : 
 Blutwurst, Mettwurst, Schinkenwurst> Leberwurst, all 
 different and all good. When a hot dish is served 
 it is usually a light one, often an omelette or some 
 other preparation of eggs ; and in spring eggs and bits 
 of asparagus are a great deal cooked together in various 
 ways : not asparagus heads so often as short lengths of 
 the stalk sold separately in the market, and quite tender 
 when cooked. There is nearly always a salad with the 
 cold meat or a dish of the salted cucumbers that make 
 such a good pickle. The big loaves of light brown rye 
 bread appear at this meal instead of the little white 
 rolls eaten at breakfast. Beer or wine is drunk, and very 
 often of late years tea as well. Sweets are not usually 
 served at supper, unless guests are present. They are 
 
FOOD 159 
 
 eaten at the midday dinner, and each part of Germany 
 has its own favourite dishes. 
 
 Soups are nearly always good in Germany, and some 
 of the best are not known in England. The dried 
 green corn so much used for soup in South Germany 
 can, however, be bought in London from the German 
 provision merchants, so at the end of this greedy 
 chapter I will give a recipe for making it. Nudel- 
 suppe of strong chicken stock and home-made Nudeln 
 used to be what the Berliner called his roast goose 
 " eine jute jabe Jottes" but the degenerate Germans of 
 to-day buy tasteless manufactured Nudeln instead of 
 rolling out their own. Nudeln are the German form 
 of macaroni, but when properly made they are better 
 than any macaroni can be. If you have been brought 
 up in an old-fashioned German manage, and, as a child 
 likes to do, peeped into the kitchen sometimes, you will 
 remember seeing large sheets of something as thin and 
 yellow as chamois leather hung on a clothes horse to 
 dry. Then you knew that there would be Nudeln for 
 your dinner, either narrow ones in soup, or wider ones 
 boiled in water and sprinkled with others cut as fine 
 as vermicelli and fried brown in butter. The paste is 
 troublesome to make. It begins with a deceptive 
 simplicity. Take four whole eggs and four tablespoons- 
 ful of milk if you want enough for ten people, says 
 the cookery book, and make a light dough of it with a 
 knife in a basin. Anyone can do that, you find. But 
 then you must put your dough on the pastry board, 
 and work in more flour as you knead it with your 
 hands. " the longer you knead and the stiffer the 
 dough is the better your Nudeln will be," continues 
 the cookery book. But the next operation is to cut 
 the dough into four, and roll out each portion as thin 
 as paper, and no one who has not seen German Nudeln 
 
160 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 before they are cooked can believe that this is actually 
 done. It is no use to give the rest of the recipe for 
 drying them, rolling each piece loosely and cutting it 
 into strips and boiling them with salt in water. If you 
 told your English cook to make you Nudeln she would 
 despise it for a foreign mess, and bring you something 
 as thick as a pancake. If you want them you had 
 better get them in a box from a provision merchant, as 
 the Hausfrau herself does nowadays. 
 
 English people often say that there is no good meat 
 to be had in Germany. I would say that there is no 
 good mutton, and a great deal of poor coarse beef. But 
 the Filetbraten that you can get from the best butchers 
 is excellent. It is a long roll of undercut of beef, so 
 long that it seems to be sold by the yard. If you cook 
 it in the English way, says my German cookery book, 
 you rub it well with salt and pepper and baste it with 
 butter ; while the gravy is made with flour, mushrooms, 
 cream, and extract of beef. I should like to see the 
 expression of the English plain cook if she was told to 
 baste her beef with butter and make her gravy for it 
 with mushrooms. I once came back from Germany with 
 a new idea for gravy, and tried it on a cook who seemed 
 to think that gravy was made by upsetting a kettle 
 over a joint and then adding lumps of flour. 
 
 " My sister's cook always puts an onion in the 
 tin with a joint," I said tentatively, for I was not 
 very hopeful. I know that there is always some in- 
 superable objection to anything not consecrated by 
 tradition. 
 
 " It gives the gravy a flavour," I went on, " not a 
 strong flavour " 
 
 I stopped. I waited for the objection. 
 
 " We couldn't do that HERE," said the cook. 
 
 " Why not ? We have tins and we have onions." 
 
FOOD 161 
 
 " It would spoil the dripping. What could I do 
 with dripping as tasted of onion ? " 
 
 I had never thought of that, and so I had never 
 asked my sister what was done in her household with 
 dripping as tasted with onion. 
 
 " I should think," I said slowly, " that it could be 
 used to baste the next joint." 
 
 "Then that would taste of onion," said the cook, 
 " and I should have no dripping when I wanted it." 
 
 I have always thought dripping a dull subject, and I 
 know that it is an explosive one, so I said nothing more. 
 I went on instead to describe a piece of beef stewed in 
 its own juices on a bed of chopped vegetables. We 
 actually tried that, and when it was cold it tasted 
 agreeably of the vegetables, and was as tender to 
 carve as butter. 
 
 " How did you like the German beef?" I said to an 
 Englishwoman who had been with me a great many 
 years. 
 
 " I didn't like it at all, M'm." 
 
 " But it was so tender." 
 
 " Yes, M'm, it made me creep," she said. 
 
 So this chapter is really of no use from one point 
 of view. You may hear what queer things benighted 
 people like the Germans eat and drink, but you will never 
 persuade your British household to condescend to them. 
 
 Except in the coast towns, sea fish is scarce and dear 
 all over Germany. Salt fish and fresh-water fish are 
 what you get, and except the trout it is not interesting. 
 A great deal of carp is eaten, cooked with vinegar 
 to turn it blue, and served with horseradish or wine 
 sauce. At a dinner party I have seen tench given, and 
 they were extremely pretty, like fish in old Italian 
 pictures, but they were not worth eating. At least a 
 pound of fresh butter was put on each dish of them, 
 ii 
 
1 62 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 handed round, and you took some of it as well as a sort 
 of mustard sauce. Perch, pike, and eel are all eaten 
 where nothing better is to be had ; but the standing 
 fish-course of inland Germany is trout. Most hotels 
 have a tank where they keep it alive till it is wanted, 
 and in the Black Forest the peasants catch it and 
 peddle it, walking miles to make good sales. We went 
 into the garden of our hotel in the Wiesenthal one day, 
 and found the basin of the fountain there crammed 
 with live trout. It was so full that you could take one 
 in your hand for a moment and look at its speckles, as 
 lovely as the speckles on a thrush's breast. The man 
 who was carrying them on his back in a wooden water- 
 tight satchel was having a drink, and he had put out 
 his fish for a drink while he rested. I have never been 
 within reach of fresh herrings in Germany, and have 
 never seen them there, but smoked ones are eaten 
 everywhere, often with salad, or together with smoked 
 ham and potatoes in their jackets. Neither the ham 
 nor the herrings are ever cooked when they have been 
 smoked, and the ham is very tough in consequence. 
 The breast of a goose, too, is eaten smoked but not 
 cooked, and is considered a great delicacy. Poultry 
 varies in quality a good deal. Everyone knows the 
 little chickens that come round at hotel dinners, all 
 legs and bones. A German family will sit down 
 contentedly to an old hen that the most economical of 
 us would only use for soup, and they will serve it 
 roasted though it is as tough as leather. I think it 
 must be said that you get better fowls both in France 
 and England than in Germany. The German national 
 bird is the goose. In England, if you buy a goose 
 your cook roasts it and sends it up, and that is all you 
 ever know of it. In Germany a goose is a carnival, 
 rather as a newly killed pig is in an English farmhouse. 
 
FOOD 163 
 
 You begin with a stew of the giblets, you perhaps 
 continue with the bird itself roasted and stuffed with 
 chestnuts, you may have a dozen different dishes made 
 of its remains, while the fat that has basted it you 
 hoard and use sparingly for weeks. For instance, 
 you cook a cabbage with a little of it instead of with 
 water. In South Germany, goose livers are prepared 
 with it, and are just as much liked as pate de foie gras. 
 Hares are eaten and most carefully prepared in 
 Germany. They are skinned in a way that an English 
 poulterer has been known to learn from his German 
 customers and pronounce very troublesome, and the 
 back is usually served separately, larded and basted 
 with sour cream. Vegetables are cooked less simply 
 than in England, and you will find the two countries 
 disagree heatedly about them. The Englishman does 
 not want his peas messed up with grease and vinegar, 
 and though he will be too polite to say so, he will 
 silently agree with his plain cook who says that peas 
 served in the pod is a dish only fit for pigs and what 
 she has never been accustomed to ; while the German 
 will get quite dejected over the everlasting plain boiled 
 cabbage and potatoes he is offered week after week in 
 his English boarding-house. At home, he says, he is 
 used to mountains of fat asparagus all the spring, and 
 he thinks slightly of your skinny green ones or of the 
 wooden stuff you import and pay less for because it is 
 " foreign." He likes potatoes cooked in twenty various 
 ways, and when mashed he is of opinion that they 
 should not be black or lumpy. He wants a dozen 
 different vegetables dished up round one joint of beef, 
 and in summer salads of various kinds on various 
 occasions, and not your savage mixed salad with a 
 horrible sauce poured out of a bottle ; furniture polish 
 he believes it to be from its colour. In the autumn he 
 
1 64 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 expects chestnuts cooked with gravy and vegetables, or 
 made into light puddings ; and apple sauce, he assures 
 you, should be a creamy white, and as smooth as a well 
 made pur<e. If he is of the South he would like a 
 Mehlspeise after his meat, Spetzerle if he comes from 
 Wiirtemberg ; one of a hundred different dishes if he is 
 a Bavarian. He will not allow that your national milk 
 puddings take their place. If he is a North German 
 his Leibgericht may be Rothe Grtitze. This is eaten 
 enormously all over Denmark and North Germany in 
 summer, and is nothing in the world but a ground rice 
 or sago mould made with fruit juice instead of milk. 
 The old-fashioned way was to squeeze raspberries and 
 currants through a cloth till you had a quart of pure 
 juice, which you then boiled with 4 oz. ground rice and 
 sugar to taste, stirring carefully lest it should burn, and 
 stirring patiently so that the rice should be well cooked. 
 But where fruit is dear you can make excellent Rothe 
 Griitze by stewing the fruit first with a little water and 
 straining off the juice. A quart of currants and a 
 pound of raspberries should give you a good quart 
 mould. The Danes make it of rhubarb and plum juice 
 in the same way ; and my German cookery book gives 
 a recipe for Griine Griitze made with green gooseberries, 
 but I tried that once and found it quite inferior to our 
 own gooseberry fool. 
 
 Food is so much a matter of taste and custom, that it 
 seems absurd to make dogmatic remarks about the 
 superiority of one kitchen to another. If you like cold 
 mutton, boiled potatoes and rice pudding, most days 
 in the week, you like them and there is an end of it. 
 The one thing you can say for certain is that to cook 
 for you requires neither skill nor pains, while to cook 
 for a German family, even if it lives plainly and poorly, 
 takes time and trouble. In trying to compare the 
 
FOOD 165 
 
 methods of two nations, one must naturally be careful 
 to compare households on the same social plane; and 
 an English household that lives on cold mutton and 
 rice pudding is certainly a plain and probably a poor 
 one. In well-to-do English households you get the 
 best food in the world as far as raw material goes, but 
 it must be said that you often get poor cooking. It 
 passes quite unnoticed too. No one seems to mind 
 thick soups that are too thick and gravies that are 
 tasteless, and melted butter like Stickphast paste, and 
 savouries quite acrid with over much vinegar and 
 anchovy. I once saw a whole company of English 
 people contentedly eat a dish of hot scones that had 
 gone wrong. They tasted of strong yellow soap. But 
 I once saw a company of Germans eat bad fish and 
 apparently like it. They were sea soles handed round 
 in a Swiss hotel, and they should by rights have 
 been buried the day before. I thought of Ottilie 
 von Schlippenschlopp and the oysters. But the soles 
 were carefully cooked, and served with an elaborate 
 sauce. 
 
 GREEN CORN SOUP. For six people take 7 oz. of 
 green corn : wash it well in hot water, and cook it 
 until it is quite soft in stock or salt water. Put it 
 through a sieve, add boiling stock, and serve with fried 
 slice of bread or with small semolina dumplings. 
 
 GREEN CORN SOUP. Another way. For six 
 people take 5^ oz. of green corn, wash it well in hot 
 water, and let it simmer for a few minutes with a little 
 stock and ij oz. butter. Then add strong stock, and 
 let it simmer slowly with the lid on till the corn is soft. 
 Then stir a tablespoonful of fine flour with half a cupful 
 of milk, and add it to the soup, stirring all the time. 
 This must then cook an hour longer. When ready to 
 
1 66 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 serve, mix the yolks of two eggs with a little sour 
 cream, and add the soup carefully so that it is not 
 curdled. The soup is not strained through a sieve 
 when it is served without dumplings. 
 
 The little dumplings are first cooked as a panada of 
 semolina, butter, milk and egg, and then dropped into 
 the soup and cooked in it for ten minutes. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 SHOPS AND MARKETS 
 
 BERLIN people compare their Wertheim with 
 the Bon Marche* at Paris, or with Whiteley's in 
 London ; only always adding that Wertheim is superior 
 to any emporium in France or England. So it really 
 is in one way. A great artist designed it, and the 
 outside of the building is plain and stately, a most 
 refreshing contrast to most Berlin architecture. On 
 the ground floor there is a high spacious hall that is 
 splendid when it is lighted up at night, and a 
 staircase leads up and down from here to the various 
 departments, all decorated soberly and pleasantly, 
 mostly with wood. You can buy almost anything you 
 want at Wertheim's, from the furniture of your house 
 to a threepenny pair of cotton mittens with a thumb 
 and no fingers. You can see tons of the most hideous 
 rubbish there, and you can find a corner reserved for 
 original work, done by two or three artists whose 
 names are well known in Germany. For instance, 
 Wertheim exhibits the very clever curious "applications" 
 done by Frau Katy Miinchhausen, groups of monkeys, 
 storks, cocks and hens, and other animals, drawn with 
 immense spirit and life on cloth, cut out and then 
 machined on a background of another colour. The 
 machining has a bad sound, I admit, but for all that the 
 
 " applications " are enchanting. Wertheim, too, shows 
 
 167 
 
1 68 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 some good furniture ; he sells theatre tickets, books, 
 fruit, groceries, Liberty cushions, embroideries, soaps, 
 perfumes, toys, ironmongery, china, glass, as well as 
 everything that can be called drapery. He has a tea- 
 room as well as a large general refreshment- room, 
 where you can get ices, iced coffee, beer, all kinds of 
 sandwiches, and the various Torten Germans make so 
 very much better than other people. In this room no 
 money is wasted on waiters or waitresses, and no one 
 expects to be tipped. You fetch what you want from 
 a long bar running along two sides of the room, and 
 divided into short stretches, each selling its own stuff; 
 you pay at the counter, and you carry your ice or 
 your cake to any little marble-topped table you choose. 
 The advantage of the plan is that you do not have to 
 wait till you catch the eye of a waitress determined not 
 to look your way : the disadvantage is that you have 
 to perform the difficult feat of carrying a full cup or a 
 full glass through a crowd. Whatever you buy at the 
 counter is sure to be good, but if all you could get was 
 a Mugby Junction bun you would have to eat it after 
 the exhausting process of buying a yard of ribbon or a 
 few picture postcards at Wertheim's. 
 
 To begin with, there are no chairs. You cannot sit 
 down. On a hot summer morning, when you have 
 perhaps been to the market already, you go to the 
 Leipziger Strasse for theatre tickets, a pair of gloves, 
 and two or three small odds and ends. On the ground 
 floor you see gloves, innumerable boxes of them besieged 
 by a pushing, determined crowd of women. The shop 
 ladies in any coloured blouses look hot and weary, but 
 try to serve six customers at once. When you have chosen 
 what you want, and know exactly how sharp the elbows 
 to left and right of you are, you see your lady walk off 
 with your most pushful neighbour and the pair of three- 
 
SHOPS AND MARKETS 169 
 
 penny gloves she has after much argument agreed 
 to buy ; for at Wertheim's you cannot depart with so 
 much as a halfpenny postcard till it has passed through 
 three pairs of hands besides your own. First the 
 shop lady must deposit it with a bill at the cashier's 
 desk. Then, when the cashier can attend to you, you 
 pay for it. Then you may wait any time until the 
 third person concerned will do it up in paper and string. 
 This last proceeding is often so interminably delayed 
 that if you were not in Germany you would snatch at 
 what you have paid for and make off. But the Polizei 
 alone knows what would happen if you ran your head 
 against the established pedantry of things in the city 
 of the Spree. You would probably find yourself in 
 prison for Beamtenbeleidigung or lese majesti. " The 
 Emperor is a fool," said some disloyal subject in a 
 public place. " To prison with him," screamed every 
 horror-struck official. " Off with his head ! " " But I 
 meant the Emperor of China," protested the sinner. 
 " That's impossible," said the officials in chorus. " Any- 
 one who says the Emperor is a fool means our Emperor." 
 And an official spirit seems to encroach on the business 
 one, and drill its very customers while it anxiously 
 serves them. For instance, the arrangements for send- 
 ing what you buy are most tiresome and difficult to 
 understand at Wertheim's. His carts patrol the streets, 
 and your German friends assure you that he sends 
 anything. You find that if you shop with a country 
 card the things entered on it will arrive; but if you 
 buy a bulky toy or some heavy books and pay for them 
 in their departments, you meet with fuss and refusal 
 when you ask as a matter of course to have them sent. 
 It can be done if your goods have cost enough, but not 
 if you have only spent two or three shillings. It is 
 the fashion in England just now for every man who 
 
1 70 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 writes about Germans to say that they are immensely 
 ahead of us in business matters. I cannot judge of 
 them in their factories and warehouses, but I am sure 
 they are behind us in their shops. A woman cannot 
 live three hundred miles from Berlin and get everything 
 she wants from Wertheim delivered by return and 
 carriage free. Nor will he supply her with an immense 
 illustrated catalogue and a book of order forms addressed 
 to his firm, so that the trouble of shopping from a 
 distance is reduced to a minimum. In England you 
 can do your London shopping as easily, promptly, and 
 cheaply from a Scotch or a Cornish village as you can 
 from a Surrey suburb. 
 
 In most German towns you still find the shops 
 classified on the old lines. You go to one for drapery, 
 and to another for linen, and to another for small wares, 
 and to yet another for ribbons. There are sausage 
 shops and chocolate shops, and in Berlin there are 
 shops for the celebrated Berlin Baumkuchen. There 
 are a great many cellar shops all over Germany, and 
 these are mostly restaurants, laundries, and greengrocers. 
 The drinking scene in Faust when Mephisto made wine 
 flow from the table takes place in Auerbach's Keller, 
 a cellar restaurant still in existence in Leipzig. The 
 lower class of cellar takes the place in Germany of 
 our slums, and the worst of them are regular thieves' 
 kitchens known to the police. There is an admirable 
 description of life in a cellar shop in Klara Viebig's 
 Das Tagliche Brod. The woman who keeps it has a 
 greengrocery business and a registry office for servants, 
 and as such people go is respectable ; but I recommend 
 the book to my countrymen who go to Berlin as 
 officials or journalists for ten days, are taken over 
 various highly polished public institutions, and come 
 back to tell us that the Germans are every man jack 
 
SHOPS AND MARKETS 171 
 
 of them clean, prosperous, well mannered, and healthy. 
 It is true that German municipal government is striving 
 rather splendidly to bring this state of things about, 
 but they have plenty of work before them still. These 
 cellar shops, for instance, are more fit for mushroom 
 growing than for human nurseries, and yet the picture 
 in the novel of the family struggling with darkness and 
 disease there can still be verified in most of the old 
 streets of Germany. 
 
 When our English journalists write column after 
 column about the dangerous explosive energy and 
 restlessness of modern Germany, I feel sure that they 
 must be right, and yet I wish they could have come 
 shopping with me a year or two ago in a small Black 
 Forest town. One of us wanted a watch key and the 
 other a piece of tape, and we set off light-heartedly 
 to buy them, for we knew that there was a draper and a 
 watchmaker in the main street. We knew, too, that 
 in South Germany everyone is first dining and then 
 asleep between twelve and two, so we waited till after 
 two and then went to the watchmaker's. There was 
 no shop window, and when, after ringing two or three 
 times, we were let in we found there was no shop. We 
 sat down in a big cool sitting-room, beautifully clean 
 and tidy. The watchmaker's wife appeared in due 
 course, looked at us with friendly interest, asked us 
 where we came from, and how long we meant to stay, 
 wondered if we knew her cousin Johannes Miiller, a 
 hairdresser in Islington, discussed the relative merits of 
 emigration to England and America, offered us some 
 cherries from a basketful on the table, and at last 
 admitted unwillingly that her husband was not at home, 
 and that she herself knew not whether he had watch 
 keys. So we set off to buy our tape, and again found 
 a private room, an amiable family, but no one who felt 
 
i;2 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 able to sell anything. It seemed an odd way of doing 
 business we said to our landlord, but he saw nothing 
 odd in it. Most people were busy with their hay, he 
 explained. Towards the end of a week we caught 
 our watchmaker, and obtained a key, but he would not 
 let us pay for it. He said it was one of an old collection, 
 and of no use to him. The etiquette of shopping in 
 Germany seems to us rather topsy-turvy at first. In a 
 small shop the proprietor is as likely as not to conduct 
 business with a cigar in his mouth, even if you are a 
 lady, but if you are a man he will think you a boor if 
 you omit to remove your hat as you cross his thresh- 
 old. Whether you are a man, woman, or child, you 
 will wish him good-morning or good-evening before 
 you ask for what you want, and he will answer you 
 before he asks what your commands are. If you are a 
 woman, about as ignorant as most women, and with a 
 humble mind, you will probably have no fixed opinion 
 about the question of free or fair trade. You may even, 
 if you are very humble, recognise that it is not quite 
 the simple question Dick, Tom, and Harry think it is. 
 But you will know for certain that when you want 
 ribbons for a hat you had better buy them in 
 Kensington and not in Frankfurt, and that though 
 there are plenty of cheap materials in Germany, the 
 same quality would be cheaper still in London. Every- 
 thing to do with women's clothing is dearer there than 
 here. So is stationery, so are groceries, so are the 
 better class of fancy goods. But the Germans, say the 
 Fair Traders, are a prosperous nation, and it is because 
 their manufactures are protected. This may be so. I 
 can only look at various quite small unimportant trifles, 
 such as ribbons, for instance, or pewter vases or blotting- 
 paper or peppermint drops. I know that a German 
 woman either wears a common ribbon on her hat, or 
 
SHOPS AND MARKETS 1 7 3 
 
 pays twice as much as I do for a good one; she is 
 content with one pewter vase where your English 
 suburban drawing-room packs twenty into one corner, 
 with twenty silver frames and vases near them. A 
 few years ago the one thing German blotting-paper 
 refused to do was to absorb ink, and it was so dear 
 that in all small country inns and in old-fashioned 
 offices you were expected to use sand instead. The 
 sand was kept beside the ink in a vessel that had a 
 top like a pepper pot ; and it was more amusing than 
 -blotting-paper, but not as efficacious. As for the 
 peppermint drops, they used to be a regular export 
 from families living in London to families living in 
 Germany. They were probably needed after having 
 goose and chestnuts for dinner, and ours were twice 
 as large as the German ones and about six times as 
 strong, so no doubt they were like our blotting-paper, 
 and performed what they engaged to perform more 
 thoroughly. 
 
 But shops of any kind are dull compared with an 
 open market held in one of the many ancient market 
 places of Germany. The photograph of Freiburg gives 
 a bird's-eye view of the town with the minster 
 rising from the midst of its red roofs ; but there is just 
 a peep at the market which is being held at the foot 
 of the minster. On the side hidden from us in the 
 photograph there are some of the oldest houses in 
 Freiburg. It is a large crowded market on certain 
 days of the week, and full of colour and movement. 
 The peasants who come to it from the neighbouring 
 valleys wear bright-coloured skirts and headgear, and 
 in that part of Germany fruit is plentiful, so that all 
 through the summer and autumn the market carts and 
 barrows are heaped with cherries, wild strawberries, 
 plums, apricots, peaches, and grapes in their season. 
 
174 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 The market place itself, and even the steps of the 
 minster and of the surrounding houses, are crowded 
 with the peasants and their produce, and with the 
 leisurely servants and housewives bargaining for the 
 day's supplies. The other photograph of the market 
 place at Cottbus in Brandenburg gives more idea of 
 the people at a German market; the servants with 
 their umbrellas, their big baskets, their baggy blouses 
 and no hats, the middle class housewife with a hat or 
 a bonnet, and a huge basket on her arm, a nursemaid 
 in peasant costume stooping over her perambulator, other 
 peasants in costume at the stalls, and two of the farm 
 carts that are in some districts yoked oftener with oxen 
 than with horses. There is naturally great variety in 
 the size and character of markets, according to the needs 
 they supply. In Hamburg the old names show you 
 that there were separate markets for separate trades, 
 so that you went to the Schweinemarkt when 
 you wanted pigs, and to some other part of the 
 city when you wanted flowers and fruit. In Berlin 
 there are twelve covered markets besides the open 
 ones, and they are all as admirably clean, tidy, 
 and unpoetical as everything else is in that spick 
 and span, swept and garnished Philistine city. The 
 green gooseberries there are marked " unripe fruit " 
 by order of the police, so that no one should think 
 they were ripe and eat them uncooked ; and you can 
 buy rhubarb nowadays, a vegetable the modern Berliner 
 eats without shuddering. But in a Berlin market 
 you buy what you need as quickly as you can and 
 come away. There is nothing to tempt you, nothing 
 picturesque, nothing German, if German brings to your 
 mind a queer mixture of poetry and music, gabled, 
 tumbledown houses, storks' nests, toys, marvellous 
 cakes and sweets and the kindliest of people. If you 
 
SHOPS AND MARKETS 175 
 
 are so modern that German means nothing to you but 
 drill and hustle, the roar of factories and the pride of 
 monster municipal ventures, then you may see the 
 markets of Berlin and rest content with them. They 
 will show you what you already know of this day's 
 Germany. But my household treasures gathered here 
 and there in German markets did not have one added 
 to their number in Berlin. 
 
 " That ! " said a German friend when I showed her 
 a yellow pitcher dabbed with colour, and having a 
 .spout, a handle, and a lid, " that ! I would not have 
 it in my kitchen." 
 
 It certainly only cost the third of a penny, but it 
 lived with honour in my drawing-room till it shared 
 the fate of all clay, and came in two in somebody's 
 hands. The blue and grey bellied bottle, one of those 
 in which the Thuringian peasants carry beer to the 
 field, cost three halfpence, but the butter-dish with a 
 lid of the same ware only cost a halfpenny. There is 
 always an immense heap of this rough grey and blue 
 pottery in a South German market, and it is much 
 prettier than the more ornate Coblenz ware we import 
 and sell at high prices. So is the deep red earthen- 
 ware glazed inside and rough outside and splashed with 
 colours. You find plenty of it at the Leipziger Messe, 
 that -historical fair that used to be as important to 
 Western Europe as Nijni Novgorod is to Russia and 
 the East. To judge from modern German trade 
 circulars, it is still of considerable importance, and the 
 buildings in which merchants of all countries display 
 their wares have recently been renovated and enlarged. 
 Out of doors the various market-places are covered 
 with little stalls selling cheap clothing, cheap toys, 
 jewellery, sweets, and gingerbread ; all the hetero- 
 geneous rubbish you have seen a thousand times at 
 
1 76 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 German fairs, and never tire of seeing if a fair delights 
 you. 
 
 But better than the Leipziger Messe, better even 
 than a summer market at Freiburg or at Heidelburg, 
 is a Christmas market in any one of the old German 
 cities in the hill country, when the streets and the open 
 places are covered with crisp clean snow, and the 
 mountains are white with it, and the moon shines 
 on the ancient houses, and the tinkle of sledge bells 
 reaches you when you escape from the din of the market, 
 and look down at the bustle of it from some silent place, 
 a high window perhaps, or the high empty steps leading 
 into the cathedral. The air is cold and still, and heavy 
 with the scent of the Christmas trees brought from the 
 forest for the pleasure of the children. Day by day 
 you see the rows of them growing thinner, and if you 
 go to the market on Christmas Eve itself you will find 
 only a few trees left out in the cold. The market is 
 empty, the peasants are harnessing their horses or their 
 oxen, the women are packing up their unsold goods. 
 In every home in the city one of the trees that scented 
 the open air a week ago is shining now with lights and 
 little gilded nuts and apples, and is helping to make 
 that Christmas smell, all compact of the pine forest, 
 wax candles, cakes, and painted toys, you must associate 
 so long as you live with Christmas in Germany. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 EXPENSES OF LIFE 
 
 A FEW years ago a German economist reckoned that 
 there were only 250,000 families in the empire 
 whose incomes exceeded 450, a year. There were 
 nearly three million households living on incomes 
 ranging from 135 to 450, and nearly four millions 
 with more than go but less than 135. But there 
 were upwards of five millions whose incomes fell below 
 4$. Since that estimate was made, Germany has 
 grown in wealth and prosperity ; and in the big cities 
 there is great expenditure and luxury amongst some 
 classes, especially amongst the Jews who can afford it, 
 and amongst the officers of the army who as a rule 
 cannot. But the bulk of the nation is poor, and class 
 for class lives on less than people do in England. 
 For instance, the headmaster of a school gets about 
 100 a. year in a small town, and from 200 to 300 
 in a big one. A lieutenant gets about 6$ a year, 
 and an additional 12 if he has no private means. His 
 uniform and mess expenses are deducted from this. 
 He is not allowed to marry on his official income, 
 unless he or his wife has an income of 125 in 
 addition to his pay, as even in Germany an army man 
 can hardly keep up appearances and support a wife 
 and family on less than 190 a year. It is quite 
 common to hear of a clerk living on 40 or 50. or of 
 
1 78 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 a doctor who knows his work and yet can only make 
 150. The official posts so eagerly sought after are 
 poorly paid ; so are servants, agricultural labourers, 
 and artisans. When you are in Germany, if you are 
 interested in questions of income and expenditure, you 
 are always trying to make up your mind why a 
 German family can live as successfully on 400 as an 
 English family on 700, for you know that rent and 
 taxes are high and food and clothing dear. If you 
 are a woman and think about it a great deal, and look 
 at family life in as many places and classes as you can, 
 you finally decide that there are three chief reasons 
 for the great difference between the cost of life in 
 England and Germany. In the first place, labour is 
 cheaper there ; in the second place, the standard of 
 luxury and even of comfort is lower ; in the third 
 place, the women are thriftier and more industrious 
 than Englishwomen. This, too, leaves out of account 
 the most important fact, that the State educates a 
 man's children for next to nothing ; and drills the 
 male ones into shape when they serve in the army. 
 
 Servants, we have seen, get lower wages than they 
 do here, but the real economy is in the smaller number 
 kept. Where we pay and maintain half a dozen a 
 German family will be content with two, and the 
 typical small English household that cannot face life 
 without its plain cook in the kitchen and its parlour- 
 maid in her black gown at the front door, will through- 
 out the German Empire get along quite serenely with 
 one young woman to cook and clean and do everything 
 else required. If she is a " pearl " she probably 
 makes the young ladies' frocks and irons the master's 
 shirts to fill in her time. Germans do not trouble about 
 the black frock and the white apron at the front door. 
 They will even open the door to you themselves if the 
 
EXPENSES OF LIFE 179 
 
 " girl " is washing or cooking. A female servant is 
 always a " girl " in Germany. I once heard a young 
 Englishwoman who had not been long in Germany 
 ask an elderly acquaintance to recommend a dress- 
 maker. 
 
 " The best one in is Fraulein Miiller," said the 
 
 elderly acquaintance. 
 
 " But she is too expensive," said the Englishwoman, 
 and she glanced across the room at the lady's nieces, 
 who were neatly and plainly dressed. " Do girls go to 
 Fraulein Miiller ? " 
 
 " Girls ! Certainly not," said the lady, with the 
 expression Germans keep for the insane English it is 
 their fate to encounter occasionally. 
 
 " But that is what I want to know, ... a dress- 
 maker girls go to ... girls with a small allow- 
 ance." 
 
 " I am afraid I cannot help you," said the lady 
 stiffly. " I know nothing about the dressmakers girls 
 employ." 
 
 " Perhaps Miss Brown means ' young girls,' " said 
 one of the nieces, who was not as slow in the uptake as 
 her aunt, and it turned out that this was what Miss 
 Brown did mean ; but she had not known that in 
 everyday life Mddchen without an adjective usually 
 means a servant. She had heard of Das Mddchen aus 
 der Fremde and Der Tod und das Mddchen, and 
 blundered. 
 
 I once made a German exceedingly angry by 
 saying that the standard of comfort was higher in 
 England than in Germany. She said it was lower. 
 When you have lived in both countries and with both 
 peoples you arrive in the end at having your opinions, 
 and knowing that each one you hold will be disputed 
 on one side or the other. " Find out what means 
 
i8o HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 Gemutlichkeit) and do it without fail," says Hans 
 Breitmann, but Gemiltlichkeit and comfort are not 
 quite interchangeable words. Our word is more 
 material. When we talk of English comfort we are 
 thinking of our open fires, our solid food, our thick 
 carpets, and our well-drilled smart-looking servants. 
 The German is thinking of the spiritual atmosphere in 
 his own house, the absence, as he says, of ceremony and 
 the freedom of ideas. He talks of a man being 
 gemiltlich in his disposition, kindly, that is, and easy 
 going. We talk of a house being comfortable, and 
 when we do use the word for a person usually mean 
 that she is rather stout. When both you and the 
 German have decided that " comfort " for the moment 
 shall mean material comfort, you will disagree about 
 what is necessary to yours. You must have your 
 bathroom, your bacon for breakfast, your table laid 
 precisely, your meals served to the moment, your 
 young women in black or your staid men to give them 
 to you, and your glowing fires in as many rooms as 
 possible. The German cares for none of these things. 
 He would rather have his half-pound of odds and ends 
 from the provision shop than your boiled cod, roast 
 mutton, and apple-tart ; he wants his stove, his double 
 windows, his good coffee, his kraftige Kost, and freedom 
 to smoke in every corner of his house. He is never 
 tired of telling you that, though you have more 
 political freedom in England, you are groaning under a 
 degree of social tyranny that he could not endure for 
 a day. The Idealist, quoted in a former chapter, is 
 for ever talking of the " hypocrisy " of English life, and 
 her burning anxiety is to save the children of certain 
 Russian and German exiles from contact with it. 
 Another German tells you that our system of collegiate 
 life for women would not suit her countryfolk, because 
 
EXPENSES OF LIFE 181 
 
 they are more " individual." Each one likes to choose 
 her own rooms, and live as she pleases. The next 
 German has suffered torments in London because he 
 had to sit down to certain meals at certain hours 
 instead of eating anything he fancied at any time he 
 felt hungry, and I suppose it is only your British 
 Heuchelei that leads you to smile politely instead of 
 adding, " As the beasts of the field do." But I am 
 always mazed, as the Cornish say, when Germans talk 
 of their freedom from convention. In Hamburg I was 
 once seriously rebuked by an old friend for carrying a 
 book through the streets that was not wrapped up in 
 paper. In Hamburg that is one of the things people 
 don't do. In Mainz and in many other German towns 
 there are certain streets where one side, for reasons no 
 one can explain, is taboo at certain hours of the day ; 
 not of the night, but of the day. You may go to a 
 music shop at midday to buy a sonata, and find, 
 if you are a girl, that you have committed a crime. 
 The intercourse between young people outside their 
 homes is hedged round with convention. German 
 titles of address are so absurdly formal that Germans 
 laugh at them themselves. Their ceremonies in con- 
 nection with anniversaries and family events bristle 
 with convention, and offer pitfalls at every step to the 
 stranger or the blunderer. It is true that men do 
 not dress for dinner every day, and wax indignant over 
 the necessity of doing so for the theatre in England ; 
 but there are various occasions when they wear evening 
 dress in broad daylight, and an Englishman considers 
 that an uncomfortable convention. The truth is, that 
 these questions of comfort and ceremonial are not 
 questions that should be discussed in the hostile 
 dogmatic tone adopted in both countries by those who 
 only know their own. The ceremonies that are 
 
1 82 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 foreign to you impress you, while those you have been 
 used to all your life have become a second nature. An 
 Englishwoman feels downright uncomfortable in her 
 high stuff gown at night, and a German lady brought 
 up at one of the great German Courts told me that 
 when she stayed in an English country house and put 
 on what she called a ball dress for dinner every night, 
 she felt like a fool. 
 
 To come back to questions of expenditure so 
 intimately related to questions of comfort, it must be 
 remembered that in an English household there are two 
 dinners a day : one early for the servants and children, 
 and one late for the grown-ups ; and solid dinners cost 
 money even in England, where at present there is no 
 meat famine. When Germans dine late they don't also 
 dine early, even where there are children ; while the 
 kitchen dinner, that meal of supreme importance here, 
 is eaten when the family has finished theirs, and is as 
 informal as the meal a bird makes of berries. In a 
 German household, living on a small income, nothing is 
 wasted, not fuel, not food, not cleaning materials, as far 
 as possible not time. The tiichtige Hausfrau would be 
 made miserable by having to pay and feed a woman 
 who put on gala clothes at midday, and did no work to 
 soil them after that. 
 
 "Two girls," I once heard a German say to an 
 Englishwoman who had just described her own modest 
 household which she ran, she said, with two maids. 
 " Two girls ... for you and your husband. But 
 what, I ask you, does the second one do ? " 
 
 " She cleans the rooms and waits at table and opens 
 the door," said the Englishwoman. 
 
 " All that can one girl do just as well. I assure you 
 it is so. There cannot possibly be work in your house- 
 hold for two girls. You have told me how quietly you 
 
EXPENSES OF LIFE 183 
 
 live, and I know what English cooking is, if you can 
 call it cooking." 
 
 " You see, there must be someone to open the door." 
 
 " Why could one girl not answer the door, . . . 
 unless she was washing. Then you would naturally 
 go yourself." 
 
 " But it wouldn't be natural in England," said the 
 Englishwoman. " It would be odd. Besides, if you 
 only have one servant, she can't dress for lunch." 
 
 "Why should she dress for lunch?" asked the 
 German. " My Auguste is a pearl, but she only dresses 
 when we have Gesellschaft. Then she wears a plaid 
 blouse and a garnet brooch that I gave her last 
 Christmas, and she looks very well in them. But every 
 day . . . and for lunch, when half the work of the day 
 is still to be done. . . . What, then, does your second 
 girl do in the afternoons ? " 
 
 " She brings tea and answers the door." 
 
 "Always the door. But your husband is not a 
 doctor or a dentist. Why do so many people come 
 to your door that you need a whole girl to attend to 
 them ? " 
 
 " Oh ! They don't," said the Englishwoman, getting 
 rather worn. " There are very few, really. It's the 
 custom." 
 
 " Ah ! " said the German, with a long deep breath 
 of satisfaction. " So are you English . . . such slaves 
 to custom. Gott sei Dank that I do not live in a 
 country where I should have to keep a girl in idleness 
 for the sake of the door. With us a door is a door. 
 Anyone who happens to be near opens it." 
 
 " I know they do," said the Englishwoman, " and 
 when a servant comes she expects you to say Guten 
 Tag before you ask whether her mistress is at 
 home ? " 
 
1 84 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 "Certainly. It is a politeness. We are a polite 
 nation." 
 
 " And once, when I had just come back from 
 Germany, I said Good-morning to an English butler 
 before I asked if his mistress was at home, and he 
 thought I was mad. We each have our own conven- 
 tions. That's the truth of the matter." 
 
 " Not at all," said the German. " The truth of the 
 matter is, that the English are extremly conventional, 
 and follow each other as sheep do ; but the German 
 does what pleases him, without asking first whether his 
 neighbour does likewise." 
 
 This is what the German really believes, and you agree 
 or disagree with him according to the phase of life you 
 look at when he is speaking. You find that when he 
 comes to England he honestly feels checked at every 
 turn by our unwritten laws, while when you go to 
 Germany you wonder how he can submit so patiently 
 to the pettiness and multiplicity of his written ones. 
 He vaguely feels the pressure and criticism of your 
 indefinite code of manners ; you think his elaborate 
 system of titles, introductions, and celebrations rather 
 childish and extremely troublesome. If you have what 
 the English call manners you will take the greatest 
 care not to let him find this out, and in course of time, 
 however much you like him on the whole, you will 
 lose your patience a little with the individual you are 
 bound to meet, the individual who has England on his 
 nerves, and exhausts his energy and eloquence in inform- 
 ing you of your country's shortcomings. They are 
 legion, and indeed leave no room for the smallest virtue, 
 so that in the end you can only wonder solemnly why 
 such a nation ever came to be a nation at all. 
 
 " That is easily answered," says your Anglophobe. 
 " England has arrived where she is by seizing every- 
 
EXPENSES OF LIFE 185 
 
 thing she can lay hands on. Now it is going to be 
 our turn." 
 
 You express your interest in the future of Germany 
 as seen by your friend, and he shows you a map of 
 Europe which he has himself marked with red ink all 
 round the empire as it will be a few years hence. 
 There is not much Europe outside the red line. 
 
 " But you haven't taken Great Britain," you say, 
 rather hurt at being left out in this way. 
 
 "We don't want it ... otherwise, . . . but India 
 ... possibly Australia." He waves his hands. 
 
 You look at him pensively, and suddenly see one of 
 the great everyday distances between your countryfolk 
 and his. You think of a French novel that has amused 
 you lately, because the parents of the heroine objected 
 to her marriage with the hero on grounds you were 
 quite incapable of understanding. The young man's 
 work was in Cochin-China, and the young lady's father 
 and mother did not wish her to go so far. Never in your 
 life have you heard anyone raise such a trivial difficulty. 
 You live in a dull sober street mostly inhabited by dull 
 sober people, but there is not one house in it that is not 
 linked by interest or affection, often doubly linked, with 
 some uttermost end of the earth. You can hardly find 
 an English family that has not one member or more in 
 far countries, and so the common talk of English people 
 in all classes travels the width of the world in the wake 
 of those dear to them. But in 1900 only 22,309 
 Germans out of a population of 60,400,000 emigrated 
 from Germany, and these, says Mr. Eltzbacher, whose 
 figures I am quoting, were more than counterbalanced 
 by immigration into Germany from Austria, Russia, and 
 Italy. It is true that the population of Germany is 
 increasing with immense rapidity, and that the question 
 of expansion is becoming a burning one; but it is a 
 
1 86 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 question quite outside the strictly home politics of this 
 unpretending chronicle. We are only concerned with 
 the obvious fact that Germans settle in far countries in 
 much smaller numbers than we do, and that those who 
 go abroad mostly choose the British flag and avoid 
 their own. It does not occur as easily to a German as 
 to an Englishman that he may better his fortunes in 
 another part of the world, or if he is an official that he 
 will apply for a post in Asia or Africa. He wants to 
 stay near the Rhine or the Spree where he was born, 
 and to bring up his children there ; and with the help 
 of the State and his wife he contrives to do this on an 
 extraordinary small income. The State, as we have 
 seen, almost takes his children off his hands from the time 
 they are six years old. It brings them up for nothing, 
 or next to nothing ; in cases of need it partially feeds 
 and clothes them, it even washes them. Some English 
 humorist has said that a German need only give him- 
 self the trouble to be born ; his government does the 
 rest. But first his mother and then his wife do a good 
 deal. They are like the woman in Proverbs who 
 worked willingly with her hands, rose while it was 
 night, saw well to the ways of her household, and ate 
 not the bread of idleness. 
 
 I have before me the household accounts of several 
 German families living on what we should call small 
 incomes ; and they show more exactly than any 
 vague praise can do the prodigies of thrift accomplished 
 by people obliged to economise, and at the same time 
 to present a respectable appearance. The first one is 
 the budget of a small official living with a wife and two 
 children in a little town where a flat on the fourth or 
 fifth floor can be had at a low rent : 
 
EXPENSES OF LIFE 187 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Rent . . . . 20 o o 
 
 Fuel . . . . 3 10 o 
 
 Light . . . . I 10 o 
 
 Clothes for the man . . .300 
 
 Clothes for the wife . . .200 
 
 Clothes for the children . . .100 
 
 Boots for the man . . .100 
 
 Boots for the wife and children . .150 
 
 Repairs to boots . . . . o 17 6 
 
 Washing and house repairs . .300 
 
 Doctor . . . . .200 
 
 Newspaper . . . . o 12 o 
 
 Charwoman . . . .300 
 
 Taxes . . . . . 2 10 o 
 
 Postage . . . . .140 
 
 Insurances . . . . 2 10 o 
 
 Amusements . . . .300 
 
 Housekeeping . . . . 45 o o 
 
 Sundries . . . . .316 
 
 ;lOO O O 
 
 The fuel allowed in this budget consists of 30 cwt. of 
 Steinkohlen at I mark 15 pf. the cwt., 30 cwt. of Braun- 
 kohlen at 70 pf. the cwt, and 4 cwt. of kindling at I mark 
 10 pf. the cwt. This quantity, 3 tons without the 
 kindling, would have to be used most sparingly to last 
 through a long rigorous German winter, as well as for 
 cooking and washing in summer. The amount set 
 apart for lights allows for one lamp in the living room 
 and two small ones in the passage and kitchen. The 
 man may have a new suit every year, one year in winter 
 and the next year in summer, and his suit may cost 
 2, I os. His great-coat also is to cost 2, ios., but 
 he can't have a new suit the year he buys one, and it 
 should last him at least four years. The ten shillings 
 left is for all his other clothes except boots, and pre- 
 sumably for all his personal expenses, including tobacco, 
 so he had better not spend it all at once. His wife 
 
1 88 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 performs greater miracles still, for she has to buy a 
 winter gown and a summer gown, a hat and gloves, for 
 her 2. These are not fancy figures. The miracle is 
 performed by tens of thousands of German women every 
 year. They buy a few yards of cheap stuff and get in 
 a sewing-woman to make it up, for as a rule they are 
 not nearly as clever and capable as Englishwomen 
 about making things for themselves. Your English 
 maid-servant will buy a blouse length at a sale for a 
 few pence, make it up smartly, and wear it out in a 
 month of Sundays. Your German she-official will have 
 a blouse made for her, and it will probably be hideous ; 
 but she will wear it so carefully that it lasts her two 
 years. Under-raiment she will never want to buy, as 
 she will have brought a life-long supply to her home 
 at marriage. You easily figure the children who are 
 dressed on twenty marks a year, the girl in a shoddy 
 tartan made in a fashion of fifty years ago with the 
 "waist" hooked behind, and the boy in some snuff- 
 coloured mixture floridly braided. But the interesting 
 revelation of this small official budget is in its carefully 
 planned fare made out for a fortnight in summer and 
 a fortnight in winter. In winter the Hausfrau may 
 spend about 1 73. a week on her food and in summer 195. 
 That leaves only 2s. a month for the extra days of the 
 month, and for small expenses, such as soda, matches, 
 blacking, and condiments. Breakfast may cost sixpence 
 a day, and for this there is to be | litre of milk, 4 small 
 white rolls, Ib. rye bread, 2 oz. of butter, I oz. of 
 coffee. Nothing is set down for sugar, and I think that 
 most German families of this class would not use sugar, 
 and would eat their bread without butter. On Sunday 
 they have a goose for dinner, and pay 45. 6d. for it, and 
 though 43. 6d. is not much to pay for a goose, it seems 
 an extravagant dish for this family, until you discover 
 
EXPENSES OF LIFE 189 
 
 that they are still dining on it on Wednesday. Not 
 only has the Hausfrau brought home this costly bird., 
 but she has laid in a whole pound of lard to roast with 
 it, white bread for stuffing, and cabbage for a vegetable. 
 Pudding is not considered necessary after goose, and 
 for supper there is bread and milk for the children, and 
 bread, butter, cheese, and beer for the parents. On Mon- 
 day they have a rest from goose, and dine on gehacktes 
 Schweinefleisch. German butchers sell raw minced meat 
 very cheaply, and the Hausfrau would probably get as 
 much as she wanted for three-halfpence. On Tuesday 
 they get back to the goose, and have a hash of the 
 wings, neck, and liver with potatoes. For supper, rice 
 cooked with milk and cinnamon. Germans use cinna- 
 mon rather as the Spaniards use garlic. They seem to 
 think it improves everything, and they eat quantities of 
 milky rice strewn with it. On Wednesday my family 
 has soup for dinner, a solid soup made of goose, rice, 
 and a pennyworth of carrots. For supper there is 
 sausage, bread, and beer. By the way, this official is 
 not really representative, for he spends nothing on 
 tobacco, and only a penny every other day on beer 
 He cannot have been a Bavarian. His wife gives him 
 cod with mustard sauce on Thursday, Sauerkraut and 
 shin of beef on Friday, and on Saturday lentil soup 
 with sausages, an excellent dish when properly cooked 
 for those who want solid nourishing food. On the 
 following Sunday 3 pounds of beef appears, and potato 
 dumplings with stewed fruit, another good German 
 mixture if the dumplings are as light as they should be 
 The husband has them warmed up for supper next day 
 One day he has bacon and vegetables for dinner, and 
 another day only apple sauce and pancakes, but at 
 every midday meal throughout the fortnight he has 
 carefully planned food on which his wife spends con- 
 
190 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 siderable time and trouble. He never comes home 
 from his work on a winter's day to have a mutton bone 
 and watery potatoes set before him. In summer the 
 bill of fare provides soups made with wine, milk, or cider ; 
 sometimes there are curds for supper, and if they have 
 a chicken, rice and stewed fruit are eaten with it. But 
 a chicken only costs this Hausfrau i mark 20 pf., so it 
 must have been a small one. I have often bought 
 pigeons for 25pf. apiece in Germany, and stuffed in the 
 Bavarian way with egg and bread crumbs they are 
 good eating. Fruit is extremely cheap and plentiful 
 in many parts of Germany, but not everywhere. We 
 have Heine's word for it that the plums grown by the 
 wayside between Jena and Weimar are good, for most 
 of us know his story of his first interview with Goethe ; 
 how he had looked forward to the meeting with ecstasy 
 and reflection, and how when he was face to face with 
 the great man all he found to say was a word in praise 
 of the plums he had eaten as he walked. In the fruit- 
 growing districts most of the roads are set with an 
 avenue of fruit trees, and so law-abiding are the boys 
 of Germany, and so plentiful is fruit in its season, that 
 no one seems to steal from them. I have talked with 
 elderly Germans, who remembered buying 3 pounds 
 of cherries for 6 kreuzers, a little more than a penny, 
 when they were boys. But those days are over. The 
 small sweet-water grapes from the vineyards of South 
 Germany are to be had for the asking where they are 
 grown, and apricots are plentiful in some districts, and 
 the little golden plums called Mirabel/en that are dried 
 in quantities and make the best winter compote there 
 is. When I see English grocers' shops loaded up with 
 dried American apples and apricots that are not worth 
 eating, however carefully they are cooked, I always 
 wonder why we do not import Mirabellen instead. 
 
EXPENSES OF LIFE 191 
 
 Sweetbreads in the Berlin markets were about I mark 
 10 pf. each last year, small tongues were I mark 10 pf. 
 Morscheln, a poor kind of fungus much used in Germany, 
 were 65 pf. a pound, real mushrooms were I mark 50 pf., 
 and the dried ones used for flavouring sauces were the 
 same price. Butter and milk are usually about the 
 same price as with us, but eggs are cheaper. You get 
 twenty for a mark still in spring, and I remember 
 making an English plumcake once in a Bavarian village 
 and being charged 6 pf. for the three eggs I used. A 
 rye loaf weighing 4 pounds costs 50 pf., the little white 
 rolls cost 3 pf. each. In Berlin last year vegetables 
 were nearly as dear as in London, but in many parts 
 of Germany they are much cheaper. I know of one 
 housewife who fed her family largely on vegetables, and 
 would not spend more than 10 pf. a day on them, but 
 she lived in a small country town where green stuff 
 was a drug in the market. Asparagus is cheaper than 
 here, for it costs 35 pf. to 40 pf. a pound, and is eaten 
 in such quantities that even an asparagus lover gets 
 tired of it. Meat has risen terribly in price of late 
 years. In the open market you can get fillet of beef 
 for i mark 60 pf., sirloin for 90 pf., good cuts of mutton 
 for 90 pf. to I mark, and veal for I mark, but all these 
 prices are higher at a butcher's shop. Fillet of beef, 
 for instance, is 2 marks 40 pf. a pound there. 
 
 The budget of a family living on 250 a year does 
 not call for so much comment as the smaller one, 
 because 250 is a fairly comfortably income in 
 Germany. Either a schoolmaster or a soldier must 
 have risen in his profession before he gets it; but 
 the following estimate is made out for a business 
 man who does not get a house free or any other aid 
 from outside : 
 
192 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Rent . . . . . 50 o o 
 
 Fuel . . . . 7 10 o 
 
 Light . . . . .500 
 
 Clothes husband . . .600 
 
 wife . . . .400 
 
 ,, children . . . 2 10 o 
 
 Shoes ... .400 
 
 School fees . . . .500 
 
 Washing . . . .500 
 
 Repairs to linen . . 2 10 o 
 
 Doctor and dentist . . .500 
 
 Newspapers and magazines . .200 
 
 Servant's wages . . .900 
 Servant's insurance and Christmas present 200 
 
 Taxes . . . . .600 
 
 Postage . . . . . I lo O 
 
 Insurances . . . .500 
 
 Housekeeping . . . . 90 o o 
 
 Amusements and travelling . 25 o o 
 
 Christmas and presents . . .1000 
 
 Sundries . . . .300 
 
 250 o o 
 
 On examining this budget it will occur to most 
 people that the poor Hausfrau might spend a little 
 more on her clothes and a little less on her presents, 
 and as a matter of fact even in Germany, where 
 Christmas is a burden as well as a pleasure, this would 
 be done. The next budget is the most interesting, 
 because it is not an ideal one drawn up for anyone's 
 guidance, but is taken without the alteration of one 
 penny from the beautifully kept account book of a 
 friend. There were no children in the family, so 
 nothing appears for school fees or children's clothes. 
 The household consisted of husband and wife and one 
 maid. They lived in one of the largest and dearest of 
 German cities, and the husband's work as well as their 
 social position forced certain expenses on them. For 
 
EXPENSES OF LIFE 
 
 193 
 
 instance, they had to live in a good street and on the 
 ground floor ; and they had to entertain a good deal. 
 
 M. Pf. 
 
 Bread . . . . .180 
 
 Meat . . . . 310 95 
 
 Fish and poultry . . . 98 55 
 
 Aufschnitt . . . . 67 25 
 
 Potatoes . . . . 19 10 
 
 Vegetables . . . . . no 50 
 
 Fruit . . . . 87 95 
 
 Eggs 83 90 
 
 Milk . . . . . 121 85 
 
 Butter ... . 195 
 
 Lard . . . . 36 55 
 
 Flour, Gries, etc. . . . . 25 60 
 
 Sugar and treacle . . . 66 20 
 
 Groceries . . . . . 22 50 
 
 Coffee 67 
 
 Tea and chocolate . . . 17 95 
 
 Drinks ..... 159 10 
 
 Lights 30 55 
 
 Washing . . . . . 126 80 
 
 Laundress . . . . . 32 25 
 
 Ice . . . . . . 10 20 
 
 Coal and wood . . . . 170 10 
 
 Turf and other fuel . . . . 159 25 
 
 Matches . . . . .3 
 
 Cleaning . . . . .60 
 
 Furniture . . . . 4 55 
 
 Repairs . . . . . 19 50 
 
 Crockery and kitchenware . . -38 
 
 Repairs ... .49 
 
 China and glass . . . 3 5 
 
 Clothes husband . . . . 181 20 
 
 wife . . 452 85 
 
 Boots husband . . . . 24 10 
 
 wife 60 35 
 
 Linen . . . . 17 5 
 
 Charities . . . . . 232 20 
 
 Rent . ... 2150 
 
 Rent of husband's share of professional 
 
 rooms 318 70 
 
 Carry forward 5839 45 
 
194 
 
 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 
 
 M. Pf. 
 
 Brought 
 
 forward 
 
 5839 45 
 
 Fares 
 
 
 46 10 
 
 Books 
 
 
 64 25 
 
 Writing materials 
 
 
 30 50 
 
 Charwoman and tips 
 
 
 85 95 
 
 Wages and servants' presents 
 
 
 335 50 
 
 Papers 
 
 
 35 25 
 
 Carpenter 
 
 
 125 - 
 
 Tobacco and cigars . 
 
 
 165 90 
 
 Sundries 
 
 
 39 35 
 
 Photography and fishing tackle 
 
 
 141 10 
 
 Music lessons 
 
 
 15 10 
 
 Medicine 
 
 
 13 80 
 
 Hairdresser . 
 
 
 2 40 
 
 Presents family 
 
 
 291 75 
 
 ,, friends . 
 
 
 119 
 
 Amusements 
 
 
 137 25 
 
 Travelling 
 
 
 736 40 
 
 Stamps 
 
 
 99 65 
 
 Entertaining (at Home) 
 
 
 232 
 
 Charities 1 
 
 
 24 
 
 Subscriptions 
 
 
 119 80 
 
 Fire insurance 
 
 
 12 30 
 
 Old age insurance . 
 
 
 10 40 
 
 8722 20 
 
 There are some interesting points about this budget 
 as compared with an English one of 436. It will 
 be seen that although meat is so dear in Germany 
 the weekly butcher's bill for three people was only 6s., 
 fish and poultry together only 2s., and the ham sausage, 
 etc. from the provision shop under is. 6d. a week. 
 The washing bill for the year is low, because nearly 
 everything was washed at home, and dear as fuel is in 
 Germany this household spent about 16, where an 
 English one presenting the same front would spend 
 20 to 25. Observe, too, the amount spent on 
 servants' wages by people who lived in a large charm- 
 
 1 Probably private charities. 
 
EXPENSES OF LIFE 195 
 
 ingly furnished flat, and had a long visiting list. The 
 wife, too, a very pretty woman and always well dressed, 
 spent much less on her toilet than anyone would have 
 guessed from its finish and variety, for she came from 
 one of the German cities where women do dress well. 
 There is nearly as much difference amongst German 
 cities in this respect as there is amongst nations. 
 Berlin is far behind either Hamburg or Frankfurt, for 
 instance. The middle-class women of Berlin have an 
 extraordinary affection all through the summer season 
 ,for collarless blouses, bastard tartans, and white cotton 
 gloves with thumbs but no fingers. In England the 
 force of custom drives women to uncover their necks in 
 the evening, whether it becomes them or not, and it is 
 not a custom for which sensible elderly women can 
 have much to say. But pneumonia blouses have never 
 been universal wear in any country, and it is impossible 
 to explain their apparently irresistible attraction for all 
 ages and sizes of women in the Berlin electric cars. 
 Those who were not wearing pneumonia blouses a year 
 ago were wearing Reform- Kleider, shapeless ill-cut 
 garments usually of grey tweed. The oddest combina- 
 tion, and quite a common one, was a sack-like Reform- 
 Kleid, with a saucy little coloured bolero worn over it, 
 fingerless gloves, and a madly tilted beflowered hat 
 perched on a dowdy coiffure. These are rude remarks 
 to make about the looks of foreign ladies, but the 
 Reform- Kleid is just as hideous and absurd in Germany 
 now as our bilious green draperies were on the wrong 
 people twenty-five years ago, and I am sure every 
 foreigner who came to England must have laughed at 
 them. On the whole, I would say of German women 
 in general what a Frenchwoman once said to me in 
 the most matter-of-fact tone of Englishwomen, Elles 
 s'habillent si mat. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 HOSPITALITY 
 
 IF a German cannot afford to ask you to dinner he 
 asks you to supper, and makes his supper inviting. 
 At least, he does if he is sensible, and if he lives where 
 an inexpensive form of entertainment is in vogue. 
 But even in Germany people are not sensible every- 
 where. The headmaster of a school in a small East 
 Prussian town told me that his colleagues, the higher 
 officials and other persons of local importance, felt 
 bound to entertain their friends at least once a year, 
 and that their way was to invite everyone together to 
 a dinner given at the chief hotel in the town ; and 
 that to do this a family would stint itself for months 
 beforehand. He spoke with knowledge, so I record 
 what he said ; but I have never been amongst Germans 
 who were hospitable in this painful way. Hotels are 
 used for large entertainments, just as they are in 
 England, but most people receive their friends in their 
 homes, and only hire servants for some special function, 
 like a wedding or a public dinner. 
 
 The form of hospitality most popular in England 
 now, the visit of two or three days' duration, is hardly 
 known in Germany, and I believe that they have not 
 begun yet to supply their guests with small cakes of 
 soap labelled " Visitors," and meant to last for a week- 
 end but not longer. In towns no one dreams of having 
 
 196 
 
HOSPITALITY 197 
 
 a constant succession of staying guests, and either in 
 town or country when a German family expects a 
 guest at all it is more often than not for the whole 
 summer or winter. You do not find a German girl 
 arranging, as her English cousin will, for a round of 
 visits, fitting in dates, writing here and there to know 
 if people can take her in, and by the same post 
 answering those who are planning a pilgrimage for 
 themselves and wish to be taken. A visit in Germany 
 is not the flighty affair it is with us. 
 
 " This winter," says your friend, " my niece from 
 Posen will be with us," and presently the niece arrives 
 and stays about three months. There is rarely more 
 than one spare room on a flat, and that is often a room 
 not easily spared. In country houses there are rows 
 of rooms, but they are not filled by an everlasting 
 procession of guests in the English way. When you 
 stay in a country house at home you wonder how your 
 hosts ever get anything done, and whether they don't 
 sometimes wish they had a few days to themselves. 
 To be sure, English hosts go about their business and 
 leave you to yours, more than Germans think polite. 
 I once spent six weeks, quite an ordinary visit as to 
 length, with some friends who had several grown-up 
 children. It was a most cheerful friendly household, 
 but one day I got into a corner near the stove, rather 
 glad for a change to be myself for a while with a novel 
 for company. When I had been there a little time 
 the second daughter looked in and at once apologised. 
 
 " Mamma sent me to see," she explained, " she 
 feared you were by yourself." 
 
 It is not easy to tell your German hosts that you 
 like and wish to be by yourself sometimes ; and if you 
 say that you are used to it in England you won't 
 impress them. The English are so inhospitable and 
 
198 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 unfriendly, they will say, for that is one of the many 
 popular myths that are believed about us. I have 
 been told of a German lady who has lived here most 
 of her life, and complains to her German friends that 
 she has never spent a night under an English roof; 
 but then, she chooses to associate exclusively with 
 Germans, whose roofs she refuses to regard as English 
 ones, even when they are in Kensington ; and she 
 cherishes such an invincible prejudice against the born 
 English that she lives amongst them year after year 
 without making a friend. It would be quite simple to 
 perform the same feat in Paris, or even in Berlin, 
 although there you would not have such a large foreign 
 colony to stand between you and the detestable natives. 
 The real difficulty in writing about German hospit- 
 ality is to find and express the ways in which it differs 
 from our own ; and certainly these lie little in qualities 
 of kindness and generosity. Amongst both nations, if 
 you have a friendly disposition you will find friends 
 easily, and receive kindness on all sides. Perhaps, as 
 one concrete instance is worth many assertions, I may 
 describe a visit I paid many years ago to a family who 
 invited me because a marriage had recently connected 
 us. I had seen some of the family at the wedding, and 
 had been surprised to receive a warm invitation, not for 
 a week-end and a cake of visitors' soap, but for the rest 
 of the winter ; six weeks or two months at least. The 
 family living at home consisted of the parents, a grown- 
 up son and two grown-up daughters. Some of them 
 met me at the station, for the German does not breathe 
 who would let a guest arrive or depart alone. Your 
 friends often give you flowers when you arrive, and 
 invariably when you go away. I cannot remember 
 about the flowers on this occasion, but I remember 
 vividly that the day after my arrival the two married 
 
HOSPITALITY 199 
 
 daughters living in the same town both called on me 
 and brought me flowers. Week after week, too, they 
 made it their pleasure to entertain me just as kindly as 
 my immediate hosts, taking me to concerts or the opera, 
 asking me to dinner or supper, including me on every 
 occasion in the family festivities, which were numerous 
 and lively. In some ways my hosts found me a dis- 
 appointing guest, and said so. The trouble was that I 
 liked plain rolls and butter for breakfast, while the 
 daughters for days before I came had baked every size 
 and variety of rich cake for me to eat first thing in the 
 morning with my coffee. I never could eat enough to 
 please anyone either. You never can in Germany, try 
 as you may. Yet it was hungry weather, for the Rhine 
 was frozen hard all the time I was there, and we used 
 to skate every day in the harbour when the daughters 
 of the house had finished their morning's work. Two 
 maids were kept on the flat, but, like most German 
 servants, they were supposed to require constant super- 
 vision, and when a room was turned out the young 
 ladies in their morning wrappers helped to do it. They 
 helped with the ironing too and the cooking, and 
 did all the mending of linen and clothes. " A child's 
 time belongs to her parents," said the father one day 
 when the elder daughter wanted to skate, but was told 
 that she could not be spared. " I've had a heavenly 
 time," said a girl friend who had been laid up for some 
 weeks with a sprained ankle ; " I've had nothing to do 
 but read and amuse myself." The household work, 
 however, was usually done before the one o'clock dinner, 
 and the afternoon was given up to skating, walks, and 
 visits. There were not so many formal calls paid as 
 in England, but there was a constant interchange of 
 hospitality amongst the members of the family, the 
 kind of intimate unceremonious entertaining described 
 
200 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 in Miss Austen's novels. Every time one of the 
 many small children had a birthday there was a 
 feast of chocolate and cakes, a gathering of the whole 
 clan. The birthday cake had a sugared Spruch on 
 it, and a little lighted candle for each year of the 
 child's age, and the birthday table had a present on it 
 from everyone who came to the party, and many who 
 did not. Once a week the married daughters and 
 their husbands came to supper with my hosts, and 
 every day when they were not coming to supper they 
 called on their mother, and if she could coax them to 
 stay drank their afternoon coffee with her. Sometimes 
 one or two strangers were asked to coffee, for this 
 household was an old-fashioned one, and gave you 
 good coffee rather than wishy-washy tea. It made a 
 point of honour of a Meringuetorte when strangers 
 came, and of the little chocolate cream cakes Germans 
 call Othellos. But it must not be supposed that one 
 or two strangers constitute a Kaffee-Klatsch, that 
 celebrated form of entertainment where at every sip 
 a reputation dies. A genuine Klatsch was, however, 
 given during my stay by a young married woman 
 who wished to entertain her friends and display her 
 furniture. About twenty ladies were invited, and when 
 they had assembled they were solemnly conducted 
 through every room of the flat from the drawing-room 
 to the spick-and-span kitchen, where every pan was of 
 shining copper and every cloth embroidered with the 
 bride's monogram. The procession as it filed through 
 the rooms chattered like magpies, for except myself 
 every member of it had been to school with the bride, 
 and had helped to adorn her home with embroidered 
 chair backs, cushions, cloths, newspaper stands, foot- 
 stools, duster bags, and suchlike, all of which they now 
 had the pleasure of seeing in the places suitable to 
 
HOSPITALITY 20 1 
 
 them. By the time we sat down in the dining-room 
 to a table loaded with cakes, the slight frost of arrival 
 had melted away. The strange Englishwoman no 
 longer acted as a wet blanket, and when she tried to 
 converse with her neighbours she found, as she still 
 finds at German entertainments, that she could only do 
 so by screaming at the top of her voice as you do in 
 England in a high wind or in the sound of loud 
 machinery. Everyone was in the highest spirits, and 
 the collective noise they made was amazing. In 
 ^Germany, when actors play English parts or when 
 people in private life put on English manners, the first 
 thing they do is to lower their voices as if they had 
 met to bury a friend. This is the way our natural 
 manner strikes them, while their natural manner strikes 
 us as easy and jolly, but tiring to the voice and after a 
 time to the spirit. There are quiet Germans, but when 
 they sit at a good man's table they must certainly 
 either shout or be left out of all that goes on. At a 
 Kaffee-Klatsch you either shout or whisper, you eat 
 every sort of rich cake presented to you if you can, you 
 drink chocolate or coffee with whipped cream. Nowa- 
 days you would often find tea provided instead. When 
 the hostess finds she cannot persuade anyone to eat 
 another cake, she leads her guests back to the drawing- 
 room, and the Klatsch goes on. There is often music 
 as well as gossip, and before you are allowed to depart 
 there are more refreshments, ices, sweetmeats, fruit, 
 little glasses of lemonade or Bowie. When you get 
 home you do not want any supper, and you are quite 
 hoarse, though you have only been to a simple Kaffee- 
 Klatsch without Schleppe. Your friends tell you that 
 when they were young a Kaffee-Klatsch mit Schleppe 
 was the favourite form of entertaining, and lasted the 
 whole afternoon and evening. Men were asked to 
 
202 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 come in when the Klatsch was over and a supper was 
 provided. Those must have been proud and bustling 
 days for a Hausfrau with one " girl." 
 
 To be asked to dinner or supper in Germany may 
 mean anything. Either form of invitation varies both 
 in hour and kind more than it does in England ; but 
 unless you are asked to a dinner that precedes a dance 
 you hardly ever need evening dress. Some years ago 
 you would have written that people never dressed for 
 dinner in Germany except when the dinner celebrated 
 a betrothal, a wedding, or some equally important and 
 unusual event. But it has become the fashion in 
 Berlin lately to dress for large dinners and evening 
 entertainments. No rule can be laid down for the 
 guidance of English visitors to Germany, because what 
 you wear must depend partly on the dinner hour and 
 partly on the ways of your hosts and their friends. 
 Last year when I was in Berlin I accepted a formal 
 invitation sent a fortnight beforehand to a dinner 
 given on a Sunday at five o'clock. As the host was 
 a distinguished scientific man who had just returned 
 from a journey round the world, it promised to be an 
 interesting entertainment ; and there were, in fact, some 
 of the most celebrated members of the University 
 present. They were all in morning dress, and their 
 womenfolk wore what we should call Sunday frocks. 
 The dinner was beautifully cooked and served, and 
 was not oppressively long. Soup began it of course, 
 roast veal with various vegetables followed, fish came 
 next, lovely little grey-blue fish better to look at than 
 to eat, then chicken, ice pudding, and dessert. There 
 were flowers on the table, but not as many as we should 
 have with the same opportunities, for the house was 
 set in an immense garden ; and all down the long 
 narrow table there were bottles of wine and mineral 
 
HOSPITALITY 203 
 
 water. When the champagne came, and that is served 
 at a later stage in Germany than it is with us, speeches 
 of congratulation were made to the host on his safe 
 return, and every guest in reach clinked their glasses 
 with his. After dinner men and women rose together 
 in the German way, and drank coffee in the drawing- 
 room. The men lighted cigars. A little later in the 
 evening slender glasses of beer and lemonade were 
 brought round, and just before everyone left at nine 
 o'clock there was tea and a variety of little cakes and 
 "sandwiches, not our double sandwiches, but tiny single 
 slices of buttered roll, each with its scrap of caviare or 
 smoked salmon. 
 
 A ball supper or a Christmas supper in Germany 
 consists of three or four courses served separately, and 
 all hot except the sweet, which is usually Gefrorenes. 
 Salmon, roast beef or veal, venison or chicken, and 
 then ice would be an ordinary menu, and every course 
 would be divided into portions and handed round on 
 long narrow dishes. In most German towns you are 
 often asked to supper, and very seldom to dinner. 
 You never know beforehand what sort of meal to 
 expect unless you have been to the house before. 
 In some houses it will be hot, in others cold. In 
 Berlin, supper usually offers you a dish made with 
 eggs and mushrooms, eggs and asparagus, or some 
 combination of the kind, and after this the usual 
 variety of ham and sausages fetched from the provision 
 shop. Tea and beer are drunk at this meal in most 
 houses. Sometimes Rhine wine is on the table too. 
 The sweets are often small fruit tartlets served with 
 whipped cream. One menu I remember distinctly, 
 because it was so quaint and full of surprises. We 
 began with huge quantities of asparagus and poached 
 eggs eaten together. Then we had Pumpernickel^ 
 
204 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 Gruyere cheese and radishes, and for a third course 
 vanilla ice. That was the end of the supper, but later 
 in the evening, just before we left, in came an enormous 
 dish covered with gooseberry tartlets, and we had to 
 eat them, for somehow in Germany it seems ungrateful 
 and unfriendly not to eat and drink what is provided. 
 
 After dinner or supper everyone wishes everyone 
 else Mahlzeit, which is to say, " I wish you a good 
 digestion." Sometimes people only bow as they say 
 it, but more often they shake hands. I know an 
 Englishman who was much puzzled by this ceremony 
 at his first German dinner-party. He saw everyone 
 shaking hands as if they were about to disperse the 
 instant the feast was over, and when his host came 
 to him with a smiling face, took his hand and mur- 
 mured Mahlzeit) he summoned what German he had 
 at his command and answered Gute Nacht. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 GERMAN SUNDAYS 
 
 THERE was to be singing in the forest on Sunday 
 afternoon, we were told, when we arrived at our 
 little Black Forest town ; and we were on no account 
 to miss it. We did not want to miss anything, for 
 whenever we looked out of our windows or strolled 
 through the streets we were entertained and enchanted. 
 From the hotel we could see women and girls pass to 
 and fro all day with the great wooden buckets they 
 carried on their backs and filled at the well close by. 
 As dusk fell the oldest woman in the community 
 hobbled out, let down the iron chains slung across the 
 street, and lighted the oil lamps swinging from them. 
 All the gossips of the place gathered at the well of 
 evenings, and throughout the day barefooted children 
 played there. Behind the main street there were 
 gabled houses with ancient wooden balconies and 
 gardens crammed with pinks. The population mostly 
 sat out of doors after dark, and as it was hot weather 
 no one went to bed early. Even in the dead of night 
 the timber waggons drawn by oxen passed through the 
 town, and the driver did his best to wake us by crack- 
 ing his long whip. For though a Black Forest town is 
 mediaeval in its ways, it is not restful. It may soothe 
 you by suggestion, the people seem so leisurely and 
 
 the life so easy going ; but there is not an hour in the 
 
 205 
 
206 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 twenty-four when you are secure from noise. The 
 
 Sunday in question began with the bustle occasioned 
 
 in a country inn by an unusual strain on its resources. 
 
 There must be an extra good dinner for the expected 
 
 influx of guests, said the landlord's niece, who kept 
 
 house for him, while the wife and daughters ran a 
 
 second hotel higher up the valley. We escaped to the 
 
 forest, where the morning hours of a hot June day were 
 
 fresh and scented, and we were sorry we had to return 
 
 to the hotel for a long hot midday dinner. When it 
 
 was over, we sat in the garden and wondered why 
 
 people held a festival on the top of a hill on such a 
 
 sleepy afternoon. However, when the time came we 
 
 joined the leisurely procession making the ascent. An 
 
 hour's stroll took us to the concert hall, a forest glade 
 
 where people sat about in groups waiting for the music 
 
 to begin. Barrels of beer had been rolled up here, and 
 
 children were selling Kringel^ crisp twists of bread 
 
 sprinkled with salt. There were more children present 
 
 than adults, and we observed, as you nearly always 
 
 will in Germany, that though they belonged to the 
 
 poorer classes they wore neat clothes and had quiet, 
 
 modest manners. The older people often let them 
 
 drink out of their glasses, for it was a thirsty afternoon, 
 
 and when the singing began the children joined in 
 
 some of the songs. The occasion of the festival was 
 
 the friendly meeting of several choirs, and they sang 
 
 fine anthems as well as Volkslieder. The effect of the 
 
 music in the heart of the forest was enchanting, and we 
 
 stayed till the end. These choral competitions or 
 
 reunions often take place on a Sunday in Germany, and 
 
 in summer are often held in an inn garden. They 
 
 bring some custom to the innkeeper, but drunkenness 
 
 and disorder are almost unknown. In fact, all the 
 
 cases of drunkenness I have seen in Germany have been 
 
GERMAN SUNDAYS 207 
 
 in the Munich comic papers. You never by any 
 chance hear of it as you do in England amongst 
 people you know, and you may spend hours at the 
 Berlin Zoo on a Whit-Monday and see no one who is 
 not sober. University students get drunk and have 
 rights with innkeepers and policemen, but that is 
 etiquette rather than vice. Next day they suffer from 
 Katzenjammer, but feel that they are upholding ancient 
 tradition. Real intemperance is found almost entirely 
 amongst the dregs of the big cities and the lowest 
 class of peasants. 
 
 In Berlin the better class of artisans and small 
 tradespeople escape from their flats on Sundays to their 
 allotment gardens. You see whole tracts of these 
 gardens on the outskirts of the city, and many of them 
 have some kind of summer house or rough shelter. 
 Here the family spends the whole day in fresher air, 
 and presumably finds out how to grow the simpler 
 kinds of flowers and vegetables. Those who have no 
 garden and can afford a few pence for fares go farther 
 afield. They carry food for the day in tin satchels, or 
 rolls that look as if they ought to accompany butterfly 
 nets and contain entomological specimens. But they 
 are usually in the hands of a stout alpaca-clad 
 middle-class mater-familias, who looks rather anxious 
 and flustered while she herds her flock and hunts for a 
 garden with the announcement, " Hier konnen Familien 
 Kaffee kochen." There for a trifling indemnity she 
 can be accommodated with seats, cups and saucers, 
 and hot water ; just as people can in an English tea- 
 garden. Provisions she has with her in her Pickenick 
 Rolle. If fate takes you to Potsdam on a fine 
 summer Sunday, you will think that the whole 
 bourgeoisie of Berlin has elected to come by the same 
 train and steamer, and that everyone but you has 
 
208 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 brought food for the day in a green tin. You need 
 not expect to find a seat either in the train or the 
 steamer at certain hours of the day, and as you stand 
 wedged in the crowd on the dangerously overladen 
 boat, and look about you as best you can at the chain 
 of wooded lakes, you wonder how it is that such 
 overcrowding is permitted in a police-governed land. 
 At home we take such things for granted as part of 
 our system or want of system. But in Germany the 
 moment you cross the frontier a thousand trifles make 
 you feel that you are a unit in an army, drilled and 
 kept under by the bureaucracy and the police. It 
 surprises you to see an unmanageable crowd in a train 
 or on a steamer, much as it would surprise you to see 
 soldiers swarm at will into a troopship. You expect 
 them to march precisely, each man to his place. And 
 in Germany this nearly always happens in civil life ; 
 while even on a Sunday or a public holiday the mob 
 behaves itself. At the Berlin Zoo, for instance, there 
 are such masses of people every Sunday that you see 
 nothing but people. It is impossible, or rather would 
 not be agreeable, to force your way through the 
 crowd surrounding the cages. But the people are inter- 
 esting, and it is to see them that you have ventured 
 here. You soon find, however, that it is not a venture 
 at all. No one will offend you, no one is drunken or 
 riotous. The gardens are packed with decent folk, 
 mostly of the lower middle classes, and the only 
 unseemly thing you see them do is to eat small hot 
 sausages with their fingers in the open-air restaurants. 
 
 Sunday is the great day of the week at German 
 theatres. In all the large towns there are afternoon 
 performances at popular prices, and this means that 
 people who can pay a few pence for a seat can see all 
 the great classical plays and most of the successful 
 
GERMAN SUNDAYS 209 
 
 modern ones ; and they can hear many of the great 
 operas as well as a variety of charming light ones 
 never heard in this country. On one Sunday afternoon 
 in Berlin, Hoffmann's Erzahlungen was played at one 
 theatre, and at others Gorky's Nachtasyl, Tolstoy's 
 Power of Darkness, Hauptmann's Versunkene Glocke, the 
 well known military play Zapfenstreich, and Lortzing's 
 light opera Der Waffenschmied. The star players 
 and singers do not usually appear at these popular 
 performances, and the Wagnerian Ring has, as far as I 
 know, never yet been given. But on Sunday afternoons 
 all through the winter the playhouses are crowded with 
 people who cannot pay week-day prices, and yet are 
 intelligent enough to enjoy a fairly good performance 
 of Hamlet or Egmont ; who are musical and choose a 
 Mozart opera ; or who are interested in the problems 
 of life presented by Ibsen, Gorky, Tolstoy, or their own 
 great fellow-countryman Gerhardt Hauptmann. When 
 summer comes, as long as the theatres are open the 
 whole audience streams out between the acts to have 
 coffee or beer in the garden, or when there is no 
 garden, in the nearest restaurant; and then comes 
 your chance of appraising the people who take their 
 pleasure in this way. They look for the most part as 
 if they belonged to the small official and shop-keeper 
 class. If the play is a suitable one, there are sure to 
 be a great many young people present, and at the 
 State-supported theatres these Sunday performances 
 are such as young people are allowed to see. 
 
 In the evening the Sunday play or opera is always 
 one of the most important of the week; the play 
 everyone wishes to see or the opera that is most 
 attractive. A Wagner opera is often played on a 
 Sunday evening in the theatre that undertakes Wagner. 
 The smaller stages will give some old favourite, Der 
 14 
 
210 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 Freischiltz, Don Juan, Oberon, or Die Zauberflote. In 
 fact, all through the winter the upper and middle classes 
 make the play and the opera their favourite Sunday 
 pastime. The lower classes depend a good deal on 
 the public dancing saloons, which seem to do as much 
 harm as our public-houses, and to be disliked and dis- 
 couraged by all sensible Germans. 
 
 So far this account of a German Sunday suggests 
 that Germans always go from home for their weekly 
 holiday, and it is true that when Sunday comes the 
 German likes to amuse himself. But he is not 
 invariably at the play or in inn gardens. It is the 
 day when scattered members of a family will meet 
 most easily, and when the branch of the family that 
 can best do so will entertain the others. Some years 
 ago in a North German city I was often with friends 
 who had a dining-room and narrow dinner table long 
 enough for a hotel. The host and hostess, when they 
 were by themselves, dined in a smaller room, sitting 
 next to each other on the sofa ; but on Sundays their 
 children and grandchildren, some spinster cousins, some 
 Stammgdste (old friends who came every week) all met 
 in the drawing-room at five o'clock, and sat down soon 
 after to a dinner of four or five courses in a long dining- 
 room. It was a company of all ages and some variety 
 of station, and the patriarchal arrangement placed the 
 venerable and beloved host and hostess side by side at 
 the top of the room, with their friends in order of im- 
 portance to right and left of them, until you came, 
 below the salt as it were, to the Mamsells and the little 
 children at the foot of the table. But the Mamsells did 
 not leave the room when the sweets arrived. Everyone 
 ate everything, including the preserved fruits that came 
 round with the roast meat, and the pudding that 
 arrived after the cheese. In those days it was not 
 
GERMAN SUNDAYS 211 
 
 considered proper in Germany for ladies to eat cheese, 
 and no young lady would dream of taking one of the 
 little glasses of Madeira offered on a tray. They were 
 exclusively for die Herren, and always gave a fillip to 
 the conversation, which was also more or less a mascu- 
 line monopoly. Just before the end of the dinner it 
 was the business of the Mamsell belonging to the house 
 to light a little army of Vienna coffee machines standing 
 ready on the sideboard, so that coffee could be served 
 when everyone went back to the drawing-room. The 
 men smoked their cigars there too, and someone would 
 play the piano, and when no music was going on there 
 was harmless, rather dull, family conversation. The 
 spinster cousins got out their embroidery, the Mamsells 
 disappeared with the children, die Herren either 
 talked to each other or had a quiet game of Skat. 
 The women and some of the men had been to church 
 in the morning, but this did not prevent them from 
 spending the rest of the day as it pleased them. 
 
 It will be seen that from the English point of view 
 Sunday is not observed at all in Germany ; yet this 
 does not mean, as is often announced from English 
 pulpits, that the whole nation is without religion. Un- 
 belief is more widely professed than here, and many 
 people who call themselves Christians openly reject 
 certain vital doctrines of the Christian faith, are 
 Unitarians, in fact, but will not say so. But the whole 
 question of religious belief in Germany is a difficult and 
 contentious one, for according to the people you meet 
 you will be told that the nation lacks faith or possesses 
 it. If you use your own judgment you must conclude 
 that there is immensely more scepticism there than here, 
 and that there is also a good deal of vague belief, a belief, 
 that is, in a personal God and a life after death. But 
 you must admit that except in an " evangelical " set 
 
212 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 belief sits lightly on both men and women. Cer- 
 tainly it has nothing to do with the way they spend 
 Sunday, and if they go to church in the morning they 
 are as likely as not to go to the theatre in the afternoon. 
 They sew, they dance, they fiddle, they act, they travel 
 on the day of rest, more on that day than on any other, 
 and when they come to England there is nothing in 
 our national life they find so tedious and unprofitable 
 as our Sundays. They cannot understand why a 
 people with so strong a tendency to drink should make 
 the public-house the only counter attraction to the 
 church on the working man's day of leisure ; and when 
 they are in a country place, and see our groups of idle, 
 aimless young louts standing about not knowing what 
 to do, they ask why in the name of common sense 
 they should not play an outdoor game. The Idealist 
 expresses the German point of view very well in her 
 Memoirs, and in so far as she misunderstands our 
 English point of view she is only on a line with those 
 amongst us who denounce the continental Sunday as 
 an orgy of noisy and godless pleasures. She says : " I 
 had a thousand opportunities of noticing that the 
 religious life did not mean a deep life-sanctifying 
 belief, but simply one of those formulas that are a part 
 of ' respectability,' as they understand it both in the 
 family and in society. Nothing proves this better than 
 their truly shocking way of keeping holy the Sabbath 
 day, which is the very reverse of holy, inasmuch as it 
 paves the way to the heaviest boredom and slackness 
 of spirit. I have been in English houses on Sundays 
 where the gentlemen threw themselves from one easy 
 chair to the other, and proclaimed their empty state 
 of mind by their awful yawns ; where the children 
 wandered about hopelessly depressed, because they 
 might neither play nor read an amusing book, not 
 
GERMAN SUNDAYS 213 
 
 even Grimm's Fairy Tales ; where all the mental 
 enjoyment of the household consisted of so-called 
 ' sacred music,' which some young miss strummed 
 on the piano or, worse still, sang. A young girl once 
 spoke to me in severe terms about the Germans who 
 visit theatres and concerts on Sundays. I asked her 
 whether, if she put it to her conscience, she could 
 honestly say that she had holier feelings and higher 
 thoughts, whether, in fact, she felt herself a better 
 human being on her quiet Sunday, than when she 
 heard a Beethoven Symphony, saw a Shakespeare play, 
 or any other noble work of art. She confessed with 
 embarrassment that she could not say so, but never- 
 theless arrived at the logical conclusion that, for all 
 that, it was very wicked of the Germans not to keep 
 Sunday more holy. Another lady, a cultured liberal- 
 minded person, invited me once to go with her to the 
 Temple Church, one of the oldest and most beautiful 
 London churches in the city, belonging to the great 
 labyrinth of Temple Bar where English justice has its 
 seat. The music of the Temple Church is famous, 
 and I had expressed a wish to hear it. So I went with 
 my house-mate and the lady in question, and sat 
 between them. During the sermon I had great trouble 
 not to fall asleep, but fought against it for the sake of 
 decorum. To my surprise, when I glanced at my right- 
 hand neighbour I saw that she was fast asleep, and 
 when I glanced at the one on my left I saw that she 
 was asleep too. I looked about at other people, and 
 saw more than one sunk in a pious Nirvana. As we 
 left the church I asked the Englishwoman, who had 
 a strong sense of humour, whether she had slept well. 
 ' Yes/ she said, laughing, ' it did me a lot of good/ 
 ' But why do you go ? ' I said. ' Oh, my dear,' said 
 she, ' what can one do ? It has to be on Sundays.' 
 
214 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 " But this narrow Sunday observance is worse for the 
 lower than for the upper classes. At that time the 
 great dispute was just beginning as to whether the 
 people should be admitted to the Crystal Palace, to 
 museums, and suchlike institutions. The question was 
 discussed in Parliament, and decided in the negative. 
 It was feared that the churches would remain empty, 
 and that morals would suffer if the people began to 
 like heathen gods, works of art and natural curiosities, 
 better than going to church. At least, this is the only 
 explanation one can give of such a decision. The 
 churches and the public-houses remained the only 
 public places open on Sundays. The churches were 
 all very well for a few hours in the morning, but 
 what about the afternoon and evening ? Then the beer- 
 house was the only refuge for the artisan or proletarian 
 bowed down by the weight of hard work, unused and 
 untaught to wile away the idle hours of Sunday in any 
 intellectual occupation, and having no friendly attractive 
 home to make the peace of his own hearth the best 
 refreshment after the exhausting week. And so it 
 turned out : the public-houses were full to overflowing, 
 and the holiness of Sunday was only too often dese- 
 crated by the unholy sight of drunken men and, more 
 horrible still, drunken women ; but this was not all, for 
 so strong was the temptation thrust upon them, that 
 the workman's hardly earned week's wages went in 
 drink, and the children were left without bread and not 
 a penny was saved to lighten future distress. The 
 coarse animal natures of the only half-human beings 
 became coarser and more animal through the degrading 
 passion for drink that only too often has murder in 
 its train, and murder in its most terrible and brutal 
 guise!" 
 
 There is not one idea or argument in this passage 
 
GERMAN SUNDAYS 215 
 
 that I have not heard over and over again from the 
 lips of every German who has anything to say about 
 our English Sunday, and every German who has been 
 in England or heard much of English life invariably 
 attacks what he considers this weak joint in our 
 armour. 
 
 " What is the use ? " he asks, " of going to church in 
 the morning if you get drunk and beat your wife at 
 night ? " 
 
 " But the same man does not usually do both things 
 in one day," you represent to him. " One set of people 
 goes to church and keeps Sunday strictly, and another 
 set goes to public-houses and is drunk and disorderly. 
 You should try to get out of your head your idea that 
 we are all exactly alike." 
 
 " But you are exactly alike. Everyone of you 
 goes to church with a solemn face, sings psalms, and 
 comes back to his roast beef and apple-pie. All the 
 afternoon you are asleep ; and at night the streets and 
 parks are not fit for respectable people." 
 
 " At night," you explain, " all the respectable people 
 are at home eating cold beef and cold pie. The 
 others . . ." 
 
 " The others you drive to drink and fight and kill 
 by your pharisaical methods. You shut the doors of 
 your theatres and your art galleries, and you set wide 
 the doors of your drinking hells. How you can call 
 yourself a religious people it is Satanic . . ." 
 
 " But, my dear man," you say, taking a long breath, 
 " the people who goto public- houses don't want theatres 
 and art galleries. They are on too low a level." 
 
 "It is the business of the State to raise them not 
 to push them down. Besides, there is drinking much 
 drinking in England on the higher levels too, as you 
 well know . , ." 
 
216 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 " Of course I know," you say impatiently. " All I am 
 saying is that we do not bring it about by shutting the 
 British Museum on Sundays." 
 
 But next time the subject comes up for discussion 
 your German will say again, as he has said ever since 
 he could speak, that the English Sunday is anathema, 
 and a standing witness to British Heuchelei, because 
 people sing psalms in the morning and get drunk and 
 beat their wives at night. You can easily imagine the 
 Hypocrite's Progress painted by a German Hogarth, and 
 it would begin with a gentleman in a black coat and 
 tall hat on his way to church, and would end with the 
 same gentleman in the last stage of delirium tremens 
 surrounded by his slaughtered family. For in Germany 
 one of the curious deep rooted notions about us, who as 
 people go are surely indifferent honest, is that we are 
 ein falsches Volk. With the want of logic that makes 
 human nature everywhere so entertaining, a German 
 will nearly always cash a cheque offered by an English 
 stranger when he would refuse to do so for a country- 
 man. As far as one can get at it, what Germans really 
 mean by our Heuchelei when they speak without malice 
 is our regard for the unwritten social law. This is so 
 strong in us from old habit and tradition that most of 
 us do not feel the shackles ; but the stranger within 
 our gates feels it at every step. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 SPORT AND GAMES 
 
 THE word Sport has been taken into the German 
 language lately, but Germans use it when we 
 should use " hobby." " It is my sport," says an artist 
 when he shows you furniture of his own design. He 
 means that his business in life is to paint pictures, but 
 his pleasure is to invent beautiful chairs and tables. 
 When the talk turns on the absurd extreme to which 
 the Marthas of Germany carry their housekeeping 
 zeal, a German friend will turn to you in defence of 
 his countrywomen. " It is their c sport/ " says he, and 
 you understand his point of view. Yet another will 
 tell you that the English have only become sportsmen 
 in modern times, and that the Germans are rapidly 
 catching them up ; but this is the kind of information 
 you receive politely, disagree with profoundly, and do 
 not discuss because you have not all the facts at your 
 fingers' ends. But you know that the British love 
 of sport, be it vice or virtue, is as ingrained in Britons 
 as their common sense, and as old as their history. 
 
 In Germany the country gentleman is a sportsman. 
 He rides, he shoots, he hunts the wild boar which he 
 preserves in his great forests. " You have no country 
 (Land)" said a German to me, using the word as 
 opposed to town. In Germany we have country still." 
 
 He meant that England is thickly populated, and that 
 
 317 
 
218 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 we have no vast tracts of heath and forest where wild 
 animals live undisturbed. I told him there were a 
 few such places still in Scotland, but that they all 
 belonged to American and Jewish millionaires ; how- 
 ever, he would not believe it. He said he had spent 
 a fortnight in England and had not heard of them. 
 
 It is not such a matter of course with Germans of 
 a certain class to ride as it is with us. You see a 
 few men, women, and children on horseback in Berlin, 
 but not many ; and in most German towns you see 
 no one riding except cavalry officers. I am told that 
 the present Emperor tried to institute a fashionable 
 hour for riding in the Tiergarten, but that it fell through 
 partly because there were not enough people to bring 
 decent carriages and horses. On the great estates in 
 East Prussia the women as well as the men of the 
 family ride, and go great distances in this way to 
 see their friends ; but in cities you cannot fail to 
 observe the miserable quality and condition of the 
 horses and the scarcity of private carriages. In 
 fact, the German does not make as much of animals 
 as the Englishman does. If he lives in the country, 
 or if he means to be a man of fashion, he will have 
 dogs and horses, but he will not have one or both, by 
 hook or by crook, whether he is rich or poor, as the 
 Briton does. You see dogs in any German city that 
 remind you of a paragraph that once appeared in an 
 Italian paper, a paragraph about a case of dog stealing. 
 The dog was produced in court, said the paper, and 
 was either a fox terrier or a Newfoundland. But you 
 often see a fine Dachs ; in Heidelberg the students are 
 proud of their great boar-hounds, and in the Black 
 Forest there are numbers of little black Pomeranians. 
 
 In German towns where there is water, the traffic 
 on it both for business and amusement is as busy 
 
SPORT AND GAMES 219 
 
 as with us, and in some respects better managed. 
 Hamburg life, for instance, is largely on the basin of 
 the Alster ; either in the little steamers that carry you 
 from city to suburb, or in the small craft that crowd 
 its waters on a summer night. It is as usual in 
 Hamburg as on the Thames to own boats and 
 understand their management, and there are the same 
 varieties to be seen there : the pleasure boats with 
 people of all ages, the racing outrigger full of strenu- 
 ous, lightly clad young men, and the little sail boats 
 scurrying across the water before the breeze. On the 
 Rhine the big steamers do a roaring traffic all the 
 summer, and catch the public that likes a good dinner 
 with their scenery; and on the Rhine, as well as 
 on most of the other rivers of Germany, there are a 
 great many swimming baths ; for every German who 
 has a chance learns to swim. In Hamburg on a 
 summer evening you meet troops of little boys and 
 girls going to the baths, many of them belonging to 
 the poorer classes ; for where there are no swimming 
 baths attached to the school they get tickets free or 
 at a very low rate. About fishing I can" only speak 
 from hearsay, for I have never caught a minnow myself, 
 but I have met Germans who are keen anglers, and 
 I have found that they knew every London shop 
 beloved of anglers, and the English name of every 
 fly. 
 
 Germans get more amusement out of their water- 
 ways in winter than we do, for the winters there are 
 long and hard, so that there is always skating. I have 
 seen the Alster frozen for weeks, and the whole city 
 of Hamburg playing on the ice. It was not what 
 we call good ice, and not what we call good skating. 
 For the most part people were content to get over 
 the ground, to mix with their friends, to have hot 
 
220 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 drinks at the booths that sprang up in long lines by 
 the chief track, and even to stroll about without skates 
 and watch the fun. All classes, all ages, and both 
 sexes skate nowadays, but some fifty or sixty years 
 ago German ladies were not seen on the ice at all. 
 Skating, like most exercises that are healthy and 
 agreeable, was considered unfeminine, and men had 
 the fun to themselves. In the mountain districts of 
 Germany winter sports are growing in favour every 
 year, and people go to the Riesengebirge or to the 
 Black Forest for tobogganing and ski -ing. The 
 German illustrated papers constantly have articles 
 about these winter pastimes, and portraits of the 
 distinguished men and women who took part in 
 them. The history of cycling in Germany is not 
 unlike its history here. The boom subsided some 
 years ago, but a steady industry survives. In Berlin 
 you see officers in uniform on bicycles, but you see 
 hardly any ladies. That is because the Emperor and 
 Empress disapprove of cycling for women, and their 
 disapproval has made it unfashionable. Ten years 
 ago, two years, that is, after the English boom, no 
 woman on a bicycle had ever been seen in the remoter 
 valleys of the Black Forest. One who ventured there 
 used to be followed by swarms of wondering children, 
 who wished her All Heil at the top of their voices. 
 They did not heave bricks at her. 
 
 Tennis has not been blighted by the imperial frown, 
 and is extremely popular in Germany. Hockey, as 
 far as I know, is not played yet; certainly not by 
 women. Cricket and football are played, but not 
 very much. An Englishman teaching at a gymnasium, 
 told me that the authorities discouraged outdoor games, 
 as they were considered waste of time. Gymnastics 
 is the form of athletics really enjoyed and practised 
 
SPORT AND GAMES 221 
 
 by Germans. Every boy, even every girl, begins them 
 at school, and the boy when he leaves school joins 
 a Turnverein. For wherever Germans foregather, 
 and whatever they do, you may be sure they have 
 a Verein^ and that the Verein has feasts in winter 
 and Ausfliige in summer. When a man is young 
 and lusty, the delights of the Verein^ the Ausflug^ 
 the feast, and the walking tour are often combined. 
 You meet a whole gang of pleasure pilgrims ascending 
 the broad path that leads to the restaurant on the 
 top of a German mountain, or you encounter them 
 in the restaurant itself making speeches to the honour 
 and glory of their Verein ; and you find that they 
 are the gymnasts or the fire brigade, or the archi- 
 tects or what not of an adjacent town, and that once 
 a year they make an excursion together, beginning 
 with a walk or a journey by rail or by steamer, and 
 culminating in a restaurant where they dine and drink 
 and speechify. Every age, every trade, and every 
 pastime has its Verein and its anniversary rites. I 
 was much amused and puzzled in Berlin one afternoon 
 by a procession that filed slowly past the tram in which 
 I sat, and was preceded and attended by such a rabble 
 of sightseers that the ordinary traffic was stopped for 
 a time. I thought at first it was a demonstration in 
 connection with temperance or teetotalism, because 
 there were so many broad blue ribbons about, and 
 I was surprised, because I know that Germans club 
 together to drink beer and not to abstain from it, 
 and that they are a sober nation. At the head of 
 the procession came a string of boys on bicycles, each 
 boy carrying a banner. Then came four open carriages 
 garlanded with flowers. There was a garland round 
 each wheel, as well as round the horses' necks and 
 the coachmen's hats, and anywhere else where a 
 
222 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 garland would rest. In each carriage sat four damsels 
 robed in white, and they wore garlands instead of hats. 
 After them walked a large, stout, red-faced man in 
 evening dress, and he carried a staff. After him 
 walked the music, men puffing and blowing into brass 
 instruments, and, like their leader, wearing evening 
 dress and silk hats. They were followed by a pro- 
 cession that seemed as if it would stretch to the moon, 
 a procession of elderly, portly men all wearing evening 
 dress, all wearing broad blue ribbons and embroidered 
 scarves, and all marching with banners bearing various 
 devices. The favourite device was Heil Gambrinus, 
 and when I saw that I knew that the blue ribbons 
 had nothing to do with total abstention. The next 
 banner explained things. It was the Verein of the 
 Schenkwirte of Berlin, the publicans, in fact, of Berlin 
 having their little holiday. 
 
 All through the summer the German nation amuses 
 itself out of doors, and leads an outdoor life to an 
 extent unknown and impossible in our damp climate. 
 A house that has a garden nearly always has a garden 
 room where all meals are served. Sometimes it is a 
 detached summer house, but more often it opens from 
 the house and is really a big verandah with a roof and 
 sides of glass. In country places the inn gardens are 
 used as dining-rooms from morning till night, and you 
 may if you choose have everything you eat and drink 
 brought to you out of doors. Most inns have a skittle 
 alley, for skittles are still played in Germany by all 
 classes. The peasants play it on Sunday afternoons, 
 and the dignified merchant has his skittle club and 
 spends an evening there once a week. The favourite 
 card game of Germany is still Skat, but bridge has been 
 heard of and will probably supersede it in time. Skat 
 is a good game for three players, with a system of 
 
SPORT AND GAMES 223 
 
 scoring that seems intricate till you have played two 
 or three times and got used to it. In Germany it is 
 always die Herren who play these serious games, while 
 the women sit together with their bits of embroidery. 
 At the Ladies' Clubs in Berlin there is some card 
 playing, but these two or three highly modern and 
 emancipated establishments do not call the tune for all 
 Germany. Directly you get away from Berlin you find 
 that men and women herd separately, far more than in 
 England, take their pleasures separately, and have fewer 
 interests in common. It is still the custom for the 
 man of the family to go to a beer-house every day, 
 much as an Englishman goes to his club. Here he 
 meets his friends, sees the papers, talks, smokes, and 
 drinks his Schoppen. Each social grade will have its 
 own haunts in this way, or its own reserved table in a 
 big public room. At the Hof Brauhaus in Munich 
 one room is set apart for the Ministers of State, and 
 I was told some years ago that the appointments of it 
 were just as plain and rough as those in the immense 
 public hall where anyone who looked respectable could 
 have the best beer in the world and a supper of 
 sorts. 
 
 It is dull uphill work to write about sport and out- 
 door games in Germany, because you may have been 
 in many places and met a fair variety of people with- 
 out seeing any enthusiasm for either one or the other. 
 The bulk of the nation is, as a matter of fact, not 
 interested in sport or in any outdoor games except 
 indifferent tennis, swimming, skating, and in some 
 places boating. When a German wants to amuse him- 
 self, he sits in a garden and listens to a good band ; if 
 he is young and energetic, he walks on a well-made 
 road to a restaurant on the top of a hill. In winter he 
 plays skat, goes to the theatre or to a concert, or has 
 
224 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 his music at home. Also he reads a great deal, and 
 he reads in several tongues. This, at any rate, is the 
 way of Germans in cities and summer places, and it is 
 a very small proportion of the educated classes who 
 lead what we call a country life. " Elizabeth " knows 
 German country life, and describes it in her charming 
 books ; perhaps she will some day choose to tell us how 
 the men in her part of the world amuse themselves, 
 and whether they are good sportsmen. I must confess 
 that I have only once seen a German in full sporting 
 costume. It was most impressive, though, a sort of 
 pinkish grey bound everywhere with green, and set off 
 by a soft felt hat and feathers. As we were having 
 a walk with him, and it was early summer, we ven- 
 tured to ask him what he had come to kill. " Bees," 
 said he, and killed one the next moment with a pop- 
 gun. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 INNS AND RESTAURANTS 
 
 NGLISH people who have travelled in Germany 
 1 > know some of the big well-kept hotels in the 
 large towns, and know that they are much like big 
 hotels in other continental cities. It is not in these 
 establishments that you can watch national life or 
 discover much about the Germans, except that they are 
 good hotel-keepers ; and this you probably discovered 
 long ago abroad or at home. If you are a woman, you 
 may be impressed by the fineness, the whiteness, the 
 profusion, and the embroidered monograms of the linen, 
 whether you are in a huge caravanserai or a wayside 
 inn. Otherwise a hotel at Cologne or Heidelberg has 
 little to distinguish it from a hotel at Brussels or Bale. 
 The dull correct suites of furniture, the two narrow 
 bedsteads, even the table with two tablecloths on it, 
 a thick and a thin, the parqueted floor, and the small 
 carpet are here, there, and everywhere directly you cross 
 the Channel. 
 
 The modern German tells you with pride that this 
 apparent want of national quality and colour is to be 
 felt in every corner of life, and that what you take to 
 be German is not peculiarly German at all, but common 
 to the whole continent of Europe. This may be true 
 in certain cases and in a certain sense, but there is 
 another sense in which it is never true. For instance, 
 
226 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 the women of continental nations wear high - necked 
 gowns in the evening. It is only English women who 
 wear evening gowns as a matter of course every day 
 of their lives. I have been told in Germany that, so 
 far from being a sign of civilisation, this fashion is 
 merely a stupid survival from the times when all the 
 women of Europe went barenecked all day. However 
 this may be, there is no doubt that whether the gown 
 be high or low, worn by sunlight or lamplight, you can 
 see at a glance whether the woman who wears it is 
 English, French, or German. Every nation has its 
 own features, its own manners, and its own tone, 
 instantly recognised by foreigners, and apparently 
 hidden from itself. The German assures you that the 
 English manner is quite unmistakable, and he will 
 even describe and imitate for your amusement some of 
 his silly countryfolk who were talking to him quite 
 naturally, but suddenly froze and stiffened at the 
 approach of English friends whose national manner 
 they wished to assume. In England we are not 
 conscious of having a stiff frozen manner, and we never 
 dream that everyone has the same manner. It takes a 
 foreigner to perceive this ; and so in Germany it takes 
 a foreigner to appreciate and even to see the character- 
 istic trifles that give a nation a complexion of its own. 
 Some of the most comfortable hotels in Germany 
 are the smaller ones supported entirely by Germans. 
 A stray Englishman, finding one of these starred in 
 Baedeker and put in the second class, may try it from 
 motives of economy, but in many of them he would 
 only meet merchants on their travels and the unmarried 
 men of the neighbourhood who dine there. In such 
 establishments as these the table ffhdte still more or 
 less prevails, while if you go to fashionable hotels you 
 dine at small tables nowadays and see nothing of your 
 
INNS AND RESTAURANTS 227 
 
 neighbours. The part played during dinner by the 
 hotel proprietor varies considerably. In a big establish- 
 ment he is represented by the Oberkellner^ and does 
 not appear at all. The Oberkellner is a person of 
 weight and standing ; so much so that when you are 
 in a crowded beer garden and can get no one to attend 
 to you, you call out Ober to the first boy waiter who 
 passes, and he is so touched by the compliment that 
 he serves you before your turn. But in a real old- 
 fashioned German inn you have personal relations with 
 -the proprietor, for he takes the head of his table and 
 attends to the comfort of his customers as carefully as 
 if they were his guests. This used to be a universal 
 custom, but you only find it observed now in the 
 Sleepy Hollows of Germany. I have stayed in a most 
 comfortable and well-managed hotel where the pro- 
 prietor and his brother waited on their guests all 
 through dinner, but never sat down with them. There 
 were hired men, but they played a subordinate part. 
 In small country inns the host still arrives in the 
 garden when your meal is served, asks if you have all 
 you want, wishes you guten Appetit, and after a little 
 further conversation waddles away to perform the same 
 office at some other table. Except in the depths of 
 the country where the inn - keepers are peasants, 
 a German hotel-keeper invariably speaks several 
 languages, and has usually been in Paris and London 
 or New York. His business is to deal with the guests 
 and the waiters, and to look after the cellar and the 
 cigars ; while his wife or his sister, though she keeps 
 more in the background than a French proprietress, 
 does just as much work as a Frenchwoman, and, as far 
 as one can judge, more than any man in the establish- 
 ment. She superintends the chambermaids and has 
 entire care of the vast stock of linen ; in many cases 
 
228 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 she has most of it washed on the premises, and she 
 helps to iron and repair it. She buys the provisions, 
 and sees that there is neither waste nor disorder in the 
 kitchen ; she often does a great part of the actual 
 cooking herself. When I was a girl I happened to 
 spend a winter in a South German hotel of old stand- 
 ing, kept for several generations in the same family, 
 and now managed by two brothers and a sister. The 
 sister, a well-educated young woman of twenty-five, 
 used to get up at five winter and summer to buy what 
 was wanted for the market, and one day she took me 
 with her. It was a pretty lesson in the art of house- 
 keeping as it is understood and practised in Germany. 
 All the peasant women in the duchy could not have 
 persuaded my young woman to have given the fraction 
 of a farthing more for her vegetables than they were 
 worth that day, or to take any geese except the 
 youngest and plumpest. She went briskly from one 
 part of the market to the other, seeming to see at a 
 glance where it was profitable to deal this morning. 
 She did not haggle or squabble as inferior housewives 
 will, because she knew just what she wanted and what 
 it was prudent to pay for it. When she got home she 
 sat down to a second breakfast that seemed to me like 
 a dinner, a stew of venison and half a bottle of light 
 wine; but, as she said, hotel keeping is exhausting 
 work, and hotel-keepers must needs live well. 
 
 At some hotels in this part of Germany wine is 
 included in the charge for dinner, and given to each 
 guest in a glass carafe or uncorked bottle. It is kept 
 on tap even in the small wayside inns, where you get 
 half a litre for two or three pence when you are out 
 for a walk and are thirsty. If you dislike thin sour 
 wine you had better avoid the grape - growing lands 
 and travel in Bavaria, where every country inn-keeper 
 

INNS AND RESTAURANTS 229 
 
 brews his own beer. Many of these small inns enter- 
 tain summer visitors, not English and Americans who 
 want luxuries, but their own countryfolk, whose purses 
 and requirements are both small. As far as I know 
 by personal experience and by hearsay, the rooms in 
 these inns are always clean. The bedding all over 
 Germany is most scrupulously kept and aired. In 
 country places you see the mattresses and feather beds 
 hanging out of the windows near the pots of carnations 
 every sunny day. The floors are painted, and are washed 
 all over every morning. The curtains are spotless. 
 In each room there is the inevitable sofa with the table 
 in front of it, a most sensible and comfortable addition 
 to a bedroom, enabling you to seek peace and privacy 
 when you will. If you wander far enough from the 
 beaten track, you may still find that all the water you 
 are supposed to want is contained in a good-sized 
 glass bottle; but if you are English your curious 
 habits will be known, and more water will be brought 
 to you in a can or pail. My husband and I once 
 spent a summer in a Thuringian inn that had never 
 taken staying guests before, and even here we found 
 that the proprietress had heard of English ways, and 
 was willing, with a smile of benevolent amusement, to 
 fill a travelling bath every day. This inn had a summer 
 house where all our meals were served as a matter of 
 course, and where people from a fashionable watering- 
 place in the next valley came for coffee or beer some- 
 times. The household itself consisted of the proprietress, 
 her daughter, and her maidservant, and during the 
 four months we spent there I never knew them to 
 sit down to a regular meal. They ate anything at 
 any time, as they fancied it. The summer house in 
 which we had our meals was large and pleasant, with 
 a wide view of the hills and a near one of an old stone 
 
230 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 bridge and a trout stream. The trees near the inn 
 were limes, and their scent while they were in flower 
 overpowered the scent of pines coming at other times 
 with strength and fragrance from the surrounding forest. 
 The only drawback to our comfort was a hornets' nest 
 in an old apple-tree close to the summer-house. The 
 hornets used to buzz round us at every meal, and at 
 first we supposed they might sting us. This they 
 never did, though we waged war on them fiercely. 
 But no one wants to be chasing and killing hornets 
 all through breakfast and dinner, so we asked the 
 maid of the inn what could be done to get rid of them. 
 She smiled and said Jawohl, which was what she always 
 said ; and we went out for a walk. When we came 
 back and sat down to supper there were no hornets. 
 Jawohl had just stood on a chair, she said, poured a 
 can of water into the nest, and stuffed up the opening 
 with grass. She had not been stung, and we were not 
 pestered by a hornet again that summer. I have 
 sometimes told this story to English people, and seen 
 that though they were too polite to say so they did 
 not believe it. But that is their fault. The story as 
 I have told it is true. We found immense numbers 
 of hornets in one wild uninhabited valley where we 
 sometimes walked that summer, but we were never 
 stung. 
 
 The proprietress of this inn, like most German 
 women, was a fair cook. Besides the inn she owned 
 a small brewery, and employed a brewer who lived 
 quite near, and showed us the whole process by which 
 he transferred the water of the trout stream into 
 foaming beer. His mistress had no rival in the 
 village, and the village was a small one, so sometimes 
 the beer was a little flat. When Jawohl brought a jug 
 from a cask just broached, she put it on the table with 
 
INNS AND RESTAURANTS 231 
 
 a proud air, and informed us that it was frisch 
 angesteckt. We once spent a summer in a Bavarian 
 village where a dozen inns brewed their own beer, 
 and it was always known which one had just tapped 
 a cask. Then everyone crowded there as a matter of 
 course. In all these country inns there is one room 
 with rough wooden tables and benches, and here the 
 peasants sit smoking their long pipes and emptying 
 their big mugs or glasses, and as a rule hardly 
 speaking. They do not get drunk, but no doubt they 
 spend more than they can afford out of their scanty 
 earnings. 
 
 In the Bavarian village the inns were filled all 
 through the summer with people from Nuremberg, 
 Erlangen, Augsburg, Erfurth, and other Bavarian 
 towns. The inn-keeper used to charge five shillings 
 a week for a scrupulously clean, comfortably furnished 
 room, breakfast was sixpence, dinner one and two- 
 pence, and supper as you ordered it. For dinner they 
 gave you good soup, Rindfleisch, either poultry or 
 roast meat, and one of the Mehlspeisen for which Bavaria 
 is celebrated, some dish, that is, made with eggs and 
 flour. There was a great variety of them, but I only 
 remember one clearly, because I was impressed by its 
 disreputable name. It was some sort of small pancake 
 soaked in a wine sauce, and it was called versqffene 
 Jung fern. Most of these inns kept no servants, and 
 except in the Kurhaus there was not a black-coated 
 waiter in the place. Our inn-keeper tilled his own 
 fields, grew his own hops, and brewed his own beer ; 
 and his wife, wearing her peasant's costume, did all the 
 cooking and cleaning, assisted by a daughter or a 
 cousin. When you met her out of doors she would 
 be carrying one of the immense loads peasant women 
 do carry up hill and down dale in Germany. She 
 
232 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 was hale and hearty in her middle age, and always 
 cheerful and obliging. At that inn, too, we never had 
 a meal indoors from May till October. Everything 
 was brought out to a summer-house, from which we 
 looked straight down the village, its irregular Noah's 
 Ark-like houses, and its background of mountains and 
 forest. 
 
 When you first get back to England from Germany, 
 you have to pull yourself together and remember that 
 in your own country, even on a hot still summer 
 evening, you cannot sit in a garden where a band is 
 playing and have your dinner in the open air, unless 
 you happen to be within reach of Earl's Court. In 
 German towns there are always numbers of restaurants 
 in which, according to the weather, meals can be served 
 indoors or out. You see what use people make of 
 them if, for instance, you happen to be in Hamburg 
 on a hot summer night. All round the basin of the 
 Alster there are houses, hotels, and gardens, and every 
 public garden is so crowded that you wonder the 
 waiters can pass to and fro. Bands are playing, 
 lights are flashing, the little sailing boats are flitting 
 about. The whole city after its day's work has turned 
 out for air and music and to talk with friends. And 
 as you watch the scene you know that in every city, 
 even in every village of the empire, there is some such 
 gala going on : in gardens going down to the Rhine 
 from the old Rhenish towns ; in the gardens of ancient 
 castles set high above the stifling air of valleys ; in the 
 forest that comes to the very edge of so many little 
 German towns ; even in the streets of towns where a 
 table set on the pavement will be pleasanter than in a 
 room on such a night as this. You can sit at one of 
 these restaurants and order nothing but a cup of coffee 
 or a glass of beer ; or you can dine, for the most part, 
 
INNS AND RESTAURANTS 233 
 
 well and cheaply. If you order a halbe Portion of any 
 dish, as Germans do, you will be served with more 
 than you can eat of it. The variety offered by some 
 of the restaurants in the big cities, the excellence of 
 the cooking, the civilisation of the appointments, and 
 the service, all show that the German must be the most 
 industrious creature in the world, and the thriftiest and 
 one of the cleverest. In London we have luxurious 
 restaurants for people who can spend a great deal of 
 money, but in Berlin they have them for people who 
 cannot spend much. That is the difference between the 
 two cities. How Berlin does it is a mystery. In the 
 restaurants I have seen there is neither noise nor bustle 
 nor garish colours nor rough service nor any other of 
 the miseries we find in our own cheap eating-houses. 
 In one of them the walls were done in some kind of 
 plain fumed wood with a frieze and ceiling of soft dull 
 gold. In another each room had a different scheme 
 of colour. 
 
 " So according to your Stimmung you will choose 
 your room," said the friends who took me. " To-night 
 we are rather cheerful. We will go to the big room 
 on the first floor. That is all pale green and ivory." 
 
 " You have nothing like this in England," said the 
 artist as we went up the lift. " It is terrible in Eng- 
 land. When I asked for my lunch at three or four 
 o'clock I was told that lunch was over. Das hat keinen 
 Zweck) I want my lunch when I am hungry." 
 
 " But you are terribly behindhand in some ways in 
 Berlin," I said, for I knew the artist liked an argument. 
 " In London you can shop all through the night by 
 telephone. It is most convenient." 
 
 " Have you ever done it ? " 
 
 " I'm not on the telephone, and I am generally 
 asleep at night. But other people . . ." 
 
234 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 " Verriickt? said the artist. " Who in his senses 
 wants to do shopping at night ? Now look at this 
 room, and admit that you have nothing at all like it." 
 
 The first swift impression of the place was that 
 Liberty had brought his stuffs, his furniture, and his 
 glass from London and set up as a restaurateur in 
 Berlin. The whole thing was certainly well done. It 
 was not as florid and fussy as our expensive restaurants. 
 The colours were quiet, and the necessary draperies 
 plain. The glass was thin and elegant ; so were the 
 coffee cups ; and the table linen was white and fine. 
 Nothing about it, however, would be worth describing 
 if it had been expensive. But the menu, which 
 covered four closely printed pages, showed that the 
 most expensive dish offered there cost one and three- 
 pence, while the greater number cost ninepence, six- 
 pence, or threepence each. The hungry man would 
 begin with crayfish, which were offered to him prepared 
 in ten various ways ; for the Germans, like the French, 
 are extremely fond of crayfish. He would have them 
 in soup, for instance, or with asparagus, with salad or 
 dressed with dill. Then he would find the week's bill 
 of fare on his card, three or four dishes for each day, 
 some cooked in small casseroles and served so to any 
 guest who orders one. If it was a Friday he could 
 have a ragout of chicken in the Bremen style, or a slice 
 from a Hamburg leg of mutton with cream sauce 
 and celery salad, or ox-tongue cooked with young 
 turnips. If he was a Catholic he would find two kinds 
 of fish ready for him, trout, cooked blue, and a ragout 
 of crayfish with asparagus and baked perch. But these 
 are just the special dishes of the day, and he is not 
 bound to try them. There are seven kinds of soup, 
 including real turtle, and it is not for me to say how 
 real turtle can be supplied in Berlin for 30 pfennig. 
 
INNS AND RESTAURANTS 235 
 
 There are seven kinds of fish and too many varieties 
 of meat, poultry, salads, vegetables and sweets, both hot 
 and cold, to count. A man can have any kind of 
 cooking he fancies, too; his steak may be German, 
 Austrian, or French ; he can have English roast beef, 
 Russian caviare, a Maltese rice pudding, apples from 
 the Tyrol, wild strawberries from a German forest, all 
 the cheeses of France and England, a Welsh rarebit, 
 and English celery. The English celery is as mys- 
 terious as the real turtle, for it was offered in June. 
 Pheasants and partridges, I can honestly say, however, 
 were not offered. Under the head of game there were 
 only venison, geese, chickens, and pigeons. 
 
 I am sorry now that when I dined at this restaurant 
 I did not order real turtle soup, Roast beef Engl. mit 
 Schmorkartoffeln, celery, and a Welsh rarebit, because 
 then I should have discovered whether these old British 
 friends were recognisable in their Berlin environment. 
 But it was more amusing at the time to ask for ham 
 cooked in champagne and served with radish sauce, 
 and other curious inviting combinations. 
 
 " But at home," I said to the artist, " at home we 
 just eat to live. We have a great contempt for people 
 who pay much attention to food." 
 
 " I stayed in an English house last year, and never 
 did I hear so much about food," said he. " One would 
 eat nothing but grape-nuts and cheese, and another 
 swore by toast and hot water and little Pastetchen of 
 beef, and the third would have large rice puddings, and 
 the fourth asked for fruit at every meal, and the fifth 
 said all the others were wrong and that he wanted a 
 good dinner. The poor hostess would have been dis- 
 tracted if she had not been one of those who love a 
 new fad and try each one in turn. Also there were two 
 eminent physicians in the house, and one of these drank 
 
236 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 champagne every night, while the other would touch 
 nothing but Perrier and said champagne was poison. 
 Directly we sat down we discussed these things, . . . 
 and everyone assured me that if I tried his regime I 
 should improve in health most marvellously." 
 
 " Which did you try ? " I asked. 
 
 " The good dinner and the champagne, of course. 
 But I did not find they affected my health one way or 
 the other." 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 LIFE IN LODGINGS 
 
 AS rents are high in Germany, it is usual for people 
 of small means to let off one or two rooms, 
 either furnished or unfurnished. But it is not usual to 
 supply a lodger with any meal except his coffee and rolls 
 in the morning. If you wish to take lodgings in a 
 German town, and work through the long list of them 
 in a local paper, you will probably find no one willing 
 to provide for you in the English fashion. 
 
 " Cooking ! " they say with horror, " cooking ! 
 You want to eat in your room. No. That can we 
 not undertake. Coffee in the morning, yes ; and rolls 
 with it and butter and even two eggs, but nothing fur- 
 ther. Just round the corner in the Konigstrasse are 
 two very fine restaurants, where the Herrschaften can 
 eat what they will at any hour of the day, and for 
 moderate prices." 
 
 If you insist, the most they will promise, and that not 
 willingly, is to provide you with a knife and fork and a 
 tablecloth for a pyramid of courses sent hot from one 
 of the very fine adjacent restaurants for I mark or i 
 mark 20 pf. Supper in Germany is the easiest meal in 
 the day to provide, as you buy the substantial part of it 
 at a Delikatessenhandlung, and find that even a German 
 landlady will condescend to get you rolls and butter 
 
 and beer. This sounds like the Simple Life, to be sure ; 
 
 237 
 
238 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 j 
 
 but if you are in German lodgings for any length of 
 time you probably desire for one reason or the other to 
 lead it. The plan of having your dinner sent piping 
 hot from a restaurant in nice clean white dishes rather 
 like monster souffte dishes is not a bad one if the 
 restaurant keeps faith with you. It is rather amusing 
 to begin at the top with soup and work through the 
 various surprises and temptations of the pyramid till 
 you get to B is kuit- Pudding mit Vanille Sauce at the 
 bottom. But in nine cases out of ten the restaurant 
 fails you, sends uneatable food, is absurdly unpunctual 
 or says plainly it can't be bothered. Then you have 
 to wander about and out of doors for your food in all 
 weathers and all states of health. This is amusing for 
 a time, but not in the long run. It is astonishing how 
 tired you can get of the " very fine " restaurants within 
 reach, of their waitresses, their furniture, their menus, 
 and their daily guests. At least, this is so in a small 
 town where the best restaurant is not "very fine," 
 although both food and service will be better than in 
 an English town of the same size. If you are in 
 Berlin and can go to the good restaurants, there you 
 will be in danger of becoming a gourmet and losing 
 your natural affection for cold mutton. 
 
 In a university or a big commercial town it is easy 
 to get rooms for less than we pay in England ; but in 
 a small Residenz I have found it difficult. There were 
 rooms to let, but no one wanted us, because we were 
 not officers with soldier servants to wait on us ; nor 
 did we want to engage rooms as the officers did for at 
 least six months. In fact, we found ourselves as 
 unpopular as ladies are in a London suburb where all 
 the lodging-house keepers want " gentlemen in the 
 city " who are away all day and give no trouble. At 
 last, after searching through every likely street in the 
 
LIFE IN LODGINGS 239 
 
 town, we found a dentist with exuberant manners, who 
 said he would overlook our shortcomings, and allow us 
 to inhabit his rooms at a high price on condition we 
 gave no trouble. We said we never gave trouble any- 
 where, and left both hotels and lodging-houses with an 
 excellent character, so the bargain was concluded. I 
 saw that his wife was not a party to it, but he over- 
 ruled her, and as he was a big red-faced noisy man, 
 and she was a small rat of a woman, I thought he 
 would continue to do so. One is always making these 
 stupid elementary mistakes about one's fellow-creatures. 
 But a little later in the day I had occasion to call at 
 the rooms to complete some arrangement about luggage, 
 and then the wife received me alone. I asked her if 
 she could put a small table into a room that only had 
 a big one. I forget why I wanted it. 
 
 " Table ! " she said rudely. " What can you want 
 another table for? Isn't that one enough?" 
 
 " I should like another," I said, " any little one 
 would do." 
 
 " I don't keep tables up my sleeve," said she. " You 
 see what you can have, . . . just what is there. If it 
 doesn't suit you . . ." 
 
 " But it does suit me," I said hurriedly, for the search 
 had been long and exhausting, and the rooms were 
 pleasant enough. I thought we need not deal much 
 with the woman. 
 
 " No meals except coffee in the morning ; you 
 understand that ? " she said in a truculent tone. 
 
 " Oh yes, I understand. We shall go out at midday 
 and at night. Afternoon tea I always make myself 
 with a spirit lamp . . ." 
 
 Never in my life have I been so startled. I 
 thought the woman was going to behave like a rat 
 in a corner, and fly at me. She shook her fist and 
 
240 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 shouted so loud that she brought the dentist on the 
 scene. 
 
 " Spiritus" she screamed. " Spiritus Spiritus leid? 
 ich nicht" 
 
 "Bless us!" I said in English. "What's the 
 matter ? " 
 
 " Was ists ? " said the dentist, and he looked down- 
 right frightened. 
 
 " Sie will kochen" said his wife, shaking her fist 
 at me again. " She has a spirit lamp. She wants 
 to turn my beautiful bestes Zimmer into a kitchen. 
 She will take all the polish off my furniture, just 
 as the last people did when they cooked for them- 
 selves." 
 
 "Cooked!" I said. "Who speaks of cooking? I 
 spoke of a cup of tea." 
 
 " Spiritus leicT ich nicht" shrieked the woman. 
 
 " No," said the dentist, " we can't have cooking here." 
 
 " Spiritus leid* . . " 
 
 But I fled. Luckily, we had not paid any rent in 
 advance. I made up my mind that I would never 
 confess to my small harmless Etna in German lodgings 
 again, and would bolt the door while I boiled water for 
 tea in it. We found rooms after another weary search, 
 but they were extremely noisy and uncomfortable. We 
 had to take them for six weeks, and could only endure 
 them for a fortnight, and though we paid them the full 
 six weeks' rent when we left, they charged us for every 
 jug of hot water we had used, and added a Trinkgeld 
 for the servant. 
 
 '* We did not engage to pay extra either for hot 
 water or for Trinkgeld" we said, turning, as worms will 
 even in a Residenz, where everyone is a worm who is not 
 Militdr. 
 
 " But Englander never give a Trinkgeld. That is 
 
LIFE IN LODGINGS 241 
 
 why we have put it in the bill. The girl expects it, 
 and has earned it." 
 
 " The girl will have it," we said ; " but we shall give 
 it her ourselves. And what have you to say about the 
 hot water ? " 
 
 " Without coal it is impossible to have hot water. 
 We let you our rooms, but we did not let you our coal. 
 It is quite simple. Have you any other complaint to 
 make ? " 
 
 We had, but we did not make them. We went to 
 one of the big cities, where the civilian is still a worm, 
 but where he has a large number and variety of other 
 worms to keep him company. In Berlin or Hamburg 
 or Leipzig there are always furnished rooms delighted 
 to receive you. There may be a difficulty, however, if 
 you are a musician. The police come in with their 
 regulations ; or your fellow-lodgers may be students of 
 medicine or philosophy, and driven wild by your har- 
 monies. I knew a young musician who always took 
 rooms in the noisiest street in Berlin, and practised with 
 his windows open. He said the din of electric trams, 
 overhead trains, motor cars, and heavy lorries helped 
 his landlady and her family to suffer a Beethoven 
 sonata quite gladly. 
 
 One of the insoluble mysteries of German life is the 
 cheapness of furnished lodgings as compared with the 
 high rent and rates. To be sure, the landlady does not 
 cook for you, and the bed-sitting-room is not considered 
 sordid in Germany. In fact, the separate sitting-room 
 is almost unknown, though it is easy to arrange one by 
 shifting some furniture. The pattern of the room and 
 its appointments hardly vary in any part of Germany, 
 though of course the size and quality vary with the price. 
 If you take a small room you have one straight window, 
 and if you take a large one you have several. Or you 
 16 
 
242 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 may have a broad balcony window opening on to a 
 balcony. You have the parqueted or painted floor, 
 the porcelain stove, the sofa, the table, the wooden bed- 
 stead, and the wooden hanging cupboard wherever you 
 are. It is always sensible, comfortable furniture, and 
 usually plain. When people over there know no better 
 they buy themselves tawdry horrors, just as they do 
 here. The German manufacturers flood the world with 
 such things. But people who let lodgings put their 
 treasures in a sacred room they call das beste Zimmer> 
 and only use on festive occasions. They fob you oft 
 with old-fashioned stuff they do not value, a roomy 
 solid cupboard, a family sofa, a chest of drawers black 
 with age, and a hanging mirror framed in old elm- 
 wood ; and if it were not for a bright green rep 
 tablecloth, snuff-coloured curtains, and a wall paper 
 with a brown background and yellow snakes on it, you 
 would like your quarters very well indeed. Rooms are 
 usually let by the month, except in watering-places, 
 where weekly prices prevail. In Leipzig you can get 
 a room for los. a month. It will be a parterre or a 
 fourth- floor room, rather gloomy and rather shabby, 
 but a possible room for a student who happens to be 
 hard up. For i a month you can get a room on a 
 higher floor, and better furnished, while for i t los. a 
 month in Hamburg I myself have had two well- 
 furnished rooms commanding a fine view of the Alster, 
 and one of them so large that in winter it was nearly 
 impossible to keep warm. Then my Hamburg friends 
 told me I was paying too much, and that they could 
 have got better lodgings for less money. They were 
 nearer the sky than I should like in these days, but 
 the old German system of letting the higher flats in 
 a good house for a low rent benefits people who care 
 about a " select " neighbourhood and yet cannot pay 
 
LIFE IN LODGINGS 243 
 
 very much. The modern system of lifts will gradually 
 make it impossible to get a flat or lodgings in a good 
 street without paying as much for the fifth floors as for 
 the first. 
 
 You do not see much of a German landlady, as she 
 does not cater for you. She is often a widow, and 
 when you know the rent of a flat you wonder how she 
 squeezes a living out of what her lodgers pay her. She 
 cannot even nourish herself with their scraps, or warm 
 herself at a kitchen fire for which they pay. Some of 
 Jhem perform prodigies of thrift, especially when they 
 have children to feed and educate. At the end of a 
 long severe winter, when the Alster had been frozen for 
 months, I found out by chance that my landlady, a sad 
 aged widow with one little boy, had never lighted her- 
 self a fire. She let every room of her large flat, except 
 a kitchen and a Kammer opening out of it. The little 
 food she needed she cooked on an oil stove, at night 
 she had a lamp, and of course she never by any chance 
 opened a window. She said she could not afford coals, 
 and that her son and she managed to keep warm. The 
 miracle is that they both kept alive and well. Another 
 German landlady was of a different type, a big buxom 
 bustling creature, who spent most of the day in her 
 husband's coal sheds, helping him with his books and 
 taking orders. Although she was so busy she under- 
 took to cook for me, and kept her promise honourably ; 
 and she cooked for herself, her husband, and their work- 
 people. She used sometimes to show me the huge 
 dishes of food they were about to consume, food that 
 was cheap to buy and nourishing to eat, but troublesome 
 to prepare. She did all her own washing too, and dried 
 it in the narrow slip of a room her husband and she 
 used for all purposes. I discovered this by going in to 
 see her when she was ill one day, and finding rows of 
 
244 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 wet clothes hung on strings right across her bed. I 
 made no comment, for nothing that is an outrage of 
 the first laws of hygiene will surprise you if you have 
 gone here and there in the byways of Germany. An 
 English girl told me that when she was recovering from 
 a slight attack of cholera in a Rhenish Pension, they 
 were quite hurt because she refused stewed cranberries. 
 " Das schadet nichts, das ist gesund? they said. I could 
 hear them say it. Only the summer before a kindly 
 hotel-keeper had brought me a ragout of Schweinefleisch 
 and vanilla ice under similar circumstances. The German 
 constitution seems able to survive anything, even roast 
 goose at night at the age of three. 
 
 A Pension in Germany costs from 3 a month up- 
 wards. That is to say, you will get offers of a room 
 and full board for this sum, but I must admit that I 
 never tried one at so low a rate, and should not expect 
 it to be comfortable. Rent and food are too dear in 
 the big towns to make a reasonable profit possible on 
 such terms, unless the household is managed on starva- 
 tion lines. To have a comfortable room and sufficient 
 food, you must pay from 5 to 7 a month, and then 
 if you choose carefully you will be satisfied. The society 
 is usually cosmopolitan in these establishments, and the 
 German spoken is a warning rather than a lesson. It is 
 not really German life that you see in this way, though 
 the proprietress and her assistants may be German. In 
 most of the university towns some private families take 
 " paying guests," and when they are agreeable people 
 this is a pleasanter way of life than any Pension. 
 
 Before you have been in Germany a fortnight the 
 police expects to know all about you. You have to 
 give them your father's Christian and surname, and tell 
 them how he earned his living, and where he was born ; 
 also your mother's Christian and maiden name, and 
 
LIFE IN LODGINGS 245 
 
 where she was born. You must declare your religion, 
 and if you are married give your husband's Christian 
 and surname ; also where he was born, and what he 
 does for a living. If you happen to do anything your- 
 self, though, you need not mention it. They do not 
 expect a woman to be anything further than married 
 or single. But you must say when and where you were 
 last in Germany, and how often you have been, and 
 why you have come now, and what you are doing, and 
 how long you propose to stay. They tell you in London 
 'you do not need a passport in Germany, and they tell 
 you in Berlin that you must either produce one or be 
 handed over for inquiry to your Embassy. Last year 
 when I was there I produced one twenty-three years 
 old. I had not troubled to get a new one, but I came 
 across this, quite yellow with age, and I thought it 
 might serve to make some official happy; for I had 
 once seen my husband get himself, me, and our bicycles 
 over the German frontier and into Switzerland, and next 
 morning back into Germany, by showing the gendarmes 
 on the bridge his C.T.C. ticket. I cannot say that my 
 ancient passport made my official exactly happy. 
 Twenty-three years ago he was certainly in a Steck- 
 kissen, and no doubt he felt that in those days, in a 
 world without him to set it right, anything might happen. 
 
 " Twenty-three years," he bellowed at the top of his 
 voice, for he saw that I was fremd, and wished to make 
 himself clear. We are not the only people who scream 
 at foreigners that they may understand. " Twenty- 
 three years. But it is a lifetime." 
 
 It was for him no doubt. I admitted that twenty- 
 three years was well, twenty -three years, and explained 
 that I had been told at a Reisebureau that a passport 
 was unnecessary. 
 
 " They know nothing in England," he said gloomily. 
 
246 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 " With us a passport is necessary ; but what is a passport 
 twenty-three years old ? " 
 
 I admitted that, from the official point of view, it was 
 not much, and he made no further difficulties. As a 
 rule you need not go to the police bureau at all. The 
 people you are with will get the necessary papers, and 
 fill them in for you ; but I wanted to see whether the 
 German jack-in-office was as bad as his reputation makes 
 him. Germans themselves often complain bitterly of 
 the treatment they receive at the hands of these lower 
 class officials. 
 
 " I went to the police station," said a German lady 
 who lived in England, and was in her own country on 
 a visit. " I went to anmelden myself, but not one of the 
 men in the office troubled to look up. When I had 
 stood there till I was tired I said that I wished someone 
 to attend to me. Every pen stopped, every head was 
 raised, astounded by my impertinence. But no one 
 took any notice of my request. I waited a little longer, 
 and then fetched myself a chair that someone had left 
 unoccupied. I did not do it to make a sensation. I 
 was tired. But every pen again stopped, and one in 
 authority asked in a voice like thunder what I made 
 here. I said that I had come to anmelden myself, and 
 he began to ask the usual questions with an air of sus- 
 picion that was highly offensive. You can see for 
 yourself that I do not look like an anarchist or anything 
 but what I am, a respectable married woman of middle 
 age. I told the man everything he wanted to know, 
 and at every item he grunted as if he knew it was a 
 lie. In the end he asked me very rudely how long a 
 stay I meant to make in Germany. 
 
 " Not a day longer than I can help," I said ; " for your 
 manners do not please me." 
 
 All the pens stopped again till I left the office, and 
 
LIFE IN LODGINGS 247 
 
 when I got back to my mother she wept bitterly ; for 
 she said that I should be prosecuted for Beamtenbeleidi- 
 gung and put in prison. 
 
 " But the really interesting fact about the system is 
 that it doesn't work," said a German to me ; " when 
 I wanted my papers a little while ago I could not 
 get them. Nothing about me could be discovered. 
 Officially I did not exist." 
 
 Yet he had inherited a name famous all over the 
 world, was a distinguished scientific man himself, and 
 had been born in the city where his existence was not 
 known to the police. 
 
 " Take care you don't go in at an Ausgang or out 
 at an Eingang" said an Englishman who had just come 
 back from Berlin. " Take care you don't try to buy 
 stamps at the Post Office out of your turn. Remember 
 that you can't choose your cab when you arrive. A 
 policeman gives you a number, and you have to hunt 
 amongst a crowd of cabs for that number, even if it is 
 pouring with rain. Remember that the police decides 
 that you must buy your opera tickets on a Sunday 
 morning, and stand queue for hours till you get them. 
 If you have a cold in your head, stay at home. Last 
 winter a man was arrested for sneezing loudly. It was 
 considered Beamtenbeleidigung. The Englishwoman 
 who walked on the grass in the Tiergarten was not 
 arrested, because the official who saw her died of shock 
 at the sight, and could not perform his duty." 
 
 Wherever you go in Germany you hear stories of 
 police interference and petty tyranny, and it is mere 
 luck if you do not innocently transgress some of their 
 fussy pedantic regulations. In South Germany I once 
 put a cream jug on my window-sill to keep a little milk 
 cool for the afternoon. The jug was so small and the 
 window so high that it can hardly have been visible 
 
248 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 from the street, but my landlady came to me excitedly 
 and said the police would be on her before the day was 
 out if the jug was left there. The police allowed nothing 
 on a window-sill in that town, lest it should fall on a 
 citizen's head. Each town or district has its own re- 
 strictions, its own crimes. In one you will hear that a 
 butcher boy is not allowed on the side- path carrying his 
 tray of meat. If a policeman catches him at it, he, or his 
 employer, is fined. In another town the awning from 
 a shop window must not exceed a certain length, and 
 you are told of a poor widow, who, having just had a 
 new one put up at great expense, was compelled by the 
 police to take the whole thing down, because the flounce 
 was a quarter of an inch longer than the regulations 
 prescribed. You hear of a poor man laboriously 
 building a toy brick wall round the garden in his 
 Hof, and having to pull it to pieces because " building " 
 is not allowed except with police permission. In some 
 towns the length of a woman's gown is decided in the 
 Polizeibureau, and the officers fine any woman whose 
 skirt touches the ground. In one town you may take 
 a dog out without a muzzle ; in another it is a crime. 
 A merchant on his way to his office, in a city where 
 there was a muzzling order, found to his annoyance, 
 one morning, that his mother's dog had followed him 
 unmuzzled. He had no string with him, he could not 
 persuade the dog to return, and he could not go back 
 with it, because he had an important appointment. So 
 he risked it and went on. Before long, however, he 
 met a policeman. The usual questions were asked, his 
 name and address were taken, and he was told that he 
 would be fined. Hardly had he got to the end of the 
 street when he met a second policeman. He explained 
 that the matter was settled, but this was not the opinion 
 of the policeman. Was the dog not at large, unmuzzled, 
 
LIFE IN LODGINGS 249 
 
 on his the policeman's beat ? With other policemen he 
 had nothing to do. The dog was his discovery, the 
 name and address of the owner were required, and there 
 was no doubt, in the policeman's mind, that the owner 
 would have to pay a second fine. The merchant went 
 his ways, still followed by an unmuzzled unled dog. 
 Before long he met a third policeman, gave his name 
 and address a third time, and was assured that he would 
 have to pay a third time. 
 
 " Dann war es mir zu bunt" said the merchant, and 
 he picked up the dog and carried it the rest of the way 
 to his office. When he got there he sent it home in a 
 cab. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 SUMMER RESORTS 
 
 IF you choose to leave the railroad you may still 
 travel by diligence in Germany, and rumble along 
 the roads in its stuffy interior. As you pass through a 
 village the driver blows his horn, old and young run 
 out to enjoy the sensation of the day, the geese cackle 
 and flutter from you in the dust, you catch glimpses 
 of a cobble-stoned market-place, a square church-tower 
 with a stork's nest on its summit, Noah's Ark-like houses 
 with thatched or gabled roofs, tumble-down balconies, 
 and outside staircases of wood. Sometimes when the 
 official coach is crowded you may have an open 
 carriage given you without extra charge, but you cannot 
 expect that to happen often ; nor will you often be 
 driven by postillion nowadays. Indeed, for all I know 
 the last one may have vanished and been replaced by a 
 motor bus. You can take one to a mountain inn in 
 the Black Forest nowadays, over a pass I travelled a 
 few years ago in a mail coach. In those times it was 
 a jog-trot journey occupying the long lazy hours of a 
 summer morning. I suppose that now you whizz and 
 hustle through the lovely forest scenery pursued by 
 clouds of dust and offended by the fumes of petrol, but 
 no doubt you get to your destination quicker than you 
 used. The pleasantest way to travel in Germany, if 
 
 you are young and strong, is on your feet. It is 
 
 250 
 
A (1KRMAN FORESTER AND HIS WIFE 
 
SUMMER RESORTS 251 
 
 enchanting to walk day after day through the cool 
 scented forest and sleep at night in one of the clean 
 country inns. You must choose your district and your 
 inn, for if you went right off the traveller's track and 
 came to a peasant's house you would find nothing 
 approaching the civilisation of an English farmhouse. 
 But in most of the beautiful country districts of 
 Germany there are fine inns, and there are invariably 
 good roads leading to them. This way of travelling is 
 too tame for English people as a rule. They laugh at 
 the broad well-made path winding up the side of a 
 German mountain, and still more at the hotel or 
 restaurant to be found at the top. From the English 
 point of view a walk of this kind is too tame and easy 
 either for health or pleasure. But the beauty of it, 
 especially in early summer, can never be forgotten ; and 
 so it is worth while, even if you are young and cherish 
 a proper scorn for broad roads and good dinners. You 
 would probably come across some dinners that were 
 not good, tough veal, for instance, and greasy vegetables. 
 The roads you would have to accept, and walk them 
 if you choose in tennis shoes. Indeed, you would for- 
 get the road and eat the dinner unattending; for all 
 that's made would be a green thought in a green shade 
 for you by the end of the day, and as you shut your 
 eyes at night you would see forest, forest with the 
 sunlight on the young tips of the pines, forest unfolding 
 itself from earth to sky as you climbed hour after hour 
 close to the ferns and boulders of the foaming 
 mountain stream your pathway followed, forest too on 
 the opposite side of the valley, with wastes of golden 
 broom here and there, and fields of rye and barley 
 swept gently by the breeze. You may walk day by 
 day in Germany through such a paradise as this, and 
 meet no one but a couple of children gathering wild 
 
252 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 strawberries, or an old peasant carrying faggots, or the 
 goose-girl herding her fussy flock. You may even 
 spend your summer holiday in a crowded watering- 
 place, and yet escape quite easily into the heart of the 
 forest where the crowd never comes. The crowd sits 
 about on benches planted by a Verschonerungsverein 
 within a mile of their hotel, or on the verandah of the 
 hotel itself. Some of the benches will command a 
 view, and these will be most in demand. Those that 
 are nearly a mile away will be reached by energetic 
 elderly ladies, and at dinner you will hear that they 
 have been to the Rabenstein this morning, and that 
 the Aussicht was prachtvoll and the Luft herrlich, but 
 that they must decline to go farther afield this after- 
 noon as the morning's exertions have tired them. But 
 some of die Herren say they are ready for anything, 
 and even propose to scale the mountain behind the 
 hotel and drink a glass of beer at the top. You readily 
 agree to go with them, for by this time you know that 
 even if you are a poor walker you can toddle half 
 way up a German hill and down again ; and the hotel 
 itself has been built high above the valley. But after 
 dinner you find that nearly everyone disappears for a 
 siesta, while the few who keep outside are asleep over 
 their coffee and cigar. Even Skat hardly keeps awake 
 the three Herren who proposed a walk ; and your friend 
 the Frau Geheimrath Schultze warns you solemnly 
 against the insanity of stirring a step before sundown ; 
 for summer in South Germany is summer indeed. 
 The sun comes suddenly with power and glory, bursting 
 every sheathed bud and ripening crops in such a hurry 
 that you walk through new mown hayfields while your 
 English calendar tells you it is still spring. Later in 
 the year the heat is often intense all through the 
 middle of the day, and the young men who make their 
 
SUMMER RESORTS 253 
 
 excursions on foot start at dawn, so that they may 
 arrive at a resting place by ten or eleven. " For many 
 years our boys have wandered cheaply and simply 
 through their German Fatherland," says a leaflet 
 advertising a society that organises walking tours for 
 girls ; Saturday afternoon walks, Sunday walks, and 
 holiday walks extending over six or eight days. 
 " Simplicity, cheerful friendly intercourse, gaiety in fresh 
 air, these are the companions of our pilgrimage. . . . 
 We wish to provide the German nation with mothers 
 'who are at home in woods and meadows, who have 
 learned to observe the beauties of nature, who have 
 strengthened their health and their preceptions of every- 
 thing that is great and beautiful by happy walks. . . . 
 Anyone wanderfroh who has been at a higher school 
 or who is still attending one is eligible. The card of 
 membership only costs 3 marks for a single member 
 and 4 marks for a whole family. Some of the 
 excursions are planned to include brother pilgrims, and 
 their character is gay and cheerful, without flirting or 
 coquetry, a genuine friendly intercourse between girls 
 and boys, young men and maidens, a pure and beautiful 
 companionship such as no dancing lesson and no 
 ballroom can create, and which is nevertheless the best 
 training for life." So nowadays gangs of girls, and 
 even mixed gangs of boys and girls, are to swarm 
 through the pleasant forests of Germany, ascend the 
 easy pathways of her mountains, and fill her country 
 inns to overflowing. How horrified the little Backfisch 
 would have been at such a suggestion, how unmaidenly 
 her excellent aunt would have deemed it, how pro- 
 foundly they would both have disapproved of any 
 exercise that heightens the colour or disturbs the 
 neatness of a young lady's toilet. I myself have heard 
 German men become quite violent in their condemnation 
 
254 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 of Englishwomen who play games or take walks that 
 make them temporarily dishevelled. It never seemed 
 to occur to them that a woman might think their 
 displeasure at her appearance of less account than her 
 own enjoyment. " No," they said, " ask not that we 
 should admire Miss Smith. She has just come in from 
 a six hours' walk with her brother. Her face is as red 
 as a poppy, her blouse is torn, and her boots are thick 
 and muddy." 
 
 As a matter of fact, I had not asked them to admire 
 Miss Smith. I knew that the lady they admired was 
 arch, and had a persuasive giggle. Nevertheless I tried 
 to break a lance for my countrywoman. 
 
 " You will see," I assured them, " she will remove the 
 torn blouse and the muddy boots ; and when she 
 comes down her face will be quite pale." 
 
 " But she often looks like that," said one of the men. 
 " At least once a day she plays a game or takes a walk 
 that is more of a strain on her appearance than it should 
 be. A young woman must always consider what effect 
 things have on her appearance." 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Why ? Because she is a woman. There is no 
 sense in a question like that. It goes back to the 
 beginning of all things. It is unanswerable. Every 
 young woman wishes to please." 
 
 " But is it not conceivable," I asked, " that a young 
 woman may sometimes wish to please herself even at 
 the expense of her appearance. Miss Smith assures 
 me that she enjoys long walks and games, oh, 
 games that you have not seen her play here 
 hockey, for instance, and cricket." 
 
 " Verruckt ! " said the men in chorus. " A young 
 woman should not think of herself at all. The Almighty 
 has created her to please us, and it does not please us 
 
SUMMER RESORTS 255 
 
 when she wears muddy boots and is as red as a poppy ; 
 at least, not while she is young. When she is married, 
 and her place is in the kitchen, she may be as red as 
 she pleases. That is a different matter." 
 
 " Is it ? " I said, and I wanted to ask why again ; but 
 I held my tongue. Some questions, as they said, lead 
 one too far afield. 
 
 The majority of visitors at a German watering-place 
 take very little exercise of any kind. They sit about 
 the forest as our seaside visitors sit about the sands, 
 and though they cannot fill in their mornings by sea 
 bathing, there are often medicinal baths that take as 
 much time. Then the Badearzt probably prescribes 
 so many glasses of water from his favourite spring each 
 day, and a short walk after each glass, and a long rest 
 after the midday dinner. Dinner is the really serious 
 business of the day, and often occupies two hours. 
 Where there is still a table d'hote it is a tedious, noisy 
 affair, conducted in a stuffy room, and even if you are 
 greedy enough to like the good things brought round 
 you wish very soon that you were on a Cumberland 
 fell-side with a mutton sandwich and a mountain stream. 
 You wish it even although you hate mutton sandwiches 
 and like meringues filled with Alpine strawberries and 
 whipped cream ; for the clatter and the clack going on 
 around you, and the asphyxiating air, bring on a de- 
 moralising somnolence that you despise and cannot 
 easily throw off. You sit about as lazily as anyone else 
 half through the golden afternoon, drink a cup of coffee 
 at four o'clock, look at mountains of cake, and then 
 start for the restaurant, which is said to be eine gute 
 Stunde from the hotel. You find, as you expected, 
 that you saunter gently uphill on a broad winding road 
 through the forest, and that you have a charming walk, 
 but not what anyone in this country would call exercise 
 
256 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 till they were about seventy. In case you should be 
 weary you pass seats every hundred yards or so, and 
 when you have made your ascent you are received by 
 a bustling waiter or a waitress in costume, who expects 
 to serve you with beer or coffee before you venture 
 down the hill again. By the time you get back to the 
 hotel everyone is streaming in to supper, which is not 
 as long as dinner, but quite as noisy. After supper 
 everyone sits about the verandah or the garden. The 
 men play cards, and smoke and drink coffee and Kirsch, 
 the married women talk and do embroidery, the maidens 
 stroll about in twos and threes or sit down to Halma. 
 There are never many young men in these summer 
 hotels, and the few there are herd with the older men 
 or with each other more than young men do in this 
 country. What we understand by flirtation is not 
 encouraged, unless it is almost sure to lead to marriage ; 
 and what the Germans understand by flirtation is justly 
 considered scandalous and reprehensible. For the 
 Germans have taken the word into use, but taken away 
 the levity and innocence of its meaning. They make 
 it a term of serious reproach, and those who dislike us 
 condemn the shocking prevalence of Flirt (they make 
 a noun of the verb) in our decadent society. 
 
 The Pension price at a German summer hotel varies 
 from four to fifteen marks, according to the general 
 style of the establishment and the position of the rooms 
 engaged. In one frequented by Germans the sitting- 
 rooms are bare and formal, and as English visitors are 
 not expected no English papers are taken. The season 
 begins in June and lasts till the end of September, and 
 you must be a successful hotel-keeper yourself to 
 understand how so much can be provided for so little, 
 miles away from any market. Many of these summer 
 hotels have been built high up in the forest, and with 
 
SUMMER RESORTS 257 
 
 no others near them. Some are run as a speculation 
 by doctors. There is hardly a woman or girl in Germany 
 who has not needed a Kur at some time of her life, 
 or who does not need one every year if she has money 
 and pretty gowns. The Badereise and everything 
 connected with it serves the German professional 
 humorist much as the mother-in-law and the drop 
 too much serve the English one, perennially and 
 faithfully. For the wife is determined to have her 
 Badereise, and the husband is not inclined to pay for 
 ,it, and the family doctor is called in to prescribe it. 
 The artifices and complications arising suggest them- 
 selves, and to judge by the postcards and farces of 
 Germany never weary the public they are designed 
 to amuse. 
 
 In Berlin, when the hot weather comes, you see the 
 family luggage and bedding going off to the sea-coast, 
 for people who take a house take part of their bedding 
 with them. There is so little seaside and so much 
 Berlin that prices rule high wherever there is civilised 
 accommodation. In Ruegen \ a week per room 
 is usual, and the room you get for that may be a very 
 poor one. In most German watering-places, both on 
 the coast and in the forest, you can have furnished 
 rooms if you prefer them to hotel life, but as a rule 
 you must either cook your own dinner or go out to 
 a hotel for it. The cooking landlady is as rare in 
 the country as in the town. Then in some places, at 
 Oberhof, for instance, high upon the hills above Gotha, 
 there are charming little furnished bungalows. Friends 
 of mine go there or to one of the neighbouring villages 
 every year, and never enter a hotel. They either take a 
 servant with them, or find someone on the spot to do what 
 is necessary. When there are no mineral waters or sea 
 baths to give a place importance, Germans say they 
 
258 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 have come there to do a Luftkur. A delightful 
 Frenchwoman who has written about England lately 
 is amused by our everlasting babble about a " change." 
 This one needs a change, she says, and that one is away 
 for a change, and the other means to have a change 
 next week. So the Germans amuse us by their eternal 
 " cures." One tries air, and the other water, and the 
 next iron, and the fourth sulphur, while the number 
 and variety of nerve cures, Blutarmut cures, diet cures, 
 and obesity cures are bewildering. It is difficult to 
 believe that life in a hotel can cure anyone anywhere. 
 However, in Germany, if you are under a capable 
 Badearzt, there may be some salvation for you, since 
 he orders your baths, measures your walks, and limits 
 your diet so strictly. At one of the well-known places 
 where people who eat too much all the year round go 
 to reduce their figures, there is in the chief hotels a 
 table known as the Corpulententisch, and a man who 
 sits there is not allowed an ounce of bread beyond 
 what his physician has prescribed. 
 
 But the German Luxusbad> the fashionable watering- 
 place where the guests are cosmopolitan and the prices 
 high Marienbad, Homburg, Karlsbad, Schwalbach, 
 Wiesbaden all these places are as well known to 
 English people as their own Bath and Buxton. 
 Homburg they have swallowed, and I have somewhere 
 come across a paragraph from an English newspaper 
 objecting to the presence of Germans there. It is the 
 quiet German watering-place where no English come 
 that is interesting and not impossible to find. During 
 the summer I spent in a Bavarian forest village I 
 only saw one English person the whole time, except 
 my own two or three friends. I heard the other day 
 that the village and the life there have hardly altered 
 at all, but that some English people have discovered the 
 
SUMMER RESORTS 259 
 
 trout streams and come every year for fishing. In my 
 time no one seemed to care about fishing. You went 
 for walks in the forest. There was nothing else to do, 
 unless you played Kegel and drank beer; for it was 
 only a Luftkur. There was no Badearzt and no 
 mineral water. To be sure, there were caves, huge 
 limestone caves that you visited with a guide the day 
 after you arrived, and never thought about again. 
 There were various ruined castles, too, in the neighbour- 
 hood that made a goal for a drive in cases where there 
 was a restaurant attached, and not far off there was a 
 curious network of underground beer-cellars that I did 
 not see, but which seemed to attract the men of our 
 party sometimes. There were several inns in the 
 straggling village, for the place lay high up amongst 
 the dolomite hills of Upper Franconia, and people came 
 there from the neighbouring towns for Waldluft. The 
 summer I was there Richard Wagner passed through 
 with his family, and we saw him more than once. He 
 stayed at the Kurhaus, a hotel of more pretentions than 
 the village inns, for it had a good sized garden and did 
 not entertain peasants. My inn, recommended by an 
 old Nuremberg friend, was owned and managed by a 
 peasant proprietor, his wife, their elderly daughter, and 
 two charming orphan grandchildren in their early teens. 
 The peasant customers had as usual a large rough room 
 to themselves, the town guests had their plain bare 
 Speisesaal, and we Britishers possessed the summer 
 house ; so we were all happy. The whole glory of the 
 place was in the forest ; for it was not flat sandy forest 
 that has no undergrowth, and wearies you very soon 
 with its sameness and its still, oppressive air. It was 
 up hill and down dale forest, full of lovely glades, 
 broken by massive dolomite rocks ; the trees not set in 
 serried rows, but growing for the most part as the birds 
 
260 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 and the wind planted them ; a varied natural forest 
 tended but not dragooned by man. The flowers there 
 were a delight to us, for we arrived early enough in the 
 year to find lilies of the valley growing in great 
 quantities amongst the rocks, while a little later the 
 stream and pathways were bordered by oak and beech 
 fern and by many wild orchises that are rare now with 
 us. It was not here, however, but in another German 
 forest, where, one day when I had no time to linger, I 
 met people with great bunches of the Cypripedium 
 calceolus that they had gathered as we gather primroses. 
 At the Bavarian watering-place we had the whole forest 
 as much to ourselves as the summer house, for no one 
 seemed to wander farther than the seats placed amongst 
 the trees by the Verschonerungsverein. 
 
 "Warum willst du waiter schweifen 
 Sieh das Gute liegt so nah," 
 
 says Goethe, and most Germans out for their summer 
 holiday seem to take his advice in the most literal way, 
 and find their happiness as near home as they possibly 
 can. 
 
 When you begin to think about the actual process of 
 travelling in Germany, the tiresome business of getting 
 from the city to the forest village, for instance, you at 
 once remember both the many complaints you have 
 heard Germans make of our system, or rather want of 
 system, and the bitter scorn poured on German fussiness 
 by travelling Britons. The ways of one nation are 
 certainly not the ways of another in this respect. 
 Directly I cross the German frontier I know that I am 
 safe from muddle and mistakes, that I need not look 
 after myself or my luggage, that I cannot get into a 
 wrong train or alight at a wrong station, or suffer any 
 injury through carelessness or mismanagement. Every- 
 
SUMMER RESORTS 261 
 
 thing is managed for me, and on long journeys in the 
 corridor trains things are well managed. But your 
 carriage is far more likely to be unpleasantly crowded 
 in Germany than in England; and as hand-luggage 
 is not charged for, the public takes all it can, and 
 fills the racks, the seats, and the floor with heavy 
 bags and portmanteaux. In bygone years the saying 
 was that none travelled first class save fools and 
 Englishmen, but nowadays Germans travel in their own 
 first-class carriages a good deal. The third-class 
 accommodation is wretched, more fit for animals than 
 men. In some districts there are fourth-class uncovered 
 seats on the roof of the carriages, but I have only seen 
 these used in summer. When I was last in Germany 
 a year ago there was much excitement and indignation 
 over certain changes that were to make travelling dearer 
 for everyone. All luggage in the van was to be paid for 
 in future, first-class fares were to be raised, and no 
 return tickets issued. 
 
 But you must not think that when you have bought 
 a ticket from one place to another you can get to it by 
 any train you please. " I want the I o. I 5 to Entepfuhl," 
 you say to the nearest and biggest official you can see ; 
 and he looks at your ticket. 
 
 " Personenzug? he says in a withering way, " the 
 10.15 is an express." 
 
 You say humbly that you like an express. 
 
 " Then you must get an extra ticket," he says, 
 " This one only admits you to slow trains." 
 
 So you get your extra ticket, and then you wait with 
 everyone else in a big room where most people are 
 eating and drinking to wile away the time. Don't 
 imagine that you can find your empty train, choose 
 your corner, and settle yourself comfortably for your 
 journey as you can in England. You are well looked 
 
262 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 after, but if you are used to England you never quite 
 lose the impression in Germany that if you are not an 
 official or a soldier you must be a criminal, and that if 
 you move an inch to right or left of what is prescribed 
 you will hear of it. Just before the train starts the 
 warders open your prison doors and shout out the chief 
 places the train travels to. So you hustle along with 
 everyone else, and get the best place you can, and are 
 hauled out by a watchful conductor when you arrive. 
 If it is a small station there is sure to be a dearth of 
 porters, but you get your luggage by going to the 
 proper office and giving up the slip of paper you 
 received when it was weighed. Never forget, as I have 
 known English people do, that you cannot travel in 
 Germany without having your luggage weighed and 
 receiving the Schein for it. If you lose the Schein you 
 are undone. I cannot tell you exactly what would 
 happen, because it would be a tragedy without precedent, 
 but it is impossible that German officials would 
 surrender a trunk without receiving a Schein in ex- 
 change ; at least, not without months of rigmarole and 
 delay. Even when it is the official who blunders the 
 public suffers for it. We were travelling some years 
 agdfrom Leipzig to London when the guard examining 
 our tickets let one blow away. Luckily some German 
 gentlemen in the carriage with us saw what happened, 
 gave us their addresses, and offered to help us in any 
 way they could. But we had to buy a fresh ticket and 
 trust to getting our money back by correspondence. 
 Six months later we did get it back, and this is an 
 exact translation of the letter accompanying it : 
 
 " In answer to your gracious letter of the 26th 
 September, we inform your wellbornship, respectfully, 
 that the Ticket Office here is directed, in regard to the 
 
SUMMER RESORTS 263 
 
 ticket by you on the 23rd of September taken, by the 
 guard in checking lost ticket Leipzig-London via 
 Calais 2nd class, the for the distance Hanover to London 
 outpaid fare of 7 1 m. 40 pf. by post to you to refund." 
 
 One must admire the mind that can compose a 
 sentence like that without either losing its way or 
 turning dizzy. 
 
 But if you want to see what Germans can give you 
 in the way of order and comfort you must leave the 
 railroad and travel in one of their big American liners. 
 Even if you are not going to America, but only from 
 Hamburg to Dover, it is well worth doing. The 
 interest of it begins the day before, when you take 
 your trunks to the docks and see the steerage pas- 
 sengers assembled for their start. They are a strange 
 gipsy-looking folk, for the most part from the eastern 
 frontier of Germany, bare-footed and wearing scraps 
 of brighter colours than western people choose. 
 When we arrived the doctor was examining their eyes 
 in an open shed, and we saw them huddled together 
 in families waiting their turn. There was no weeping 
 and wailing as there is when the Irish leave their 
 shores. These people looked scared by the bustle 
 of departure, and concerned for the little children 
 with them, and for their poor bundles of clothes; 
 but they did not seem unhappy. In the luggage 
 bureau itself you came across the emigrant upsides 
 with fortune, the successful business German return- 
 ing to America after a summer holiday in his native 
 land, and speaking the most hideously corrupt and 
 vulgar English ever heard. The most harsh and 
 nasal American is heavenly music compared with 
 nasal American spoken by a German tongue. The 
 great ship was crowded with people of this type, and 
 
264 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 the resources of Europe could hardly supply them 
 with the luxuries they wanted. We had a special 
 train next day to Cuxhaven, and an army of blue- 
 coated white-gloved stewards to meet us on the 
 platform, and a band to play us on board. Our 
 private rooms were hung with pale blue silk and 
 painted with white enamel and furnished with satin- 
 wood ; the passages had marble floors ; there were 
 quantities of flowers everywhere, and books, and the 
 electric light. In fact, it was the luxurious floating 
 hotel a modern liner must be to entice such people 
 as those I saw in the luggage bureau to travel in it. 
 The meals were most elaborate and excellent ; and 
 I feel sure that any royal family happening to travel 
 incognito on the ship would have been satisfied with 
 them. But my neighbours at table were not. "We 
 shall not dine down here again," said one of them, 
 speaking with the twang I have described. " After 
 to-night we shall have all our meals in the Ritz 
 Restaurant." I looked at her reflectively, and next 
 day after breakfast I stood on the bridge and looked 
 at the other emigrants. The women were singing an 
 interminable droning mass, the men sat about on sacks 
 and played cards, the bare-footed children scuttled 
 to and fro. 
 
 " One day some of these people will come back in 
 a Luxus cabin," said a German acquaintance to me. 
 
 " And they will dine in the Ritz Restaurant, because 
 our dinner is not good enough for them," I prophesied. 
 
 Directly we got to Dover every feature of our arrival 
 helped us to feel at home. There was a batch of 
 large good-natured looking policemen, whose function 
 I cannot explain, but it was agreeable to see them 
 again. There was no order or organisation of any 
 kind to protect and annoy you. The authorities had 
 
SUMMER RESORTS 265 
 
 thoughtfully painted the letters of the alphabet on 
 the platform where the luggage was deposited, and 
 you were supposed to find your own trunks in front 
 of your own letter. I, full of German ideas still, 
 waited a weary time near my letter. "You'll never 
 get them that way," said an English friend. " You'd 
 much better go to the end of the platform and pick 
 them out as you can." So I went, and found a huge 
 pile of luggage pitched anyhow, anywhere, and picked 
 out my own, seized a porter, made him shoulder things, 
 and followed him at risk to life and limb. All the 
 luggage leaving Dover was being tumbled about at 
 our feet, and when we tried to escape it we fell over 
 what had arrived. Porters were rushing to and fro 
 with trunks, just as disturbed ants do with eggs, but 
 in this case it was the German passengers who felt 
 disturbed. They were not used to such ways. When 
 they had to duck under a rope to reach the waiting 
 train they grew quite angry, and said they did not 
 think much of the British Empire. But there was 
 worse to come for us all. Breakfast on board had 
 been early and a fog had delayed our arrival. We 
 were all hungry and streamed into the refreshment 
 room. We filled it. 
 
 " What is there to eat ? " said one. 
 
 The young woman with the hauteur and detach- 
 ment of her calling did not speak, but just glanced 
 at a glass dish under a glass cover. There were two 
 stale looking ham sandwiches. 
 
 " Well," says my Englishman, when I tell him this 
 true story " we are not a greedy nation." 
 
 " But how about the trunks that were not under 
 their right letters ? " I ask. 
 
 " Who in his senses wants to find trunks under 
 letters ? " says he. " The proper place for trunks is 
 
266 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 the end of the platform. Then you can tear out of 
 the train and find yours first and get off quickly. 
 When you are all dragooned and drilled an ass comes 
 off as well as anyone else. You place a premium on 
 stupidity." 
 
 " But that is an advantage to the ass," I say ; " and 
 in a civilised State why should the ass not have as 
 good a chance as anyone else ? " 
 
 The argument that ensues is familiar, exhausting, 
 and interminable. " An ass is an ass wherever he 
 lives," says someone at last ; and everyone is delighted 
 to have a proposition put forward to which he can 
 honestly agree. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 PEASANT LIFE 
 
 THE peasant proprietors of Southern Germany are 
 a comfortable, prosperous class. " A rich 
 peasant " begins your comic story as often as " a rich 
 Jew." The peasants own their farms and a bit of 
 forest, as well as a vineyard or a hop garden. They 
 never pretend to be anything but peasants ; but when 
 they can afford it they like to have a son who is a 
 doctor, a schoolmaster, or a pastor. Unless you have 
 special opportunities you can only watch peasant life 
 from outside in Germany, for you could not stay in a 
 Bauernhaus as you would in a farmhouse in England. 
 At least, you could not live with the family. In some 
 of the summer resorts the peasants make money by 
 furnishing bedrooms and letting them to Herrschaften^ 
 but the Herrschaften have to get their meals at the 
 nearest inn. The inner life of the peasant family is 
 rougher than the inner life of the farmer's family in 
 England, though their level of prosperity is as high, 
 possibly higher. You cannot imagine the English 
 farmer and his wife putting on costly and picturesque 
 mediaeval costumes every Sunday and solemnly 
 marching to church in them ; but the German Bauer 
 still does this quite simply and proudly. In some 
 parts of the Black Forest every valley has its own 
 
 costume, so that you know where a man lives by the 
 
 267 
 
268 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 clothes he wears. There is one valley where all the 
 girls are pretty, and on festive occasions or for church 
 they wear charming transparent black caps with wings 
 to them. There is another valley where the men are 
 big-boned and blackavised, with square shaven chins 
 and spare bodies, rather like our English legal type ; 
 and they go to church in scarlet breeches, long black 
 velvet coats, and black three-cornered hats. Their 
 women-folk wear gay-coloured skirts and mushroom 
 hats loaded with heavy poms-poms. In Cassel there are 
 most curious costumes to be seen still on high days 
 and holidays ; from Berlin, people go to the Spreewald 
 to see the Wendish peasants, and in Bavaria there is 
 still some colour and variety of costume. But every- 
 where you hear that these costumes are dying out. 
 The new generation does not care to label itself, for 
 it finds stadtische Kleider cheaper and more convenient. 
 The Wendish girls seem to abide by the ways of 
 their forefathers, for they go to service in Berlin on 
 purpose to save money for clothes. They buy or are 
 presented with two or three costumes each year, and 
 when they marry they have a stock that will last a 
 lifetime and will provide them with the variety their 
 pride demands. For they like to have a special rig-out 
 for every occasion, and a great many changes for 
 church on Sundays. In Catholic Germany a procession 
 on a saint's day seems to have stepped down from a 
 stained-glass window, the women's gowns are so vivid 
 and their bodies so stiff and angular. But to see the 
 German peasantry in full dress you must go to a 
 Kirchweih, a dance, or a wedding. 
 
 You can hardly be in Germany in summer without 
 seeing something of peasants' weddings, and of the 
 elaborate rites observed at them. Different parts of the 
 empire have different ways, and even in one district you 
 
PEASANT LIFE 269 
 
 will find much variety. We saw several peasant 
 weddings in the Black Forest one summer, and no two 
 were quite alike. Sometimes when we were walking 
 through the forest we met a Brautwagen : the great 
 open cart loaded with the furniture and wedding 
 presents the bride was taking as part of her dowry to 
 her new home. It would be piled with bedding, 
 wooden bedsteads, chests of drawers, and pots and pans ; 
 and gay-coloured ribbons would be floating from each 
 point of vantage. Sometimes the bridal pair was 
 with the cart, the young husband in his wedding 
 clothes walking beside the horse, the bride seated 
 amongst her possessions. Sometimes a couple of men 
 in working clothes, probably the bridegroom and a 
 friend, were carrying the things beforehand, so that the 
 new home should be ready directly after the wedding. 
 We happened to be staying in the Black Forest when 
 our inn-keeper's daughter was going to marry a young 
 doctor, the son of a rich peasant in a neighbouring 
 valley, and we were asked to the wedding. Our 
 landlord ran two inns, the one in which we stayed and 
 another a dozen miles away, which was managed by 
 his wife and daughters. The wife's hotel was in a 
 fashionable watering-place, and offered a smarter 
 background for a wedding than the one in our out-of- 
 the-world little town. It is the proper moment now 
 for you to object that this could not have been a 
 "peasant" wedding at all, and has no place in a 
 picture of peasant life ; and I concede that the bride 
 and bridegroom, their parents, and certain of their 
 friends all wore stadtische Kleider. The bride was 
 in black silk, and the bridegroom in his professional 
 black coat. But nearly all the guests were peasants, 
 and wore peasant costume; and the heavy long- 
 spun festivities were those usual at a peasant's 
 
270 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 wedding. We started with our bicycles at six o'clock 
 in the morning, and soon found ourselves in a straggling 
 procession of carts and pedestrians come from all the 
 valleys round. The main road was like a road on a 
 fair day. Everyone knew that there was to be a 
 Hochzeit at R., a big splendid Hochzeit, and everyone who 
 could afford the time and the money was going to eat 
 and drink and dance at it. Everyone was in a holiday 
 mood, and all along the lovely forest road we exchanged 
 greetings with our fellow-guests and gathered scraps of 
 information about the feast we were on our way to 
 join. Every inn we passed had set out extra tables, 
 and expected extra custom that day, and when we got 
 to one within a mile of R. we found the garden 
 crowded. People were ready by this time for their 
 second breakfast, and were having it here before 
 making their appearance at the wedding. We were 
 hungry and thirsty ourselves, so we sat down under 
 the shade of trees and ate belegtes Butterbrod and 
 drank Pilsener as our neighbours did. We arrived at 
 R. just in time to remove the dust of the road, and 
 then walk, as we found our hosts expected us to do, in 
 the wedding procession. First came the bride and 
 bridegroom, and then a long crocodile of brides- 
 maids, all wearing the curious high bead wreaths 
 possessed by every village girl of standing in this part 
 of Germany. We witnessed the civil ceremony, but 
 though I have been present at several German civil 
 weddings I remember as little about them as about a 
 visit to the English District Council Office where I 
 have sometimes been to pay taxes. In both cases 
 there is a bare room, an indifferent official, some 
 production of official papers, and the thing is done. 
 When the bride and bridegroom had been made 
 legally man and wife they headed the waiting proces- 
 
PEASANT LIFE 271 
 
 sion again, and proceeded to the church for the real, 
 the religious ceremony. It was packed with people, 
 and the service, which was Catholic, lasted a long time. 
 When it was over everyone streamed back to the hotel, 
 and as soon as possible the Hochzeitsmahl began ; 
 but though we were politely bidden to it we politely 
 excused ourselves, for we knew that the feast would 
 last for hours and would be more than we could bear. 
 Till evening, they said, it would last, and there would 
 be many speeches, and it was a broiling summer day. 
 The guests we perceived to be a mixed company of 
 peasants in costume, of inn-keepers and their families 
 in ordinary clothes, and of university students in black 
 coats who were removed from the peasantry by their 
 education, but not by birth and affection. The invited 
 guests sat down to dinner in the Speisesaal, but the 
 hotel garden was crowded with country people who 
 paid for what they consumed. The dinner served to 
 us and to others out here was an unusually good one, 
 so we discovered that people who attend a wedding 
 unasked get a spectacle, a dance, and extra fine food 
 for their money. Towards the end of the afternoon 
 before we left R. we looked in at the ballroom, where 
 dancing had begun already. 
 
 At another peasant's wedding in the Black Forest 
 we saw some quaint customs observed that were omitted 
 at R. In this case the bride and bridegroom were 
 themselves peasants, and wore the costume of their 
 valley. The bride was said to be well endowed, but 
 she was extremely plain. Amongst German peasants, 
 however, beauty hardly counts. What a woman is 
 worth to a man, he reckons partly in hard cash and 
 partly in the work she can do. There were two 
 charmingly pretty girls in the Bavarian village where 
 we once spent a summer, but we were told that they 
 
272 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 had not the faintest chance of marriage, because, 
 though they belonged to a respectable family, they 
 were orphans and dowerless. Auerbach's enchanting 
 story of Barfiissele^ in which the village Cinderella 
 marries the rich peasant, is a fairy story and not a 
 picture of real life. The feast at this second wedding 
 we saw must have cost a good deal, for it was prepared 
 at our hotel for a large crowd of guests and lasted for 
 hours. It was an agitating wedding in some of its 
 aspects. The day before we had been startled at 
 irregular but frequent intervals by loud gunshots, and 
 we were told that these were fired in welcome of the 
 wedding guests as they arrived. When the bride 
 appeared with her Brautwagen and an escort of young 
 men there was a volley in her honour. We did not 
 go to church to see that wedding, as we were not 
 attracted by the bridal pair ; but we watched the crowd 
 from our windows, and as it was a wet day, endured 
 the sounds of revelry that lasted for hours after the 
 feast began. There was no dancing at this marriage, 
 and as each batch of guests departed a brass band just 
 outside our rooms played them a send-off. It was a 
 jerky irritating performance, because the instant the 
 object of their attentions disappeared round the turn 
 of the hill they stopped short, and only began a new 
 tune when there was a new departure. We were rather 
 glad when the day came to an end. In the Black 
 Forest you always know where there is a wedding, 
 because two small fir trees are brought from the forest 
 decked with flying coloured streamers of paper or ribbon, 
 and set on either side of the bride's front door. 
 
 The German peasant loves his pipe and his beer, and 
 on a Sunday afternoon his game of Kegel\ but on high 
 days and holidays he likes to be dancing. He and she 
 will trudge for miles to dance at some distant village 
 
PEASANT LIFE 273 
 
 inn. You meet them dressed in their best clothes, 
 walking barefoot and carrying clean boots and 
 stockings. How they can dance in tight boots after a 
 long hot walk on a dusty road, you must be a German 
 peasant yourself to understand. The dance I remember 
 best took place in a barn belonging to a village inn in 
 Bavaria. I went with several English friends to look 
 on at it, and the men of our party danced with some 
 of the village girls. The room was only lighted by a 
 few candles, and it was so crowded that while everyone 
 was dancing everyone was hustled. But we were told 
 that anyone who chose could " buy the floor " for a time 
 by giving sixpence or a shilling to the band. Two of 
 the Englishmen did this, and the crowd looked on in 
 solemn approval while they waltzed once or twice round 
 with the pretty granddaughters of our hosts. It was a 
 scene I have often wished I could paint, the crowd was 
 so dense, and the faces, from our point of view, so 
 foreign. The candles only lifted the semi-darkness 
 here and there, but where their light fell it flashed on 
 the bright-coloured handkerchiefs which the women of 
 this village twisted round their heads like turbans, and 
 pinned across their bosoms. I think it is absurd, though, 
 to say that German peasants dance well. They enjoy 
 the exercise immensely, but are heavy and loutish in 
 their movements, and they flounder about in a grotesque 
 way with their hands on each other's shoulders. At a 
 Kirchweih they dance in the open air. 
 
 A Kirchweih is a feast to celebrate the foundations 
 of the village church, and it takes the form of a fair. 
 The preparations begin the day before, when the round- 
 abouts and shooting booths are put up in the appointed 
 field. On the day before the Kirchweih in our Bavarian 
 village I found the inn-keeper's wife cooking what we 
 call Berlin pancakes in a cauldron of boiling fat, the 
 18 
 
274 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 like of which I have never seen before or since for size. 
 It must have held gallons. All day long she stood 
 there throwing in the cinnamon flavoured batter, and 
 taking out the little crisp brown balls. They are, it 
 seems, a favourite dainty at a Bavarian Kirchweih, and 
 must be provided in large quantities. On the fair field 
 itself the food offered by the stall-keepers seemed to 
 be chiefly enormous slabs of shiny gingerbread made 
 in fanciful shapes, such as hearts, lyres, and garlands, 
 cheap sweetmeats, and the small boiled sausages the 
 artless German eats in public without a knife and fork. 
 The Kirchweih is the chief event of the summer in 
 a German village, and is talked of for weeks before- 
 hand. The peasants stream in from all the villages 
 near, and join in the dancing and the shooting matches. 
 When the day is fine and the fair field has a background 
 of wooded hills, you see where the librettists of pre- 
 Wagnerian days went for their stage effects. All the 
 characters of many a German opera are there correctly 
 dressed, joining in the songs and dances, shooting for 
 wagers, making love, sometimes coming to blows. But 
 you may look on at a Kirchweih from morning till 
 night without seeing either horseplay or drunkenness. 
 Not that the German peasant is an opera hero in his 
 inner life. He is a hard-working man, God-fearing on 
 the whole, stupid and stolid often, narrowly shrewd 
 often, having his eye on the main chance. When he 
 is stupid but not God-fearing he dresses himself and 
 his wife in their best clothes, puts his insurance papers 
 in his pockets, sets his thatched house on fire, and goes 
 for a walk. Then he is surprised that he is caught 
 and punished. Fires are frequent in German villages, 
 and in a high wind and where the roofs are of straw 
 destruction is complete sometimes. You often come 
 across the blackened remains of houses, and you always 
 
PEASANT LIFE 275 
 
 feel anxious about the new buildings that will replace 
 them. It is a good deal to say, but I believe our own 
 jerry-builders are outdone in florid vulgarity by German 
 villadom, and the German atrocities will last longer than 
 ours, because the building laws are more stringent. 
 But the old Bauernhaus still to be seen in most parts 
 of the Black Forest is dignified and beautiful. The 
 Swiss chalet is a poor gim-crack thing in comparison. 
 Sometimes the German house has a shingled roof, and 
 sometimes a thatched roof dark with age, and it has 
 drooping eaves and an outside staircase and balcony 
 of wood. It shelters the farm cattle in the stables on 
 the ground floor, and the family on the upper floor, and 
 in the roof there are granaries. But the beautiful old 
 thatched roofs are gradually giving place to the slate 
 ones, because they burn so easily, and fire, when it 
 comes, is the village tragedy. I can remember when 
 a fire in a big German commercial town was proclaimed 
 by a beating drum, the noisy parade of fire-men, the 
 clanging of bells, and all the hullaballoo that panic and 
 curiosity could make. But last year, in Berlin, looking 
 at houses like the tower of Babel, I said something of 
 fire, and was told that no one felt nervous nowadays, 
 the arrangements for dealing with it were so complete. 
 
 " People just look out of the window, see that there 
 is a fire next door, or above or beneath them, and go 
 about their business," said my hosts. " They know 
 that the fire brigade will do their business and put 
 it out." 
 
 I did not see a fire in Berlin, so I had no opportunity 
 of witnessing the remarkable coolness of the Berliner in 
 circumstances the ordinary man finds trying ; but I saw 
 a fire in my Bavarian village, and there were not many 
 cool people there. The summons came in the middle 
 of the night with the hoarse insistent clanging of the 
 
2/6 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 church bell, the sudden start into life of the sleeping 
 village, the sounds in the house and in the street of 
 people astir and terrified. Then there came the 
 brilliant reflection of the flames in the opposite windows, 
 and the roar and crackle of fire no one at first knew 
 where. It was only a barn after all, a barn luckily 
 detached from other buildings. Yet when we got into 
 the street we found most of the population removing 
 its treasures, as if danger was imminent All the beds 
 and chairs and pots and pans of the place seemed to 
 be on the cobble-stones, and the women wailed and the 
 children wept. " But the village is not on fire," we said. 
 " It may be at any moment," they assured us, and were 
 scandalised by our cold-bloodedness. For we had not 
 carted our trunks into the street, but hastened towards 
 the burning barn to see if we could help the men and 
 boys carrying water. The weather was still and the 
 barn isolated, so we knew there was no danger of the 
 fire spreading. But the villagers were too excitable 
 and too panic-stricken to be convinced of this. All 
 their lives they had dreaded fire, and when the flames 
 broke out so near them they thought that their houses 
 were doomed. 
 
 Next to fire the German peasant hates beggars and 
 gipsies. We were six months in the Black Forest and 
 only met one beggar the whole time, and he was a 
 decent-looking old man who seemed to ask alms 
 unwillingly. But in some parts of Germany there are 
 a great many most unpleasant-looking tramps. The 
 village council puts up a notice that forbids begging, 
 and has a general fund from which it sends tramps on 
 their way. But it does not seem able to deal with the 
 caravans of gipsies that come from Hungary and 
 Bohemia. In a Thuringian village we came down one 
 morning to find our inn locked and barricaded as if a riot 
 
PEASANT LIFE 277 
 
 was expected, and an attack. Even the shutters were 
 drawn and bolted. " Was ist denn los ? " we asked in 
 amazment, and were told that the gipsies were coming. 
 
 " But will they do you any harm ? " we asked. 
 
 " They will steal all they can lay hands on," our 
 landlady assured us. She was a widow, and her 
 brewer, the only man in her employ, was, we supposed, 
 standing guard over his own house. We thought the 
 panic seemed extreme, but we had never encountered 
 Hungarian gipsies on the warpath, and we did not know 
 'how many were coming. So, after assuring our excited 
 little Frau that we would stand by her as well as we 
 could, we went to an upper window to watch for the 
 enemy. Presently the procession began, a straggling 
 procession of the dirtiest, meanest-looking ruffians ever 
 seen. There was waggon after waggon, swarming with 
 ragamuffins of both sexes and all ages. The men 
 were mostly on foot, casting furtive glances to 
 right and left, evident snappers-up of unconsidered 
 trifles, truculent, ragged, wearing evil-looking knives 
 by their sides. During their transit the village 
 had shut itself up, as Coventry did for Godiva's 
 ride. When we all ventured forth again the talk 
 was of missing poultry and rifled fruit trees. The geese 
 had luckily started for their day on the high pastures 
 before the bad folk came ; for in a German village 
 there is always a gooseherd. Sometimes it is a little 
 boy or girl, sometimes an old woman, and early in the 
 morning whoever has the post collects the whole flock, 
 drives it to a chosen feeding ground, spends the day 
 there, and brings it back at night. It must be a con- 
 templative life, and in dry weather pleasant. I think 
 it would suit a philosopher if he could choose his days. 
 In our Franconian village the gooseherd was a little 
 boy, vastly proud of his job. Every morning, long 
 
278 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 before we were up, he would stride past our windows 
 piping the same tune, and at the sound of it every 
 goose in the village would waddle out from her night 
 quarters and join the cackling fussy crowd at his heels. 
 Every evening as dusk fell he came back again, still 
 piping the same tune, and then the geese would detach 
 themselves in little groups from the main body and 
 find their own homes as surely as cows do. 
 
 Every rural district of Germany has its own novelist. 
 Fritz Reuter, Frensson, Rosegger, Sudermann all write 
 of country life in the places they know best. In 
 Hauptmann's beautiful plays you see the peasant 
 through a veil of poetry and mysticism. Auerbach, I 
 am told, is out of fashion. His stories end well 
 mostly, his construction one must admit is childish, and 
 his characters change their natures with the suddenness 
 of a thunderbolt to suit his plot. Yet when I have 
 Sehnsucht for Germany, and cannot go there in reality, 
 I love to go in fancy where Auerbach leads. He takes 
 you to a house in the Black Forest, and you sit at break- 
 fast with the family eating Haferbrei out of one bowl. 
 You know the people gathered there as well as if you 
 had been with them all the summer, and you know them 
 now in winter time when the roads are deep in snow and 
 a wolf is abroad in the forest. The story I am thinking 
 of was published in 1860, and I believe that there are 
 no wolves now in the Black Forest. But as far as one 
 outside peasant life can judge, I doubt whether any- 
 thing else has changed much. You hear the history 
 of the Grossbauer, the rich farmer of the district whose 
 breed is as strong and daring as the breed of the 
 Volsungs. Seven years ago the only son and heir of 
 this forest magnate, Adam Rottman, loved a poor 
 girl called Martina, and their child Joseph is now six 
 years old. Adam is still faithful to Martina, but his 
 
PEASANT LIFE 279 
 
 parents will not consent to their marriage, and insists 
 on betrothing him to an heiress as rich as he will be, 
 Heidenmiiller's Toni. The whole village looks on at 
 the romance and sides with Martina; for Adam's 
 mother, die wilde Rottmdnnin^ is one of those stormy 
 viragoes I myself have met amongst German women. 
 She masters her husband and son with her temper. 
 She is so rich that she has more Schmalz than she can 
 use, and so mean that she would rather let it go bad 
 than give it to the poor. At midnight, when the roads 
 are deep in snow, she sends for the Pfarrer, and when 
 he risks his life and goes because he thinks she is 
 dying, he finds she is merely bored and wanted his 
 company ; for she has been used to think that she 
 could tyrannise over all men because she was richer 
 and more determined than most. Next day she gets 
 up, orders her husband and son to put on Sunday 
 clothes, and well wrapped up in Betten drives with them 
 to the Heidenmiihle^ where Adam is formally betrothed 
 to Toni. The girl knows all about Martina, but she 
 consents because she would marry anyone to escape 
 from her stepmother, who treats her cruelly, and in 
 order to hurt her feelings has given her mother's cup to 
 the Knecht. After the betrothal the two fathers sit 
 together and drink hot spiced wine, the two mothers 
 gossip together, and the Brautpaar talk sadly about 
 Martina, who should be Adam's wife, and Joseph who 
 is his child. At last Adam could bear it no longer. 
 He would go straight to Martina, he said, and he 
 would be with Toni again before the Christmas tree 
 was lighted ; and then he would either break with 
 Toni or feel free to marry her. " The bride stared at 
 Adam with amazement as he put on his grey cloak 
 and his fur cap and seized his pointed stick. He 
 looked both handsome and terrible." For he is one 
 
28o HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 of the heroes Germans love, a giant who once held a 
 bull by its horns while Martina escaped from it, who 
 is called the Gaul, because for a wager he once carried 
 the cart and the load a cart horse should have carried, 
 and who on this wild winter night meets the wolf in 
 the forest and kills it with his stick. So you see him 
 striding through the snow-bound forest to the village 
 where Martina lives, dragging the wolf after him, as 
 strong as Siegfried, as credulous as a child, ready to 
 believe that the voices of his father and his child both 
 looking for him in the snow are witches' voices. But 
 when he gets to the village he finds that his child, so 
 long disowned and disregarded, is really lost, and is 
 looking for him in the snow. The hatter who tramps 
 from village to village hung with hats met him, and 
 tried to turn him back. But the child said he had 
 come out to find his father, and must go on. Then 
 every man in the village assembles at the Pfarrhaus^ 
 and, led by the PfarreSs brother-in-law (an eventual 
 husband for Heidenmtiller's Toni), sets out to find 
 Joseph in the snow. Before they start Adam vows 
 before the whole community that whether the child is 
 alive or dead nothing shall ever part him again from 
 Martina, and when he has made this vow you see the 
 whole company depart in various directions carrying 
 torches, ladders, axes, and long ropes. Meanwhile the 
 child, after some alarms and excursions, meets three 
 angels (children masquerading), who take him with 
 them to the mill where Toni has just lighted the 
 Christmas tree. She rescues Joseph from die wilde 
 Rdttmdnnin, and that same night, her father dying of 
 his carouse, she becomes a rich heiress and free of 
 her wicked stepmother. Joseph's hostile grandfathers, 
 after a fight in the snow, make friends, the obliging 
 Pfarrer marries Adam and Martina at midnight, and 
 
PEASANT LIFE 281 
 
 soon after the wilde Rottmdnnin who will not be 
 reconciled leaves this world. So everyone who deserves 
 happiness gets it. But though you only half believe 
 in the story you have been in the very heart of the 
 Black Forest, the companion of its people, the observer 
 of their most intimate talk and ways. You have 
 heard the women gossip at the well, you have made 
 friends with Leegart the seamstress, who believes that 
 quite against her will she is gifted with supernatural 
 powers. There is Haspele, too, who made Joseph his 
 new boots, and would marry Martina if he could ; and 
 there is David, the father of Martina, who was hardly 
 kept from murdering his daughter when she came home 
 in disgrace, and whose grandson becomes the apple of 
 his eye. The whole picture of these people is vivid 
 and enchanting, touched with quaint detail, veined with 
 the tragedy of their lives, glowing with the warm 
 human qualities that knit them to each other. The 
 South German loves to tell you that his country is 
 ein gesegnetes Land> a blessed country, flowing with 
 milk and honey; and whether you are reading 
 Auerbach's peasant stories or actually staying amongst 
 his peasant folk, you get this impression of their 
 natural surroundings. Nature is kind here, grows 
 forest for her people on the hill-tops, and wine, fruit and 
 corn in her sheltered valleys, ripens their fruit in summer, 
 gives them heavy crops of hay, and sends soft warm 
 rain as well as sun to enrich their pastures. 
 
 In the eastern provinces of Germany the conditions 
 of life amongst the poor are most unhappy. Here the 
 land belongs to large proprietors, and until modern 
 times the people born on the land belonged to the 
 landlords too. No man could leave the village where 
 he was born without permission, and he had to work 
 for his masters without pay. Even in the memory of 
 
282 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 living men the whip was quite commonly used. In 
 her most interesting account of a Silesian village, 1 
 Gertrud Dyhrenfurth says that the present condition 
 of the peasantry in this region compares favourably 
 with former times, but she admits that they are still 
 miserably overworked and underpaid. They are no 
 longer legally obliged to submit to corporal punishment, 
 nor can they be forced to live where they were born, 
 and as they emigrate in large numbers, scarcity of labour 
 has brought about slightly improved conditions for 
 those remaining. But a man's wage is still a mark a 
 day in summer and 90 pf. in winter. A woman 
 earns 60 pf. in summer and 50 pf. in winter. Besides 
 receiving these wages, a family regularly employed 
 lives rent free and gets a fixed amount of coal, and at 
 harvest time some corn and brandy. You cannot say 
 the family has a house or cottage to itself, because the 
 system is to build long bare-looking barracks in which 
 numbers of working families herd like rabbits in a 
 warren. In modern times each family has a kitchen 
 to itself, so there is one warm room where the small 
 children can be kept alive. In former times there was 
 a general kitchen, and in the rooms appointed to each 
 family no heating apparatus ; therefore, if the children 
 were not to die of cold, they had to be carried every 
 morning to the kitchen, where there was a fire. The 
 present plan has grave disadvantages, as in one room the 
 whole family has to sleep, eat, wash, and cook for them- 
 selves and for the animals in their care. The furniture 
 consists of two or three bedsteads with straw mattresses 
 and feather plumeaux, shelves for pots and pans, a 
 china cupboard with glass doors, a table in the window, 
 and wooden benches with backs. This installation is 
 
 1 Ein schlesischts Dorfund Rittcrgut, von Gertrud Dyhrenfurth. Leipzig, 
 Duncker und Humblot. 
 
PEASANT LIFE 283 
 
 quite luxurious compared with that of a milkmaid's or 
 a stablemaid's surroundings sixty or seventy years ago. 
 " Her home consisted of a plank slung from the stable 
 roof and furnished with a sack of straw and a plumeau. 
 Her small belongings were in a little trunk in a wooden 
 niche, her clothes in a chest that stood in the garret." 
 Here is the life history of an unmarried working woman 
 of eighty-six born in a Silesian village. When she left 
 school she was apprenticed to a thrasher, with a yearly 
 wage of four thalers, besides two chemises and two aprons 
 as a Christmas present. Even in those days this money 
 did not suffice for clothing, although even in winter the 
 women wore no warm under-garments. Quite unpro- 
 tected, they waded up to the middle in snow. ... In 
 summer the girl was in the barn and at work by dawn ; 
 in winter they threshed by artificial light. A bit of 
 bread taken in the pocket served as breakfast. The 
 first warm meal was taken at midday. When the 
 farm work was finished there was spinning to do till 
 10 o'clock." 
 
 This woman " bettered herself" as she grew older 
 till she was earning 35 thalers (5, 55. od.) a year ; she 
 accustomed herself to live on this sum, and when 
 wages increased, to put by the surplus. So in her old 
 age she is a capitalist, has saved enough for a decent 
 funeral, for certain small legacies, and for such an 
 amazing luxury as a tin foot-warmer. The family 
 she faithfully served for so many years allows her coal, 
 milk and potatoes, and when necessary pays for doctor 
 and medicine. Her weekly budget is as follows 
 
 Pf. 
 
 Rent .... .50 
 Bread .... .25 
 Rolls 5 
 
 Carried forward , . 80 
 
284 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 Brought forward 
 | Ib. butter. 
 Ib. coffee and chicory 
 Sugar 
 I Ib. flour 
 Salt. 
 Light 
 Washing . 
 
 Pf. 
 80 
 
 25 
 25 
 15 
 ,14 
 
 I 
 10 
 
 5 
 
 im. 75 
 
 Meat is of course out of the question, and in discuss- 
 ing another budget Fraulein Dyhrenfurth shows that 
 a family of eight people could only afford three 
 quarters of a pound a week. Their yearly expenses 
 amounted to 455 m. 26 pf., so each one of the eight 
 had to be fed and clothed for about is. id. a week. 
 Women are still terribly overworked in the fields. 
 They used to begin at four o'clock in the morning, and 
 go on till nine at night, a working day, that is, of 
 seventeen hours for a wife and the mother of a family. 
 When the family at the mansion had the great half- 
 yearly wash, the village women called in to help began 
 at midnight, and stood at the washtub till eight o'clock 
 next evening, twenty hours, that is, on end. In 1880 
 the working day was shortened, and only lasts now 
 from five in the morning till seven at night, with a 
 two hours' pause for dinner and shorter pauses for 
 breakfast and vesper. But, on the other hand, women 
 do work now that only men did in former times. The 
 threshing of corn has fallen entirely into their hands, 
 and they follow a plough yoked with oxen. Both 
 kinds of work are heavy and unpleasant. But women 
 are glad to get the threshing in winter time when 
 other work fails, and it is often on this account that 
 the proprietors do not introduce threshing machines. 
 
 At certain times of the year Poles swarm over the 
 
PEASANT LIFE 285 
 
 frontier into the eastern provinces of Germany, but 
 Fraulein Dyhrenfurth says that they do not work for 
 lower wages. The women have no house-keeping 
 to do, and can therefore give more hours to field 
 labour. One woman prepares a meal for a whole 
 gang of her country people, and they live almost 
 entirely on bread, potatoes, and brandy. They do 
 not mix with the Germans, but spend their evenings 
 and Sundays in playing the harmonium, dancing, 
 and drinking. They return every year, are always 
 foreigners in Germany, and are very industrious, 
 religious, contented, and cheerful, but inclined to drink 
 and fight. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 HOW THE POOR LIVE 
 
 OVERT Y in German cities puts on a more 
 L respectable face than it does in London or 
 Manchester. It herds in the cellars and courtyards of 
 houses that have an imposing frontage; and when it 
 walks out of doors it does not walk in rags. But you 
 only have to look at the pinched faces of the children 
 in the poorer quarters of any city to know that it is 
 there. They are tidier and cleaner than English slum 
 children, but they make you wish just as ardently that 
 you were the Pied Piper and could pipe them all with 
 you to a land of plenty. It would require more 
 experience and wider facts than I possess to compare 
 the condition of the poor in England and Germany, 
 especially as the professed economists and philan- 
 thropists who make it their business to understand 
 such things disagree with each other about every detail. 
 If you talk to Englishmen, one will tell you that the 
 German starves on rye bread and horse sausage because 
 he is oppressed by an iniquitous tariff; and the next 
 will assure you that the German flourishes and fattens 
 on the high wages and prosperous trade he owes 
 entirely to his admirable protective laws. If you talk 
 to the Anglophobe, he will tell you that the dirt, 
 drunkenness, disease, and extravagance of the English 
 
 lower classes are the sin and scandal of the civilised 
 
 286 
 
HOW THE POOR LIVE 287 
 
 world ; that it is useless for you to ask where the poor 
 live in Berlin, because there are no poor. Everyone in 
 Germany is clean, virtuous, well housed, and well-to-do. 
 If you talk to an honest, reasonable German, he will 
 recognise that each country has its own difficulties and 
 its own shortcomings, and that both countries make 
 valiant efforts to fight their own dragons. He will tell 
 you of the suffering that exists amongst the German 
 poor crowded into these houses with the imposing 
 fronts, and of all that statecraft and philanthropy are 
 patiently trying to accomplish. Doctor Shadwell, in 
 his most valuable and interesting book Industrial 
 Efficiency, says that the American has to pay twice as 
 much rent as the English working man, and that rents 
 in Germany are nearer the American than the English 
 level. As wages are lower in Germany than in 
 England, and as meat and groceries are decidedly 
 dearer, it is plain that the working man cannot live in 
 clover. Doctor Shadwell gives an example of a smith 
 earning 1050 marks, and having to pay 280 for rent. 
 He had a wife and two children, and Doctor Shadwell 
 reckoned that the family to make two ends meet must 
 live on 37 pf. per head per day ; the prison scale per 
 head being 80 pf. I know a respectable German char- 
 woman who earns 41 marks a month, and pays 25 
 marks a month for her parterre flat in the Hof. She 
 lets off all her rooms except the kitchen, and she sleeps 
 in a place that is only fit for a coal-hole. A work-girl 
 pays her 6 marks a month for a clean tidy bedroom 
 furnished with a solid wooden bedstead, a chest of 
 drawers, a sofa, and a table. This girl works from 7.30 
 to 6 in a shop, she pays the charwoman 10 pf. for her 
 breakfast, 10 pf. weekly for her lamp, and another 
 10 pf. for the use and comfort of the kitchen fire 
 at night. Her dinner of soup, meat, and vegetables the 
 
288 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 girl gets at a Privatkilche for 40 pf. So the workgirl's 
 weekly expenses for food, fire, and lodging are 5 marks 
 20 pf., but this does not give her an evening meal or 
 afternoon coffee. The charwoman reckoned that she 
 herself only had I 5 marks a month for food, fire, light, 
 and clothes ; but she got nearly all her food with the 
 families for whom she worked. She was a cheerful, 
 honest body, and though she slept in a coal-hole was 
 apparently quite healthy. She looked forward to her 
 old age with tranquillity, because before long she would 
 be in receipt of a pension from the State, a weekly sum 
 that with her habits of thrift and industry would enable 
 her to live. 
 
 A German lady who chooses to teach in a Volks- 
 schule, because she thinks the Volk more interesting 
 than Higher Daughters, described a home to me from 
 which one of her pupils came. The parents had eight 
 children, and the family of ten lived in two rooms. 
 That is a state of things we can match in England, 
 unhappily. But my friend described this home, not on 
 account of its misery, but for the extraordinary neatness 
 and comfort the mother maintained in it. " Every 
 time I go there," said my friend, who lived with her 
 father and sister in a charming flat, " every time I go 
 there I say to the woman, if only it looked like this in 
 my home " ; and there was no need for me to see the 
 rooms to understand what she meant ; for I know the 
 air of order and even of solidity with which the poorest 
 Germans will surround themselves if they are respect- 
 able. They have very few pieces of furniture, but those 
 few will stand wear and tear; they prefer a clean 
 painted floor to a filthy carpet, and they are so poor 
 that they have no pence to spend on plush photograph 
 frames. I cannot remember what weekly wage this 
 family existed on, but I know that it seemed quite 
 
HOW THE POOR LIVE 289 
 
 inadequate, and when I asked if the children were 
 healthy as well as clean and tidy, my friend admitted 
 that they were not. In spite of the brave struggle 
 made by the parents, it was impossible to bring up a 
 large family on such means, and the maladies arising 
 from insufficient food, fire, and clothing afflicted them. 
 The case is, I think, a typical one. English people are 
 always impressed when they visit German cities by the 
 tidy clothes poor people wear, and if they are shown the 
 right interiors, by their clean tidy homes. But you need 
 most carefully and widely collected facts and figures to 
 judge how far the children of a nation are suffering 
 from poverty. It was found, for instance, in one 
 German city, that out of 1472 children examined in 
 the elementary schools, 63 per cent, of the girls and 
 60 per cent, of the boys were nicht vollig normal. 
 
 Moreover, there are whole classes of poor people in 
 Germany whose homes are not tidy and comfortable, 
 who are crowded into cellars and courtyards, and who 
 have neither time nor strength for the decencies of life. 
 The " Sweater " flourishes in Berlin as well as in 
 London, and his victims are as overworked as they are 
 here. He is usually a Jew, it is said in Berlin, but I 
 will not guarantee the truth of that, for I have not 
 observed that the Jew is anywhere a harder task- 
 master than the Christian. As Berlin grew, these 
 spiders of society increased in numbers, finding it easy 
 and profitable to employ home workers and spare 
 themselves the expenses of factories and of insurance. 
 Women who could not go out to work were tempted 
 by the chance offered them of earning a trifle at home, 
 and woman-like never paused to reckon whether it was 
 worth earning. As the city gets larger every evil 
 connected with the system increases. The worst 
 paid are naturally the incompetent rough peasant 
 19 
 
2QO HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 women who swarm into Berlin from the country 
 districts, because they think that it will be easier 
 to sit at a machine than to labour in the fields. 
 These people have to buy their machines and their 
 cotton at high prices from their employers, and then 
 they get 10 pf. for making a blouse. A lady who 
 spends her life in working amongst poor people told 
 me that many of them worked for nothing in reality, 
 because the trifle they earned only just paid the 
 difference between the food they had to buy ready 
 cooked and the food they might with more leisure 
 prepare at home. They pay high rents for wretched 
 homes, 1 5, for instance, for a kitchen and one room in 
 a dark courtyard. Under 13 it is impossible to get 
 anything in the poorest quarter of Berlin. 
 
 " The house itself looked respectable enough from 
 outside," says Frau Buchholz, when she went to see a 
 girl who had just married a poor man ; " but oh ! those 
 steep narrow stairs that I had to mount, those wretched 
 entrances on each floor, the miserable door handles, the 
 sickly bluish-grey walls, the shaky banisters ! It was 
 easy to see that the outside had been devised with a 
 view to investors, and the inside for poverty." In houses 
 of this class there are often three courtyards, one behind 
 each other, all noisy and badly kept. The conditions 
 of life in such circumstances are no better than in our 
 own notorious slums, but a slum seven storeys high, and 
 presenting a decent front to the world, does not suggest 
 the real misery behind its regular row of windows, nor 
 does the quiet well-swept street give any picture of the 
 rabbit warren in the courtyards at the back. In the 
 enormous " confection " trade of Berlin the home-workers 
 are nearly all widows and mothers of families, as the 
 unmarried girls prefer to go to factories. A skilled 
 hand can earn a fair wage at certain seasons of the year, 
 
HOW THE POOR LIVE 291 
 
 as the demand for skilled work in this department always 
 exceeds the supply. But the average wage of the un- 
 skilled worker is only I o marks a week, while it sinks as 
 low as 4 marks for petticoats, aprons, and woollen goods. 
 A corset maker, who has learned her trade, can only 
 make from 8 to 10 marks a week in a factory, while a 
 woman who sits at home and covers umbrellas gets 
 I mark 50 pf. a dozen when the coverings are of stuff, 
 and slightly more when they are of silk. The extreme 
 poverty of these home-workers is a constant subject of 
 inquiry and legislation, but for various reasons it is 
 most difficult to combat. The market is always over- 
 crowded, because, badly paid as it is, the work is popular. 
 Women push into it from the middle classes for the sake 
 of pocket-money, and from the agrarian classes because 
 they fancy a city life. Efforts are being made to organise 
 them, and especially to train the daughters of these 
 women to more healthy and profitable trades. I went 
 over a small Volkskuche in Berlin, and was told that 
 there were many like it established by various charitable 
 agencies, and that the effect of them was to make the 
 children ready to go into service ; a life that has some 
 drawbacks, but should at any rate be wholesome and 
 civilising, a better preparation for marriage, too, than 
 to sit like a slattern over a machine all day, and buy 
 scraps of expensive ready-made food, because both time 
 and skill are wanting for anything more palatable. In 
 the kitchen I visited there were sixteen children from 
 the poorest families in the neighbourhood, and, assisted 
 by a superintendent and two teachers, they were pre- 
 paring a dinner that cost 30 pf. a head for 250 people. 
 The rooms were clean and plainly furnished. A small 
 laundry business was run in connection with the kitchen, 
 so that the girls should be thoroughly trained to wash 
 and iron as well as to cook. Of late years the working 
 
292 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 classes of Berlin have adopted what they call Englische 
 Tischzeit, and no one who knows the ways of the English 
 artisan will guess that the German means late dinner. 
 He now does his long day's work, I am told, on bread 
 alone, and has the one solid meal in the twenty-four 
 hours when he gets home at night. Arbeiten durch, he 
 calls it, and people interested in the welfare of the poor 
 say it is bad for all concerned, but especially bad for 
 the children, who come in too exhausted to eat, and 
 for the women, who have to cook and clean up when 
 the day's business should be nearly done. It is quite 
 characteristic of some kinds of modern Germans that 
 they should in a breath condemn us, imitate us, and 
 completely misunderstand our ways. 
 
 The business women of Germany have organised 
 themselves. Der Kaufmdnnische Verbandfiir Weibliche 
 Angestellte was founded by Herr Julius Meyer in 1889, 
 and, beginning with 50 members, numbered 17,000 in 
 1904. Its aim has been to improve the conditions of 
 life for women working in shops and businesses, to carry 
 on their education, and to help them when ill or out of 
 work. It began by opening commercial schools for 
 women, where they could receive a thorough training 
 in book-keeping, shorthand, typewriting, and other 
 branches of office work. These have been a great 
 success, have been imitated all over Germany, and have 
 led to an expansion of the law enforcing on girls attend- 
 ance at the State continuation schools. The society 
 was founded to remedy some crying abuses amongst 
 women employed in shops and offices, a working day of 
 seventeen hours, for instance, dismissal without notice, 
 no rest on Sundays, no summer holiday, and not only 
 a want of seats but an actual prohibition to sit down 
 even when unemployed. All these matters the society, 
 which has become a powerful one, has gradually set 
 
HOW THE POOR LIVE 293 
 
 right. A ten-hours' day for grown-up women, and eight 
 hours for those under age, the provision of seats, an 
 8 o'clock closing rule, a month's notice on either side, 
 some hours of rest on Sunday, and a summer holiday 
 are all secured to members of the organisation. The 
 system of " living in " does not obtain in Germany. 
 Shops may only open for five hours on Sundays now, 
 and large numbers do not open at all. They may only 
 keep open after ten on twenty days in the year. Other 
 reforms the society hopes to bring about in time ; and 
 meanwhile it occupies itself both in rinding work for 
 members who are out of place, and in protecting those 
 who are sick and destitute. 
 
 The ladies of Germany have taken to philanthropic 
 work with characteristic energy and thoroughness. 
 There is one society in Berlin that has 700 members, 
 some of whom devote their whole time to their poor 
 neighbours. I am not going to give the name of the 
 society, so I may describe one of its secretaries, who 
 personified the best modern type of German woman. 
 She was about 27, a dark-haired, slim, serious-looking 
 person with delicate Jewish features and beautiful grey 
 eyes ; a girl belonging to the wealthy classes, and able 
 if she had chosen to lead a life of frivolity and pleasure. 
 But she had chosen instead to give herself to the sick, 
 the afflicted, the needy, and even to the sinning ; for 
 she was a moving spirit of the organisation that dives 
 down into the depths of the great city, and rescues 
 those who have gone under. Her society also does a 
 great deal for the children of the very poor, not only 
 for babies in creches, but for those who go to school. 
 The members help these older ones with their school 
 work, and when the children are free teach them to 
 wash, cook, and sew, and to play open-air games. 
 They teach the blind, they look after the deserted 
 
294 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 families of men in prison, and the older members act 
 as guardians to illegitimate children ; for in Germany 
 every illegitimate child must have a guardian, and women 
 are now allowed to act in this capacity. The secretary 
 said they found no difficulty in getting both married 
 and single women to take up these good works. 
 
 " What do the parents say when their daughters take 
 it up ? " I asked, for I could not picture the German 
 girl as I had always known her going out into the 
 highways and byways of the city, leaving her cooking, 
 her music, her embroidery, and her sentiment, and 
 battling with the hideous realities of life amongst the 
 sick, the poor, and the more or less wicked of the earth. 
 
 " The parents don't like it," my girl with the honest 
 eyes admitted. " When girls have worked for us some 
 time they often refuse to marry ; at least, they refuse 
 the arranged marriages proposed to them. But we 
 cannot stop on that account. If a girl does not wish 
 to marry in this way it is better that she should not. 
 No good can come of it." 
 
 Then she went on to tell me how well it was that 
 a child born to utmost shame and poverty should have 
 a woman of the better classes interested from the be- 
 ginning in its welfare, and responsible for its decent 
 upbringing. It implied contact with various officials, 
 of course, but she said that the ladies who took this 
 work in hand met with courtesy and support every- 
 where. 
 
 You have only to place this type of young woman 
 beside the Backfisch, who represents an older type 
 quite fairly, to understand how far the modern German 
 girl has travelled from the traditional lines. If you 
 can imagine the Backfisch married and mentally little 
 altered in her middle age, you can also imagine that 
 she would find a daughter with the new ideas upsetting. 
 
HOW THE POOR LIVE 295 
 
 At present both types are living side by side, for there 
 are still numbers of women of the old school in 
 Germany, women who passively accept the life made 
 for them by their surroundings, whether it suits their 
 needs or not ; and who would never strike out a path 
 for themselves, even if by doing so they could forget 
 their own troubles in the troubles of others. 
 
 The State and Municipal establishments for the poor 
 and sick have been so much described lately, that 
 everyone in England must be acquainted with all 
 that Berlin does for its struggling citizens. There 
 are, of course, large hospitals and sanatorium s for 
 consumption; and the admirable system of national 
 insurance secures help in sickness to every working 
 man and woman, as well as a pension in old age. 
 " The club doctor and dispensary as we have them 
 here do not exist," say the Birmingham Brassworkers 
 in their pamphlet. " In their stead leading doctors and 
 specialists (with very few exceptions) are at the service 
 of the working man or woman." 
 
 " Yes," said a leading doctor to me when I quoted 
 this ; " we get about three half-pence for a consultation, 
 and we find them the most impossible people in the 
 community to satisfy. As they get medical advice 
 for nothing they run from one doctor to another, and 
 consult a dozen about some simple ailment that a 
 student could set right. We all suffer from them." 
 So that is the other side of the question. 
 
 But Berlin certainly manages its Submerged Tenth 
 both more humanely and more wisely than we manage 
 ours. It begins, as one thinks any civilised country 
 must, by separating those who will not work from those 
 who cannot. The able-bodied beggar, the drunkard, and 
 other vagrants are sent to a house of correction and 
 made to work. The respectable poor are not driven 
 
296 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 to herd with these people in Germany. They receive 
 shelter and assistance at institutions reserved for the 
 deserving. In one of these old married people who 
 cannot support themselves are allowed to spend the 
 evening of their lives together. Anyone desiring to 
 know more about the charitable institutions of Berlin 
 will find a most interesting account of them in the 
 pamphlet written by the Birmingham Brassworkers, 
 and published by P. S. King & Son. The bias of 
 the authors is so strongly German that when you 
 have read to the end you begin to lean in the 
 opposite direction, and look for the things we manage 
 better over here. " In 1 900," they say, " there was 
 such a shortage of houses (in Berlin) that 1500 
 families had to be sheltered in the Municipal Refuge 
 for Homeless People." That is surely a worse state 
 of affairs than in London. But when you walk 
 through London or a London suburb in winter, and 
 are pestered at every crossing and corner by able- 
 bodied young beggars of both sexes, you begin to 
 agree with the brassworkers. Berlin is clear of 
 beggars and crossing-sweepers all the year round, and 
 you know that as far as possible they are classified 
 and treated according to their deserts. It is not 
 possible for the individual bent on his own business 
 to know at a glance whether he will encourage vice 
 by giving alms or behave brutally to a deserving case 
 by withholding them. The decision should never 
 be forced upon him as it is in England every day of 
 his life. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 BERLIN 
 
 ONCE upon a time a German got hold of Aladdin's 
 lamp, and he summoned the Djinn attendant on 
 the lamp. " Build me a city of broad airy streets," he 
 bade him, " and where several streets meet see that 
 there is an open place set with trees and statues and 
 fountains." All the houses, even those that the poor 
 inhabit, are to be big and white and shining, like 
 palaces ; but the real palaces where princes shall live 
 may be plain and grey. There are to be pleasure 
 grounds in the midst of the city, but they are to be 
 woods rather than parks, because even you and the 
 lamp cannot make grass grow in this soil and climate. 
 In the pleasure grounds, and especially on either side 
 of one broad avenue, there are to be sculptured figures 
 of kings and heroes, larger than life and as white as 
 snow. The Djinn said it would be easy to build the 
 city in a night as the German desired, but that the 
 sculpture could not be hurried in this way, because 
 artists would have to make it, and artists were people 
 who would not work to order or to time. The German, 
 however, said he was master of the lamp, and that the 
 city must be ready when he wanted it early next 
 morning. So the Djinn set to work and got the city 
 ready in a night, sculpture and all. But when he had 
 finished he had not used half the figures and garlands 
 and other stone ornaments he had made. If he had 
 been in England he might have reduced them in size, 
 
 297 
 
298 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 and given them to an Italian hawker to carry about 
 on his head on a tray. But he knew that hawkers 
 would not be allowed in the city he had built. So, 
 as he was rather tired and anxious to be done, he 
 quickly made one more long, broad street stretching 
 all the way from the pleasure ground in the centre 
 of the city to the forest that begins where the city 
 ends ; and on every house in the street he put figures 
 and garlands and gilded balconies and ornamental 
 turrets, as many as he could. The effect when he 
 had finished pleased him vastly, and he said it was 
 the finest street in the city, and should be called the 
 Kurfurstendamm. His master and all the Germans 
 who came to live in it agreed with him. They gave 
 large rents for a flat in one of the houses, and when 
 they went to London and saw the smoky dwarfish 
 houses there they came away as quickly as possible 
 and rubbed their hands and were happy, and said 
 to each other, " How beautiful is our Kurfurstendamm. 
 We have as many turrets as we have chimneys, and 
 we have garlands on our balconies of green or gilded 
 iron, and some of us have angelic figures made of red 
 brick, so that the angelic faces are checked with white 
 where the bricks are joined together." 
 
 " But it does not become anyone from England to 
 criticise the architecture and sculpture of a foreign 
 country," I said to the artist who told me the story 
 of the lamp. " Our own is notoriously bad." 
 
 " It is not you who will criticise ours," he answered. 
 " By your own confession, you know nothing whatever 
 of architecture and sculpture, and when people know 
 nothing they should either keep silence or ask for 
 information in the best quarter. You have my authority 
 for saying that the architects and sculptors of Berlin 
 would have been better employed building dog-kennels." 
 
BERLIN 299 
 
 " But I rather like your wide cheerful streets," I ob- 
 jected, " and your tall clean houses. Our houses . . ." 
 
 " Your houses are little black boxes in which people 
 eat and sleep. They do not pretend to anything. 
 Ours pretend to be beautiful, and are ridiculous. 
 Moreover, in England there are men who can build 
 beautiful houses. You do not employ them much. 
 You prefer your ugly little boxes. But they are 
 there. I know their names and their work." 
 - " But what do you think of our statues ? " I asked him 
 
 " I don't think of them," he said ; " I prefer to think 
 of something pleasant. When I am in London I 
 spend every hour I have at the docks." 
 
 " I like the Sieges- A llee" I said boldly, " it is so 
 clean and cheerful." 
 
 " It was made for people who look at sculpture from 
 that point of view," said my friend. 
 
 I hardly know where an artist finds inspiration in the 
 streets of Berlin. It really makes the impression of a 
 city that has sprung up in a night, and that is kept 
 clean by invisible forces. The great breadth of the 
 streets, the avenues of trees everywhere, and the 
 many open places make it pleasant ; but you look in 
 vain for the narrow lanes and gabled houses still to be 
 found in other German towns, and you are not surprised 
 when Americans compare it with Chicago, because it is 
 so new and busy. It is indeed the city of the modern 
 German spirit, and what it has of old tradition and 
 old social life lies beneath the surface, hidden from the 
 eye of the stranger. There is Sans-Souci, to be sure, 
 and Frederick the Great, and the Grosser Kurflirst. 
 There is the double line of princes on either side of the 
 Sieges- Allee. But modern Berlin dates from 1870, 
 and so do all good Berliners, whatever their age may 
 be. They are proud of their young empire and of 
 
300 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 their big city, and of doing everything in the best poss- 
 ible way. There is unceasing flux and growth in Berlin, 
 so that descriptions written a few years ago are as 
 out of date as these impressions must be soon. For 
 instance, I had counted steadfastly on finding three 
 things there that I cannot find at home: first and 
 second-class cabs, hordes of soldiers everywhere, and 
 policemen who would run a sword through you if you 
 looked at them ; and of -all these I was more or less 
 disappointed. 
 
 I did get hold of a second-class cab on my arrival in 
 Berlin, but it nearly came to pieces on the way, and I 
 never saw another during my stay there. The cabs 
 are all provided with the taximeter now, so that the fare 
 knows to a fraction what is due to the driver ; and the 
 drivers are of the first class, and wear white hats. Any- 
 one who wished to see a second-class cab would have 
 to make inquiries, and find a stand where some still 
 languish, but before long the last of them will probably 
 be preserved in a museum. Cabs are not much used in 
 Berlin, because communication by the electric cars is 
 so well organised. The whole population travels by 
 them, the whole city is possessed by them. If it is to 
 convey a true impression, a description of Berlin should 
 run to the moan of them as they glide everlastingly to 
 and fro. You can hardly escape their noise, and not 
 for long their sight. Even the Tiergarten, the Hyde 
 Park of Berlin, is traversed by them, which is as it 
 should be in a municipal republic. This is what the 
 Germans call their city, for they are not conscious 
 themselves of living under an autocracy or of being in 
 any sense of the word less free than, let us say, the 
 English, a point of view most puzzling to an English 
 person, who is conscious from the moment he crosses 
 the German frontier of being governed for his good. 
 
BERLIN 301 
 
 But it is pleasant on a summer morning to be carried 
 through the shady avenues of the Tiergarten in an open 
 car, whether it is an autocracy or are public that arranges 
 it for you ; and you reflect that in this and a thousand 
 other ways Germany is an agreeable country even if it 
 is not a free one ; especially for " the people " who have 
 small means, and are able to drive through the chief 
 pleasure ground of their city for a penny. The 
 conductors of the cars are obliged to announce the name 
 of the next halting-place, so that passengers alighting 
 may get up in time and step off directly, but on no 
 account before the car stops. Nothing is left to chance 
 or muddle in Berlin, and unless you are a born fool you 
 cannot go astray. If you are a born fool you ask a 
 policeman, as you would at home, and find another dear 
 illusion shattered. He does not draw his sword, he is 
 neither gruff nor disobliging. He greets you with the 
 military salute, and calls you gracious lady. Then he 
 answers your question if he can. If not he gets out the 
 little guide book he carries, and patiently hunts up the 
 street or the building you want. He is usually a good- 
 natured rosy faced young man with a fair moustache, 
 and he will do anything in the world for you except 
 control the traffic. That with the best will in the 
 world he cannot do. So he stands in the midst of it 
 and smiles. Sometimes he sits amidst it on a horse 
 and looks solemn. But he never impresses himself on 
 it. There is a story of a policeman who went to 
 London to learn from our men what to do, and who 
 bemoaned his fate when he got back. " I hold up my 
 hand in just the same way," he said, "and then the 
 people run and the horses run, and there's a smash and 
 I get put in prison." The Berliners themselves say 
 that they are not accustomed yet, as we have been for 
 years, to regard the police as their well-liked and trusted 
 
302 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 servants, and to obey their directions willingly. How- 
 ever this may be, there is at present only one safe 
 way of getting to the opposite side of a busy street 
 in Berlin, and that is to wait till a crowd gathers 
 and charges across it in a bunch like a swarm of 
 bees. 
 
 Berlin is never asleep, and it is as light by night as by 
 day. It is much pleasanter for a woman without escort 
 to come out of the theatre there than in London. She 
 will find crowds of respectable people with her, and they 
 will not depart in their own cabs and carriages. They 
 will crowd into the electric cars, and she must know 
 which car she wants and crowd with them. The worst 
 that can happen to her will be to find her car over- 
 crowded, and in that case she must not expect a man to 
 give her his seat. I have seen a young German lady 
 make an old lady take her place, but I have never 
 known men yield their seats to women. You do not 
 see as many private carriages in Berlin in a week as 
 you do in some parts of London in an hour. Even in 
 front of the Opera House very few will be in waiting ; 
 and there is no fashionable hour for riding and driving 
 in the Tiergarten. I know too little about horses 
 to judge of those that were being ridden, or driven 
 in private carriages ; but the miserable beasts in cabs 
 and carts force the most ignorant person to observe 
 and pity them. They look as if they were on their 
 way to the knacker's yard, and very often as if they 
 must sink beneath the load they are compelled to carry. 
 It is comforting to reflect that horses will doubtless soon 
 be too old-fashioned for Berlin, and that all the cabs 
 and vans of the future will be motors. The cars run 
 early enough in the morning for the workmen, and late 
 enough at night for people who have had supper at a 
 popular restaurant after the theatre or a glass of beer 
 
BERLIN 303 
 
 at one of the Zelten, the garden restaurants that in the 
 time of Frederick the Great were really tents, and 
 where the Berliners flocked then as they do now to 
 hear a band, look at the trees of the Tiergarten, and 
 enjoy light refreshments. When you get back to your 
 house from such gaieties you find it locked and in 
 darkness, but though there is a " portier " you do not 
 disturb him by calling out your name as you would in 
 Paris. In modern houses there is electric light outside 
 each floor that you switch on for yourself, and you have 
 a race with it that you lose unless you are active ; but 
 you soon learn to feel your way up to the next light 
 when you are left in darkness. The Berlin " portier " 
 is not as much in evidence as the Paris concierge. He 
 opens the door to strangers, but if you stay or live in 
 the house you are expected to carry two heavy keys 
 about with you, one for the street door and one for 
 the flat. The modern doors have some machinery by 
 which they shut themselves noiselessly after you. You 
 hear a great deal more said about " nerves " in Germany 
 than in England, and yet Germans seem to be amaz- 
 ingly indifferent to noise. They will not tolerate the 
 brass bands and barrel-organs that pester us, but 
 that is because they are fond of music. Screaming 
 voices, banging doors, and the clatter of kitchens and 
 business premises seem not to trouble them at all. 
 Most houses in Berlin are five or six storeys high, and 
 are built round the four sides of a small paved court. 
 No one who has not lived in such a house, and in a 
 room giving on the court, can understand how every 
 sound increases and reverberates. Footsteps at dawn 
 sound as if the seven-leagued boots had come, and were 
 shod with iron. You whisper that the kitchen on a 
 lower floor in an opposite corner looks well kept, and 
 the maid hears what you say and looks at you smiling. 
 
304 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 I knew that the back premises of these big German 
 hives might harbour any social grade and almost any 
 industry, and for a long time I vowed that some one 
 must live in our court whose business it was to hammer 
 tin, and that he hammered it most late at night and 
 early in the morning. I had not heard anything like 
 the noise since I had lived in a high narrow German 
 street paved with cobble-stones, and occupied just 
 opposite my windows by a brewer whose vans returned 
 to him at daybreak and tumbled empty casks at his 
 door. But I never discovered my tin merchant in 
 Berlin, and in time I had to admit that my hosts were 
 right. The noise I complained of was made by the cook 
 washing up in the opposite kitchen. I should not have 
 noticed it if I had been a sensible person, and slept 
 with my curtains drawn and my double windows tight 
 shut. 
 
 Of course, there are some quiet streets in Berlin, and 
 there are charming homes in the " garden-houses." 
 Some of the quadrangles are built round a garden 
 instead of a paved yard, and then you can get a quiet 
 pleasant flat with a balcony that looks on a garden 
 instead of a street. The traditional plan of a Berlin 
 flat is most inconvenient and unpractical. In old- 
 fashioned houses, and even in houses built sixteen 
 years ago or less, you find that one of the chief rooms 
 is the only thoroughfare between the bedrooms near 
 the kitchen premises and the rooms near the front door. 
 Anyone occupying one of these back rooms, which are 
 often good ones, can only get to the front door by way of 
 this thoroughfare, where he will usually find the family 
 gathered together ; the maid, too, must pass through 
 every time the door bell rings, and when she goes about 
 her business in the front regions her brooms and pails 
 must pass through with her. The window of this room, 
 
BERLIN 305 
 
 which is known as a Berliner Zimmer, is always in 
 one corner and lights it insufficiently. The Berliners 
 themselves recognise its disadvantages, but I like to 
 describe it, because I observe amongst the Germans 
 of to-day a fierce determination to destroy and deny 
 everything a foreigner might call a little absurd, even 
 if it is characteristic ; so I feel sure that if I go to 
 Berlin a few years hence there will not be a Berliner 
 Zimmer left in the city, and no Berliner will ever 
 have seen or heard of one ; nor will the flat doors have 
 the quaint little peepholes through which the maid's 
 eye may be seen appraising you before she lets you in. 
 The newest houses, those in the Kurfurstendamm, for 
 instance, have every " improvement " central heating, 
 lifts, gas cooking stoves, sinks for washing up, and 
 bathrooms that are a reality and not a mere appearance. 
 These bathrooms, I am assured, can be used without 
 several hours' notice and the anxious superintendence 
 of the only person, the head of the family as a rule, 
 who understands the heating apparatus. Berlin, like 
 Mr. Barrie's Admirable Crichton, has found out how 
 to lay on hot and cold. It has found out about electric 
 light too, and it might teach London how to use the 
 telephone. Berlin talks to its friends by telephone 
 as a matter of course, asks them how they are, if they 
 enjoyed the Fest last night, whether if you call 
 on Tuesday they will be at home. Perhaps when Mr. 
 Wells goes to Berlin he will forsee a reaction, a revolt 
 against the incessant insistent bell that respects no 
 occupation and allows no undisturbed rest. It is a 
 hurried generation that uses the telephone so much, for 
 the letter boxes are emptied eighteen times in twenty- 
 four hours, and if the post is not quick enough or a 
 telegram too expensive for all you want to say you can 
 send a card by the tube post. 
 20 
 
306 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 Berlin is not the city of soldiers that the English 
 fancy pictures it. English people, English little boys, 
 for instance, who would like to see all their lead soldiers 
 come to life, must go to one of the smaller garrison towns, 
 where in every street and every square they will watch 
 men on the march and at drill. In those quarters of 
 Berlin not occupied by barracks the population is civilian. 
 You see the grey and the dark blue uniforms every- 
 where, but not in masses and not at work. The people 
 rush like children to follow the guard changed at the 
 Schloss every day ; just as they might in London, where 
 soldiers are a rare spectacle. In a smaller town the 
 army is more evidently in possession. It fills the 
 restaurants, occupies the front row of the stalls at the 
 opera, prevails in public gardens, and holds the pave- 
 ment against the world. But Berlin to all appearances 
 belongs to its citizens, and provides for their profit and 
 convenience. They fill its multitude of houses. They 
 say they make its laws and order its progress. At 
 any rate they live in an agreeable, well-managed city, 
 full of air and light, and kept so clean that most other 
 cities seem slovenly and grimy by comparison. To go 
 suddenly from Berlin to Hamburg, for instance, gives 
 you a shock ; though Hamburg is incomparably more 
 attactive and delightful. But in Hamburg you may 
 see bits of paper lying about, and dust on the pavement. 
 In Berlin there is no dust, and no one has ever seen 
 an untidy bit of paper there. It is to be hoped that 
 no one ever travels direct from Berlin to London. 
 What would he think of Covent Garden Market? 
 There are markets in Berlin, at least a dozen of them, 
 but by midday they are swept and garnished. You 
 would not find a leaf of parsley or an end of string to 
 tell you where one had been. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 ODDS AND ENDS 
 
 THE most amusing columns in German daily 
 papers are those devoted to family advertise- 
 ment. There you find the prolix intimate announce- 
 ments of domestic events compared with which the 
 first column of the Times is so bare, so nichtssagend. 
 
 " The birth of a second son is announced with joy 
 by Dr Johann Weber and Wife Martha, born 
 Hansen." Dresden, 22 May 1907." 
 
 "Emil Harzdorf and wife Magdalene, born Klaus, 
 have the honour to announce the birth of a strong 
 girl." Hamburg, 26 May 1907." 
 
 Boy babies are nearly always stramm, the girl 
 babies are krdftig> and the parents are hocherfreut, as 
 they should be. Engagements and marriages are 
 advertised more simply, and your eye is not caught by 
 them as it is by the big black bordered paragraphs 
 that inform the world that someone has just left it. 
 
 " To-day, in consequence of a stroke of apoplexy, my 
 deeply loved husband, our dear father, grand- 
 father, father-in-law, brother, and uncle fell 
 asleep. In the name of the survivors, Olga 
 Wagner, born Richter. Leipzig, 23 May 1907." 
 
 This is a curt announcement compared with many. 
 When the deceased has occupied any kind of official 
 
 post, or has been an employer of labour, a long register 
 
 307 
 
308 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 of his many virtues accompanies the advertisement of 
 his death. " He who has just passed away was an 
 exemplary chief, a fatherly friend and adviser, who by 
 his benevolence erected an everlasting monument to 
 himself in the hearts of his colleagues and subordinates." 
 He who had just passed away had been the head of a 
 small soap factory, and this advertisement was put in by 
 the factory hands just beneath the one signed by all 
 the family. Another advertisement on the same page 
 expresses thanks for sympathy, " on the death of my 
 dear wife, our good mother, grandmother, mother-in- 
 law, aunt, sister-in-law, and cousin, Frau Angelika 
 Pankow, born Salbach." 
 
 A German friend who had to undergo an operation 
 last year wrote just before to tell me she expected to 
 come through safely. "If not," she said, " you'll receive 
 a card like this " 
 
 u Yesterday passed away 
 
 Adelaide Deminski, born Weigert, 
 Her heart-broken 
 
 Husband 
 
 Grandmother 
 
 Father 
 
 Mother 
 
 Sons 
 
 Daughters 
 
 Sons-in-law 
 
 Daughters-in-law 
 
 Brothers 
 
 Sisters 
 
 Brothers-in-law 
 
 Sisters-in-law 
 
 Uncles 
 
 Aunts 
 
 Cousins " ; 
 
 for Germans themselves laugh at these advertise- 
 ments, and assure the inquiring foreigner that their 
 
ODDS AND ENDS 309 
 
 vogue has had its day. But if the inquiring foreigner 
 looks at the right papers he will find as many as ever. 
 You will also find matrimonial advertisements in papers 
 that are considered respectable. 
 
 But when you turn to the news columns for details 
 of some event that is startling the world, whether it is 
 a crime, an earthquake, a battle, or a royal wedding, 
 you find a few lines that vex you with their insufficiency. 
 Our English papers have pages about a German 
 Coronation, German manoeuvres, German high jinks at 
 Kopenick. But when I wanted to see what happened 
 in London on our day of Diamond Jubilee I found 
 five lines about Queen Victoria having driven to St. 
 Paul's accompanied by her family and some royal 
 guests. I was in a country inn at the time, and 
 the paper taken there was one taken everywhere in the 
 duchy. It is a great mistake to think that German 
 newspaper hostility to England dates from the 
 Transvaal War. The same journal that spared five 
 lines to the Jubilee gave a column to a question 
 asked by one of our parliamentary cranks about the 
 ill-treatment of natives by Britons in India. The 
 question was met by a complete and convincing denial, 
 but we had to turn to our English papers to find that 
 
 recorded. The Tageblatt printed the question with 
 
 comments, and suppressed the denial. As long ago as 
 1883, when there was cholera in Egypt, a little 
 Thuringian paper we saw weekly had frenzied articles 
 about the evil English who were doing all they could 
 to bring the scourge to Germany. I think we had 
 refused some form of quarantine that modern medical 
 science considers worse than useless. The tone of the 
 press all through the Transvaal War did attract some 
 attention in this country, and since then from time to 
 time we are presented with quotations from abusive 
 
310 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 articles about our greed, our perfidy, and our presump- 
 tion. I am not writing as a journalist, for I know 
 nothing whatever of journalism ; but as a member of 
 the general public I believe that we are inclined to 
 overrate the importance of these amenities, because we 
 overrate the part played by the newspaper in the 
 average German household. One can only speak 
 from personal experience, but I should say that it 
 hardly plays a part at all. Whatever Tageblatt is in 
 favour with the Hausherr comes in every morning, and 
 is stowed away tidily in a corner till he has time to 
 look at it while he drinks his coffee and smokes his 
 cigar. If the ladies of the household are inclined that 
 way they look at it too. But there really is not much 
 to look at as a rule. These paragraphs about the wicked 
 British that seem so pugnacious when they are printed 
 on solid English paper in plain English words, are 
 often in a corner with other political paragraphs about 
 other wicked nations. At times of crisis, when the 
 leading papers are attacking us at great length, the 
 Germans themselves will talk of Zeitungsgeschrei and 
 shrug their shoulders. It is absurd to deny the 
 existence of Anglophobia in Germany, because you can 
 hardly travel there without coming across isolated 
 instances of it. But these isolated instances will 
 stand out against a crowded background of people 
 from whom you have received the utmost kindness and 
 friendship ; and of other people with whom your 
 relations have been fleeting, but who have been 
 invariably civil. Unfortunately the German Anglo- 
 phobe is a creature of the meanest breed, and he 
 impresses himself on the memory like a pain ; so that 
 one of him looms larger than fifty others, just as the 
 moment will when you had your last tooth out, and 
 not the summer day that went before and after. The 
 
ODDS AND ENDS 311 
 
 truth is, that we are on the nerves of certain Germans. 
 You may live for ever in an English family and never 
 hear a German mentioned. You would assuredly not 
 hear the nation everlastingly discussed and scolded. 
 As far as we are concerned, they are welcome to their 
 own manners, their own ways, and their own opinions. 
 If they would only take their stand on these and leave 
 ours alone we could meet on equal terms. But that is 
 the one thing this particular breed of German cannot 
 do. He must be always arguing with you about the 
 superiority of his nation to yours, and you soon think him 
 the most tiresome and offensive creature you ever met. 
 In private life you can usually avoid him and seek out 
 those charming German people who, even if their 
 Tageblatt teaches them that they should hate England, 
 will never extend their hatred to the English stranger 
 within their gates, and who will admit you readily and 
 kindly to their pleasant unaffected lives. Germany is 
 full of such people, whatever the German newspapers 
 are saying. 
 
 Presumably every country has the press that suits it, 
 and in one respect German journalism is more dignified 
 and estimable than our own. It does not publish 
 columns of silly society gossip, or of fashions that only a 
 duchess can follow and only a kitchen-maid can read. 
 Nor would the poorest, smallest provincial Tageblatt 
 descend to the depths of musical criticism in which one 
 of our popular dailies complacently flounders all through 
 the London season. 
 
 " I cannot tell you much about last night's Wagner 
 opera, because to my great annoyance the auditorium 
 was dark nearly all the time. Once when we were 
 allowed to see each other for a moment I noticed that 
 the Duchess of Whitechapel was in her box, looking so 
 lovely in cabbage green. Mrs. ' Dicky ' Fitzwegschwein 
 
312 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 was in the stalls with a ruby necklace and a 
 marvellous coat of rose velours spangled in diamonds, 
 and on the grand tier I saw Lady ' Bobby ' Holloway, 
 who is of course the daughter-in-law of Lord Islington, 
 in black net over silver, quite the dernier cri this season, 
 and looking radiant over her sister Lady Yolande's 
 engagement to the Duke of Bilgewater. Richter 
 conducted with his usual brilliance, and the new Wotan 
 sang with great eUan, although he was obviously suffering 
 from a cold in his head." 
 
 It is impossible to imagine Berlin waking some winter 
 morning to find such a "criticism" as this on its 
 breakfast table. In Germany, people who understand 
 music write about music, and people who understand 
 about fashions write about fashions, and the two subjects, 
 both of them interesting and important, are kept apart. 
 Society journalists who write about Lady Bobbies and 
 Mrs. Fitzwegschweins do not exist yet in Germany, 
 and so far the empire seems to worry along quite 
 comfortably without them. I once asked a well-known 
 English journalist who is of German birth, why one of 
 our newspaper kings did not set up a huge, gossipy, 
 frivolous paper in Berlin, and it was explained to me 
 that it would be impossible, because the editor and his 
 staff would probably find themselves in prison in a week. 
 What we understand by Freedom of the Press does not 
 exist there. 
 
 On the other hand, books and pamphlets are 
 circulated in Germany that would be suppressed here ; 
 and the stage is freer than our own. Monna Vanna 
 had a great success in Berlin, where Mme. Maeterlinck 
 played the part to crowded audiences. Salome is now 
 holding the stage both as a play and with Richard 
 Strauss' music as an opera ; Gorky's Nachtasyl is 
 played year after year in Berlin. Both French and 
 
ODDS AND ENDS 313 
 
 German plays are acted all over Germany that could 
 not be produced in England, both because the censor 
 would refuse to pass them and because public opinion 
 would not tolerate them, unless, to be sure, they were 
 played in their own tongues. It is most difficult to 
 explain our attitude to Germans who have been in 
 London, because they know what vulgar and vicious 
 farces and musical comedies pass muster with us, and 
 ^indeed are extremely popular. It is only when a play 
 touches the deeps of life and shows signs of thought 
 and of poetry that we take fright, and by the lips of our 
 chosen official cry, "This will never do." Tolstoy, Ibsen, 
 Gorky, Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Hauptmann, and 
 Otto Ernst are the modern names I find on one week's 
 programme cut from a Berlin paper late in spring when 
 the theatrical season was nearly over. Besides plays 
 by these authors, one of the State theatres announced 
 tragedies by Goethe, Schiller, and a comedy by Moliere. 
 The Merchant of Venice was being played at one 
 theatre and A Midsummer Nights Dream at another; 
 there were farces and light operas for some people, and 
 Wagner, Gluck, and Beethoven at the Royal Opera 
 House for others. The theatre in Germany is a part 
 of national life and of national education, and it is 
 largely supported by the State ; so that even in small 
 towns you get good music and acting. The Meiningen 
 players nc celebrated all over the world, and everyone 
 who has read Goethe's Life will remember how actively 
 and constantly he was interested in the Weimar stage. 
 At a Stadt- Theater in a small town two or three operas 
 are given every week, and two or three plays. Most 
 people subscribe for seats once or twice a week all 
 through the winter, and they go between coffee and 
 supper in their ordinary clothes. Even in Berlin 
 women do not wear full dress at any theatre. 
 
314 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 In the little towns you may any evening meet 
 or join the leisurely stream of playgoers, and if you 
 enter the theatre with them you will find that the 
 women leave their hats with an attendant. You are in 
 no danger in Germany of having the whole stage hidden 
 from you by flowers and feathers. 
 
 Shakespeare is as much played as Goethe and 
 Schiller, and it is most interesting and yet most 
 disappointing to hear the poetry you know line upon 
 line spoken in a foreign tongue. Germans say that 
 their translation is more beautiful and satisfying than the 
 original English ; but I actually knew a German who 
 kept Bayard Taylor's Faust by his bedside because he 
 preferred it to Goethe's. I think there is something the 
 matter with people who prefer translated to original 
 poetry, but I will leave a critic of standing to explain 
 what ails them. I have never met a German who 
 would admit that Shakespeare was an Englishman. 
 They say that his birth at Stratford-on-Avon was a 
 little accident, and that he belongs to the world. They 
 say this out of politeness, because what they really 
 believe is that he belongs to Germany, and that as 
 a matter of fact Byron is the only great poet England 
 has ever had. I am not joking. I am not even 
 exaggerating. This is the real opinion of the German 
 man in the street, and it is taught in lessons in liter- 
 ature. An English girl went to one of the best- 
 known teachers in Berlin for lessons in German, and 
 found, as she found elsewhere, that the talk incessantly 
 turned on the crimes of England and the inferiority 
 of England. 
 
 " You have had two great names," said the teacher, 
 " two and no more. That is, if one can in any sense 
 of the word call Shakespeare an English name . . . 
 Shakespeare and Byron, . . . then you have finished. 
 
ODDS AND ENDS 315 
 
 You have never had anyone else, and Shakespeare has 
 always belonged more to us than to you." 
 
 The English girl gasped, for she knew something of 
 her own literature. 
 
 "But have you never heard about Chaucer," she 
 asked, " or of the Elizabethans, or of Milton, Keats, 
 Shelley, Wordsworth . . . ? " 
 
 " Reden Sie nicht, reden Sie nicht ! " cried the teacher, 
 " I never allow my pupils to argue with me. 
 "Shakespeare and Byron . . . no, Byron only, . . . then 
 England has done." 
 
 You still find Byron in every German household 
 where English is read at all, and no one seems to have 
 found out what fustian most of his poetry really was. 
 Ruskin and Oscar Wilde are the two popular modern 
 authors, and the novel-reading public chooses, so several 
 booksellers assured me, Marion Crawford and Mrs. 
 Croker. I could not hear a word anywhere of 
 Stevenson or Rudyard Kipling, but I did come across 
 one person who had enjoyed Richard Fever el. 
 
 " Your English novels are rather better than they 
 used to be, are they not ? " said a lady to me in good 
 faith, and I found it a difficult question to answer, 
 because I had always believed that we had a long roll 
 of great novelists; but then, I had also thought that 
 England had a few poets. 
 
 The most popular German novels are mostly 
 translated into English, and all German novels of 
 importance are reviewed in our papers. So English 
 people who read German know what a strong reaction 
 there is against the moonshine of fifty years ago. The 
 novels most in vogue exhibit the same coarse, but often 
 thoughtful and impressive, realism that prevails on the 
 stage and in the conversation and conduct of some sets 
 of people in the big cities. The Tagebuch einer 
 
316 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 Verlorenen has sold 75,000 copies, and it is the story 
 of a German Kamelliendame compared with whom 
 Dumas' lady is moonshine. It is a haunting picture of 
 a woman sinning against the moral and social law, and 
 no one with the least sense or judgment could put it on 
 the low level of certain English novels that sell because 
 they are offensive, and for no other reason in the world. 
 Aus guter Familie, by Gabrielle Reuter, is another re- 
 markable novel, and I believe it has never been translated 
 into English. It presents the poignant tragedy of a 
 woman's life suffocated by the social conditions obtaining 
 in a small German town where a woman has no hope 
 but marriage, and if she is poor no chance of marriage. 
 It is one of the most sincere books I ever read. Das 
 Tagliche Brod, Klara Viebig's story of servant-life in 
 Berlin, is another typical novel of the present day, and 
 that has been translated for those amongst us who do 
 not read German. I choose these three novels for 
 mention because they are written by women, and 
 because they are brilliant examples of the modern tone 
 amongst women. If you want the traditional German 
 qualities of sentiment, poetry, formlessness, and dreamy 
 childlike charm, you must read novels written by men. 
 I have said very little about music in Germany, 
 because we all know and admit that it reaches heights 
 there no other nation can approach. An Englishman 
 writing about Germany lately says that you often hear 
 very bad music there, but I think his experience must 
 have been exceptional and unfortunate. I am sure 
 that Germans do not tolerate the vapid dreary drawing- 
 room songs we listen to complacently in this country ; 
 for in England people often have beautiful voices 
 without any musical understanding, or technical facility 
 without charm. I suppose such cases must occur 
 amongst Germans too, and in the end one speaks of a 
 
ODDS AND ENDS 317 
 
 foreign nation partly from personal experience, which 
 must be narrow, and partly from hearsay. I have met 
 Germans who were not musical, but I have never met 
 any who were pleased with downright bad music. On 
 the whole, it is the art they understand best, the one in 
 which their instinctive taste is sure and good. You 
 would not find that the Byron amongst composers, 
 whoever he may be, was the one they set up for worship. 
 Nor do you find the street of a German city or suburb 
 Infested with barrel-organs. There is some kind of 
 low dancing saloon or cafe chantant called a Tingl- 
 Tangl where I imagine they have organs and grama- 
 phones and suchlike horrors, but then unless you 
 chance to pass their open windows you need not endure 
 their strains. In England, even if we are fond of 
 music, and therefore sensitive to jarring sounds and 
 maudlin melodies, yet in the street we cannot escape 
 the barrel-organ nor in the house the drawing-room 
 songs. As if these were not enough, we now invite 
 each other to listen to the pianotist and the pianola. 
 
 " I will explain my country to you," said the artist 
 one day when I had expressed myself puzzled by the 
 curious gaps in German taste, and even in German 
 knowledge ; by their enthusiasm for the second rate in 
 poetry and literature, and by their amazing uncertain 
 mixture of information and blank complacent ignorance. 
 For when an Englishman says " Goethe ! Schiller ! 
 Was is das ? " you are not surprised. It is just what 
 you expect of an Englishman, and for all that he may 
 know how to build bridges and keep his temper in 
 games and argument. But when a German teacher of 
 literature tells you Byron is the only English poet, and 
 when the whole nation neglects some of our big men 
 but runs wild over certain little ones, you listen eagerly 
 for any explanation forthcoming. " We have Wissen" 
 
3i8 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 said the artist, " we have Kunst ; but we have no 
 Kultur." 
 
 I did not recover from the shock he gave me till the 
 evening, when I saw the professor of philosophy and 
 aesthetics. 
 
 " The artist says that you have no Kultur" I told 
 him ; for I wanted to see how he received a shock. 
 
 " The artist speaks the truth," said the professor 
 calmly. I have never met anyone more civilised and 
 scholarly then he was himself; and I set a high value 
 on his opinion. 
 
 "What is Kultur?" I asked. 
 
 " One result of it is a fine discrimination," he replied, 
 " a fine discrimination in art, in conduct, and in manner." 
 
 " Are you not the most intellectual people in the 
 world ? " I said reproachfully. 
 
 He seemed to think that had nothing to do with it. 
 
 " Are you still worrying your head about Kultur ? " 
 said the artist next time I saw him. "Then I will 
 explain a little more to you. I, as you know, am 
 extremely anti-Semit" 
 
 " I am sure that is not a proof of Kultur" I said 
 hurriedly. 
 
 " It is not a proof of anything. It is a result. 
 Nevertheless I perceive that if it were not for the Jews 
 there would be neither art nor literature in Germany. 
 They create, they appreciate, they support, and although 
 we affect to despise them we invariably follow them 
 like sheep. What they admire we admire ; what they 
 discover we see to be good. But. . . I told you I was 
 anti-Semit) . . . though they have most of the brains 
 in the country, they have little Kultur. One of us who 
 is as stupid as an ox, . . . most of us are as stupid as 
 oxen, . . . may have more, . . . but because he is 
 stupid he cannot impose his opinion on the multitude." 
 
ODDS AND ENDS 319 
 
 " Do you mean that the Jews set the fashion in art 
 and literature, and that they sometimes set a bad one ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " That is exactly what I mean." 
 
 It was a curious theory, and I will not be responsible 
 for its truth. But there is no doubt that in every 
 German town artistic and literary society has its centre 
 amongst the educated Jews. They are most generous 
 hosts, and it is their pleasure to gather round them an 
 aristocracy of genius. The aristocracy that is perfectly 
 happy without genius would as a rule not enter a Jew's 
 house ; though the poorer members of the aristocracy 
 often marry a Jew's daughter. Where there is inter- 
 marriage some social intercourse is presumably inevit- 
 able. But the social crusade against Jews is carried 
 on in Germany to an extent we do not dream of here. 
 The Christian clubs and hostels exclude them, 
 Christian families avoid them, and Christian insults are 
 offered to them from the day of their birth. " What 
 do you use those long lances for ? " said the wife of a 
 Jewish professor to a young man in a cavalry regiment. 
 " Damit hetzen wir die Juden" said he, with the snarl 
 of his kind ; and he knew very well that the lady's 
 husband was a Jew. I have been told a story of a 
 Jewish girl being asked to a Court ball by the Emperor 
 Frederick, and finding that none of the men present 
 would consent to dance with her. I have heard of 
 girls who wished to ask a Jewish schoolmate to a dance, 
 and discovered that their Christian friends flatly refused 
 to meet anyone of her race. How any Christians 
 contrive to avoid it I do not understand, for wherever 
 you go in Germany some of the great scholars, doctors, 
 men of science, art, and literature, are men of Jewish 
 blood. The press is almost entirely in their hands, 
 and when there is a scurrilous artist or a coarse picture 
 
320 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 your friends explain it by saying that the tone of that 
 special paper is jiidisch. The modern campaign 
 against Jews began nearly thirty years ago, when a 
 Court chaplain called Stocker startled the world by 
 the violence of his invective. But the fire he stirred 
 to flame must have been smouldering. He and. his 
 followers gave the most ingenuous reasons for curtailing 
 Jewish rights and privileges in Germany, one of which 
 was the provoking fact that Jewish boys did more 
 brilliantly at school than Christians. The subject 
 bristles with difficulties, and no one who knows the 
 German Jew intimately will wish to pose him as a 
 persecuted saint. The Christian certainly makes it 
 unpleasant for him socially, but in one way or the 
 other he holds his own. I have seen him vexed and 
 offended by some brutal slight, but his keen sense of 
 humour helps him over most stiles. So no doubt does 
 his sense of power. " They will not admit me to their 
 clubs or ask my daughters to their dances," said a 
 Jewish friend, " but they come to me for money for 
 their charities." And I knew that half the starving 
 poor in the town came to his wife for charity, and that 
 she never sent one empty away. 
 
 When a very clever, sensitive, numerically small race 
 has lived for hundreds of years cheek by jowl with a 
 dense brutal race that has never ceased to insult and 
 humiliate it, you cannot be surprised if those clever but 
 highly sensitive ones become imbued in course of time 
 with a painful undesirable conviction that the brutes 
 are their superiors. So you have the spectacle in 
 Germany of Jews seeking Christian society instead of 
 avoiding it ; and you hear them boast quite artlessly 
 of their cliristlicJier Umgang. They would really serve 
 their people and even themselves more if they refused 
 all christlicher Umgang until the Christians had learned 
 
ODDS AND ENDS 321 
 
 to behave themselves. An Englishwoman living in 
 Berlin told me that once as she came out of a 
 concert hall an officer standing in the crowd stared at 
 her and said, so that everyone could hear : " At last ! 
 a single face that is not a jildischer Fratz" The 
 concert, you will understand, must have been a good 
 one, and therefore largely attended by a Jewish 
 audience. Possibly the officer who so much disliked 
 his surroundings had married a Jewish heiress and was 
 waiting for his wife. Such things happen. During 
 the worst times of Stocker's campaign a woman with 
 Jewish features could hardly go out unescorted ; and 
 even now, though it is not openly expressed, you can 
 hardly fail to catch some note of sympathy with the 
 Russian persecution of the Jews. The deep helpless 
 genuine horror felt in England at the pogroms is felt 
 in a fainter way in Northern Germany. 
 
 Meanwhile the Jewish woman of the upper classes 
 takes her revenge by knowing how to dress. In 
 German cities, when you see a woman who is 
 " exquisite," slim that is and graceful, dainty from head 
 to foot and finely clad, then you may vow by all the 
 gods that she has Jewish blood in her. 
 
 21 
 
INDEX 
 
 Advertisements, 85, 307 
 Allotment gardens, 207 
 Anglophobia, 5, 119, 130, 184, 
 
 309-3H 
 
 Art in the nursery, 1 1 
 Auerbach, 272-278 
 
 Backfischerfs Leiden und Freu- 
 
 den, 38-43 
 Baden, 6, 22 (see also Black 
 
 Forest) 
 
 Badereise, 255-260 
 Bathrooms, 103, 305 
 Bavaria, 228, 231, 258, 273, 275 
 Beds, 124, 229 
 Beggars, 276, 295 
 Berlin- 
 Electric cars, 300 
 
 Fire-brigade, 275 
 
 Flats and houses, 103-108 
 
 Frobel Haus, 12 
 
 Ladies' clubs, 75 
 
 Philanthropy, 293 
 
 Registry offices, 142 
 
 Restaurants, 233 
 
 Sculptures, 297 
 
 Berlin- 
 Shops, 167-170, 174 
 Students, 57 
 Sunday excursions, 207 
 Taxes, 109 
 
 Berliner Zimmer, 305 
 
 Bestes Zimmer, 242 
 
 Betham-Edwards, Miss, 36 
 
 Betrothals, 85-91 
 
 Bier Comment, 54-56 
 
 Birmingham brassworkers, 295 
 
 Black Forest, 162, 171, 205, 220, 
 267 ff. 276 
 
 Brautpaar, 87 
 
 Budgets, household, 187-194, 
 283 
 
 Biirgerliches Gesetzbuch, 102 
 
 Burschenschaft, 51 
 
 Byron, 38, 314 
 
 Cellar-shops, 170 
 Charlottenberg Forest School, 
 
 32 
 
 Christmas, 176 
 Church tax, 109 
 Confirmation, 78-80 
 
 323 
 
324 
 
 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 Cooking classes, 72 
 Corps-Studenten, 51-53 
 Gotta, Frl. v., 21 
 Cottbus Market, 174 
 Cr&ches, 10, 33 
 
 Dicnstbuch) 142-145 
 Divorce, 100 
 Doctors, 9, 31, 72, 295 
 Doecker system, 33 
 Drawing-rooms, 126 
 Drunkenness, 206 
 Duels, students', 51-53 
 Dyrenfurth Gertrud, 282 
 
 Economy, 130, 178, 188, 243, 
 
 287 
 
 Eltzbacher, O., 93, 185 
 Emigration, 185, 263 
 Emperor Wilhelm II., 70, 218, 
 
 220 
 Empress Friedrich, 21, 71 
 
 Family life, 61, 65, 128 
 Flachsmann als Erzieher, 17 
 Flats, 103, 123, 130, 304 
 Food- 
 Family meals, 154 
 
 Fish, 161 
 
 Free food, 31, 50 
 
 Goose, 162 
 
 Meat, 160 
 
 Mehlspeisett) 164, 231 
 
 Nudeln, 159 
 
 Ochsenfleisch, 155 
 
 Food- 
 Recipes, 159-165 
 Rothe Grutze^ 164 
 Supper, 158, 203 
 Tea, 158 
 Vegetables, 163 
 
 Freiburg Market, 173 
 
 Fuel, 1 06, 187 
 
 Furniture, 123-126 
 
 " Garden houses," 304 
 
 Gardens, 104 
 
 " German Home Life," 8, 93 
 
 Gipsies, 276 
 
 Goethe, 116, 260 
 
 Gymnasium, 15-19 
 
 Gymnastics, 31, 34, 220 
 
 Hamburg 
 
 Life, 105, 155, 232 
 
 Lodgings, 242 
 
 Markets, 174 
 
 Servants' dress, 138 
 
 Sports, 219 
 Heidelberg, 51-53 
 Hofi the, 104, 1 08 
 Home-workers, 289-291 
 Hospitality, 43, 196 ff., 210 
 Hospitals, 295 
 House-keeping budgets, 187- 
 
 194, 283 
 House-porter, 108, 303 
 
 Idealistin^ Memoir en einer, 78, 
 125, 131, 139, 180, 212-214 
 
INDEX 
 
 325 
 
 Illegitimate children, 93, 294 
 Incomes, 48, 177 ; and see 
 
 Economy 
 Inns and Innkeepers, 227-232 
 
 Jews, 50, 80, 289, 319-321 
 Joseph im Schnee, 278-281 
 
 Kaffee Klatsch, 90, 200-202 
 Kindergarten, 12-14 
 Kirchiveih, 273 
 
 Kitchens, 34, 107, 132-134, 146 
 Kneipe, 54-56, 64, 128 
 Kommers, 56 
 
 Ladies' clubs, 75-77 
 Landes tax, 109 
 Lange, Frl. Helene, 22-27 
 Laundry work, 136 
 Leipziger Messe, 175 
 Lette-Verein, 71-75 
 Linen, 135-137 
 Lodgings, 237 ff 
 Loeper-Housselle, Marie, 23 
 Luggage on railways, 261 
 Lyceum Club, 76 
 Lyceum, Victoria, 21 
 
 Marketing, 133-228 
 Markets, 173-176, 306 
 Marriage 
 Arranged, 68, 80-82 
 Ceremony, 94 ff 
 
 Marriage 
 
 Proposal, 84 
 
 Revolt against, 66, 83 
 Miinchhausen, Frau K., 167 
 Music, 31, 206, 303, 316 
 
 Newspapers, 307-312 
 Novels, 315 
 Nurseries, 9-11 
 
 Oberhof, 257 
 Opera, 209 
 Outdoor life, 222 
 
 Peasants' costume, 268 
 
 Dances, 272-274 
 
 Weddings, 269-272 
 Pensions, old age, 30, 1 50 
 Pestalozzi Frobel Haus, 12 
 Philanthropy, 293-296 
 Police regulations, 108, 151, 169, 
 
 245-249 
 Polterabend, 92 
 Professors' salaries, 48 
 Prussia 
 
 Cost of schools, 17 
 
 Free schools, 31 
 
 Taxes, 109 
 
 Railway travelling, 260-263 
 Religious teaching, 19 
 
 belief, 211-216 
 
 Rents, 103 
 
326 
 
 HOME LIFE IN GERMANY 
 
 Restaurants, 233-235 
 Reuter, Gabrielle, 82 
 Riehl on women, 57 ff 
 Riigen, 257 
 
 Salamander, 56 
 Saxony, 108 
 Scenery, 250 ff 
 Schadchan, 80 
 Schlegel, Caroline, 95 
 Schmidt, Auguste, 23 
 Schools 
 
 Cost of, 17 
 
 Elementary, 29-31 
 
 Forest, 32-35 
 
 Kinds of, 16, 20, 22 
 
 Lessons, 18 
 
 Medical inspection, 31, 34 
 
 Music in, 31 
 
 Religious teaching in, 19 
 Servants 
 
 Bedrooms, 151 
 
 Costumes, 10, 138, 183 
 
 Dances, 148 
 
 Gratuities, 145, 149 
 
 Meals, 147 
 
 Pensions, 150 
 
 Wages, 140, 145 
 Shadwell, Dr., 287 
 Shakespeare, 314 
 Shops 
 
 Cellar, 170 
 
 In Berlin, 167-170 
 
 In Black Forest, 171 
 Silesian village, 282-285 
 Skittles, 222 
 
 Sofa, 126 
 
 Sports, winter, 220 
 
 State tax, 109 
 
 Steckkissen, 7 
 
 Stiff e, 27,69-71,76 
 
 Stoves, 106-108 
 
 Students, 47 ff 
 
 Stiize der Hausfrau, 73, 151 
 
 Summer resorts, 250 ff. 
 
 Sundays, 205 ff 
 
 "Sweating," 289-291 
 
 Swimming-baths, 219 
 
 Tafel-Lieder, 97-99 
 
 Taine, M., 117, 149 
 
 Taxes, 108 
 
 Teachers' seminaries, 21 
 
 Theatres, 208-210, 312-314 
 
 Thuringia, 229, 276 
 
 Tidiness, 37, 128-130, 135, 306 
 
 Titles, 126 
 
 Toys, ii 
 
 Trousseaux, 89, 123, 140 
 
 Universities, 47 ff. 
 
 Vereine, 221 
 Victoria Lyceum, 21 
 Viebig, Klara, 141, 170, 316 
 Village fires, 274-276 
 Visits, 196-200 
 Volkskiiche, 291 
 
 Walking tours, organised, 253 
 Weddings, 92 ff, 268-272 
 Weibliche Angestellte, 292 
 
INDEX 
 
 327 
 
 Wertheim, 167-170 
 Wickelkinder, 8 
 Windows, 105 
 Winter sports, 220 
 Women 
 
 Dress, 154, 195 
 Legal position, 101 
 
 Women 
 
 Modern, 66, 82-84 
 Riehl on, 57 ff 
 Single, 60-62, 75, 81 
 Treatment of, 60, 63, 65, 117- 
 
 122 
 Working, 287 ff 
 
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