



Produced by Renald Levesque






WOMAN

VOLUME VIII

WOMEN OF THE TEUTONIC NATIONS



HERMANN SCHOENFELD, PH.D., LL. D.
PROFESSOR OF GERMANIC LITERATURE IN THE GEORGE
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY


[Illustration 1:
EMMA CARRYING HER LOVER
After the painting by G. L. P. Saint-Ange
Charlemagne had so great an affection for his children, legitimate and
natural, that he prevented his daughters, of whom Emma was one, from
marrying, in order not to lose their company. They were reputed to be
very beautiful. Being debarred from marriage, they sought unlawful love
adventures, and gave birth to illegitimate children. The romantic story
of Emma's nightly meetings with Eginhard, and of her carrying her
learned lover through the freshly fallen snow to conceal his footprints,
is an unauthenticated legend.]



_Woman_

In all ages and in all countries

VOLUME VIII


WOMEN OF THE TEUTONIC
NATIONS

BY

HERMANN SCHOENFELD, PH.D., LL.D.
Professor of Germanic Literature in the
George Washington University

ILLUSTRATED

PHILADELPHIA
GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PUBLISHERS



THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY
Dedicated to
MADAME CHRISTIAN HEURICH NEE KEYSER




PREFACE


Adequately to write the history of the woman of any race would mean the
writing of the history of the nation itself. There is no phase of the
cultural life of any people that is not founded upon the physical and
moral nature of its women. On the other hand, mental and moral heredity,
both through paternity and maternity, determines the character and
innermost being of woman. If we knew all the preponderating influences
of heredity for ages, we could with almost mathematical accuracy compute
the traits of human biology in every case. The forces of environment,
tremendous though they are, modify, but do not alter in any way the
original nature of man, which is established and standardized "by
eternal and immutable laws." Anthropology is continuously progressing
toward a firm scientific foundation, and is beginning to organize even
the vast domain of psychology into a well-defined system. The
interdependence between physical, mental, and moral traits is well
recognized, but its exact determination is impossible, owing to the
infinite complexity of the endless ancestral potencies.

So much is established, however: Teutonic woman, as she appears in
history, is the product of two groups of influences, the one group,
inherited nature; the other, environment; she is the exact sum of these
antecedent causes. And only so far as these causes differ does the
Teutonic woman differ from her sister of any other race of other times
and climes.

In this book of a purely historical, literary, and cultural character
must be excluded all that refers to the physiological and ethnographical
characteristics of the Teutonic woman and of her Slavic sister. Nor are
we concerned with the theory of their evolution, _i. e._, the search of
the physical principles according to which the consequences of their
existence are true to the laws of their antecedents. Many eminent
scientists have tried their great faculties on this subject of universal
interest and importance. Standard works of a scientific character, like
Floss's _Das Weib in der Natur und Volherhunde_, abound in scientific
and medical bibliography.

Our limited task is merely to deal succinctly with the most general
evolution of the social position and the cultural status of the Teutonic
and, even more briefly, of the Slavic woman at the various epochs of
their respective histories, and how far the history of civilization
among those races was influenced by them, how far the symptoms of
national morality and the degree of culture were shaped by feminine
achievements, proclivities, virtues, and vices. Two thousand years of
the richest, almost unfathomable, history had to be traversed in the
attempt to glean the essential red thread from the enormous masses of
facts which in their entirety would be inaccessible even to the most
universal historical scholar. Most difficult of all the periods is
perhaps the question of the present and actual women's movement, which
is now in its liveliest flux and in a most variable condition both in
the German and in the Slavic world. It is impossible as yet to
systematize the entirety of the problems and the requirements which have
resulted in recent times from the transformation of society with regard
to the position of woman among the two modern peoples. Many of the
questions belong to the domain of private and public law, of political
economy, of sociology, of education in all its phases. The leaders of
state and church and society, the higher schools and universities, are
signally undecided concerning the final solution, though the mist of the
conflict of opinion begins slowly to clear away. Even under the changed
conditions of modern society, one party still clings to the old
tradition of the family ideal of wifehood and motherhood, which is no
longer possible in all cases, as of yore, and considers extra-domestic
activity as abnormal, unhealthy, transient; the other extremists desire
to wipe out the natural differences and the limitations prescribed by
sex to human activity and capacity. A middle ground and a rational
solution will certainly be found during this century.

The author has strenuously endeavored to avail himself for every period
of all the source material and the secondary works accessible to him in
the Library of Congress and in the other libraries of the national
capital. The chapters on the Reformation Period, the Era of Desolation,
and on Woman Held in Tightening Bonds, a long period of dreariness so
distressing and humiliating to German pride, were prepared with skill
and scholarship by Miss Sarah H. Porter, A. M., at the time a graduate
student in the author's department. Credit for the chapter on Russian
Woman belongs to Mr. Alexis V. Babine, of the Library of Congress.

The author also expresses sincere gratitude to the publishers, and
especially to Mr. J. A. Burgan, the publishers' editor, for his careful
revision of the English text and for the generous, vigilant aid extended
to the author throughout the entire work.

HERMANN SCHOENFELD.

The George Washington University.




CHAPTER I

THE WOMEN OF THE PAGAN TEUTONS


Women were valued by the primeval Teutonic race, as by all other races
of the human family, as mere chattels means whereby the profit or the
pleasure of man might be maintained or increased. The custom of burning
the wife or wives with the dead master and husband was, from the
prehistoric times until far into the light of historic days, prevalent
in the tribes of the Teutonic family. Sacrifices of widows were
especially prescribed in eastern Germanic law, and the low status of
woman among the Teutons of the early times is sufficiently indicated by
the established and quasi-legalized right and prerogative of the
husband, as the owner of the female chattel, to bequeath, give, sell, or
hire her person or services to strangers, guests, or friends; or even to
kill her if she committed adultery, or if want and distress made such a
course expedient.

We must admit the harshness and cruelty to which woman, according to the
most ancient conscience of the Teutonic race, could lawfully be
subjected. Evidences that her status was outside of the pale of right
and law is manifest in all historical proofs. Traces of the old status
still abound. One lies in the present refinement of woman's actual
position a refinement which cannot obscure its real origin from the
student of culture and civilization.

It is certain that the prehistoric Germanic community began with the
communal use of women for pleasure or profit. This common use could be
broken and suppressed only by marriage by capture. If the man wished to
have exclusive possession of a wife, he had to procure her from outside
his own community. Besides this exogamic marriage, an endogamic marriage
was later recognized as conferring title, on the condition that the man
reconciled the woman's blood relatives by the payment of a definite
compensation. This system of marriage by capture survived the Migration
period, and was found in Sweden even in the early Middle Ages.

Marriage by treaty also existed even in prehistoric times. This compact
(_Gifta_) is always between the blood relatives of the bride and the
bridegroom. It is a presentation, a giving away (_Verschenkung_) of the
bride. The parent or guardian gives her away, an act which requires no
consent of the bride, but only a counter gift, or rather purchase money,
from the bridegroom. Thus a kind of purchase, the symbolic pursuit of
the bride (_Brautlauf_) as an imitation of the ancient marriage by
capture, and the technical consummation of marriage (_Beilager_), for
which the man, however, owes her a gift (_Morgengabe_), are the phases
of marriage.

Polygamy is the rule at first. The northern Teutons, especially the
Scandinavians, practised an unmitigated polygamy down to a very late
period, and only yielded after a most persistent struggle with the
ethics of Christianity. As late as the eighth century the bitter
accusations of the churchmen against Pepin of Heristal for having two
wives, and their arraignment of Charlemagne's sins of concupiscence,
show how ineradicable this ancient Teutonic usage was. However, as early
as B.C. 57, Caesar mentions King Ariovistus's marriage to two wives as an
exception to Teutonic custom, due, perhaps, to political motives.
Tacitus praises the Germans as those who, with few exceptions, live in
monogamy, and though Tacitus is not an unimpeachable authority, owing to
the fact that he wished to idealize the vigorous race as a model to the
decadent Roman world of his time, his statements seem to prove that at
the dawn of Christianity southern and western German tribes at least had
the highest conception of family purity. Later on, under the teachings
of Christianity, polygamy was first modified, then abolished; and
marriage by capture was either suppressed or treated as a crime.

Upon the status of women among the Teutonic tribes the study of
philology sheds some light. From it we learn that the Gothic _quind_,
woman (in general), and _queue_, married woman, signifies the
child-bearing one, from the verb _quinan, gignere_; or _wip_ (Saxon
_wif_, Old Norse _vif_), indicating the root of _wib_, motion, the
mobile being; though _frouwa, frau_ (Old Norse, _freyja_), means
originally "joyous, mild, gracious," and is used to signify "illustrious
ladies" down to the thirteenth century.

The female child was allowed to live only by grace of the father. If
this right of the father over the life of his female child appears
barbarous, we must understand that the valuation of life in primitive
times is always very low. Not only among the early Teutons, but also
among the early Romans and Slavs, a custom prevailed by which the
children might kill their old or incurably sick parents, because of