Home Life In Germany Part 4

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 Verband_, 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 shaking from head to foot with nervousness and excitement. In some cities the carriage used by a well-to-do bride and bridegroom is as big as a royal coach, and upholstered 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 bridegroom 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 a.s.sembles 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 bridegroom did not go till they were over.

When the celebrated and much married Caroline Schlegel married her first husband, George Bohmer, in 1784, the ceremony took place at her own home in Gottingen, where her father was a well-known professor.

"It would be unnatural 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 pa.s.sed gaily, and yet with quietness. There was no trepidation--only an 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 gla.s.s, 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 Bohmer 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 clergyman, 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 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 doc.u.mentary 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 _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 _Tafel-Lied_ describes the courtship step by step, and even the a.s.sistance 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 gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.ses 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 ill.u.s.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 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 ist doch der Onkel hoch begluckt Das Tantchen heute der 'Brautkranz' schmuckt"

went with "myrtle green."

"Liebe Gaste, mit Genuss, Wollet alle Euch erheben-- Hoch das Brautpaar-- Es soll 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 subst.i.tuted for the solid old wedding breakfast in this country.

HOCHZEITS-TAFEL.

Caviar-Schnitten Potage Douglas Saumon-S^{ce} Bernaise Pommes Naturelles Selle de Chevreuil a 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 1900er Caseler 1896er St. Emilion

1890er Schloss Johannisberg

Moet et Chandon White Star

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 circ.u.mstances. 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 applaud 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 treatment 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 condemned. At the same time, I have heard Germans quote the saying--"_Geschiedene Leute scheiden fort und fort_," and object strongly to a.s.sociate 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 subst.i.tutes; 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 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 grandchildren, 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 _Burgerliches 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-cla.s.s dining-room or _Wohnzimmer_. You could bring up a family in a single room I once had for a whole summer in Thuringen 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 s.p.a.cious, and one of them is almost sure to have a balcony looking on the street and the pleasant avenue of trees with which it is planted.

For this rent you must either make yourself 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 ma.s.ses 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 gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s 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 Hamburg, 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 beautiful 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 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 s...o...b..ll of flowers, and everyone says _Wie Herrlich!_ but you miss the profusion 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 gra.s.s is grown it looks either thin or coa.r.s.e. 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 temperature 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 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 _Fullofen_ 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 looking 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 inconsiderate 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 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 tradespeople, and for the tenants who inhabit the poorer parts of the building. In houses where all the tenants belong to the poorer cla.s.ses, 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 inst.i.tution even in Berlin.

Taxes vary in different parts of Germany. In Saxony a man spending 500 a year pays altogether 60 for Income tax, Munic.i.p.al rates, Water, School, 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 munic.i.p.al 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 compulsory 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 a 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 munic.i.p.al 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 finding my neighbour's cigar unpleasantly strong. One cigar in a tramcar, however, is nothing at all, and should not be mentioned. It is when a railway carriage beautifully 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-Coupe_ 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: es zieht!_" and all the other women in the carriage will say in chorus, "_Ja! ja! 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 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 housemaid 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."