WOMAN
VOLUME VIII
WOMEN OF THE TEUTONIC NATIONS
by
HERMANN SCHOENFELD,PH.D., LL. D.
PROFESSOR OF GERMANIC LITERATURE IN THE GEORGEWASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
EMMA CARRYING HER LOVER
After the painting by G. L. P. Saint-Ange
Charlemagne had so great an affection for his children, legitimate andnatural, that he prevented his daughters, of whom Emma was one, frommarrying, in order not to lose their company. They were reputed to bevery beautiful. Being debarred from marriage, they sought unlawful loveadventures, and gave birth to illegitimate children. The romantic storyof Emma's nightly meetings with Eginhard, and of her carrying herlearned 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 thewriting of the history of the nation itself. There is no phase of thecultural life of any people that is not founded upon the physical andmoral nature of its women. On the other hand, mental and moral heredity,both through paternity and maternity, determines the character andinnermost being of woman. If we knew all the preponderating influencesof heredity for ages, we could with almost mathematical accuracy computethe traits of human biology in every case. The forces of environment,tremendous though they are, modify, but do not alter in any way theoriginal nature of man, which is established and standardized "byeternal and immutable laws." Anthropology is continuously progressingtoward a firm scientific foundation, and is beginning to organize eventhe vast domain of psychology into a well-defined system. Theinterdependence between physical, mental, and moral traits is wellrecognized, but its exact determination is impossible, owing to theinfinite complexity of the endless ancestral potencies.
So much is established, however: Teutonic woman, as she appears inhistory, is the product of two groups of influences, the one group,inherited nature; the other, environment; she is the exact sum of theseantecedent causes. And only so far as these causes differ does theTeutonic woman differ from her sister of any other race of other timesand climes.
In this book of a purely historical, literary, and cultural charactermust be excluded all that refers to the physiological and ethnographicalcharacteristics of the Teutonic woman and of her Slavic sister. Nor arewe concerned with the theory of their evolution, i. e., the search ofthe physical principles according to which the consequences of theirexistence are true to the laws of their antecedents. Many eminentscientists have tried their great faculties on this subject of universalinterest and importance. Standard works of