Gender and the Modern Research University: The Admission of Women to German Higher Education, 1865-1914 9781503620506

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GENDER AND THE MODERN RESEARCH UNIVERSITY

Gender and the Modern Research University THE ADMISSION OF WOMEN TO GERMAN HIGHER EDUCATION, I

86 5-1914

Patricia M. Mazon

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 2003

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2003 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mazon, Patricia M. Gender and the modern research university : the admission of women to German higher education, I 865-1914/ Patricia M. Mazon. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-8047-4641-9 (alk. paper) 1. Women-Education (Higher)-Germany-History. 2. Universities and colleges-Germany-Admission-History. 3· Sex discrimination in higher education-Germany-History. I. Title. LC2I06.M39 2003 378.1'9822-dC:I.I 2003005980 Original Printing 2003 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: I2 II IO 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 Typeset by Classic Typography in I0/12.5 Sa bon

For my mother, Mary Medina Mazon, and in memory of my grandmother, Maria Ines Garaygord6bil Medina (I92I-I979)

Contents

Acknowledgments

IX

List of Abbreviations

xi

Introduction

I

Academic Citizenship and Masculinity in the German World of Learning

I

2. "What Will Become of Our Daughters?" The Women's Movement and the Studentin, I865-I900

50

3· "Our Universities Are Men's Universities": The Debate Over Women's Admission, I865-I900

85

4· Selecting the "Better Elements": The Regulation of the Entrance of Women into the University, I89o-I909

II5

5. Fraulein Doktor: Literary Images of the First Female University Students

I

6. "A Student Who Can't Get Drunk?" Women Students and the Problem of Identity

I76

Conclusion

213

Notes Selected Bibliography

227

27I

Index of Names of Persons

289

Subject Index

293

I.

Eighteen pages of photographs follow page

I I

4

9

52

Acknowledgments

The research for this project was undertaken with the support of the SSRC Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies. Its writing was made possible by grants from the Mellon and Spencer Foundations. Further revision was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the College of Arts and Sciences of the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the Nuala McGann Drescher Affirmative Action/Diversity Leave Program (United University Professions and the State University of New York at Buffalo). A final grant came from Julian Park Publication Fund of the College of Arts and Sciences of the State University of New York at Buffalo. In the course of my research, I profited from the assistance of countless librarians and archivists. Fond thanks are due the friendly staff of the Humboldt University Library and the archivists of the Humboldt and Leipzig University Archives. For allowing me the generous use of its collection, I am grateful to Frau Amonat of the Deutscher Staatsbiirgerinnenverband in Berlin. Sonia Moss of the Stanford University Interlibrary Loan Office went beyond the call of duty for me several times. In the field, I would like to thank my fellow Frauenstudium researchers for many productive early conversations: Ilse Costas, Edith Glaser, Claudia Huerkamp, and Senta Stromer. Karin Hausen, Konrad Jarausch, and Bernhard vom Brocke offered counsel along the way. My research would not have been possible without the fine related work of James Albisetti of the University of Kentucky. This project had its first faint origins in a report on the Frauenstudium for Rudiger vom Bruch's 1989 Munich seminar, "Deutsche Studenten 1848-1923;" I thank him for his interest throughout. For their comments on various parts of my work I am grateful to Giesela Brinker-Gabler, Roger Chickering, Deborah Cohen, James Cronin, Hasia Diner, Patricia Herminghouse, Gabriele Jiihnert, Larry Eugene Jones, Robert Nye, Jean Pedersen, Bryant Ragan, the late Susanne Zantop, and the participants in the first German-American Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar, in particular Kathleen Canning, Pascal Grosse, Krista Molly O'Donnell, and Jeffrey Schneider. A special note of thanks goes to Johanna Bieker for her hospitality at the Institute for the History of Medicine at the Free University of Berlin in r 99 5 and her continuing interest in the project.

lX

X

AC KNOW LED G MENTS

At Stanford, Amir Alexander and Jutta Sperling provided feedback and friendship. Estelle Freedman, Tim Lenoir, and Karen Offen commented on parts of the project at critical points. Paul Robinson read my work cheerfully and gave me wise and witty advice. Keith Baker was my guide to cultural history. Mary Louise Roberts opened up the world of women's and gender history to me and filled me with enthusiasm for an exciting new field. My greatest debt, intellectual and professional, is to my adviser, James Sheehan, a fair and judicious mentor who nurtured and encouraged this project at every stage. In Buffalo, Deans Kerry Grant and Charles Stinger of the College of Arts and Sciences and history chair Richard Ellis provided institutional support. In the department, I am grateful for input from Susan Cahn, Heidi Gengenbach, and Tamara Thornton as well as from other colleagues, including Georg Iggers and Bill Allen. Gail Radford deserves special recognition for her selfless mentoring and tireless efforts as publishing midwife; the appearance of this book owes much to her encouragement. Outside my department, I thank Michael Metzger for his careful comments on Chapter Five. For moral support I am indebted to Maria Elena Gutierrez. Reinhild Steingrover, now at Rochester, has shared many intellectual and pedagogical adventures and has helped make academic life more of a community endeavor. Jen Caruso cheerfully provided technical help at the very last minute. At Stanford University Press, Norris Pope gave the project a home, while Mariana Raykov gently pushed it along. In Berlin I have benefited over the years from the hospitality and friendship of Tanja Lenuweit, Robin Gooch and Martin Ostreich-Gooch, and Apiyo Kurth. In Hungary Ildik6 Muller once provided a place to get away from it all. In California, Awino Kurth and Myong Lee accompanied me along paths both intellectual and personal. Finally, I thank family: Mary, David, and Alexis Mazon; Edith, Leonard, and Wendy Feinstein; and Elsie. My late uncle first sparked my interest in education as a subject of scholarly attention. Most of all I am grateful to Joshua Feinstein, who has been my first and keenest critic as well as a patient and loving spouse. BUFFALO, JUNE 2003

Abbreviations

ADF

Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein General German Women's Association

BDF

Bund deutscher Frauenvereine Association of German Women's Organizations

GSAPK

Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian State Archive), Berlin

HUA

Universitiitsarchiv der Humboldt-Universitiit zu Berlin (Humboldt University Archive), Berlin

HBGUA

Universitiitsarchiv Heidelberg (Heidelberg University Archive)

LUA

Leipziger Universitiitsarchiv (Leipzig University Archive)

GENDER AND THE MODERN RESEARCH UNIVERSITY

Introduction

I

In nineteenth-century Germany, the idea of a female university student, or Studentin, was so improbable as to be a source of amusement. Any number of satirical plays, poems, and cartoons on the subject made their humorous points by depicting women imitating the boisterous lifestyle of the typical male student. One such parody, Das Corps Schlamponia, describes a student fraternity made up exclusively of women, who engage in the same outrageous pranks, duels, love affairs, and drinking ceremonies as their male nineteenth-century counterparts. 1 By the late r89os, when women actually began to appear in university halls, many German professors had lost their senses of humor. Upon noticing a young woman in the audience of one of his lectures, Heinrich von Treitschke, the mercurial nineteenth-century German historian, reportedly interrupted his presentation and escorted her out. The next time, he told a colleague, he would post an usher to bar women at the door. 2 In 189 5 Treitschke also personally intervened to keep one woman from auditing courses at the University of Berlin. "A student who can't get drunk? Impossible!" he exclaimed to the university rector. The individual in question later went on to become one of the first women in Prussia to get a doctorate, but at Halle, not Berlin. 3 Even the most well-meaning and fair-minded of professors had difficulties with the idea of university education for women, popularly known as the Frauenstudium. 4 In r892 the Berlin art historian Hermann Grimm painstakingly explained to the readers of the National-Zeitung why women should be allowed to study. Six years later, however, he asked to be excused from teaching them himself, for "personal" reasons. "When ladies then appeared in the auditorium, I was embarrassed by their presence," he wrote. "Often I had to express what I had to say in another way and could not speak freely and uninhibitedly as before." 5 Grimm's candor was unusual, but his sentiments were not. I

INTRODUCTION

Professors were not the only ones uncomfortable about the prospect of female university students. Indeed, there was a long and heated debate among academics, state officials, and members of the women's movement over the admission of women to German universities, recorded in hundreds of books and articles. This controversy affected few persons directly-perhaps three thousand women applied to the university during the forty years before they were formally admitted. Nevertheless, the issue struck a nerve in Wilhelmine society. Discussion of the question began around 1865, when women's groups first raised the possibility of female admission to German higher education, and continued even after women had gained the right to study at all German universities by 1909. In this debate, the most common arguments centered on women's innate intellectual ability. For many years, the smaller size of the average female brain was a compelling argument against higher education for womenthat is, until the scientist who expounded this theory, Theodor von Bischoff, died and left his body to science. His own brain weighed substantially less than even the average female brain. Other arguments, though, had more staying power. Professors worried about standards, since university preparatory courses were closed to girls. Academics also saw the political implications of admitting women, who were banned in most states from membership in a political party until 1908 and could not vote until 1918. Since German universities trained large numbers of civil servants, university-educated women could conceivably stake a claim to a government job and, eventually, the vote. Morality was another issue. In an era of strictly defined gender roles, what place did respectable women have at the university, where, for example, medical lectures and dissections would offend delicate feminine sensibilities? Would women who infiltrated this male preserve remain "true women," or would they sacrifice all aspects of their femininity? The prominent professor of law Otto Gierke summed up these objections in 1897 by declaring, "Our universities are men's universities. " 6 Throughout the years of controversy, the press eagerly followed the exploits of the first Studentinnen, its interest piqued by the question of their intellectual fitness. Would female students be equal to the task before them, or would the strain of trying to meet unreachable goals drive them mad? Their peculiar dilemma was presented as a true-life melodrama in the Deutsches Tageblatt in r889. According to the newspaper, Emma Mark! had been a promising Viennese medical student in Zurich. The newspaper printed an excerpt of the suicide note that had reportedly reached her parents: I fear I have wasted my life. I stand before a mountain upon which the temple of truth stands. The paths that lead up to it are steep, and the men have a staff in their strength, their profound knowledge. We [women] lack that ....

INTRODUCTION

3

I realized that I was not born to be a doctor.... My hand will tremble when it takes the pulse of a patient, because I'll say to myself: you blaspheme if you presume to know [what you are doing)F

The article implies that at the university Emma Mark! had learned, if nothing else, about the limits imposed on her ability by her sex. These limits were tested at German universities time and again by female auditors, whose numbers grew throughout the 189os. Despite the long controversy over their admission and the often chilly reception they received once there, female university students had established themselves as a social group by World War I. In 1917, the War Ministry was willing to mobilize the Studentin like any other resource and to use flattery to do so. The recruitment poster for war work read: Studentinnen, go on ahead! You know the discipline of work. Accustomed to self-dependence, you will quickly learn new tasks and give the women who follow you an example of perseverance. 8

As with many other divisions in German society, the exotic and isolated position of the female student was dissolved in the war effort, at least temporarily. This transformation, that is, the metamorphosis of the Studentin from a bizarre and controversial idea to a more commonplace one, is the subject of this book. II

Why were women considered antithetical to the very essence of the university? What sorts of arguments were advanced and considered valid by both traditionalists and reformers? This book demonstrates how the discussion was shaped by competing discourses. Traditionalists opposed female students by invoking the ideal of "academic citizenship," which encompassed a highly gendered vision of scholarship and community harking back to the university's medieval origins. 9 Reformers sought higher education for women to improve the condition of the sex. The "woman question"- the nineteenth century's long-running discussion of women's place in society-gave the German middle-class women's movement a way to articulate its concerns. The admission of women to higher education was one of the women's movement's principal accomplishments. The debate's cultural importance is evidenced by the extremely lively and long-lived discussion generated by the relatively few women seeking to enroll. While many of the arguments echo similar debates elsewhere, including modern-day America, my work aims to recontextualize the arguments and analyze the contemporary German cultural logic that permeated the discussion.

4

INTRODUCTION

This study addresses three major contexts. First, my work speaks to the issues surrounding female higher education in Germany and its history. Second, reading the debate as a cultural artifact can tell us much about the larger worlds of German society and politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Third, in the broadest sense this book is about the problems of access to higher education for a previously excluded group. Because so many Western countries modeled their own modern research universities after the German ones of this period, any "imperfections" in the model are significant not only for the Germans but for all those who adopted it. Indeed many of the arguments raised around women students in turn-of-thecentury Germany resonate with present discussions of multiculturalism. The question of women's admission unfolded in the context of a complex institution. What we now recognize as the modern research university has German roots. The founding of the University of Berlin in r810 under the influence of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Wilhelm von Humboldt, among others, was seen as emblematic of a new type of institution that married teaching and research. By the late nineteenth century, this "new" kind of university had arrived. The German universities had established themselves as the world's preeminent centers of science and scholarship, overshadowing the scientific academies existing elsewhere in Europe. At the same time, the university was closely allied with the state, which funded the university generously and provided jobs in the upper civil service to many of its graduates. Indeed, the prospering and expanding German educated middle class [Bildungsburgertum] defined itself by sending its sons to college. Yet by the r 89os, the university had become a victim of its own success. The prestige and status its degree conferred attracted a growing student body, which was increasingly diverse in terms of class, religion, and nationality. The university now served not just the aristocracy but Germany's reinvigorated bourgeoisie; quite a few students even came from the lower-middle class. The representation of Jewish students exceeded their proportion of the overall German population. What proved most anxiety-provoking to German academics, both professors and students, was the growing number of foreign students. The largest and most intensely disliked group among these were Russian Jews, who flocked to German universities after being shut out of higher education at home. Amidst rising enrollments, many professors wrung their hands over admission standards. The swelling ranks of the university-educated raised fears among students of a competitive and overcrowded job market in the professions and the civil service. While scholarship was tremendously vital during this period-which saw the rise of new disciplines such as psychology-the very proliferation of new fields and specializations challenged the unity of all knowledge that Schleiermacher had

INTRODUCTION

5

championed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Academics felt these changes in the university community, both demographic and intellectual, threatened to undermine a sense of common purpose. Reaching its height between 1887 and 1910, the debate over female students arose at a point when the university was already perceived to be in crisis. For many professors, the prospect of enrolling women was the last straw in an ongoing argument about general access to the university, academic standards, the role of foreign students, and anxiety about professional overcrowding. Moreover, what would become of all the women who completed a university education? Academics worried that a university degree would be wasted on a woman who might marry. Even worse was the threat posed by women who did use their education, as they would be competing with men for jobs in the professions, particularly in medicine and teaching. Again, both officials and male students thought female graduates would hasten the creation of an "intellectual proletariat," a threat already looming for certain oversubscribed areas. All of these concerns about the problem of women students would figure in its solution, which involved answering not only whether women should study but also which women should study. Indeed the social background of the first women students would prove more elite than that of their male peers. In addition, women, though formally admitted to all areas of the university, clustered in a few areas preparing for careers like gynecology and teaching at girls' schools that would limit their professional competition with men. It would be decades before girls gained parity with boys in the university qualifying exam, the Abitur. Until then, requiring female applicants to take this exam served to divert the onslaught of women students officials had feared. This requirement also proved particularly effective in mitigating the other major concern of officials, namely that large numbers of Russian Jewish women soon join their male compatriots at German universities. Even some very progressive Germans saw this group of women as politically radical, sexually dangerous, and generally unwelcome in the academy. The admission of women to university study challenged German society in several areas: gender roles, education [Bildung], the definition of class, and notions of the state. While women were closely associated with their bodies and the "natural," men were seen as logical and "intellectual." Hegel outlined the intimate opposition between nature and education clearly: "One can only become all one should be through education and discipline .... one must shake off the natural." 10 Opponents of female students argued that women's education should aim to produce competent wives and mothers but not extend beyond this. Supporters of women's university study pushed at the limits of male and female identities. At a time when class allegiance

6

INTRODUCTION

trumped that of gender, as evident in the hopelessly divided bourgeois and socialist women's movements, the prospect of learned women strained the self-understanding of Germany's educated middle class, which had understood education to be a defining characteristic of its male members only. Clearly the arguments over the matriculation of female students were also about women's access to the public sphere in general. Once women had studied, they would theoretically have a claim to state professional examinations, government jobs, and full participation in public life, including the franchise. This discussion carried a special significance in Germany, where higher education, the state bureaucracy, and middle-class respectability were more closely intertwined than in other European countries, as Jiirgen Kocka has noted. 11 While the British supported a mix of public and private institutions, for example, all German universities were state-financed, drawing the nexus between university and state even tighter. George Weisz writes that French universities were not tied as closely to the state and the bourgeoisie as in Germany.U By 1900 a university education itself had become the ticket to professional upper-middle class success in Germany, whereas the most prestigious British universities were still mired in tradition, both in terms of the composition of the student body and their curricula. The story of women's admission to higher education is at once part of the larger German story and an experiment on its margins. For those who have seen German history as dominated by the state, the debate over female university students is a rare opportunity to contemplate both the relationship of women to the state and their place in public life. The political parties did not champion women's higher education. At most the parties commented briefly and often dismissively in any discussion of petitions sent to the Reichstag and state legislatures. In turn, female reformers saw the benefits of not being overly associated with one political party, although almost all of them identified with the liberal end of the political spectrum. Women's groups themselves, however, were officially apolitical and nonpartisan. Until 1908 women were banned from joining political organizations in most German states. Yet the bourgeois women's movement made the case for reform in a public and political way, broadly conceived. Women's higher education belonged to those problems resolved in what could be called Imperial Germany's "parallel" political sphere, one defined by the close cooperation of government agencies and interest groups. 13 As David Blackbourn writes, "The major brokers of bourgeois interests tended to retreat off the political stage into pressure groups," circumventing legislatures. 14 Offstage, in a lengthy process, state education ministers, university officials, and women's groups negotiated a resolution to a series of issues surrounding female higher education. Indeed, it is ironic that female reformers succeeded in winning admission of women to the university, a project entailing the progressive vindication of

INTRODUCTION

7

individual rights, during an era that was increasingly enamoured of corporatist political logic. As the liberal parties began their long decline after 188o, Germany witnessed a profusion of conservative political interest groups ranging from cartels to regional parties. 15 Public discourse was characterized by an increasingly nationalist tone as well as a renewed emphasis on regional and religious identity. 16 On a rhetorical level, the language of corporatism stressed the constituitive role of groups and social institutions within the nation rather than individual rights. In this way, corporatism hearkened back to a romanticized notion of a premodern community that was appealing to a nation experiencing the displacements of rapid industrialization. This broad political and cultural shift is as evident in the women's movement's arguments for reform as in those of the traditionalists who opposed them. 17 The change in the argumentation surrounding women's higher education resulted in the admission of women more as a group and less as individuals, a result that resonated strongly with the wider political climate. How are we to evaluate these corporatist resonances accompanying women's admission to the university? Some have seen the revival of corporatism as something profoundly backward and a sign of Germany's inability to modernize politically. But as David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley remind us, there is no single model of liberal or political development. 18 In the case of the Frauenstudium, corporatist logic was in fact used in a broadly progressive way, even if at the same time it had disturbing resonances. This tension itself is emblematic of modernity and consistent with what joan Scott argues about the contradictions inherent in liberalism. As many, including Hannah Arendt, have written, liberal principles have always operated within particular, bounded groups. In the nineteenth century, the particular group within which the project of attaining universal rights was attempted was the nation and specifically its male citizens. For Scott, however, there is a slippage between liberal ideas and the group that embodies them that invites others to claim these principles for themselves. In the case of the women's movement, women embraced the liberal idea of emancipation and equality but in the process inevitably called attention to their (sexual) difference. Scott thus sees feminism not as a sign of political liberalism's progressiveness but instead as "a symptom of its constituitive contradictions," and it is characteristic of liberalism that these contradictions remain unresolved. 19 This study shows that the admission of women did not involve merely eliminating a barrier to women but rather carefully selecting which women could enter the university. Years of discussion helped to shape an admission policy that excluded almost all foreign women and privileged German women. Moreover, foreign women were treated much more harshly than their male compatriots, who were still able to study in Germany under somewhat more generous provisions. Thus we may speak of a particular

8

INTRODUCTION

group of women that such a policy produced, a group that was German and almost exclusively from the educated middle class. This book also presents a case study of how new groups gain access to higher education. My analysis shows that the solution is more complex than simply throwing open the gates. If the institution does not change, new members are under tremendous pressure to adapt. In the case of women in Imperial Germany, the university made few if any allowances for them. In this study, we see the effect this had on individual female students. Some tried to emulate the male student lifestyle, dressing in a mannish way, smoking, and keeping a dog. Others tried to create an alternative female academic community, which was not always easy with only a handful of fellow academic women. As in the contemporary American case, treating students the same can sometimes have inequitable results. Lani Guinier has recently argued that despite male and female law students' apparent parity in terms of numbers and qualifications, current forms of legal education disadvantage female students. For instance, Guinier reports that some female students are alienated by the masculine ethos implicit in the Socratic method and other types of legal training that stress ritual combat. 20 The debate over women's higher education in Germany is of particular significance in light of the nineteenth-century German university's role as the model for the development of graduate education and research universities in the West. British higher education, which had been focused on teaching, faced an intellectual challenge from Germany's research-centered institutions during the half century before World War J.2 1 The French were especially conscious of the disparity between their higher education and Germany's: Ernest Renan maintained that it was the German universities that had won the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. By 1896 France would begin to establish research universities on the German model. 22 American graduate education was consciously modeled on that of the Germans. In I86o Yale became the first U.S. university to offer a doctorate that was not honorary. Many American educators and administrators visited or studied at German universities. The majority returned greatly impressed by the advanced training in a wide range of disciplines offered there. 23 The lure of a German degree could be quite strong. W.E.B Du Bois, for example, had already begun graduate work at Harvard when he set his sights on a German doctorate in 1892. As his biographer David Levering Lewis writes, "Harvard's degree, after all, was regarded in about the same light by the leading German universities as his Fisk bachelor's had been by Harvard. To return to the United States with a coveted Heidelberg or Berlin doctorate would be the ultimate seal of professional standing. " 24 Some American women, such as M. Carey Thomas, Edith and Alice Hamilton, and Ida Hyde, were able to make their way to Germany and, armed with their degrees

INTRODUCTION

9

from American women's colleges, persuade German professors to admit them to lectures; Hyde even earned a Heidelberg Ph.D. in 1896.25 Germany's influence on American higher education persisted well into the twentieth century. One example is Herbert Baxter Adams's graduate history seminar, which he imported to Johns Hopkins directly from Germany. 26 Before and after World War II, American academics would again see their close ties with German academia renewed through a wave of Germantrained emigre scholars. These (mostly male) academics reinforced traditional German scholarly norms, in particular for their graduate students. 27 As American universities became the world's premier institutions of higher learning after World War II, the parallels between nineteenth-century German universities and postwar American institutions grew stronger. Even before World War I, Germany had possessed an array of scientific institutes to support its growing military might. The Cold War would see similar patterns develop in the United States, as American universities expanded dramatically, in part by offering their services to the state. 28 The German controversy over female students revealed the highly gendered foundations of an institution with aspirations to universal relevance and knowledge. This story resonates with contemporary American debates of the last twenty years surrounding multiculturalism and higher education during another era of transformation for the leading institutions of higher education. In each case the same themes of access, standards, and fairness surface. Whereas female students were controversial in turn-of-the-century Germany, the first "affirmative action babies" (to borrow Stephen Carter's phrase) of the 1970s and 8os set off a firestorm of public reaction that, years later, is still not settled. The ethnic diversification of the American student body was taking place, as in Imperial Germany, in a university that was a world leader in scholarship and science. Yet scholars questioned the university's mission, some in multicultural critique, others in the refutation of that critique, as it appeared in everything from admission standards to core curricula. The question of what constituted a "qualified minority" was debated at the same time as what constituted a "great book." And again as in the German case we explore here, members of the new group on campus faced the task of assimilating to or changing the academic community they found. III

The precursors to the long debate over women's university study in Germany can be traced back at least to the eighteenth century,29 when various books treated the subject, including Theodor von Hippel's landmark work in 1792, On the Civil Improvement ofWomen. 30 Isolated incidents of women studying at the university in Germany date from the mid-I7oos.

10

INTRODUCTION

Documenting these early cases is difficult, and reports of the "first" doctoral degrees earned by women often conflict. The first case usually cited of a German woman to receive a doctorate is that of Dorothea Erxleben, who completed a dissertation and examination in medicine in 1754. Dorothea Schli::izer is commonly mentioned as the first woman to receive a doctorate in philosophy in 1787. 31 The emergence of the Frauenstudium as a public issue is intimately linked to the middle-class women's movement in Germany and its fight to widen the range of female occupations beginning in 1865. At about the same time, small numbers of women were being allowed to audit courses, but not enroll, at several German universities. Since the presence of women had never been an issue before, except in the handful of cases mentioned above, most universities had no policies expressly forbidding women. The first wave of auditors in the late 186os and early 187os forced universities to take a formal position on the matter, which resulted in policies banning women at almost all German universities by 1879. After a lull in the early and mid-188os, several women's groups took up the issue again in a systematic campaign of petitions and publicity, beginning in 1887 and lasting through the turn of the century. The petitions emphasized the importance of training female physicians and teachers for the higher grades of girls' schools. Although attempts to bring the question up in the Reichstag and state parliaments failed, the petitions did spark a long public discussion about the Frauenstudium. By the late r89os, many German universities began to accept women as auditors on a more regular basis, and with special permissions auditors could in fact earn doctorates. It is difficult to estimate the exact number of women who did so. One source lists r69 doctorates-the only degree then available-in all fields by women (including foreigners) in Germany from 1754 until 1908,66 in medicine alone. Furthermore, a certain number of German women were driven abroad to study; the same source estimates 77 doctorates by German women at Swiss universities between 1875 and 1907-1908, 26 of these in medicine. InGermany itself, formal admission occurred on a state-by-state basis between 1900 and 1909: Baden admitted women in 1900; Bavaria followed in 1903; Wiirttemberg in 1904; Saxony in 1906; Thuringia in 1907; Prussia, AlsaceLorraine, and Hessen in 1908; and Mecklenburg in 1909.32 Interestingly, the issue of female higher education, unlike so many other questions in Imperial Germany, did not immediately draw an explicitly confessional response, partly because religious women's movements formed much later than secular groups like the General German Women's Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein or ADF), founded in 1865. The Protestant and Catholic national women's organizations were both initiated by Elisabeth Gnauck-Kiihne, who studied with the prominent historical

INTRODUCTION

II

economist Gustav Schmoller in Berlin in the 189os. Gnauck-Kiihne argued for women's admission in her 1892 appeal Das Universitiitsstudium der Frauen (Women's University Study), largely on the basis of the so-called "woman surplus." 33 Two years later she established the Protestant Social Women's Group (Evangelisch-Soziale Frauengruppe), the seed of the larger German Protestant Women's League (Deutsch-Evangelischer Frauenbund) established in 1899, which still exists today. After her conversion to Catholicism in 1900, Gnauck-Kiihne organized the Catholic Women's League (Katholischer Frauenbund) in 1904. 34 The same year, the Jewish Women's League Uiidischer Frauenbund) was founded by Bertha Pappenheim. 35 By the time the Catholic and Jewish groups were founded, much of the urgency had deserted women's higher education, and members turned their attention to other issues. Interestingly, the discussion over female students played out in a university setting that was increasingly marked by the struggles of cultural Protestantism. 36 Added to this was the long-running debate in Germany over the perceived gap between Protestant and Catholic educational achievement, especially at the university level. In the case of the Frauenstudium, however, it appears that anti-woman sentiment served to unify both Protestant and Catholic commentators, so that again the issue of female students did not become explicitly confessional. In what context does the story of the first female students belong? The secondary literature on the Frauenstudium concentrates exclusively on the women involved to the exclusion of the university. In turn, university historiography has ignored the Frauenstudium. It is understandable that Friedrich Paulsen, the best-known chronicler of higher education in Imperial Germany, sketched the admission of women as a peripheral development to that of the university as a whole in his definitive 1902 study of the German university system, published when women were admitted in only one German stateY But historians who came after him followed his lead in seeing women's admission as a footnote to the history of the German academy. The most obvious reason for the exclusion of the topic from institutional histories is that it was regarded at the time as belonging to the larger "woman question," and indeed literature addressing this topic is where most discussions of female students can be found around 1900. Later generations of historians have repeated the topical divisions of the nineteenth century: "women's" issues on one side, "university" ones on the other. The admission of women, although surely one of the most discussed issues in German higher education at the time, has been largely ignored in histories of German academia 38 and of the educated middle class. 39 This book redraws historiographical divisions, situating women's admission in the context of the university as well as in that of the women's movement. Indeed, precisely because female higher education affected such

12.

INTRODUCTION

tiny numbers of upper-middle-class women in Germany, the first few female students cannot be seen as representative of German women as a whole. Thus the university is in some ways the more significant backdrop for analyzing the story of female students. Many accounts of women's higher education focus on the question of whether women were in fact qualified to study, given their generally poor academic preparation at the time. In contrast, I am concerned with examining the particular university standards, roles, and expectations that were at stake in the negotiations surrounding the issue of female students. By examining these exchanges, I hope to gain an understanding of how gender helped to construct academic roles and institutional authority in Imperial Germany. Historians have told the story of the Frauenstudium in several ways. 40 Overall the secondary literature can be divided into three categories: documentary histories of women at individual universities; works by historians of Germany that place women's education in a larger interpretive framework; and diverse feminist approaches to the question. Surveys of the impact that educated women had on their fields of study in terms of research and the shaping of knowledge are just beginning to appearY The documentary histories tend to rely heavily on the holdings of university archives, which consist mostly of administrative records and hold no yearbooks or letters to document student life. 42 There has also been a spate of publications in association with the rooth anniversary of women's enrollment. 43 German dissertations have taken up this subject; however, these studies vary widely in quality and accuracy and incorporate little analysis. Those written as dissertations for the medical doctorate are often quite thin. 44 The historian of German education James Albisetti argues that in the end, reformers convinced education ministers already worried about Germany's image abroadY Albisetti points to the success with the Frauenstudium as one of the main achievements of the German middle-class women's movement. He sees the admission of women as a reform that was an inevitable part of the modernization of higher education. In analyzing the demands of the women's movement, Albisetti looks at them as a strategy in the service of progress. Other historians such as Claudia Huerkamp have seen the Frauenstudium in social and economic terms. According to this interpretation, by the late nineteenth century, the family was no longer a center of production. The increasing inability of bourgeois families to support spinster daughters meant that single women had to earn their own support outside the home. The problem was compounded by the so-called "woman surplus," a supposed surfeit of unmarried and unmarriageable women. Finding suitable employment for upper-middle-class women was especially difficult. Huerkamp explains that educated, middle-class fathers

INTRODUCTION

13

approved of university study "to save their single daughters from a loss in social status. " 46 Feminist scholars have focused on the barriers women faced because of their sex, both before and after admission. Landa Schiebinger, for example, traces the exclusion of women from scientific and academic life beginning in the eighteenth century. Schiebinger documents the above-mentioned cases of Dorothea Erxleben and Dorothea Schlozer and argues that the efforts of women to gain admission really started in the eighteenth, not the nineteenth, century.47 Nonetheless, German universities did not formulate explicit policies barring women until the late r86os and r87os. Although university study may have been an issue for a handful of women before this date, it did not become a controversial topic until then. Edith Glaser's detailed local study of women at Tiibingen from their admission in 1904 to 1934 reveals the discrepancy between the women's feelings of gratitude for the opportunity to study and the actual stumbling blocks in their way. 48 However important it is to document discrimination, though, such an approach leaves vast parts of women's experience unexplored. One effort to address this problem can be found in the sociological study of Studentinnen in the Weimar Republic by Gitta Benker and Senta Stromer. Instead of seeing female students as "victims of patriarchal politics," Benker and Stromer are interested in understanding "the whole social and mental framework" of the female students through interviews with surviving students and analyses of articles and novels of the period. 49 Despite their differences, all three historiographical approaches to the problem share an implicit comparative perspective and ask why, in their view, the admission of women took longer in Germany than elsewhere. Common to most accounts of the Frauenstudium is the opinion, also voiced at the time, that Germany was "backward" in terms of female education. Many scholars conflate this with the Sonderweg theory, which refers to Germany's "special path" to modernity, specifically to its failure to develop a viable modern parliamentary democracy before r 94 5. 50 Seen through the lens of the Sonderweg, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German feminism appears too heavily premised on ideas of female difference and not enough on sexual equality, hindering the emancipation of German women and reflecting the larger failure of German liberalism. 51 Writing about the University of Gottingen, Use Costas uses the Sonderweg to explain Germany's comparatively late enrollment of women. 52 In contrast, while Albisetti's work points to the limits of liberalism in the Kaiserreich, he argues against interpreting the story in terms of the Sonderweg, especially with regard to the women's movement, which he shows to be remarkably successful in making the case for female higher education. If anything, Albisetti argues, German officials were finally pushed to admit women

INTRODUCTION

to medical certification for fear of appearing retrograde compared to other countries. 53 This fear had some basis in fact. In the I86os, for example, a few women were already studying medicine in Paris. 54 In I867 the first female students matriculated at the University of Zurich. Sweden and Denmark both opened the doors to women in higher education in the early I 87os, by which time women's colleges had begun to be established in England. The matriculation of women proceeded quite unevenly in Austria but began in I897 with admission to the philosophical faculty in Vienna. 55 In the United States, Oberlin College had admitted women in I833, and the founding of numerous women's colleges followed. At the time, many German reformers had the feeling of lagging behind the other "civilized nations." One complained in I 897 that "now Germany is really the only country which represses the intellectual ambitions of women; the nation of thinkers thinks so much about this question that it never gets past the thinking stage." 56 It is true that the campaign for women's enrollment may have lasted significantly longer in Germany than in other European countries. Yet a superficial comparison of "firsts" in each country can be misleading. The degree to which Germany can be considered backward depends on how one defines the problem and how one measures progress and fairness in education. For instance, it is difficult to compare the admission of women to German universities, which were not divided into undergraduate and graduate levels, to American women's access to women's colleges, state universities, and graduate and professional training, each of which occurred at a different time. Furthermore, the appearance of progress elsewhere was sometimes deceptive. Although many other European countries had admitted women by the I 87os, few universities could boast a significant number of female students, and in those that could, such as Paris or Zurich, most of the female students were foreigners, not Frenchwomen or Swiss women. Sometimes women were not allowed at all of a country's institutions of higher learning. For example, other Swiss universities such as Basel admitted women decades later than Zurich. In the United States, while women were allowed at a few colleges in the I83os, many elite colleges such as Yale, the University of Virginia, and Columbia have become coeducational only within the last thirty years. Women were admitted early to most state universities that sprang up in the latter half of the nineteenth century, but female access to graduate and professional training at these institutions was sometimes as difficult as at private universities. 57 Often cited as a counter-example to the German case, women at Oxford faced the peculiar problem of not being allowed to claim the degrees they had earned. Admitted to the same exams as men, women could not add the coveted "B.A." to their names until I92o.

INTRODUCTION

15

Carol Dyhouse writes that with respect to gender equality, British universities ranked behind their American counterparts, as well as the universities of the Commonwealth. 58 In Germany, the discussion over women's higher education lasted longer, but the results were more uniform. Once a German state decided to admit women, all universities in that state had to do so. Thus, by 1909 all German universities were officially coeducational. In addition, women were admitted to all subject areas and could earn a degree in any of them. After graduation women's progress could be slowed, despite their credentials, by state licensing exams and other obstacles. Whereas medicine and teaching opened up rather quickly, the equivalent of the bar exam was closed to women until 1920. Theology, one of the four traditional faculties of the German university along with law, medicine, and philosophy (encompassing arts and sciences), remained a male stronghold. Nevertheless this lag in admitting women to state qualifying examinations for the professions outside of medicine and teaching was the case in many Western countries. Interestingly, no German reformer consistently advocated the solution of the woman's college, as had occurred in Britain and the United States. By 1900 the German women's movement had largely rejected the establishment of separate women's universities, which it feared would be seen as inferior. 59 As this book shows, what set Germany apart from other countries was not cultural or political backwardness but the structure of German institutions. Because all German universities were public, the question of women's admission quickly became that of their admission to all universities or none. Universities' traditionally close ties to the state served to focus the debate on the admission of women to these institutions and not on the creation of separate women's institutions. Therefore the discussion was often longer and more highly charged than in other Western and European nations. In contrast, when all else failed, American feminists could often literally bribe institutions to admit women, either by raising money to cover the additional cost of female college students, as happened at the University of Rochester in 1900, or by making a large donation contingent on the admission of women to medical training, as was the case at the Johns Hopkins medical school in 1893.60 When a German woman tried this tactic, the university quickly turned her down, one reason being that state-financed German universities had no need of the individual gifts that supported American institutions. 61 While German educational reformers faced down an "incorruptible" state, their American counterparts operated in a more flexible atmosphere. The variety of institutions of higher education, from small college to large university, and their wide range in academic quality made it initially easier to establish separate women's institutions. Nationwide, though, women's admission to graduate education or to academically

16

INTRODUCTION

elite schools presented a greater challenge because of that very mix of public and private, higher- and lower-quality, which meant that American women's choices were far narrower than men's, especially in terms of elite education and graduate training. In contrast, when German women's formal admission came between 1900 and 1909, they had immediate access to all German universities, all public and largely of comparable prestige, a range of access that would elude American women well into the twentieth century. IV

Although isolated petitions of women to audit courses date back to at least the 184os, the issue of female university attendance first entered public discussion around 1865. This book concentrates on the main part of the debate between 1887 and 1910. Ending the study in 1914 allows the consideration of the first generation of Studentinnen to enroll formally at the university. Another important reason for concluding this work in 1914 is that the most dramatic institutional change affecting women students after their formal admission came after 1968 in response to the student movement. The struggle of women inside the German university today takes place in a different, if still recognizable, institution. As the lengthy debate over women's admission took place throughout Germany and cannot be pinned down to a single university, this is a broadly national study. Even though the debate was carried on nationwide, it did not command the attention of all classes and groups equally. Rather, the Frauenstudium was most highly contested among educated elites. Arguments were aired not only in official policy discussions but were published and responded to in a wide variety of forms, such as newspaper articles, pamphlets, and books. That the reading public thus engaged was solidly middle-class is evident from the types of newspapers that covered the story. The socialist newspaper Vorwiirts devoted very little attention to the subject, whereas both politically liberal and conservative newspapers were more interested. Most articles appeared in liberal newspapers like Berliner Tageblatt, Frankfurter Zeitung, and VoPische Zeitung, but a variety of other publications also addressed the issue, including the conservative Kreuz-Zeitung and popular publications like Die Gartenlaube and the Illustrirte Zeitung. 61 Because university study was restricted to a very elite group in Imperial Germany, women's higher education was of less interest to a working-class audience, which focused any attention given to women's issues on the very significant problems of working-class women at the time. Women's readership is a more difficult question to address. Women certainly wrote many of the appeals for educational reform, and these were usually addressed to a mixed audience. While it was not considered proper for young women to

INTRODUCTION

I7

read the daily newspapers with their highly political contents, a few, such as the future university student and later parliamentarian Marie-Elisabeth Liiders, read them anyway. 63 Members and sympathizers of the bourgeois women's groups read their organs, which devoted much coverage to female students. Women also constituted part of the audience for much of the fiction dealing with the novelty of female higher education. The first chapter of this study considers why a female student was difficult for nineteenth-century Germans to imagine. Not only was the role of a student traditionally masculine, but students were also members of a longstanding corporate and highly exclusionary community. Belonging to this group was conceived of in terms of academic citizenship. At the same time, academic citizenship served to inculcate a particular kind of middle-class masculine identity. Using the language of the "woman question," the middle-class women's movement shaped the rationale in favor of reform, as Chapter Two demonstrates. The improvement of girls' and women's education at all levels was the movement's highest priority throughout the Imperial period. Female reformers saw higher education for women not in terms of academic citizenship but as a solution to the woman question that plagued late nineteenthcentury Europe. Women's groups were especially concerned with opening new employment opportunities for single middle-class women in professions requiring university training, such as medicine. In the women's movement's long campaign for the Frauenstudium, female reformers articulated different ideas about women and plans for their education. The clash between the rhetoric of the woman question and that of academic citizenship is the subject of Chapter Three. Problems of professional competition, academic standards, and radical politics were components of the perceived crisis of the university that preoccupied German academics and also attached themselves to the question of female students. The subjects that women were expected to study and the careers for which they would prepare were a decisive factor in whether they could pursue higher education at all. The importance of female physicians was a key element of the compromise reached in the confrontation between the social demands made by the women's movement and the German academy's view of membership in it. Chapter Four traces the principal policies leading to women's formal university enrollment. State and university officials experimented with a variety of efforts to control the number of women at university. In the end, admission to the university was justified in part by its promise to reduce the number of Studentinnen. Moreover, the question of what qualified a woman to study was settled more on political grounds and less on the basis of intellectual merit. The final admission of German women rested on an

18

INTRODUCTION

institutional compromise that all but banned foreign women, in particular Russian Jews. The debate over women's admission spilled over into the culture at large. One important arena the discussion carried over to was fiction, as explored in the fifth chapter. Stories and novels written about the Studentin were a way for outside observers to play with the idea of a female student in a way that ultimately came back and informed more official deliberations. To popular authors, women students represented everything from natural catastrophe to the inspiration for a new kind of womanhood. The final chapter tackles women's experience at the university and their efforts to make a place for themselves there. Autobiographies written by the first female students provide a window on this process. In addition, these narratives illustrate the ways the tension between the poles of academic citizenship and the woman question played out in the lives of early female students. This book aims to restore a sense of contingency to the story of the admission of women to German universities, setting it in a wider context than that of educational reform or the history of the educated middle class. My work demonstrates just how complicated the formal enrollment of women was at the time by exploring the cultural terrain on which the question was contested and finally justified. The debate over the Frauenstudium became intertwined with other important issues of the day, including those articulated by the women's movement and by the university community. In turn, the debate over female students has much to tell us not only about German academia but also Imperial Germany as a society and the university as an institution.

CHAPTER I

Academic Citizenship and Masculinity in the German World of Learning Frei ist der Bursch. (The student is free.) -German student motto'

I

"The university years are the test of whether inside the young person there is a man," observed Friedrich Paulsen, the well-known historian of German higher education. After completing a highly regimented high school curriculum, the student entered the relatively unconstrained atmosphere of the university, where he was free to attend lectures in any subject that pleased him. There were no transcripts or grades. Three or four years of study culminated in a single final examination. Thus the temptation to squander the intervening years was great. Parents who had pushed their sons through a strict preparatory program were dismayed when they failed to adjust to so much freedom. Paulsen, however, resolutely rejected the slightest suggestion of providing more guidance for students. The university, he explained, was a "school of self-reliance" where the student would learn "the difficult art of ruling himself." Of course, there was always the

risk that, given free rein, young people might come to harm, Paulsen conceded. Still, this was the price to be paid, for "one must risk young people in order to win men." Paulsen's colleague at the University of Berlin, the historian Heinrich von Treitschke, agreed that the universities were more than "mere educational institutions." Rather they offered "a camaraderie that ... is invaluable for the building of a young man's character. " 2 The close connection that Paulsen and Treitschke drew between the student's intellectual development and his sense of masculine identity was characteristic for their time. In spite of the premium then placed on objectivity in both the natural and social sciences, the university in Imperial Germany was not a "neutral" site of disinterested intellectual pursuits. While other scholars have analyzed the political, class, and ethnic biases that colored the nineteenth- and twentieth-century German academy, 3 I am interested in the lines of gender as they were drawn and redrawn in German academic culture. The German university was gender-neutral neither 19

20

ACAD E M I C C I T I Z EN S H I P AN D M ASC U LI N I T Y

in theory nor in practice. Institutionally, German higher education was marked male by the simple fact that all the professors and students were men. On a conceptual level, the ideas defining both university and student had a decidedly masculine cast in Imperial Germany. The university provides a window on the production of a masculine identity particular to the student. 4 Through the student, the university exerted a unique influence on the formation of an entire social class, known to historians today as the educated middle class [Bildungsburgertum]. 5 As opposed to the "moneyed" middle class [Besitzburgertum], the educated middle class was defined by the fact that its men had attended the university and pursued professional occupations. Before setting foot in the university, the oldest prep students already imitated the customs of student life, such as fraternities and drinking ceremonies. 6 Decades after leaving the university, the old boys [Alte Herren] of the fraternity still looked back on that "golden time." Commenting on the wide influence of higher education on German life, Paulsen observed that teachers, ministers, physicians, and judges all still felt a connection to the academic world. 7 Given the Bildungsburgertum's close ties to the university, it is not surprising that the daughters of this class first raised the question of the admission of female students to German higher education. A closer examination of the world that women aspired to enter is essential to understanding the debate surrounding the question of university education for women. Resistance to the idea of female students cannot be understood without first examining what Germans associated with male student life. Historically, "woman" and "student" were two mutually exclusive categories in Germany. This chapter will explain why this was so, and later chapters will analyze how these two roles were reconciled, to some extent, once the Frauenstudium was established. The specific nature of the roles and ideologies that women confronted in German higher education is extremely important. Moreover, these conventions were not constructed solely in terms of a male/female antithesis but were also shaped by factors such as class, religion, and politics. The starting point for this process will be to examine descriptions of the German world of learning and its most common denizen, the student. The main idea that will guide us in our exploration of the German academy is that of academic citizenship. Known as the akademisches Burgerrecht, academic citizenship dates back to the medieval German university, which was an independent corporation having its own laws, court system, and even jail cells. 8 Through the matriculation ceremony, the new student was officially inscribed as a citizen of the university community. A description of this initiation appeared in an account of German student life from I 84 I. Candidates for matriculation [enrollment] must ... appear before the board of matriculation, and lay before it their certificates of learning and morals ....

ACADEMIC CITIZENSHIP AND MASCULINITY

2I

The new candidate thereupon gives to the prorector ... his hand, pronounces what is above stated, and then receives the matriculation certificate ... which confers upon him the enjoyment of all the rights of academical burgership [sic]. Through this he acquires a claim on the academical court of justice, on the protection of the academical laws, as well as the right to enjoy the benefit of the library and the learned institutions. 9

The bounds of "academical burgership" defined the perimeters of student life. At a time when only a tiny number of persons could pursue higher education, the university student was already part of a socially elite group with particular privileges. Many held one of the defining characteristics of the student community to be its egalitarian ethos, which in theory blurred the line between nobleman and bourgeois. 10 Interestingly, the existence of exclusionary groups such as fraternities was not thought to undermine, at least in principle, the egalitarian side of academic citizenship. The vision of a democratic academic community contrasted sharply with the elite status of the student in a wider, nondemocratic society. This tension was contained in the idea of academic citizenship itself. Unlike the vision of citizenship ushered in by the French Revolution, which was premised on equality and the individual's duty to the nation, academic citizenship rested on a older and more particular ideal. The historian Mack Walker has described this type of citizenship as it existed for citizens or burghers [Burger} of eighteenth and nineteenth-century German towns. While many persons might reside in the town, only some gained the right of citizenship in it; the rest of the town's residents were merely tolerated. As Walker points out, "simply living in the town space did not confer membership rights." Only burghers could own property or have a say in the town's governance. 11 Like the townsman's citizenship, academic citizenship depended as much on keeping certain people out as on keeping others in. Academic citizenship should not be confused with political citizenship, which was undergoing major changes of its own in nineteenth-century Germany. With German unification in I 87 I, citizenship was no longer mostly local and particular but now included a national dimension, which was accompanied by universal male suffrage. 12 Political citizenship was a marker of manhood and adulthood for all German males. As we shall see, academic citizenship shared this connection to masculinity and maturity yet remained, in contrast to political citizenship, something highly exclusive and exclusionary. The relationship of students to politics itself will be discussed later in this chapter. By the time of German national unification in I 871, the university's legal autonomy had been eroded and was confined to routine administrative and disciplinary matters. 13 The metaphor of academic citizenship, however,

2.2.

ACADEMIC CITIZENSHIP AND MASCULINITY

outlived the student's actual legal status because it conveyed crucial points about student life and its attendant rights and duties. What Mack Walker observed about the town held equally true for the university; in each case citizenship was "an explicit legal term denoting a real range of working human relations." 14 In the sources for this chapter, the idea of academic citizenship is a pervasive category, so much taken for granted that it rarely has to be overtly mentioned by the authors, yet their comments cannot be understood without it. The historian's task is often to recover what used to be common knowledge. For this reason I want to develop academic citizenship explicitly as an analytical concept that unifies the writings discussed here. 15 In examining how the role of student was constructed, this chapter will cover three broad areas. First, some background information on the university as an institution will be provided along with an examination of the main sources for the chapter, three handbooks for students. Second, the principal part of the chapter will focus on the definition of the student through the concept of academic citizenship. What privileges and duties did academic citizenship entail? Third, the manifold connections between the student and society will be traced. What social and political associations did the student conjure up? The chapter will conclude with a look at the fit between gender and the rhetoric of academic citizenship, highlighting several terms that emerged as central categories in the debate over the Frauenstudium. II

Although elementary education was mandated in many of the German lands by the early eighteenth century, at the end of the following century most boys got no further than the eight-class grammar school [Volksschule]. Only a few followed this with six years of Realschule, a type of secondary school that did not entitle its graduates to go on to the university but provided some vocational training. During the same period, girls' education was largely limited to the grammar school level. Upper-middle class girls could attend school a few years longer at a higher girls' school [hohere Tochterschule], which itself might encompass the elementary grades from the third year on, but this school was not nearly as rigorous as the corresponding school for boys and could not prepare its students for university study. Wealthy girls might visit a finishing school after or instead of the higher girls' school. Single-sex education was, of course, the norm everywhere except in the grammar schools of small communities. 16 The decision to send. a son to the university was made very early. Many boys began with three years at a preparatory school [Vorschu/e], or four years at the grammar school, and then started the nine-year Gymnasium

ACADEMIC CITIZENSHIP AND MASCULINITY

23

program at age nine or ten. 17 The Gymnasium was the secondary school that prepared German students for university study. Its curriculum emphasized Latin and Greek. Access to the university was possible only by passing the Abitur, the final exam of the Gymnasium. By 1900 Realgymnasien, which stressed modern languages, math, and science, were also allowed to send their graduates to the university. 18 Twenty universities existed in Imperial Germany, all financed by the individual states comprising the empire. Most prominent at the time were the universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Gottingen, although all were roughly of equal rank in comparison to the wide range in quality found at the time in American or British institutions of higher learning. Other institutions existed at the tertiary level, but none approached the prestige of the university. Engineering and applied sciences, for instance, were taught at technical colleges [technische Hochschulen]. These were first elevated to the level of universities in 1900 after many years of debate over whether the technical colleges fulfilled the same high scholarly mission as the universities. 19 In the nineteenth century, the university was divided into four faculties: theology, medicine, law, and philosophy. These took the place of depart" ments or schools as we know them in American universities today. The philosophical faculty included all of the humanities and natural sciences, as well as mathematics. Before World War I, some universities split the natural sciences and mathematics off from the philosophical faculty because of the great proliferation of disciplines inside of it, both humanistic and scientific. Generally speaking, each of the universities' four faculties prepared its students for a different type of career. Although the student had to enroll in and receive his degree from one particular faculty, he could attend courses in any field he chose. In each faculty the terminal degree was either a doctorate or state certification, and the course of study took three years, at least in theory. The theological faculty trained almost exclusively prospective priests and ministers, who usually concluded their studies with a state exam rather than the licentiate, the theological equivalent of a doctorate. The legal faculty prepared the vast majority of its students not for a doctorate but for the first state exam, which enabled them to begin a career in the civil service or in private practice. The third faculty, medicine, was as clearly preprofessional as law and theology. In the philosophical faculty, which offered the greatest range of subjects, over two-thirds of the students planned to become secondary school teachers, which again called for a state examination rather than a doctorate. 20 While the university controlled access to specific careers, these were in turn closely tied to the state. Konrad Jarausch estimates that all levels of government taken together furnished "around ninety-five percent of the jobs for theologians, seventy percent of the positions for law graduates, fifteen percent of the employment

24

ACADEMIC CITIZENSHIP AND MASCULINITY

for doctors, and sixty-six percent of the career openings for alumni of the philosophical faculty," the latter as teachers. 21 The prestige of a university education, considerable to begin with, grew over the course of the nineteenth century as the demand for university graduates increased. 22 Yet by the 189os, the elite status of the student was in fact being undermined by a tremendous increase in enrollments. After midcentury, the German university began a dramatic period of growth and change that would not be seen again until the large-scale reforms in West German higher education after 1968. The most obvious changes were in the student body. At the founding of the German Empire in 1871, just over 13,000 students were enrolled at universities. By the First World War, this figure had climbed to nearly 61,ooo, over a four-fold increase. In the same interval, the general population grew from 40 million to 6 5 million, a much smaller increase proportionally. Whereas higher education had long been the privilege chiefly of the nobility and the upper-middle class, more students from lower-middle-class backgrounds began to enroll. Religious and ethnic diversity also increased. For example, Jews came to represent up to seven times their share in the population in the ranks of Prussian students. Moreover the number of foreign students at Prussian universities nearly quadrupled over the course of the Kaiserreich. These changes informed the major themes that dominated discussion of student issues in Imperial Germany. One of the most important was the periodically reoccurring overcrowding crisis caused by rising enrollments. Overflowing classrooms lead to fears of a glut of graduates and a disgrun-

tled "academic proletariat." A second favorite topic was the interest in reforming the student's libertine lifestyle. At the end of the century the numbers of students involved in associations against drinking, dueling, prostitution, and even premarital sex rose markedly. The increasingly conservative political opinion of the student body has been well-noted. One way in which this manifested itself was in open hostility toward foreign students, particularly those from Russia and Eastern Europe, who were largely Jewish. The "foreigner question" [Auslanderfrage] continued to be an acute issue into the 1920s.23 As we will see, what gave the Frauenstudium its urgency was the way in which it touched on these and many of the other issues already facing the academy: academic standards, educational access, concerns about professional competition, and the place of foreign students at the university. The problems and promise of the German academy were often couched in the language of neo-humanism. From the nineteenth century until the present, "neo-humanism" has served as a shorthand for the writings of university reformers such as Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Johann Gottlieb Fichte around 18oo.24 These men are closely associated with the founding of the Univer-

ACADEMIC CITIZENSHIP AND MASCULINITY

25

sity of Berlin in r8o9, often described as the model for the "modern" German university and thus as the model for the modern research university worldwide. 25 They rallied around a new educational ideal inspired by Herder's use of education [Bildung] in the sense of self-cultivation and not in its previous sense of training or apprenticeship. Now Bildung joined the ranks of more abstract, all-encompassing terms like culture and humanity. In this view of education, the mind was cultivated for its own sake. Bildung was a highly individual matter, occurring in freedom and distance from the practical world. Eventually, it was thought, the educated individual would prove useful to society as a whole. 26 According to the neohumanists, the student's program was to be organized around the ideal of scholarship [Wissenschaft]. The German word "Wissenschaft" actually encompasses much more than the English "science." First, Wissenschaft applies to all disciplines, not just the natural sciences. Second, it denotes scholarly learning as a wholeY For the neohumanists, Wissenschaft was characterized by a belief in the unity of all knowledge. In his lectures on university study, the philosopher Friedrich Schelling emphasized that more specialized training could only be based on the "recognition of the organic unity of all scholarship." Another cardinal rule of Wissenschaft was "to study only in order to create." This way one would never find oneself in the predicament of the careerist student, who was unable to improvise when he came across something for which he had not crammed. According to Schelling, university study should be a "liberation from blind faith" in which the student would practice making his own judgments. In this view of scholarship, professors had the responsibility of creating knowledge and of serving as a living ideaJ.2 8 In a lecture, a professor was to reproduce his moment of discovery. As Schleiermacher wrote in r8o8, "his reproduction must be no mere game, but truth ... for him no repetition will be possible without a new combination animating him, a new discovery drawing him to itself." 29 These new conceptions of education and scholarship were both ideas that grew out of the Enlightenment and were successfully grafted onto the older medieval and corporate ideal of academic citizenship. The social class supporting neo-humanist reforms was an elite that came from the nobility and professional upper-middle class, as the historian Charles McClelland explains. The aristocratic background of neo-humanist thinkers like Humboldt gave Bildung, which emphasized the pursuit of knowledge as part of a leisurely self-development, a somewhat exclusive tenor. Interestingly, one of the main beneficiaries of the neo-humanist reforms was the image of the student himself. Whereas in the eighteenth century and earlier he had had the worst of reputations for carousing and violence, the reformers envisioned for him a loftier ideal, giving him a higher

26

ACADEMIC CITIZENSHIP AND MAS C U L1 NIT Y

°

social status more in line with his superior education. 3 Careerism among students was made a cardinal sin in the moral economy of neo-humanism. No one incurred greater scorn than the Brotstudent, literally a student studying for the sake of later earning his "bread." The new understanding of Wissenschaft differed from an earlier ideal of scholarship in which professors merely passed knowledge on to students. Another contrast lay in the strong research ethic that developed by the mid-nineteenth century. 31 Bildung did not long remain an abstract philosophical concept. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the term acquired professional and social status overtones. 32 Bildung had become a form of power, exercised through the institution of the university. A symbol of this was the respect, authority, and high pay commanded by professors, an occupation that was largely the privilege of upper-middle class Protestants. Overall Catholics were at a marked educational disadvantage in Imperial Germany, while only a handful of Jews made it into the professoriate without converting. University careers, then as now, ran on an extended apprenticeship system. By 1820, the Habilitation, which eventually came to constitute a second dissertation, began to be a requirement to teach at the university. Upon its completion, the young man became an instructor [Privatdozent], whose only income derived from fees collected directly from students at his lecture. Only after being called to a professorship did he receive a state salary as well as student fees. 33 The increasingly close relationship between the academy and the state, coupled with the access to elite careers provided by the university, further enhanced the power of the professoriate. 34

Like Bildung, the ethos of Wissenschaft was undergoing profound stresses and changes as well. In 1895 the Strassburg professor of philosophy Theobald Ziegler had defined the mission of the university as "to educate through Wissenschaft for a profession." 35 Yet he and other professors had ambivalent feelings about career preparation. University training centered on Wissenschaft was geared to educate future researchers and scholars, but even those who would go on to more mundane occupations were presumed to benefit. In practice, however, university study often meant an all too singleminded preparation for a career. 36 Ziegler warned against careerism particularly those who studied in the legal and theological faculties, since these subjects prepared one directly for a prestigious position in a job market dominated by the civil serviceY Ironically, progress in scholarship was itself a factor in the fragmentation of the unity of all knowledge through specialization, which in turn generated more pressure on the student to narrow the focus of his studies. Neo-humanist language pervades the principal sources for this chapter, three surveys of university life written for students. These works spell out how a student should behave and what was expected of him, both in and

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outside the classroom. I will consider three of the best-known handbooks. The first of these is by Johann Eduard Erdmann (1805-I892), a professor of philosophy at Halle who published his lectures on student life in 1858. His book was widely read and, nearly four decades later, inspired Theobald Ziegler to write one of his own. Throughout his career Ziegler (I 8461918) was an outspoken commentator on educational issues. 38 His book Der deutsche Student amEnde des 19. ]ahrhunderts (The German Student at the End of the Nineteenth Century) first appeared in r 89 5 and went through several editions until 19I2. I will also rely on Friedrich Paulsen's standard study, Die deutschen Universitiiten und das Universitiitsstudium (The German Universities and University Study), which appeared in I902 and is still one of the best general studies of the nineteenth-century German university. 39 Like the other two men, Paulsen (1846-1908) was a professor of philosophy; he would later make his reputation as a scholar of education and as a key player in the reform of secondary schools in Prussia. These handbooks had their roots in the tradition of lectures on Hodegetik, which was an introduction to university study itself. Erdmann reported that such talks used to be held at almost all German universities. Discussion of the "right path" (the literal meaning of Hodegetik) was meant to keep the student from deviating from it. Later, these lectures started to be given in the last year of Gymnasium instead. The topic was so important, Erdmann noted, that an essay on how to behave at the university became part of some college entrance exams. Yet by the time Erdmann studied in the late r82os, university lectures on Hodegetik had already fallen out of favor. He blamed this on increasing disciplinary specialization, which meant that no one faculty member felt he had the authority to speak for the university as a whole. 40 In his guide, Erdmann made this claim for himself by virtue of his professional and personal background. First, he explained, he belonged to the university's most general faculty, that of philosophy, which at the time included all humanities and sciences. Second, he had studied theology and served as a pastor before returning to the university to study philosophy, so in lecturing on university life he was drawing on the experience of having studied twice. 41 His determinedly traditional perspective on university life coincided with his political and philosophical convictions. A selfproclaimed right Hegelian, Erdmann had sided with the conservatives during the failed revolution of I 848. 42 In contrast Ziegler had decidedly liberal leanings but aimed for an objective tone in his writings, classifying himself as belonging to "no political party and no scientific school." He purposely avoided Erdmann's more personal styleY Although Ziegler would later publicly support higher education for women, he did not address this issue in his book. Paulsen, on the other hand, opposed university study for

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most women and accepted it only grudgingly in truly exceptional cases. He gave his lectures on the German university for the first time in I891. These were most likely the raw material for his later book, in which he laid out the history of the German academy along with contemporary challenges to it. Paulsen never joined a political party but had liberal sympathies, albeit more conservative than Ziegler's. Like many liberals, Paulsen opposed Bismarck's domestic policies yet admired his foreign policy. As a liberal Protestant, Paulsen had much in common with persons such as Adolf von Harnack, the prominent Berlin theologian. 44 Despite the differences in their authors' backgrounds and motivations, the works display significant continuities in style and content. All three men were philosophers, and their training is evident in their efforts to construct a logical flow of concepts, each deriving from the previous one. 45 The descriptions of university life frequently had two parts. The first consisted of an account of the academic environment on an idealistic plane, informed by philosophical and historical considerations. The second part described conditions as the authors reported them, often based on their own experience. Although the two levels were not always strictly separated, this tension between prescription and description informs all of the works. In fact this oscillation points to a central feature of the books, namely that this perceived discrepancy between the ideal and the real was what drove the authors to write in the first place. In times of change there is often an increased need to establish roles, rules, and boundaries. Ziegler's and Paulsen's writings bear this out for the fin-de-siecle German university, with its booming enroll-

ments and intellectual growing pains. Both men point out the contrast between the student of the I 89os and the one of thirty years before. Ziegler had been prompted to write on university life by the crisis that many intellectuals perceived in the academy in the I89os. Not only were German universities no longer as highly regarded as they had once been, he wrote, but students had become too materialistic and lacked the clear ideals of the I86os, when Ziegler himself had studied. Ziegler's point of reference picked up where Erdmann's lectures, published in I 8 58, left off. With this book, Erdmann succeeded in establishing a coherent set of guidelines for the student and in connecting the neo-humanist ideals of 18oo to his own time. 46 Like all nineteenth-century German academics, Erdmann, Paulsen, and Ziegler saw themselves as the heirs to the neo-humanist ideal of BildungY In their writings, the authors constructed a "golden age" of the German university, located somewhere in the first half of the nineteenth century and characterized by neo-humanist principles. 48 These ideas provided a language for the legitimate discussion of the university and its mission. The image of a golden age of neo-humanism also served to highlight a perceived contrast with the present. The apparent contrast between this ideal andre-

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ality is typified by Ziegler's lament that the universities were not as wellrespected as they once had been. By the time the debate over the Frauenstudium intensified in the r89os, the German university was widely believed to be in crisis. Paulsen warned that "an undercurrent hostile to the workings of Wissenschaft in our universities" was to be felt in many places. "Something like a disappointment makes itself felt; scientific research does not seem to achieve what one had hoped from it." Not only did Nietzsche and his followers feel this way, even some academics did, Paulsen observed with some alarm. Was Wissenschaft really bankrupt, he asked, or was it just a case of a "long-repressed desire for philosophy, which ... is simply not sure of the way and the goal?" Ziegler was similarly distressed. "We live in an age of transition," he announced, literally the "crisis of a world." The historian Konrad Jarausch emphasizes the mixed feelings with which German academics viewed changes like the "enrollment explosion" and the emergence of "big science." Although proud of the fruits of scientific research, they worried about an excess of university graduates and falling academic standards. Ziegler asked, "What are the ideals of today's student? The answer to this is no longer as clear as it was for us in the years of r86o-r87o." 49 III

In Germany, the university student was a colorful and celebrated figure. The first theme that emerges from the definition of academic citizenship as explored in the three handbooks mentioned above is the idea of maturity and the student years as a special life stage. Following this, we will look at the rallying cry of the German university, "academic freedom," and the closely related notion of the student's special sense of honor. The intel-

lectual side of academic citizenship involves the student and his relationship to the ethos of Wissenschaft. As mentioned above, the ultimate goal of university study was Bildung, which forms the final, unifying theme in the conception of the student presented in these guides. Particular attention will be paid to how each facet of the student role was described in gendered terms. "Male" attributes and metaphors informed prescriptions for appropriate behavior as well as observations on the way students actually acted. Academic citizenship was marked by a specific vision of masculinity that the university years helped to create. Maturity was the first hurdle to overcome on the path to becoming a university burgher. According to Erdmann, maturity had both a literal and a figurative meaning for the prospective student. The Maturitatserklarung, literally declaration of maturity, 50 was another name for the Abitur, the examination given at the end of the Gymnasium. Passing this exam entitled the student to study any subject at any university in Germany. Yet the Abitur

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was not just a school-leaving certificate, Erdmann maintained, but aninitiation into a separate life stage, that of the youth, which straddled the boundary between boyhood and manhood. 51 All boys would eventually make this transition, whether they studied or not. What is important to note is that the standard of maturity for the student was tied to the process of becoming not just an adult but more specifically, a man. Upon reaching maturity, Erdmann wrote, the boy's relationship to his family was redefined. The first step in this process was leaving home, which was encouraged by all the authors. From now on the youth would refer not to "our home" but to "my parental home." In this case the German Haus carries the connotation of both a physical house and a family home, including servants, with strong paternal authority. The members of the family were then defined by their relationship to the Haus: Hausvater, Hausmutter, Haussohn, etc. 52 The son would not marry and establish his own home until his studies were completed and he had obtained a secure job. In the meantime, finances permitting, he would take a room with another family. This small and often shabby room, known as a Bude, was a symbol of the transitional nature of the university years. Another signal of the student's continuing semi-dependence was the financial support that he continued to receive from his family. Nevertheless all three authors agreed that the student's newly-found maturity required that he be free to spend his money as he wished and that furthermore his father had an obligation to provide him with a reasonable allowance if in a position to do so. 53 The separation from the family was not yet complete. Erdmann compared the boy's heretofore sheltered life in the family home to that of the fetus carried by the mother. After the child has been separated from the maternal organism with which it was one ... [the child] does indeed at intervals again become one flesh with the mother, that is, in the moments in which she gives it her own body to drink. If the breast is healthy, it should be, apart from the spiritual delight, also physically the greatest pleasure for the mother; the breast, however, sickens, and the most terrible of all pains ensue, when the baby is brought [to nurse] too often. This, Erdmann said, was a hint from nature about the relationship of the student to his family. He should go home regularly, but not too often, lest his visits cause "painful conflicts, like the wounded breast." 54 Here Erdmann's concern appears to rest first with the mother. He pointed out that if a student continued to be too closely tied to his family and its domesticity, as represented by the mother, his dependence and ensuing loss of masculinity would ultimately pain her most. Having outgrown the duties of the boy, the youth had not yet attained the rights of a man. Erdmann defined the responsibilities of man and boy

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in terms of the law of the species, which encompassed human physical growth and reproduction, and the law of ethics, which embodied the sum of a society's mores. 55 "The boy experiences the law of the species as that law according to which he grows, loses teeth, etc. and the law of ethics as a custom that he must observe," Erdmann noted. The fully grown man, however, served the law of the species through his wife, with whom he produced children. Through his office, he helped to make the law of ethics. Briefly stated, the law of ethics meant that the adult male had a role in shaping his society; the man's middle-class status and official position were implicit. As the youth did not yet have a wife or a position, he was free to fantasize about them, or, as Erdmann advised, to think of them in the most idealized terms possible, all the better to realize these wishes one day. The student differed from all other youths in the intellectual acumen that he brought to these reflections. Physical separation from the family enabled the youth to assume a new, less restrained social role, although Erdmann cautioned that the youth's impressionability and desire to experiment had to be held in check. This, Erdmann admitted, was difficult. "Since [the youth] has his own voice, he has the right to sing his own song." Boys were bound by obedience to familial authority, and men were expected to be faithful to both family and work. The motto of youth, though, was independence and spontaneity, which together made for boldness, Erdmann reasoned. Throwing up his hands in despair, he advised his readers (and their parents) that at this age, excess was generally to be forgiven. What type of excess was Erdmann referring to? One strong clue emerges in his discussion of relations with women. Speaking from the lectern, he exhorted students to save themselves for marriage. 56 To this he added descriptions of domestic bliss and appropriate behavior with women of the same class. The relationship to the sister of a friend, for example, was important for the "cultivation of the tender side of the ethical character." The friend's sister occupied a position halfway between the student's own sister and his fiancee. Thus the young man learned to feel comfortable with a "female being," to respect "the holiness of morality" and to acquire the habit of domesticity. Having such a female friend to confide in, Erdmann maintained, was "one of the most powerful dams against sexual sin," the strongest being, of course, absorption in intellectual work. 57 In any case, the student's relationship to women of his own class was highly circumscribed and strongly idealized. What Erdmann left unspoken, namely, how to treat women of a different class, points to a more ambivalent attitude toward sexual matters. His indulgence toward the unspecified excess that he mentioned certainly referred to the informal sexual liaisons that the student had, a problem that

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came under increasing scrutiny over the course of the century. Writing in 1910, one professor cited a study claiming that at least one-fourth of Berlin students contracted a venereal disease every year. Syphilis was rampant in this period, and students, along with the prostitutes they frequented, were especially at risk. Casual affairs with barmaids or the landlady's daughter [filia hospitalis] were common. Indeed, domestic servants were often the victims of unwanted sexual advances by their employers, and students did not have a particularly good reputation in this regard. Some students entered into a domestic arrangement called a "student marriage" in which they lived with working-class young women who kept house for them. The fickleness of the student, though, was legendary, and upon graduation the "marriage" dissolved. 58 The domestic idyll that Erdmann had described was only a model for legalized unions. While students were taught to respect women of their own class, the silence surrounding other women indicates that they were fair game. Furthermore, the model of male sexuality presented here as elsewhere in the German academic world was strongly heterosexist. The homoeroticism implicit in fraternity life likely caused even more pressure to conform to heterosexual norms. 59 The definition of youth as a special life stage was an essential prerequisite for academic freedom, which was usually defined as the main privilege of academic citizenship. Paulsen recognized the connection between the student's age and the need for freedom, noting that "one cannot force young men in the age between 19 to 25 years to study, much less to work in a scholarly [wissenschaftlich] fashion." 60 Academic freedom had its roots in the autonomous medieval university; the concept retained its importance as a central organizing principle even after the state made inroads on the university's independence in the modern period. Rotteck's and Welcker's Staats-Lexikon of 1843 listed the main characteristic of German universities as academic freedom, consisting of two parts. The first was the freedom of the professors to teach whatever subject they wished. The second was the freedom of the student to attend lectures on any topic and with whatever regularity he pleased. Ziegler explained that in order to stay enrolled, the student was required to sign up for, but not necessarily attend, one lecture course per semester. 61 "Freedom of learning" was not the only side of academic freedom, which was commonly understood to extend beyond the classroom into all other aspects of a student's life. More obvious, and more important for our purposes, was what Ziegler called the "student's freedom of life, the lack of restraint in moral matters as well." While the schoolboy was, as a family member, part of the "spirit of the house" and bound by its rules, his older brother the student was held to a different code of conduct as an academic citizen. In this case Ziegler drew an explicit parallel between the state and

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education. School, he explained, was like a small state in which the boy was merely a subject. In contrast, the university granted the student citizenship, which carried with it the right to self-determination and freedom. Ziegler argued that this did not mean freedom from the law or from the law of morality but rather from social convention. 62 Ziegler linked the legitimate testing of social mores to the period of indulgence granted the young man during his studies. What Ziegler emphasized was that while moral laws were eternal guidelines for ethical behavior, their implementation in practice often consisted of empty formalities. It was imperative that the student think about "his position on social conventions and moral substance: this is best done during a time at which he is also in fact removed from these conventions." This testing of social limits was the main reason why Ziegler recommended that a student leave his hometown if possible so as not to be constrained by family considerations or disgrace the family name. The student would be "unknown, foreign, and nameless in the city where he studies, he pays no heed to what people say and think about him." Later in life, Ziegler emphasized, the grown man would again be bound by convention. "The philistine 63 is the eternally considerate one, the student is the absolutely inconsiderate one" in regard to fossilized social customs. Ziegler assured his readers that the student would not retain his rudeness. Rather he should, once in his life, "take a healthy bath in the spirit of robust inconsiderateness" and then "let himself be anointed with a drop of revolutionary oil, which every truly moral person must have in him," persons such as "a Socrates, a Jesus, a Francis of Assisi, a Luther." 64 According to Ziegler, academic freedom justified, in fact demanded such a period of experimentation. In recognition of this need, both he and Erdmann advocated that academic freedom extend to the student's religious beliefs as well and that the churches accept this. 65 For many students, however, the line between the detached contemplation and the outright rejection of moral values was all too fine. Nowhere is the rowdy and often raunchy side of student life more explicitly documented than in the large body of student songs, which, as Erdmann pointed out, "no other nation has." Although these songs were often popular with other groups, Erdmann ranked them as the distinct privilege of the student. Indeed he found it offensive when others sang them. He recalled that in Halle students had been forbidden to sing in the street, with the result "that the student songs are sung the best by young girls, for whom these are as unbecoming as smoking tobacco. " 66 Girls singing student songs disturbed Erdmann because the lyrics glorified alcohol, women, and academic freedom in general, none of which was especially suitable for young ladies. Take, for example, the later paean to the landlady's daughter:

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0 delights of youth, filled with endless joys, With trips in search of love, far and wide, where the prettiest girl might be. I salute you, you young blood, to ev'ry pretty maid I'm good, And yet there's nothing like the daughter of the house. 0 wonnevolle Jugendzeit mit Freuden ohne Ende, Mit Minnefahrten weit und breit, wo sich die Schonste flinde. Ich gri.iBe dich, du junges Blut, bin jedem hi.ibschem Weibe gut, Und doch ist nichts aequalis der filia hospitalisY Drinking was a mainstay of student life and a perpetual theme, as in this song from r822. There's no better life than the student life, Just as Bacchus and Gambrinus had it, Into bars to slink, your money to drink, Is a noble and wondrous habit. 'S gibt kein schoner Leben als Studentenleben, Wie es Bacchus und Gambrinus schuf, In die Kneipen laufen und sein Geld versaufen 1st ein hoher, herrlicher Beruf. 68 Such songs also contained a good dose of sentimentality, mostly in anticipation of the time when the "glorious" and "golden" student days would be long gone. "Oh good old student days of yore, where have you disappeared to?/You'll ne'er return, oh golden time, so gay and fancyfree." [0 alte Burschenherrlichkeit! wohin bist du verschwunden? Nie kehrst du wieder, gold'ne Zeit, so frob und ungebunden!] 69 lamented one popular tune, a standard number at any reunion of fraternity brothers. The strict social order of nineteenth-century Germany sanctioned the student years as a single period of free license, so it is not surprising that so many looked back nostalgically. In his canonical writings on the university, the renowned early nineteenthcentury theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher had accepted immoral excess as part of the educational process and the price of academic freedom.

If the cultivation of the character is to keep pace with that of the scholarly mind, if the youth is to learn to know himself in the measure and proportion of his inclinations: then he must have freedom. This freedom is necessary; abuse in individual cases will always occur.... The same is likely true of the excesses particularly of the sex drive and gambling. 70 Erdmann winked at the rambunctious and dissipated nature of student life. Forty years later, amidst the rise of movements for temperance and sexual abstinence, Paulsen and Ziegler would be more disapproving.

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In his lectures, Ziegler enumerated the four most common excesses of student life. First and foremost was drinking. "The Germans have always drunk 'one more,"' admitted Ziegler, recalling the saying "He who has never been drunk is no worthy man." But Ziegler found the forced, ritualized drinking of the fraternities reprehensible. The fraternities cherished their long pub nights, in which students drank to the point of vomiting and then came back for more. It was not considered good form to leave the table before the evening's program of student songs, toasts, and beer chugging had been completed. A far more serious danger was prostitution. On this point Ziegler recalled his fraternity's chastity paragraph, which had had at least symbolic value, he insisted. A third problem was debt, a perpetual predicament among the student body. Ziegler reminded his listeners that a son might rely on his parents to finance his studies, even if they had to scrimp a little, if he only asked for a fair amount. As the last major instance of student intemperance, Ziegler listed dueling, a custom that had originally served to enforce the student honor code but now bordered on a blood sport. Although he approved of fencing for exercise, like many others he was against the duel as practiced by student associations. 71 Ziegler had phrased these four wider temptations of academic freedom in terms of threats to student honor, the one tenet of academic life meant to guard against such excess. Paulsen observed that on the list of student values, honor was next to academic freedom. He defined honor as "the estimation that the individual enjoys among his comrades in his own circle." Three character traits determined a student's honor: "courage, independence, and truthfulness. " 72 At the university, where class differences were in theory set aside, relations between students were based on the acknowledgment of each other's honor. This mutual respect was important to the special nature of friendships formed during the university years. Here the student was to choose his friends freely, regardless of social status. Erdmann contrasted this with the friendship of boys, which was supervised by parents and characterized by submission and domination. Men were able to select their friends, but here also status and profession established a hierarchy. The student, though, had another standard, the "recognition ... of his personal worth." Erdmann held student friendship to be "inseparable from honor." This conception of honor made the duel more than the answer to an insult. A challenge forced the person who had doubted another's individual worth now to recognize it. 73 Duels were about acknowledging the rights of others as fellow academic citizens. Student honor was highly masculine because of its origins in male physical prowess; both the readiness to defend oneself and then taking action were crucial. Dueling had its roots in the physical side of academic freedom, which Erdmann saw as bolstered by the student's natural "fearlessness" and "courage." He took pride in his body

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and exercised "for the pleasure of his own strength and endurance." No sport could match the popularity of fencing/ 4 whose value went far beyond exercise. It was an essential part of the student's code of honor, which was his defense against any infringements on his own academic freedom. Dueling, and the interaction of students among themselves in general, was regulated by the Comment. Originally formulated only for fraternity members, the Comment was a written code that eventually influenced much of the student body. As Ute Frevert explains in her study of dueling, "the Comment functioned ... as a list of masculine orientations and patterns of behavior that formed men out of youths. " 75 The rules about who might fight whom were notoriously Byzantine and varied from one place to another. Certain groups were judged incapable of defending their honor, if indeed they had any, and could not be challenged to a duel. Jews, for example, were generally considered as having no honor to defend. In addition anti-Semitism excluded them almost completely from regular fraternities. Still, the Jewish fraternities established in response increasingly required the duel of their members. Catholic students encountered similar prejudice within the fraternity system. One important reason for this was that in I 891 Pope Leo XIII forbade them from participating in duels. Thus Catholics established their own non-dueling fraternities. Depending on the university, between a quarter and half of the students belonged to associations of all kinds. Although dueling students were in the minority, their standards exerted a large influence on their peers. 76 From the I86os on, fencing matches took two different forms: "genuine" duels on points of honor and "jousts" for recreation. Later the assigned duel [Bestimmungsmensur] was introduced, in which members of two groups would duel without personal motives. Students wrapped themselves in a special padded leather outfit with pants, gloves, silk around the neck and wrists, and a felt hat. The weapon of choice was the sword [Schlager], not the pistol or saber [Sabel] popular outside the university; thus fatalities were rare. Some complained that the art of fencing had degenerated into a kind of bloody hacking. Nonetheless it was considered a sign of great courage to be able to take the blows without flinching, and students prized the scars that they acquired on their faces. Duels were an open secret among students but had to be hidden from university officials, who often turned a blind eye, anyway. The state tried intermittently to crack down on the practice, with little success. 77 Despite the prominence of drinking and dueling in student life, the official "occupation" of the academic citizen was, of course, study. Studying was thought of as an activity particular to the university, which occupied the top of the German educational hierarchy. The German terms studieren and Student were reserved exclusively for higher education, whereas learning at

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the primary and secondary levels was referred to as lernen, and schoolchildren were not students but SchUler, or pupils. Lernen was a largely mechanical activity focusing on drill and rote memorization. As Erdmann observed, the schoolboy "left the home, in which he had a right to receive the same love as his siblings, for the drill place [Gymnasium], in which the goal was to earn a place for oneself, to become either first in the class or the dunce." His achievement depended solely upon his ambition and obedience. Once an adult, a man no longer "learned" things but rather had internalized both knowledge and skill to such an extent that they were made his own. "Skill became art, teaching had taken the place of learning," Erdmann commented. The pinnacle of academic achievement was represented in the Akademie. Schleiermacher described this as the place where the scholar was free to pursue pure knowledge. Unlike the French, the Germans had no actual national academy. Instead they had an ideal one in the form of the "republic of scholars," to which every university professor contributed through his own research and writing. Erdmann located the university halfway between the school and the Akademie. He associated a different intellectual behavior with each life stage, pointing out that in school the boy "learned," at the university the student "studied," and at the academy the scholar pursued knowledge. 78 The apprentice system was a common metaphor used to describe the student's intellectual activities. Erdmann compared the schoolboy to an apprentice and the scholar to the master. The student, in turn, was a journeyman who worked for the master of his choice. At this stage, the student neither taught nor was taught, except insofar as he taught himself. "Since it lies in between learning and knowing, practice and art, his activity is learning to know, practicing art," Erdmann concluded.79 The student's task was to work his way up a ladder of knowledge, whose rungs Erdmann Ia be led belief, opinion, and knowledge/truth. 80 University lectures would "show the student how truths take the place of his beliefs and opinions and how these [truths] unite into a relative system ... a kind of truth," Erdmann promised. 81 One of the premises of the neo-humanist ideal of education was that the student should find his own truth. Lectures were also intended to initiate the student into the mysteries of Wissenschaft. As depicted by all three authors, Wissenschaft was gendered on two levels. First, the cultivation of an educated, independent judgment as described above was a process reserved almost exclusively for men. Second, the internalizing of knowledge, so central to the idea of Wissenschaft, rested on masculine images of power and appropriation. Take, for instance, Erdmann's description of a student selecting a field of study. Erdmann compared the relationship of the student to his chosen discipline to a marriage.

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"The professor resembles the older acquaintance who is called upon to play the father of the bride, the fellow students play the role of wedding marshals, but the discipline is the bride." Continuing the matrimonial metaphor, Erdmann warned that just as a father should not pick his son's bride, neither should he pick his field of study. Even worse was selecting the subject of study with a career in mind, which was like marrying a woman for her money. Instead one should look for guiding hints of talent and enthusiasm. Erdmann called hard work and passion the academic counterparts to marital fidelity. When a man married, he should leave his parents and cleave unto his wife, but this did not imply submission to her. Instead the husband should take to heart other scripture saying that he should be master over her. For Erdmann, "true devotion to the subject of intellectual love" consisted of "mastering it and winning power over it." Like a woman on her wedding day, a discipline did not become one until the student took it for his own. The intellectual courtship by the student resembles that by the man of his beloved [in which] ... that change occurs with her, which the change of name just as aptly indicates as the custom of only now calling her a woman or a wife, as if she had not yet fulfilled that to which her sex destines her. This change ... [also] occurs with the object of study through study, in which it becomes that which is its destiny, and only then earns the name of . science .... 82

In the German understanding of Wissenschaft, it was crucial that the student make his subject his own. This was achieved not by persuasion or by reflection but through conquest. Erdmann's use of the marital metaphor points to the centrality he accorded study in student life. More significantly, however, the comparison of study to marriage also draws upon prevailing social ideas about authority and how to assert it. The gendered nature of Wissenschaft in practice is perhaps best demonstrated in the descriptions of the relationship of professors and students. The concepts of Bildung and Wissenschaft rested on the presumption of their near equality. Erdmann explained how the boy was educated first by father and then by the teacher. As a student, the youth chose his professor, who was more like an adviser than a teacher. Where the teacher had ordered, the professor could merely suggest, and the student was free to accept his comments or not. A sense of equality was also important to the atmosphere of intimacy and trust that existed between the two. In the lecture hall, the professor should show "how Wissenschaft develops in him and for this reason to express his own subjectivity, his feelings." The student had every right to expect that the lecture be "a real confession, not a put-on mask. " 83 But no matter how heartfelt his performance had been, the professor could not force his audience to understand it. Whereas the teacher had called on

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the student to see if he had understood everything, "the professor carries on a dialogue with himself." Erdmann explained this by way of another comparison with the teacher, who was like "the commander who sends troops into battle." In contrast, the professor resembled "someone who at the call: Volunteers onward! goes first, at the risk that only few may follow him." 84 Here the professor exercised a distinctly masculine form of leadership; the military metaphor conjures up feelings of duty, patriotism, and self-sacrifice. What the professor was entitled to expect from the students was that the content of his lecture remain private. With some feeling, Erdmann intoned that the "sanctity of the house, or ... the confessional, is profaned when a confession spoken here is made the basis for malicious newspaper articles and so brought before a public whom the professor ... perhaps thought himself too good ever to address." 85 Erdmann emphasized his own goodfaith effort in the auditorium to give an honest professio. In doing so he felt that he demonstrated a genuine camaraderie with his audience. 86 This trust was an essential ingredient of academic citizenship. Ziegler made a similar appeal to his listeners. Although students could be critical, they had to keep in mind that the professor's words were meant for a single audience, his students. "I consider you mature, noble, and worthy, with you I let myself go and give myself to you openly and freely.... [But] I do not place my scholarly beliefs ... before those who do not have the bridal gown of scholarly work, the necessary prerequisites, for it." Thus taking the contents of a professor's lecture public would be a gross breach of trust. 87 It would also violate one of the premises of academic citizenship, which was a certain collegiality in the service of Wissenschaft and the realization that others outside the community might not share in it. Apart from the dynamics of the lecture itself, there was little mutual obligation between professors and students. Attendance at lectures was optional. The full professor, Ziegler observed, had a double charge and thus double pay. One salary came from the state and obliged him to hold a certain number of lectures free of charge to the academic community. The other source of a professor's income was student lecture fees. By paying the professor for the lecture, students entered into a contract with him, not the state. This meant that students were free with respect to the professor-it was their own business if they chose to skip class and throw their money away. Only in the laboratory courses and seminars did professors and students have a chance to work together and get to know each other. Ziegler found a moderate amount of socializing between the two groups acceptable.88 Still it seems safe to say that relations between a professor and his students were not usually especially close. The trust that existed between the two groups was of a formal and limited nature.

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The greatest reward of academic citizenship was Bildung, the development of the student into an "independent personality." Academic freedom was the necessary prerequisite for the student's self-education. 89 Paulsen recognized the importance of gaining a background in a discipline and in independent scholarly work, which he saw as crucial even for those who would not pursue academic careers. At least as important, though, was philosophische Bildung, or the forming of a personal Weltanschauung and philosophy of life. 90 Was the idea of Bildung gendered? The universality of Bildung has already been questioned, by among others Aleida Assmann, who points out that the exclusion of social groups such as the nobility and the workers and their values meant that "the formation of the bourgeoisie and its backbone, the idea of Bildung, was by no means as universalistic as it pretended to be. " 91 This is not the place to discuss if Bildung, as a universal ideal, bears the indelible stamp of one sex rather than the other. What is relevant to our discussion here is that Erdmann, Paulsen, and Ziegler thought of Bildung in gendered terms. In the most abstract form it assumes in the works examined here, Bildung was influenced by contemporary conceptions of gender. In an observation that revealed as much about his own society as about his system of philosophy, Hegel wrote, "The education of women occurs, one does not know how, through the atmosphere of imagination, so to speak, more through living than through acquiring knowledge, whereas the male earns his position only through the accomplishment of thought and through much technical effort." 92 This view of women's limited capabilities gave Bildung, in its most abstract sense, a masculine cast. A similar set of silent assumptions informed Ziegler and Paulsen's view of Bildung. They defined it as a combination of the recognition of "natural and historical reality," a critical self-assessment, a strong will and aesthetic sensitivity. To these qualities Ziegler added tolerance. All of this added up to something beyond learning. It was not just a matter of mastering material but of forming a complete and unified world view for which the student should strive. 93 None of these qualities, with the likely exception of a strong will, was necessarily ruled out in a woman. It is indisputable, though, that women were not encouraged to systematize their learning as men were. As we saw above, it was the acquisition of one's own system of truth that marked the internalization of knowledge. This last stage of Bildung did not belong to women. The process of acquiring Bildung was gendered in no uncertain terms. As mentioned at the outset of this chapter, Paulsen saw the university years as the test of masculinity. Quoting a colleague, the historian Heinrich von Sybel, Paulsen observed that the "full emancipation of the male mind" was a great effect of the university. "Every educated man on German soil should

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have at least one moment in his life when the organs of authority, when nation, state, and teachers themselves proclaim to him the command to be intellectually free as the highest of all demands. " 94 This moment of intellectual freedom was expressly reserved for men. Moreover the aforementioned "organs of authority" only took an interest in seeing that men, not women, experience this. Intellectual effort alone was not enough to become educated. According to Ziegler, the materialistic, career-oriented student would never develop into an individual personality; he was too wedded to convention. Bildung demanded holding firm to individuality and self-reliance. True Bildung, wrote Ziegler, was the cultivation of that which is individual. 95 One concrete way in which intellectual positions could be tried on and sharpened was Erdmann's recommendation that the students debate and discuss with each other frequently. The student was able to argue precisely because he had yet to form hard and fast opinions on things. In Erdmann's words, "the student can argue because he has no convictions yet. " 96 Needless to say, this sort of give and take was not a part of a young lady's upbringing. Extracurricular activities were also important to bringing out a student's personality. Erdmann recommended sports, music, dancing lessons, and drama, all of which had the advantage of ultimately helping the student with the fair sex. "He who has often held a dancer in his arms and started a conversation with her and cheerfully continued it ... will show that ease with the female sex that will save him from boyish timidity and equally boyish forwardness. " 97 Erdmann again associated the conquest of women with that of knowledge. The company of women alone, however, would be of little help in ridding the student of his "clumsy bashfulness." Only the association with men could accomplish this, Erdmann emphasized. Talking with normal townsmen, or strangers from many places and classes in the pub would work wonders here, as would the long hiking trips undertaken in the summer breaks. 98 These nonacademic activities were intended to complete the student's intellectual work toward cultivating himself. IV The student's special status did not end at the university door; he enjoyed particular rights and duties in the society outside the university as well. In the sources examined here, the authors divided the "real world" into a three-part hierarchy with Hegelian overtones consisting of the family, civil society, and the state. These categories were all subsumed under a fourth category, that of ethical life. As an orthodox Hegelian, Erdmann observed these divisions strictly. Paulsen and Ziegler could not help but also employ these categories, which by that time pervaded the general academic

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atmosphere. Here I want to show the part the student played in each area. What privileges and obligations did he find there? How did academic citizenship prepare him for his later activities in life? Since these divisions assumed a central position in the debate over the Frauenstudium itself, the concepts outlined here will be revisited in later chapters. As the basic unit of society, the family had strictly defined roles. Gender constituted a principal dividing line, which was expressed in terms of Bestimmung, or the social and biological "destiny" of each sex. Although opinions varied about the degree and nature of the difference between men and women, Paulsen's views can be taken as representative in this matter. He saw the contrast between the sexes as both physiological and "psychic." The driving force in· the life of a man, he believed, was the struggle for respect and achievement, while women wanted only to be loved. Intellectually men and women diverged not so much in their ability to learn as in the direction of their interest, Paulsen contended. Having a less developed sense of the abstract and general, women tended instead toward the individual and the concrete, while men were builders of systems and makers of rules. 99 Different natures translated into different relationships to the family home for men and women. Both girls and boys were bound by family rules during childhood. Upon reaching maturity, though, men and women had vastly different options. While grown daughters waited at home to be whisked off to their lives as mothers and wives, adult sons had a period of separation from the family home. During the university years, the student had few family obligations, as he lived away from his parents. Nonetheless, as discussed above, this did not release him from the obligation to reflect on and prepare for starting his own family. In recognition of this, Erdmann and Ziegler encouraged the student to seek out families with which to socialize. Erdmann admonished him to choose these carefully. Ziegler seconded this warning, pointing out that students usually could not socialize with their landlord's family, the implication being that they were often of a lower class. 10°Following this hiatus, men then took the active role in founding a family, in which their will would be law. 101 Legally the family was held to constitute one person; its sole legitimate representative to the outside world was the only conceivable head of the household, the husband. 102 Civil society was understood to consist of the various classes and estates of society made up by the heads of families. The issue of class was partially sublimated during the student years in favor of the corporatist idea of the estate. As Erdmann explained, upon entering the university, students were temporarily removed from their estates and created their own in the fraternities. These groups were dress rehearsals for later class loyalties. The student practiced "the pride with which he will later say, 'We burghers, we nobles [Ritter]," Erdmann remarked. 103 At the same time, the interests of aca-

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demic citizenship meant that class differences among students were to be ignored, at least in theory, and perhaps only in theory. 104 In the Hegelian view of society to which Erdmann subscribed, the state was the ethical community that incorporated aspects of both the family and civil society into itself. 105 The student's relationship to the state was multi-faceted. Erdmann thought a young man should have the right to complain about everything relating to his education. 106 Where academic freedom and the power of the state collided was on the matter of the student's behavior. Although Erdmann readily admitted that the student was bound to come into conflict with the police, he was unwilling to take the side of either one, remarking that it was "just as necessary for the student to remain a student as that the civil order be maintained." Any complaints, Erdmann felt, could be hammered out in the courts where both town and gown were represented. 107 The student's involvement with the state extended beyond routine disciplinary matters into the world of partisan politics. During the nineteenth century, the universities had become centers of German national political feeling. Many students participated in the nascent nationalist movement, first by volunteering in the wars against Napoleon, then by forming nationalist, reform-oriented fraternities [Burschenschaften] in I 8 I 5. The Carlsbad decrees of 1 8 I 9 drove the Burschenschaften partly underground; nevertheless the political activity of students on the side of the liberal cause continued through the failed revolution of I848. After German national unity was achieved, the universities were no longer the centers of the nationalist movement, and political agitation by the students subsided. The sharp contrast between the liberal Burschenschaften and the traditional, exclusive fraternities, or Corps, began to erode, with both groups standing squarely behind the state. 108 The Kaiserreich saw a sea change in the political leanings of students, who, as a group, became less liberal, more nationalistic, and increasingly anti-Semitic. All three authors surveyed here recognized the importance of preparing the student for his future political participation. They were also all concerned with keeping him from political involvement while he was a student. Paulsen reminded his readers that there had been a time when students had a role to play in politics (referring to the Wars of Liberation and the Revolution of I848), but this was not the case anymore. Practical politics, he emphasized, was the responsibility of men, not youths, who were not mature enough. The student should study politics, not make it. Ziegler shared Paulsen's views on this matter and believed that politics was best left to men between fifty and sixty years of age. There was nothing wrong with a student educating himself and acquiring a political opinion, but joining a party at his age would be going too far, Ziegler wrote. As with the rest of

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his world view, the student had the right to change his mind about politics. Erdmann also urged the student to confine his political engagement to the theoretical. The student, he believed, would be best served by informing himself through lectures, books, parliamentary debates, political clubs, and newspapers. 109 Interestingly, despite his conservatism, Erdmann counseled the student to avoid moderate political positions, which he saw as the domain of the timid philistine. Instead, he countenanced taking a more extreme stand. "The [political] theory of the student should be liberal, idealistic, else it is worthless." 110 In addition to politics, the realm of civic duty encompassed military service. Anyone who completed six years of Gymnasium qualified to perform a single "volunteer" year instead of the usual two years of service. The possibility of a reserve commission afterwards only added to the prestige. 111 Higher education was bound up with the military in several ways. Ziegler noted that "the student, too, [serves as] a soldier, he wants to become an officer," so he prepared himself by fencing and dueling. Erdmann also saw the duel as a rehearsal for the real world of the officer corps, the main difference being that the military did not recognize the distinction that students drew between "play" and "serious" duels. For an officer, a duel was no game. The military considered only Corps students as equals and drew heavily on them for personnel. It was harder for members of the Burschenschaften and harder still for students in non-dueling clubs, such as Catholics, to become reserve officers. Another reason why relations between the military and students were often not exactly smooth was that students had trouble making the transition between the university and the army. Accustomed to academic freedom, they suddenly found themselves at the bottom of a rigid system of discipline. The insults they perceived led to many duels between students and military officers, even though the latter were often explicitly warned against challenging students. 112 Paulsen and Ziegler disagreed on the merits of military service, which usually fell directly before or after university studies. Paulsen admitted that the year of service, which formally counted toward the completion of studies, often cut them short, since little coursework could be done during this year. Furthermore, the subordination drilled in the army was at odds with the freedom of the university. Yet the benefits to the individual of attending the "second greatest educational institution for our Volk, next to the school" still outweighed the costs. The recruit learned order, discipline, and patriotism. It was only natural that the student also attend this "school of masculinity," not only to serve his country but also to learn how to command and obey, the key parts of any later official position. Ziegler was less enthusiastic about the effects of military service performed before entering the university. He disliked the superior military tone that had crept in among

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the students. Ultimately, he believed, this lead to a "stiffness and formality" better "suited to military subordination but not to academic freedom and equality." 113 During the Kaiserreich, military service became closely associated with the academy. Ziegler himself had called student life the life of "intellectual conscription. " 114 Nevertheless, tension between the value systems of the two institutions did exist. The student's future relationship to the state was not confined to the political and military duties of the citizen. Many students would go on to occupy positions in the civil service. As Lorenz von Stein described it, the German state was conceived of as a collection of individual organs, each specialized for a different task, yet all representing the state's unified will. The state was entrusted with the responsibility of representing the development of the society as a whole, not just that of the ruling class. In this system, the government office and the monarch were closely linked. While the monarchy stood for a general principle, the office was charged with its application in individual cases for the common good. Thus the higher officeholder himself was of no little importance. On a local level, he literally embodied the state. As such he was an ethical power and, in the eyes of the people, the "natural representative of the common good and need." For this reason he was also a "pillar of Bildung and had to be educated himself; it contradicts the German national consciousness that the officeholder be nothing else and understand nothing else ... than the burgher." For his profession, it was essential that he have an appropriate education, which generally consisted of studying law. The student already bore a certain resemblance to the official in that both were held to be members of an estate, each with its own code of honor. The historian Otto Hintze saw the "officials' estate" [Beamtenstand] as "the necessary complement to the estate of rulers and businessmen." The duties of the public official carried with them the obligations of loyalty, obedience, the preservation of secrecy, and respectable behavior in and outside the office. Other curbs on personal life were limits on economic and political activity and, in some cases, the need to gain permission to marry. The office was a calling, claiming its holder's "entire personality." In fact the official was not paid by the state for a particular service but rather was provided for, the standard being whatever it took to support a family in a way appropriate to its station. He was motivated by a sense of duty, not socioeconomic self-interest. Correspondingly, instead of a spirit of competition, the official had a "spirit of collegiality." For Hintze, this was a matter of course. "It only need be suggested here that the spirit of collegiality among civilian officials as well as the camaraderie in the officer corps belong to the strongest ethical and social factors of the [officials'] estate's morals," he wrote. The student was very likely to be exposed to this

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value system because the officials' estate was so broadly defined that many university graduates were likely to find occupations belonging to it. Hintze included in this category not only state officials but also military officers, Protestant and Catholic clergy, teachers, postal and train employees, and local community officials, among others. 115 The dimensions of society outlined so far-family, civil society, and the state-were all permeated by the idea of ethical life. The original German term for this, Sittlichkeit, although commonly translated as morality, has a multiplicity of other associations. As the idea of a universally valid morality declined over the nineteenth century, Sittlichkeit gradually lost its religious overtones and took on more sociological ones. Eventually it came to refer to the whole complex of customs and social mores that make up human life; in this sense it is nearly identical with the term "culture." When used by turn-of-the-century social thinkers, the value judgment inherent in Sittlichkeit had almost completely disappeared. This was not yet true of its popular, nonscholarly use, which was still much closer to meaning that which is moral, decent, or socially acceptable. 116 In the discussion of the Frauenstudium, Sitt/ichkeit was constantly invoked in both of these senses. A third, closely related use of Sittlichkeit is that defined by Hegel, and Erdmann and Ziegler followed him in this usage. Here Sittlichkeit is usually rendered as "ethical life" and differs from an individual's own morality. As Michael Inwood explains, "Sitt/ichkeit is the ethical norms embodied in the customs and institutions of one's society." An example of this usage is Erdmann's observation that fraternities played a large role in the "ethical training" of the student. By this he meant that fraternities initiated their members into the norms of student life. 117 In another lecture, Erdmann explained how adult men were called to help shape ethical life. Such men, Erdmann believed, did not want to experience ethical life as a sort of unchangeable fate. Moreover, they sought to be free "in the bands of marriage and office." Paradoxically, the only way to achieve this freedom was to accept the bands and thus change them into "chains of roses." The resulting "freedom through not being able to do otherwise," as Erdmann reasoned, was loyalty, the singular "masculine virtue. " 118 Ziegler agreed that the student would later help to make ethical standards. Thus he saw the student years as a crucial period of contemplation and reflection. 119

v Breaking academic citizenship into the five elements discussed here reveals that the image of the student was inseparable from, and indeed helped to create, the masculine identity of the educated middle class. The gendered nature of the student role extended from the most abstract dis-

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cussions of the idea of the student to reports on the actual nature of academic life. Since gender roles in Imperial Germany were defined in opposition to each other, the discussion of the student's masculinity necessarily implies something about contemporary ideas of femininity. In reviewing these themes, the difficulties of applying them to female students will be considered briefly. Could any of these standards have been regendered, that is, recast in a feminine or even neutral mold? Maturity was the fundamental basis of academic citizenship. The student years were conceived of as a separate life stage, marked by the certification of intellectual maturity in the form of the Abitur. This was followed by the emancipation and separation from the family home. An equivalent declaration of maturity for women of the same age was not possible, though, for two reasons. First, women were excluded from the educational track. that led up to the exam and the subsequent declaration of maturity. Second, maturity for young women was conceived of in a radically different way than for young men. A woman would certainly become physically mature, yet never ripen intellectually. A father did not emancipate his daughter but rather gave her away to the next man in her life. A woman went from family to family with no period of freedom in between. Her badge of maturity was marriage and a family of her own. As Hegel wrote, within the circle of the family one was a member of it, not a "person for oneself. " 120 In Imperial Germany the echoes of the gender divisions observed and systematized by Hegel still resounded. While the male had his "substantial life in the state, Wissenschaft, and the like" as well as a life in the family, his wife had her destiny solely in the latter. "Women may well be educated, but they are not made for the higher sciences, for philosophy and certain artistic productions that require a universal element. Women may have insights [Einfiille], taste, and delicacy, but they do not possess the ideal," Hegel pronounced.12 1 Academic freedom was the main privilege of the academic burgher and carried with it a certain indemnity in terms of lifestyle. Young men were encouraged to establish their independence by beginning their studies in a town where they were unknown and could ignore what people said about them. It is clear that this would have been unthinkable for a woman of the same class, who would have had a reputation to uphold. Moreover a legitimate testing of social mores, such as Ziegler advocated for the student, was definitely not encouraged for young women. Conceivably, certain unusually intelligent and well-prepared women might been admitted to the intellectual part of academic citizenship and allowed to attend any class they chose. Granting a young woman the same freedom of lifestyle as a young man, however, would have been inconceivable, especially for the daughters of the educated upper-middle class. The idea of two classes of

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academic citizenship, one with full academic freedom for men, the other with limited academic freedom for women, was irreconcilable with university tradition. Heinrich von Treitschke rejected the idea out of hand. "It is an insult to any student if one demands that he sit together with people who have no academic freedom," he insisted. 122 The concept of student honor was essential to the defense of the rights of academic citizens. Students saw their code of honor as equivalent to that of military officers, who in this respect embodied the standard of the "real world. " 123 Nevertheless students continued to prize their own particular brand of honor, which, as Erdmann wrote, was difficult for outsiders to secure. "A long association with Germanic and neo-Roman peoples, and thus a certain denationalization, is necessary in order for the Jew or ethnic Russian ... to acquire a feeling of honor" equivalent to that of the German student, Erdmann explained. 124 He would have had no reason to imagine women in the category of outsider. Yet were women to have been subjected to the process of normalization described here, a "desexification" would have had to have taken the place of "denationalization." To share in male academic honor, women would have had to have been accepted as equals with men, or as fellow academic citizens. But how could they then have defended themselves? Was honor possible without the means to enforce it? The honor particular to women in this period had little to do with equality and self-defense and far more to do with chastity and marital fidelity. In contrast, student honor had everything to do with masculinity. The cycle of demanding and receiving Satisfaktion was a rehearsal for manhood and its attendant duties and privileges. The intellectual work of the student was conceived of as appropriate to both his age and academic credentials. It goes without saying that at this time only male youths were thought capable of the necessary intellectual rigor. The issues of choosing a field of study and a subsequent career were both presented as quintessentially male dilemmas, comparable to the travails of finding a wife. The main obstacle for women seeking to study was that they were thought of as intellectually inferior. Could they live up to the challenge? As for the course of studies, the metaphors of apprenticeship, courtship, and marital conquest excluded women a priori. The overriding purpose of university study was Bildung, which carried great social as well as intellectual prestige. Academic freedom was a difficult but necessary prerequisite for attaining this. As Paulsen pointed out, one took an enormous chance in giving young men the freedom either to succeed or to make a complete wreck of their lives. The independence granted young men, though, required it. No one would have taken similar risks with daughters. Academic citizenship meant joining an exclusive community that occupied a privileged position in Imperial Germany. This group was directly as-

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sociated with a particular social class, the educated middle class, which in turn had a close relationship to the state in the form of political influence and employment in the civil service. In mapping the contours of the student's identity, this chapter has introduced some of the main concepts that were contested and redefined in the debate over the Frauenstudium. The starting point for these constraints was the narrow definition of both male and female roles. While a woman's destiny confined her to the home, a man's suited him for a more active role outside of the family. As will be seen in the following chapters, Bildung as the highest process of intellectual and personal development was reserved for men. Ideas about the destiny of each sex limited women's share in the institutions of civil society. The prospect of university-educated women was a threat to a state that accorded them little or no participation. Women posed a similar risk for the civil service. How could a woman represent the state or make decisions for the common good? Furthermore, the collegiality so prized by bureaucrats would be shattered by female co-workers. In a system that linked higher education with military service, female students clearly did not fit (the German army today is still all male). Finally, Sittlichkeit served as the last barrier to the Frauenstudium. As Fritz Ringer explains, Germans saw societies, like symphony orchestras, as more than the sum of their parts. Admitting women to a new realm of society would change the Sittlichkeit that embodied the ethical norms of the nation as a whole. 125 In spite of the German university's exalted sense of mission and scholarly objectivity, relations between it and Imperial German society were tightly interwoven. This is especially clear in the way academic life was defined by certain masculine traits and metaphors. Although women had reasons to want to study by the r87os, the analysis of the student role shows why women could not fill it at that time. This chapter has highlighted some of the concepts that would have to be renegotiated before the Studentin could become a reality.

CHAPTER 2

ccWhat Will Become of Our Daughters?,, THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT AND THE 'STUDENTIN,' I 86 5-1900

How far we have come since the days when only a few women dared make a toast! -3oth anniversary report of the ADF, leading German women's organization, I 89 51

I

Louise Otto, one of the founders of the nineteenth-century German women's movement, was a journalist and author who had made her reputation with spirited writings in support of the revolutionary upheavals of 1848. Her short-lived Frauen-Zeitung (Women's Newspaper) had been harshly suppressed in the ensuing political reaction, but, over a decade later, Otto was ready to raise the issue of women's rights again. In 1865 she organized a conference in Leipzig to found the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein (General German Women's Association, hereafter ADF), which would later become the most prominent group in the middle-class wing of the women's movement. In attendance was the liberal politician Ludwig Eckhardt, Otto's friend, whom she had asked to open the conference. She intended to lead the discussion to follow, as she was one of the few women then familiar with parliamentary procedure. But, as Otto tells it, Eckhardt replied with a smile, "The women's conference must not begin with an inconsistency and be opened by a man. Women must plead their own cause, else it is lost from the start!" Otto agreed and addressed the gathering despite her soft voice and heavy Saxon accent. 2 In the broadest sense, the nineteenth-century bourgeois women's movement was about women learning to speak up in public. Thirty years and many conferences after Otto's first whisper, the ADF's organ, Neue Bahnen (New Paths), would look back on the days when "few women dared make a toast." It is no accident that while women were learning to speak and write for an audience, one of the main issues they treated was that of female education. At a time when German universities were setting the standard of excellence internationally, the education of German women lagged 50

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sorely behind. The eight-class grammar school provided elementary education to both boys and girls. For the daughters of the wealthy, a more exclusive education was available at municipal or private higher girls' schools [hohere Tochterschulen]. Nonetheless this schooling ended by the age of 16, having covered a wide range of courses in little depth. Most girls dropped out early, anyway, around age 14. For those who wished to continue their education, the only option open to them was a two- or three-year course at a teacher's seminar, whose graduates were nevertheless barred from teaching the higher classes in most girls' schools. 3 Although many prominent figures in the women's movement had studied to be schoolteachers, among them Hedwig Dohm, Helene Lange, Auguste Schmidt, and Minna Cauer, 4 their own education had been so poor that the brightest among them were largely self-taught. These women had, however, learned enough to recognize the gaps in their knowledge. Their own training in rhetoric and persuasion, which proceeded largely through trial and error in speeches to women's groups and articles in the women's press, was simultaneous and inextricably linked to the debate over women's access to the world of learning. From 1865 to 1900 and beyond, the reform of female education was the defining issue of the German middle-class women's movement. At the same time it was calling for changes in girls' schools and higher education for women, the women's movement also sought to expand employment opportunities for single middle-class women. One premise of the women's movement was that "progress" and industrialization had pushed unmarried middle-class women out of the home and into a narrow range of occupations such as girls' school teachers and governesses. Surveying the limited array of jobs open to middle-class women, the ADF's cofounder Auguste Schmidt remarked, "Only sound, academic education can help here!" 5 The women's movement envisioned new careers for women as doctors and higher-level teachers, positions considered more appropriate to middle-class status. The path to these professions, though, would have to lead through the university. The women's movement conceived of the Frauenstudium in terms of the woman question and as a partial solution to it. Yet the woman question was not the language of the women's movement alone but provided a common vocabulary for discussing women's place in society in a conversation that had begun in the wake of the French Revolution and was rekindled in the 186os. Over time the woman question took its place alongside other great "questions" of nineteenth-century Europe: the social question, the Jewish question, the German question. The woman question was informed by several concrete areas of social anxiety. At the time, many traced the origins of the woman question to changes in family structure brought about by industrialization. Overall marriage rates were thought to be declining,

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leading to a group of "surplus" women. 6 The consequences were considered to be especially disastrous for the middle class, whose families were believed to be increasingly unable to support their single adult daughters. Their employment options were limited to teaching, working as a governess or lady's companion, or doing needlework surreptitiously at home. 7 Accompanying fears about single women's financial support were those about their education and character. Frequently criticized was the role of the "daughter of the house," who was often painted as either frittering away her youth at balls and parties or languishing in a parlor, desperately awaiting the right suitor. Reformers came to see in the Frauenstudium a panacea for these social ills. Complicating female reformers' arguments in favor of women's higher education were several factors already referred to in the previous chapter. The very name of the phenomenon, Frauenstudium, or university study by women, was an oxymoron at the time. The most obvious reason for this was that girls' education was far less rigorous than boys' and geared toward producing mothers and housewives, not serious students. How could women, who had never fully mastered the first, elementary steps of learning, the kind of mechanical study known in German as lernen, ever hope to ascend to the higher steps of university study, to which the German studieren referred? More important, the role of the university student was so strongly masculine in most of its aspects that the very idea of a female student was a non sequitur. Thus the middle-class women's movement found itself using a completely different discourse, that of the woman question, in order to conceive of a female membership in a male domain. This chapter will focus on how the women's movement built the case for female higher education around the rhetoric of the woman question by exploring the ideas and writings of four of the main reformers who worked and spoke out on this issue: Louise Otto-Peters, Hedwig Dohm, Hedwig Kettler, and Helene Lange. In constructing an argument for women's higher education, all four women confronted a paradox on a rhetorical level. The paradox derived from the women's movement's position as an outgrowth of political liberalism. The universal rights and freedoms that liberalism championed were in practice embodied in a select group of men. By claiming these rights for women, the German women's movement drew attention to the fact that women had been previously excluded because of their gender. 8 In doing so, the reformers argued both on the basis of women's equality with and difference from men, sometimes simultaneously. In other words, German women had to overlook a basic prerequisite for studying in their society, maleness, in making their appeals for women's university admission. Inevitably, all four reformers, even those committed to the ideal of sexual equality, found themselves having to justify the admission of the

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Studentin to the university precisely in terms of her womanhood. How each reformer negotiated this paradox is a major theme of this chapter. 9 Historians have often summarized the story of the German women's movement into one of the triumph of an ideology of "difference" over that of "equality," 10 where difference and equality mean two rhetorical strategies, usually seen as mutually exclusive, with which women could argue for the improvement of their condition. Borrowed from the Anglo-American model of the development of feminism, the analytical scheme of "equality or difference" loses much of its edge in the translation to German conditions. I follow Joan Scott in seeing the apparent contradiction between equality and difference as deriving from the contradictions within liberal ideology itself, from which the women's movement sprang. 11 For example, Dohm and Otto are often cited among the main representatives of the "equality" and "difference" camps, respectively. Although Dohm is usually described as making the most liberal and individualist arguments on behalf of women, this was not entirely the case, as our discussion will show. Likewise Otto did not insist only on female difference and motherliness. Dohm and Otto shared a whole range of assumptions about gender identity and possibilities for reform. In this study, the term "women's movement" is used consciously instead of "feminist" movement because the former corresponds more closely to how the larger organizations in the movement saw themselves. 12 The nineteenth-century German women's movement divided itself into workingand middle-class factions, an important distinction here. Only the bourgeois women's groups showed an interest in the Frauenstudium. Higher education was limited to such an elite social group in Imperial Germany that it made little sense for the socialist women's movement to concern itself with it. All mentions of the women's movement here will refer to the middle-class groups that in 1894 formed the Association of German Women's Organizations (Bund deutscher Frauenvereine, hereafter BDF), the large umbrella organization usually treated in histories of German feminism, which included Otto's ADF. The first half of the chapter elaborates briefly on the organizational and discursive contents of the debate over female higher education, providing an overview of the beginnings of the "woman question" and the women's movement from 1865 to 1900. In this period, women's groups raised the issue of female higher education for the first time, confining themselves more to the realm of speculation than to direct demands for change. Nonetheless the positions taken by Hedwig Dohm and Louise Otto are of special interest because their arguments sketched the broad outlines for those that followed. Dohm argued for women's admission to all subjects as a basic human right, while Otto made a case for female physicians and

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teachers, professions for which women were considered naturally suited and which would benefit society. The second half of the chapter covers the years from I887 to I9oo, during which the two principal rationales for the Frauenstudium were honed. The first came from Hedwig Kettler, who conceived of admission to university study as a matter of expanding women's opportunities and improving their financial status; thus women should be allowed to study whatever subjects they pleased. A second, more moderate formulation came from a group led by Helene Lange. Lange believed that women should only study in preparation for selected professions suited to their motherly talents, such as medicine and teaching, an argument that seemed to support existing social norms and not to undermine them. The chapter's six sections will look at the way in which each reformer confronted the paradoxical nature of the appeal for university study. All four women conceived of the future Studentin differently, with varying opinions as to what kinds of women should study and which professions they should enter. Even more uncertain was the degree to which existing student traditions would shape women's everyday lives at the university. The debate also had broad implications for the categories in which Germans conceived of their society. By stepping out of the constraints imposed by their gender, educated women threw into question the interconnected, hierarchical realms of the family, the state, and finally ethical life [Sittlichkeit) itself. The women's movement was by no means alone in calling for female higher education, as will be shown in the next chapter. Some (male) professors defended the idea as well. Yet because the women's movement included the only organizations that systematically fought for this goal, as opposed to the isolated efforts of would-be Studentinnen and sympathetic professors, its actions and internal debates are worthy of a separate investigation. Thus this chapter traces how advocacy of the Frauenstudium developed within the context of the woman question, while the next chapter will show the woman question in dialogue with academic citizenship in the public debate over female students.

II Hedwig Dohm entered the public stage when the Frauenstudium first became a focus of public attention in the early I 87os. At this time three factors converged: the efforts of the women's movement, which had just begun in I865 to think about female higher education in the most abstract way; the official admission in I 867 of female students to the University of Zurich, a first for a German-speaking country; and the translation by Jenny Hirsch of John Stuart Mill's On the Subjection of Woman in

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I869. Helene Lange recalled that until Mill's book, "the women's movement had left the men of the intellectual upper class pretty cold." When the book did appear, though, Lange observed, "the men of the higher professions drew their swords ... because here a man of their own class, whose political theories had also engaged German scholarship, stood up for women." Several German intellectuals and academics, among them the theologians Philip von Nathusius and Hermann Jakoby, wrote pointed counterattacks to Mill. Perhaps most famously, the Munich professor of medicine Theodor von Bischoff wrote a scathing review of the very idea of female physicians in I 872. 13 The polemical tracts by Nathusius, Jakoby, and Bischoff attracted a reply in kind from Hedwig Dohm, who spoke out at a time when Louise Otto was more concerned with holding together her fledgling organization than with issuing a direct rebuttal herself. 14 Dohm was, on the surface of things, an unlikely candidate for this role. She is generally remembered as the beautiful but shy and retiring wife of Ernst Dohm, who was editor of the satirical journal Kladderadatsch and very much a man about town. Born into a large middle-class, partly-Jewish family, Dohm attended school until age I 5 and then a teachers' seminar for an additional year before marrying Dohm. She began her career as an author in 1867 at age 34 with the publication of a history of Spanish literature. Writing this book may have prompted her to think long and hard about women's education, if only because her own access to intellectual capital had been so difficult. In the I 87os Dohm published in rapid succession a series of sharply argued, bitterly witty books on various aspects of the woman question, which will be discussed more extensively in the following chapter. In Was die Pastoren von den Frauen denken (What Pastors Think of Women, I872), she replied to Nathusius and Jakoby. The following year she proposed women's suffrage in Der ]esuitismus im Hausstande (Jesuitism in the Household). Dohm's call for female medical students in Die wissenschaftliche Emanzipation der Frau (The Scholarly Emancipation of Women, 1874) was a direct response to Bischoff. In taking on Bischoff, she remarked casually that "a famous professor of philosophy from Bonn . . . will be Herr von Bischoff's second." By appropriating the image of the duel, she had positioned herself metaphorically to meet her opponent on his own terms. Dohm struggled with her vision of the Studentin and devoted much of her attention to debunking stereotypes about smart women. Most people, she remarked, associated intelligent women with "hard features, a long nose, flat-heeled boots, character quirks and ... elderliness." Dohm, who placed a premium on her own appearance, quickly cited counterexamples of learned Italian and French women whose "beauty, charm, and housewifely virtues" were legendary. "The seductive and winning women of

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France were almost always also the intelligent ones." At the same time Dohm insisted that if a woman did not happen to be beautiful or charming, it was no one's business but her own. "If a woman who has studied, a female doctor, for example, is not to men's taste, no one in God's world is forcing you to love and marry this medical female, be her income ever so considerable." Dohm's views are often characterized as the most individualist and liberal articulated by anyone associated with the women's movement. She saw the woman question as a "yearning for freedom." Thus women should be allowed to study because they had a right to the "individual freedom to pursue the business that they pleased." Following the liberal tradition, Dohm meant by "business" activities both economic and intellectual. No one, she argued, had the right to take away the right to earn a living from "an entire class of people." She had a strong faith in the value of knowledge, "the highest and most desirable good on earth." Yet she shared many of the assumptions of her day and of other female reformers about female nature. Although Dohm insisted that women claim their human right to an education, she also believed that women thought differently than men and had a particular contribution to make to science. Hence female difference was the ultimate reason why women should study medicine. Not only was it a moral imperative (because modest women would prefer to be examined by female physicians), but women would understand other women and be able to treat them much better than men. 15 Dohm's particular blend of individualist and womanist arguments represented one effort at mapping out a possible place for female students in Imperial German society. Dohm eventually suffered more at the hands of the organized women's movement, from which she held herself largely aloof, than from her conservative opponents. The former never tired of invoking her, presumably so that it could look moderate and reasonable by contrast. Helene Lange's and Gertrud Baumer's Handbuch der Frauenbewegung (Handbook of the Women's Movement), which appeared in 1901 as the "official" history of the women's movement, derided Dohm for being "more critical than constructive." Baumer faulted her for holding the intellectual difference between the sexes to be the result of education and upbringing. Ultimately, Baumer concluded, "her significance lies more in the momentary effect of a brilliant satire than in cooperation" with the women's movement. In her memoirs Helene Lange recalled that Mill had met with "inferior" arguments by his German opponents, so that Dohm's rebuttal of these was no great achievement. Lange also felt that Dohm's "self-confidence" and "lack of respect" in her tone displeased more timid women. The final straw, Lange wrote, was Dohm's support of female suffrage in Germany at a time when no organized suffrage groups existed. "And then the support of woman suf-

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frage! in Germany! in the [r 8]7os! A worse anachronism can hardly be imagined," she exclaimed exasperatedly. In fact it was through the arguments of Mill and Dohm, Lange claimed, that she came to be convinced of the "fundamental difference of both sexes," a belief that would play a large role in Lange's own ideas about female education and the Frauenstudium. 16 A more dispassionate view of Dohm reveals that in her quest for women's improvement, she embraced a broad vision of liberalism, which entailed freeing women to compete with men in both the economic and cultural arenas. With her strong belief in women's natural talents, Dohm had no doubt they would succeed. III

Baumer's and Lange's history of the women's movement portrayed Dohm and Louise Otto as polar opposites. Actually, the two women had quite a bit in common. Both had been inspired by the revolution of r 84 8, Dohm as a young girl who had witnessed bloodshed in the streets of Berlin and Otto as a young woman who had begun to work for the democratic cause in the r84os. This experience made them life-long democrats. Dohm's existence as a wife and mother had left her vaguely dissatisfied; only slowly did she develop a voice in her late 30s and early 40s as a polemicist on women's issues and later as a novelist dealing with the same themes. In contrast Otto had been awakened to politics by her liberal family and chose a life of action, devoting herself to the democratic cause, workers' issues, and the women's movement. Both Dohm and Otto supported woman suffrage, although Otto did not seek to pursue it as a part of the ADF's program. But

already in r 866 Otto had raised the topic of women physicians in her influential book, Das Recht der Frauen auf Erwerb (The Right of Women to Work). Otto argued that "every female creature will, especially in cases where a viewing of the body is necessary ... prefer to let herself by examined and treated by a fellow female." Femininity, Otto wrote, demanded female physicians. "Let men study the male body, but leave the women to women," she advised. Perhaps the real difference between the two women had more to do with the inevitable compromises faced by someone active in organizational life as opposed to the principled outrage of another who felt she was crying the wilderness. Otto sympathized with Dohm's desire to improve women's material lot in life but took a broader view of women's responsibilities to society and not just to themselves. Louise Otto was born in r8r9 to a middle-class family in MeiRen, Saxony. After losing her parents in childhood, she earned a living as a journalist. From r848 until its suppression in 1852, she published the Frauen-Zeitung,

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widely hailed as the first German women's periodical to call for women's rights and self-improvement. After her husband, the democratic revolutionary August Peters, died in I 864, she and Auguste Schmidt, a schoolteacher, founded the ADF when the ban on women assembling and founding organizations was lifted the following year. Although after I87o Otto increasingly distanced herself from the day-to-day running of the organization, she remained at its head and continued to edit the ADF's biweekly organ, Neue Bahnen, from its establishment in I 866 until her death in I 89 5. Subsequently the ADF was led by its cofounder Auguste Schmidt, who stepped down in 1902 and was replaced by Helene Lange, who served until I92I. By r 889 the ADF could boast 20 branch clubs and between I r,ooo and 12,ooo members. At its peak between r89o and I9o8, it counted 47 affiliates and I9,ooo membersP From its founding in I 865 to the end of the r87os, the ADF underwent several changes. During its early years, Otto, true to her democratic convictions of r848, tried to bring working- and middle-class women together through all-female lectures, entertainment, and job training courses. By the end of the I 87os, however, proletarian women had drawn closer to the workers' movement, and the ADF focused its attentions on the middle class. 18 At the same time, the organization's ideology was shifting. Although its founding motto had been "to become human is what women want," the German historian Herrad-Ulrike Bussemer argues that this discourse of equality was never used consistently by most of the ADF's members. More influential was the new ideology of spiritual motherliness espoused by Henriette Goldschmidt and other followers of the pedagogue Friedrich Frobel, who stressed woman's role in educating the young as well as an ethos of female service and dutyY The ADF's shift in ideology was also influenced by outside political developments such as the fear of socialism. Otto wrote that after the Paris Commune of r87I, the women's movement was also spooked by the "red ghost of women's emancipation" that aspired to male clothing and male habits. 20 All of these factors contributed to a change by the end of the I87os in the ADF's focus from the economic underpinnings of women's labor to the education that would prepare them for occupations serving the common good and suited to their female talents. In many ways these changes mirrored those affecting political liberals in the same period. The transformation of the ADF in these years was profound. The organization changed from a club that claimed to represent all women to one that focused more on the middle class, from a rhetoric of common humanity and rights to one of difference and duty, from seeing the woman question in material terms to conceiving of it in cultural ones. The ADF was the first women's organization to raise the issue of female students consistently. At its founding conference in I 86 5, female colleges or

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universities [Frauenhochschulen] were discussed, albeit in nebulous terms. The first paragraph of the organization's statutes laid out its mission: to work "for the increased education [Bildung] of the female sex and the freeing of female work from all obstacles standing in the way of its development." At the ADF conference of 1872, Dr. F. M. Wendt spoke on plans for a "girls' Gymnasium." He envisioned a school tailored to female needs that would train female doctors for women and children, teachers, and even "female legal scholars." Although the conference decided to support his idea and petition for it, Otto recalled that no action was ever taken because no one could decide whether to turn to the state or federal government for assistance. The benefits of university education continued to be highlighted at ADF gatherings. At the conference of 1873, one speaker thanked the universities of Leipzig and Prague for allowing women to audit courses there. Three years later, the first German female physicians, Drs. Franziska Tiburtius and Emilie Lehmus, discussed their Swiss training and practices with the conference delegates. At the meetings of 1877 and 1879, repeated calls came for the training of women doctorsY Of course it was understood that female physicians would tend to women and children but not treat men. Yet the ADF's appeals for change went unheeded. No institutional gains were made in the 187os and 188os, or indeed until the early I89os, when a few universities began allowing selected women to audit on a trial basis. Female physicians who had trained abroad were not admitted to medical certification in Prussia until 1899. More than one observer has noted that the ADF suffered from the consequences of the weakness of their closest political partners, the liberals, as well as from the anti-socialist law, which had banned the Social Democratic Party between 1878 and 1890 and stifled other pressures for social reform. By the end of the 187os, the discussion of women's issues, in particular the Frauenstudium, ground to a halt and resumed only slowly. In 1883 the ADF began to plan a school to prepare girls for university study. A year later the group received a generous bequest, the first of several, and began to offer scholarships, mostly to German women studying at Swiss universities. The late 188os and early 189os saw a renewed public interest in the woman question. 22 By this time the ADF was well-established and several new organizations had appeared, including Hedwig Kettler's association, Reform, in 1888. From 1888 to about 1902 the ADF embarked on an active petition campaign on behalf of female higher education. In the first year the ADF submitted a petition asking that women be allowed into the medical and higher teaching professions by way of the appropriate university course of study to all German state governments overseeing universities. The petition's wording was revealing: "not in the interest of the small number of women, who wish to devote themselves to a higher occupation, but rather in consideration of

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the advancement in health and morality of the whole female sex" did the ADF make its request. This rhetoric was highly successful, as is evident in an update in Neue Bahnen on the signing of a mass petition to the Reichstag in I 89 I. The journal reported that signatures were especially easy to come by in those households where women had become "invalids" as aresult of shrinking from a visiting a male physician. On the political level, however, the petition met with little immediate success. The ADF's mass petition eventually grew to over 5o,ooo signatures and was submitted to the Reichstag in I891, I892, and I893· The document was repeatedly sent back to committee, or the Reichstag chose simply to ignore the petition, returning to its order of business. This pattern continued through I902. Although all German universities would eventually be opened to women state by state between I 900 and I 909, their admission was never the result of a petition on their behalf being granted. 23 Otto's and the ADF's ideas about the Studentin took on more concrete contours in the pages of Neue Bahnen, which regularly carried stories about women pursuing higher education. Because in the I86os and 187os no German university had yet explicitly barred women (until then there had been no need to), a few women obtained permission from individual professors to attend their lecture courses. In I869 Neue Bahnen mentioned the appearance of an unnamed Russian woman-who must have been the famous mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaia-in a Heidelberg lecture hall. The author remarked on how although she sat in the last row taking notes and listening attentively, "everyone" noticed her, and her neighbor sketched her (!). "Everyone" thought she was seventeen but she was in fact nearly a decade older, and her mystery companion turned out to be her husband. The author made a point of mentioning that she was pretty and well-dressed. 24 In this description Kovalevskaia's beauty and brains were assigned equal value. "Sightings" of female students at German universities were soon overtaken by those at the University of Zurich. Neue Bahnen often provided information on the female students there, who had been the objects of much journalistic curiosity since their admission in r867. 25 In the early r87os, Zurich and its university were known as a magnet for Russian students and radicals, including women, associated with socialism, nihilism, and free love. The Russian women attracted much attention for their unconventional dress and lifestyle but most of all for their political activities. When this news reached the Tsar in 1873, he issued a decree compelling all of these women to return to Russia or else lose any hope of professional employment there. Despite a statement from the university defending the women from the charge of any political activity, the Russians were forced to leave Zurich. Many of them applied to other Swiss and German universities.26 In Germany, these applications constituted the first encounter that

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many German universities had with the female students. Indeed this chain of events, in particular a fear of political radicalism, led almost all German universities to refuse the Russian women and by the end of the decade to slam their doors completely shut to women. The aura of scandal surrounding the Russians and the attendant stereotypes of emancipated women, though, lasted for decades and were constantly invoked in discussions of the Frauenstudium. Ironically the historian Elizabeth Wood, drawing on the revolutionary Vera Figner's memoirs, notes that the radical Russian women in Zurich took no particular interest in the "woman question," being much more interested in nihilism and socialismP Their numbers at Zurich quickly dropped, then slowly increased again in the next decades, including many Jews and members of other groups who could not easily study in Russia. The specter of the Russian women was one reason why Neue Bahnen sought above all to present a non-threatening view of the women in Zurich through first-hand accounts. The journal noted that at the r 873 ADF conference, a professor's wife informed the assembly that she herself had gone to Zurich to study with her daughter and that only a few of the Russian women were badly behaved. 28 In r875 Louise Otto reported that the rector of the University of Bern, where eighteen Russian women had fled to study after having been forced to leave Zurich by the Tsar, affirmed that the women were "hard-working, live quietly and have not given university officials the least cause to regret having admitted them. " 29 A report from r877 tried to defuse the issue of "radical" Russian women and the dangers of coeducation by pointing out how well the women got along both with each other and with the male students. "In the auditorium the pale Jewess with the dark melancholy eyes sits next to the small blonde lively Russian woman ... from all over the world, from Germany, Russia, England, Bohemia, Serbia, Hungary, America, Holland, Poland the women have come to quench their thirst for knowledge." The life of the female students was "quiet and simple," as they had sacrificed much to come to a strange country to pursue a "beautiful, great goal." The following year, another article confirmed the report that Studentinnen "live mostly quietly and withdrawn; how could it be otherwise when one is busy from six in the morning till late in the evening" ?30 Medical student Marie von Thilo noted that a woman "participates in the life of the university inasmuch as she participates in the lectures through passive listening, otherwise she has nothing to do with the public life at a university." The apparent exception to this was the "ennobling effect on their environment at the university" with which Thilo credited the Studentinnen. 31 With reports like these on the wholesome and serious lives of the women in Zurich, Neue Bahnen tried to present a counter-image to the "Amazon" mentioned in one angry

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letter to the publication in 1875Y Neue Bahnen continued to follow the news about female students in Switzerland through the 189os, always seeking to emphasize the positive. The historian Margrit Twellmann argues that after the expulsion of the Russians, the women's movement was forced to emphasize continually that "university study for women and immorality were not identical." 33 Before women could enter the university, however, they had to acquire the necessary preparation. Traditional girls' education had focused on preparing them for their Bestimmung, meaning their physical and mental capacities as well as their "destiny" in life as wives and mothers. Thus adding a solid academic curriculum to the mix raised concerns about girls' losing their femininity. In a I 88 5 article in Neue Bahnen, Auguste Schmidt discussed how to prepare girls for university study and at the same time preserve their "noble womanhood." Instead of embarking on the boys' Gymnasium's nine-year curriculum at the same age as boys, Schmidt recommended that girls complete the higher girls' school at age I 5 and then take a special preparatory course taught by university-educated women. Of course it was exactly this type of course that the ADF intended to establish with a new bequest. 34 In 1886 Franziska Tiburtius, a Zurich-trained physician who wholeheartedly supported women's university study, recommended a similar approach, opposing the idea of a Gymnasium for girls. Instead she advised parents to let girls complete regular schools and then spend the years between 16 and 19 at home helping their mothers. Only after this should they embark on a four-year course like the ADF's to prepare for the university. Tiburtius saw this break as necessary to protect the health of pubescent girls and to allow them to mature emotionally. One should consider that [the girls], as a tiny minority among a great number of young men, must maintain their position, earn respect, and prove themselves ... It is certainly true that a girl, who ought to assume a proper and dignified position among many young men, [must] be superior to them in some way; if she isn't through knowledge, she must be so in life experience, tact, confidence, calmness, objectivity.

Tiburtius noted, perhaps ruefully, that she spoke from experience. A young woman entering the classroom must be prepared to hold her own not only intellectually but socially as well. Auguste Schmidt echoed this sentiment in 1899 in her reaction to the protests against female medical students at the University of Halle by their male counterparts. Schmidt asked her readers rhetorically what would have happened if the two Studentinnen in question, graduates of Helene Lange's preparatory course, had not comported themselves with so much dignity and poise. For a female student, she concluded, character was as important as talent. 35 The message that both Tiburtius and Schmidt sent was that a Studentin had somehow

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to combine academic excellence with the manners of a well-brought-up young lady. The ADF expected female students to be at once the equals of men but not interchangeable with them. Auguste Schmidt admonished the readers of Neue Bahnen that "in the first place it doesn't matter if the current state of the Gymnasien is right or wrong, what counts is that the female sex achieve the same so that the superstition of its inferiority will be removed" (emphasis in the original). In the next breath Schmidt reiterated that equal achievement must not erode feminine qualities. "Mary Stuart spoke Latin and Greek without losing her irresistible charm," she observed. In fact, education and femininity were highly compatible in that "higher intellectual cultivation [Bildung] produces greater insight and thus higher understanding of [one's] life-work, hence noble humaneness and in women, beautiful femininity." Furthermore, education need not diminish a young woman's marriage prospects. Schmidt asked mothers, "Why shouldn't your daughter become a happy Frau Doctor after being a Fraulein Doctor? And if she doesn't, don't complain but be glad that your daughter has made something of herself. " 36 The ADF's efforts to reconcile learnedness with more traditional feminine qualities would have ramifications for the first Studentinnen, as we shall see in the case of Maria von Linden in Chapter Six. The picture that the ADF offered of female students was, by the standards of the time, a bundle of contradictions: smart but self-sacrificing, feminine yet not flirtatious. The Studentin was portrayed as someone who was prepared to sacrifice her own modesty by studying medicine alongside men so that other women would not have to sacrifice theirs by being examined by a male gynecologist. This scenario also addressed the problem so important to Otto and the ADF, namely how a single young woman could support herself in a socially useful way. Dohm's vision of the prospective female student was laden with similar contradictions, albeit with a freer view to what subjects women should study. Most significant for the discussion to follow, though, was that both Dohm and Otto envisioned the Studentin not in her future native habitat of the university but rather exclusively in the context of the woman question itself, a perspective that would be adopted by other female reformers such as Hedwig Kettler and Helene Lange.

IV As Hedwig Kettler saw it, the Frauenstudium was a simple question. Women, she believed, should be admitted to study all subjects in order to further their intellectual development and to earn a living through a profession. For Kettler, university training was a way to solve a specific problem:

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the downward mobility of single middle-class women. But she was silent on the political or social ramifications of educating women, fearful perhaps of losing public support. At the time, her arguments were already perceived as quite daring. In her history of the women's movement, Gertrud Baumer recalled that Kettler's organization, Reform, "was the first in the bourgeois women's movement to carry the nuance that the public referred to as 'radical."'37 Kettler's vision was that educated middle-class women would reform the educated classes, precisely by studying what they chose. Her emphasis on women's material condition led to an understanding of the woman question based on class. As with all four reformers in this chapter, she could visualize less clearly the female student in everyday life. In her remarkable career, Kettler not only led an ambitious petition campaign for the Frauenstudium but also founded the first girls' Gymnasium in Germany. Kettler's conception of the woman question was, as her position on the Frauenstudium suggests, at once radical and limited. At the time her demand that women have access to the university and new careers was very bold, but her interests were centered on the economic welfare of middle-class women. Kettler had little patience with those who focused on the cultural side of the woman question. "When a woman starves, her 'noble womanhood' starves with her," she noted acerbically. 38 For her the woman question was a social and material one, stemming from an economic reality that left unmarried middle-class women unable to support themselves. Kettler wrote that the woman of the "so-called educated middle class" was at a distinct disadvantage relative to other women, as her education filled her with aspira-

tions to middle-class security without giving her the tools to achieve it on her own. In contrast, she argued, poor women had only modest expectations and were prepared to work outside the home, and rich women fulfilled their greater expectations without working. Thus the woman question belonged, in Kettler's estimation, first and foremost to the women "of the educated middle class." She defined this group as what was leftover when the working classes and the "upper Io,ooo" were excluded, in other words "those who exercise professions based on university study, civil servants, officers, engineers, artists, the cultivated circles of business and industry." Kettler considered women from these backgrounds far more likely to end up in the category of widows and "leftover" (single) women with no support. Their numbers, she claimed, made up forty percent of all German women, and their prospects for earning a living without an education were dim. 39 The solution she offered was proper preparation for a middle-class career. She urged parents to consider their daughters' future. Female emancipation, Kettler wrote, was really "the highest act of motherly love, the education of children for their own welfare." 40 With this plea she pressed traditional values into the service of the new.

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The kind of work available to single middle-class women only exacerbated the "class" difference between the sexes that so clearly disturbed Kettler. For young women who had to earn their own living, the options were quite narrow. Those whose families had had the foresight to send them to school for a few extra years could become schoolteachers. Often, though, a father might be reluctant to let his daughter work outside the home or to acknowledge that he could not support her. Thus cases of "secret" or "hidden" work, usually needlework, by a daughter or even a wife were regarded as a common bourgeois family scandal. 41 Kettler was referring to needlework and other work done at home when she observed that "considering the rate at which this girl works, her education was too expensive, so she is wasted in this respect." Furthermore since these middleclass "daughters of the house" did not have to support themselves fully, they worked for a lower wage, thus bringing down that of working-class women. Men, Kettler observed, did not cut into each other's work areas like that. A university-educated man would never work at an occupation beneath him, "but that his sister, who is his social equal, who has received the same careful upbringing as he," did so disturbed the brother not in the least. 42 Again, in Kettler's description the sister was at once considered "educated" by birth yet had not been formally educated at all. Kettler's vision of the Frauenstudium critiqued the solidarity of the educated classes. Many of her arguments were aimed at rooting out gender bias in the middle class. "The university-educated father is appalled at the very thought of letting his son become a craftsman and in good conscience lets his daughter ... become a craftswoman!" she exclaimed, referring to the needlework that many bourgeois women did discreetly in order to earn a little extra money. 43 Kettler also drew attention to the inconsistency that "the concern of the educated German man for the good of woman begins exactly where it is a matter of mental labor, which is usually his work, and stops exactly where heavy physical labor, which in general is not his, comes into question." This point echoed Dohm's argument of nearly twenty years before. 44 In identifying these contradictions, Kettler appealed to an ideal of middle-class identity. Her efforts were centered on redefining the "educated" middle class so that this label would apply equally to all its members. Although she wavered between arguing for women's admission on the grounds of pure economic necessity and seeing education as women's basic human right, both rationales were inherent in liberalism itself. Kettler's ideas on the Frauenstudium were bound up with a vision of a new middle-class identity that accorded women the same education and economic opportunity as men. She did not argue that this identity would entail social change but that this change had already occurred and the bourgeoisie should catch up. The main social change she singled out was

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the erosion of the rights and duties involved in what she termed the "marriage bargain." Since the duty of supporting the family fell to the man, he had a corresponding right to professional education in order to do so, whereas in marriage women traded any claim to further education for financial security. Now, Kettler maintained, women had only the duty to support themselves but no right to an education that would enable them to do so. Conversely there were an increasing number of men who, choosing not to marry, had only rights, for example to an education, but no obligation to support a family. 45 This situation put female dependence in a new light. A child is a minor, therefore he is provided for. A woman is kept a minor but should provide for herself. The child is told, 'Are you hungry? Here is bread, eat! The woman is told, 'Are you hungry? Get your own bread. Up there are a bunch of loaves ... but you may not use that ladder to get them down-it is only for men. But maybe one of the loaves will come down to you ... ' 46

In view of this inequality, Kettler argued, the woman question boiled down to a single problem: "is the grown woman an adult like the man, or is she a big child? " 47 Kettler saw university study as appropriate only for certain women. These were first and foremost unmarried middle-class women, unable to support themselves. In her writings, she developed the idea of membership to the "educated" middle class. Belonging to this group distinguished middleclass women from other women and also from other "mute" groups in society such as apprentices, children, and workers. Moreover the fact that this group was defined around a certain level of education enabled women to lodge a claim against their unfair treatment. The problem Kettler set up is that of the "educated" woman who, curiously, has in fact not been educated. As she explained in the first issue of Frauenberuf, "we intend to discuss everything to which the educated [gebildete] woman is called by virtue of her education [Bildung]" (my emphasis). This was plainly a circular argument: who deserves the education? The educated woman. Kettler wrote later that the educated woman must demand the right to a job but only to "work that corresponds to her education." Yet she could not get this sort of work because of a lack of professional training, which in turn was the result of poor schooling. Only improving the education of girls, Kettler argued, would eventually lead to their getting the right kind of work. 48 Indeed Kettler thought the only way to banish the specter of intellectual difference and prove the equal value of the intelligence of both sexes was to give girls the same education as boys via a Gymnasium for girls. 49 As coeducation did not become the norm in German schools until well after World War II, college preparatory schools for girls represented "equal" treatment to the women's movement at the time. In Kettler's view, native intelligence,

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education, and equal rights were all inextricably bound up with each other. Women's "disgraceful condition" was the result of "their being minors," which was the consequence of "their poorly developed intelligence," which was in turn an effect of "their bad education." A woman who wished to claim the rights of man, Kettler argued, must first demand the one right from which all others derived, "the right to the same education as [a] man." By denying women an education, men had taken from them all other rights, "reserving them for [men] alone." 50 What the everyday life of the Studentin might resemble did not interest Kettler. Only once did she seek to allay fears of lost femininity and improper decorum in the figure of "a dashing Studentin, cigarette between the teeth, carousing and fencing with her male colleagues." Instead Kettler told of having coffee with a young woman studying medicine, who "refused the liqueur and cigarettes that I jokingly offered her." Her handkerchief smelled of perfume, not the carbolic acid of the dissecting table. One would never have suspected that she had seen an operating table even from afar. No, I can assure you that the way that she walked and stood there, with the modern chic of her well-fitting dress, with her pleasant clever manners ... this young lady belonged in any parlor, absolutely not in a pub. And just think, that was one of the very worst, a Studentin of medicine! 51 In her comments, Kettler demonstrated that she shared some of the same stereotypes that she attributed to her readers. Moreover she did not see why the traditional qualities that she valued in a young woman, such as good grooming and manners, should not also be expected of a female student. There are several reasons why Kettler might not have addressed the conflict that a Studentin faced between expectations for her behavior as a student and as a woman. Acknowledging such a conflict would have undermined the arguments that Kettler was trying to make, in which the only thing that separated women from a rewarding professional life was education. In the liberal framework she set up, where women were forced out of the household and into the university by economic need or by an intellectual drive, there was little room to consider the social changes that would necessarily accompany this change in women's role. Tellingly the term "Sittlichkeit" (ethical life, morality), which led other arguments for and against the Frauenstudium, particularly Helene Lange's, rarely occurs in Kettler's writings. In addition Kettler's own education had been quite limited, so she had not experienced at first hand the changes in identity that come with a wider intellectual perspective. Probably both these factors played a role in Kettler's refusal to dwell on the difficulties the Studentin might encounter. Only the women involved with Kettler's organization, Reform, who themselves had studied, such as Kathe Schirmacher and Anita Augspurg, were deeply conscious of the roles the Studentin had to reconcile.

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Yet the political implications of women's ambiguous positions surfaced only rarely in Kettler's writings. At one point she wrote that if the state wished to strengthen itself, it must first strengthen the family. The way to do so, however, was not by "raising its women to be weak minor children." Instead the family should be strengthened by liberating women "from the anachronism of their education." This could only help Germany, she concluded. 52 Kettler almost certainly glossed over politics in her writings due to her own wish to keep Reform focused solely on the issue of female education; the club's statutes had emphasized that it had no religious or political affiliation. By refusing to address politics directly, Kittler left an ambiguous silence surrounding her implicit challenge to gender roles and the state. Kettler had apparently felt the lack of an education keenly. Born the daughter of a railroad official in Osnabriick in I 8 sr, Kettler had the usual higher girls' school education. Years later when the London Woman's Herald asked whether her goal was to have women study everything, she replied, "Making an artificial line of demarcation between men's and women's capacities is more than a mistake; I hold it [sic] illogical. When quite a girl, long before I knew anything of a Woman's Question, I was puzzled to think why girls should be debarred from studying subjects which any boy, be he ever so stupid, is allowed to take up." Kettler's own spotty education may explain her eclectic reception of John Stuart Mill and other liberal thinkers. In her youth she planned to become a painter and studied with the painter Biermann in Berlin. In r88o she married her cousin, Julius Kettler, and gave birth to two daughters in I 8 8 I and I 8 8 5. Kettler's husband seems to have endorsed her activities, having given at least one speech in support of her plan for Gymnasien for girls. 53 Her husband's work appears to have moved the family several times, but each time Kettler managed to establish a new network for her undertakings. As the married mother of young children, Kettler was certainly an anomaly among the leadership of the women's movement, who were mostly widowed or single. Perhaps it was partly due to her exceptional personal situation that Kettler started her own organization rather than joining an existing one. Her first step was to start a journal called Frauenberuf (Women's Profession), which appeared from Christmas I886 until r892. The first volume ran to 384 pages; subsequent years topped soo pages. The front page of the first issue proclaimed the journal's mission: to speak to the "educated woman." This was not, Kettler emphasized, the woman whose interest in the daily care of her family was so deep "that nothing else seems to exist for her"; neither was the intended audience that woman who "forgetting her natural duties in the family, contents herself with aspiring to justified or unjustified emancipation ideas." Instead Kettler aimed

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for a readership of those women who put in an "honest day's work," either as a wife and mother or as a woman earning a living. By appealing to woman's "lofty cultural mission," Kettler sought to recognize and value women's work. The entire statement of purpose struck the tone of a counterweight and attempt to contain the novelty and brashness of the journal's title, which was literally "women's profession" at a time when women were barred from the exercise of one. Once uttered, the word "profession" cried out for definition. Kettler saw woman's calling not just in the family but also "in her teaching and raising of youth, in every profession, which claims the good traits of woman: patience, gentleness, self-denial, energetic will to work, and enterprise." By citing traditional female attributes, Kettler was able to diffuse some of the anxiety that might have been provoked by her publication's title and its stated mission. 54 Peppered with colorful and outrageous examples, Kettler's writings shared Dohm's indignant tone but lacked the latter's ability to skewer an opponent humorously. From r889 until the mid-189os, she published a number of books in her own series, Bibliothek der Frauenfrage (Library of the Woman Question). The titles of Kettler's books in the series spell our her agenda: Was wird aus unsern Tochtern? (What Will Become of Our Daughters?), published in 1889, followed by Was ist Frauen-Emanzipation? (What is Women's Emancipation?) in 1891 and Gleiche Bildung fur Mann und Frau! (Equal Education for Man and Woman!) the next year. Most striking about Kettler's style was her focus on one argument, reinforced repeatedly with simple examples. Since many of these writings were originally given as speeches, they were almost certainly more effective in spoken than in written form. What remains uncertain is whether Kettler purposely tailored her style to the level of a popular audience or whether her own limited education kept her from making more complex points. In May r888 Kettler announced the formation in Weimar of a new organization for the reform of girls' education, the Deutscher Frauenverein Reform (German Women's Reform Association), later called the Verein Frauenbildungs-Reform (Association for the Reform of Women's Education); here I will refer to it simply as Reform. Reform, which grew from 120 members from its inception in 1888 to 423 two years later, self-consciously set itself apart from other women's groups in several ways. First, Reform focused exclusively on women's university education and held itself largely apart from other women's groups with broader causes. Second, Reform insisted on the admission of women to all university-trained professions. This stood in bold contrast to Helene Lange's and the ADF's concurrent efforts, rooted in the women's movement as a whole, to open principally medical study and higher teaching positions in girls' schools to women. Third, Reform had made a clear statement by electing Hedwig

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Dohm honorary president for life in r89o. At the r89r conference, the club explicitly distanced itself from Louise Otto's belief that men were physically and mentally "stronger" than women. Reform, the report continued, believed that women had the same reason [Verstand] as men and thus the right to many of the professions reserved for men. 55 Yet the ambivalence and fluidity of alliances in the women's movement was reflected in Kettler's warm review of Frauenbildung (Women's Education) by Otto's ally Helene Lange only two years earlier. 56 The initial announcement and appeal for members at the beginning of r888 was signed by Kettler, Hedwig Dohm, and seven other women. The notice called on readers to save the increasing numbers of unmarried women of the educated classes by opening more professions to women. The club's goals were listed as the establishment of institutions, girls' lyceums and a women's college or university [Frauenhochschule], that would give women the education necessary to enter these fields. 5 7 By the time Reform's statutes were drafted a few months later, they no longer mentioned separate universities, if that was indeed what was meant in the original call for members. Most likely the club, which had always emphasized that women should have the same education as men, had now recognized that a women's university would have had difficulty garnering state support. Instead the group called simply for the admission of women to the existing university preparatory course of study, as well as the founding of schools to prepare girls for university study and state permission for women to enter all professions requiring university training. The statutes echoed an earlier demand "that a woman should be admitted to the study of all disciplines, the same as a man, not to isolated ones (such as, for example, medicine or higher teaching positions)." Strategies mentioned in the statutes included petitions, newspaper articles, and the collection of funds for a "girls' lyceum." 58 By r889 the terms "girls' lyceum" was replaced by Gymnasium for girls in Frauenberuf and Kettler's writings. 59 This change demonstrates that Reform now had a clearer idea of what its goals were. "Gymnasium for girls" left no doubt that what was intended was an institution on a par with the boys' Gymnasium. Like the ADF, Reform regularly submitted petitions to state governments and ministries all over Germany on behalf of the Frauenstudium and Gymnasien for girls from r888 until 1894. 60 The first petition was submitted in r888 to the ministries of education in Prussia, Bavaria, and Wiirttemberg, and in June r889 the same petition was sent to those of all the other German states, accompanied by Kettler's brochure, Was wird aus unsern Tochtern? The text of the petition, at times taken word for word from Kettler's other writings, began by reassuring the reader that "the 'natural profession' of woman (as of man) is doubtless marriage." This calm was shattered by the next line, which stated that the opening of academic pro-

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fessions was "perhaps the most important step in the expansion of employment opportunities" for women of the educated middle class. Theresults would be twofold: first, relieving menial jobs from competition and a lot of "unsuited" female workers (i.e. middle-class women); second, a fight against the "shameful" need of many girls to marry out of economic necessity. Indeed, allowing women into the professions would not only offer security for daughters who did not marry but would actually make marriage easier through the help of the woman in supporting the family, thus reducing the number of singles of both sexes. The document concluded with three demands: first, so long as no girls' Gymnasium existed, girls with proper preparation should be admitted to the Abitur at boys' Gymnasien; second, those who passed should be admitted to the universities; and third, women who studied should be allowed to practice those professions "that on the one hand are already exercised by women in other European civilized countries today and that on the other hand also appear feasible." These two petitions exemplified Reform's most extreme demands. A third petition sent to the Reichstag in May 1890 asking solely for female doctors showed that Kettler and Reform were willing to be flexible in their strategy. "The prevailing social and moral conditions in Germany on the one hand, as well as the physical nature of the female sex on the other would make it seem foolish to demand the admission of woman to the practice of all professions." The next sentence seemed more an admonition to Reform members than to the ministry: "An honest reform movement will always aim for only that which ... is really feasible ... which in our eyes is ... above all the admission of women to the practice of medicine" (emphasis in the original). Reform's strategy was modified yet again in another petition sent to all German state legislatures in January 1891 asking that women be admitted to the university and that Gymnasien for girls be established or that girls be allowed to take the Abitur at an existing Gymnasium. 61 Governments never acted on these petitions; after discussing them briefly or not at all, the legislature would generally return to its order of business. If there was to be competition, Kettler reasoned, women might as well prepare themselves for it. The solution to the dilemma of the uneducated woman of the educated middle class was to put her through the Gymnasium for girls, which she conceived of as the equivalent of the Gymnasium for boys. At the 1889 Reform conference she explained that she opposed Gymnasium-style courses or other courses intended to catch girls up in about four years to the level of the Gymnasium after completion of the higher girls' school because such courses could never lead to "the same thorough knowledge, consolidated through the passage of time" that boys attained after nine years at the Gymnasium. Although Reform planned to

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raise money privately for a Gymnasium for girls, Kettler believed that the state should and eventually would bear part of the cost. After all, she noted, women also paid taxes. Indeed she thought that "the state could save [the necessary monies] from the insane asylums and nerve clinics for women" that giving women an educational outlet would free up. 62 Given the strength and uniformity of the university tradition and its standards in Germany, any institution but a Gymnasium for girls seemed to Kettler to lack credibility. Putting theory into practice, Kettler and Reform did not wait for the government to sanction Gymnasien for girls before starting one. In 1893 Kettler established in Karlsruhe the very first school for girls modeled on a boys' Gymnasium, in this case the boys' six-class Reformgymnasium (a progressive variant of the Gymnasium) in Frankfurt. Her efforts on behalf of the school literally earned Kettler a crown of laurel at the Reform conference that summer. Yet upon the school's opening in September, a negative reaction in the press and public grew, culminating in accusations at the Reform conference of 1897 that Kettler was neglecting the school and that "'no conscientious mother would trust her daughter to the Karlsruhe Gymnasium for girls."' From the materials at hand, it is unclear to what degree disgruntled board members were responsible for the rumors, which fed increasing financial difficulties. The school was taken over by the city of Karlsruhe in 1900. In 1899 Kettler tried to start another Gymnasium for girls in Hannover, but disagreements with the Prussian state government and her fellow board members over the school's curriculum led to her resignation from Reform in 1901. She continued her involvement with female education by forming the Committee for Complete Girls' Gymnasien, meaning Gymnasien for girls patterned exactly after those of boys, which the Prussian education ministry still refused to allow. The membership consisted of seventy well-known persons, including the liberal editor and politician Friedrich Naumann, the novelist and historian Ricarda Huch, and the sociologist Georg Simmel. Kettler's most vocal work on behalf of the Frauenstudium had, however, come to an end. 63 It was this political silence that would cost Kettler some of her strongest allies. Originally, Kettler's position on parity for girls' education attracted those who would later be among the most radical members of the women's movement such as Anita Augspurg and Kiithe Schirmacher. As Augspurg's life companion, Lida Gustava Heymann, recalled, Augspurg "instinctively recognized the insufficiency of the opportunistic women's movement lead by Auguste Schmidt and her followers [the ADF]," choosing instead to work with "the first champion of the Frauenstudium, Hedwig Kettler. " 64 Helene Lange named Anita Augspurg explicitly as one of the leaders of the "radical" wing. Lange reproached this group for turning the women's movement

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from an "educational to a political one." Although both moderates like Lange and radicals would go on to endorse woman suffrage, Lange saw this as a distant goal, whereas the radicals took the vote as a starting point. Both groups also justified themselves differently, wrote Lange, who characterized the radicals as more legalistic and individualistic. She faulted them especially for stressing the equality of the sexes and not, as Lange and others did, their fundamental difference. 65 Augspurg was seen as radical at the time because of her insistence on the immediate equality of man and woman, as well as her unconventional lifestyle and openly lesbian relationship with Heymann. Still, she shared many of the core values of the women's movement, chief among them the belief in the power of education. 66 She even wrote that educated women made better housewives and went further to make the eugenic argument that educated women would raise better children, which would in turn improve the race. Only in her analysis of the social effects of better education for women did Augspurg venture a more radical social critique. "The educated woman will not demand of her spouse that he have a fat wallet but rather also possess ethical values." In short, educated married women would stop supporting the moral double standard that sanctioned philandering husbands. 67 For Augspurg, educating women meant a chance toreform society. In 1896 Augspurg resigned from Reform. 68 The following month she became the leader of a new association, the Association for Women's University Study (Verein fiir Frauen-Studium) in Berlin, which advocated women's studies and professional life to be based on a standard (boys') Gymnasium curriculum. 69 For Kettler, women's higher education was an economic issue challenging the self-definition of the educated middle class. Her liberal-inspired arguments for women's education and employment as basic rights were strongly influenced by Dohm. Like Dohm, Kettler had an ambivalent relationship to the women's movement, which would later cost her valuable allies like Augspurg and Schirmacher, up-and-coming figures in the women's movement who did not think that her organization went far enough in cooperating with other women's groups or in linking the Frauenstudium to social change. Nonetheless Kettler stands out as an eclectic thinker who made provocative arguments about women and higher education and then tried to put them into practice.

v In most histories of German women's education, Helene Lange takes center stage. Unlike Kettler, Lange summoned the weight of the organized women's movement behind her and assembled an intellectual foundation of

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ambitious breadth and depth in support of the Frauenstudium. In this chapter Lange will be treated in her role as the most prominent advocate of female higher education in the moderate middle-class women's movement. This section will also devote some attention to Mathilde Weber, who shared many of Lange's ideas and wrote an influential, much-cited short book in 1888 on the need for female physicians. Both this book, Fraueni:irzte fur Frauenkrankheiten (Female Physicians for Female Illnesses), and Lange's Frauenbildung accompanied the ADF's petition to all German states with universities in 1888. 70 In her writings Lange presented the paradox of the Frauenstudium in the form of a seemingly watertight argument. Contemporary social needs, she said, dictated women's admission to selected fields of study to prepare them for the "motherly" (and hence "womanly") professions of teaching and medicine. At the same time she offered reassuring claims about gender roles: women could be both learned and feminine. This put Lange squarely in the tradition of Louise Otto and the ADF. Yet she made an important innovation by placing a premium on Bildung, a strategy with profound implications. Lange's emphasis on education was informed by a broader concern with the political dimension of the woman question, which involved removing it from the realm of material need and reformulating it as a cultural matter. In an 1889 essay she traced the origins of the women's movement "not to caprice, not to a passing mood, not modern dissatisfaction with what exists" but to "an ethical necessity, a search for outer living conditions that correspond to an inner change." Women had won some battles by con-

vincing the "highest-thinking" men of the rightness of their cause, but other men still viewed the woman question with suspicion, associating it with the social question (and by implication socialism) and threats to the sphere of power and law. Lange sought to dissipate these fears by pointing out the faulty logic behind them. As Kettler had also noted, Lange observed that men, although convinced of women's inferiority, still feared economic competition. The female ideal of the average German, she wrote, showed the "trait of intellectual passivity." Lange sought to circumvent both obstacles by suggesting that "every woman has not only the right but the duty to serve the common good in the best way her nature can." Lange agreed that woman's new commitment to service was indicative of a deeper change: the cultivation of a "free personality." With this formulation Lange claimed the long German tradition of education and selfcultivation, previously restricted to men, for women. Just as the man without culture stands helpless before the complicated tasks of life, so does woman, and it is a fateful ... error [to assume] that in her case instinct could take the place of education [Bildung] . ... On the contrary. The more woman develops into an ethical personality, the more proudly she in-

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scribes "I serve" on her shield, and the more she expands her intellectual horizon through educational struggles ... she will return with that much greater love to that which is her real profession: to the raising and educating of humanity, as she will only now be conscious of being truly equal to the task.

In the German ideal of Bildung, education itself was but a stepping stone toward a higher goal, the cultivation of the individual personality. Education freed the mind and opened the initial possibility of personal development. This line of thought was so tightly interwoven with male privilege, including but not limited to university study, that Lange then backpedaled a bit. Of course women could not expect to get all of the rights associated with the development of "free personality" at once; it would even be dangerous, Lange warned, but in the long run not one of those rights would be denied to women. She reassured her readers that this transformation would not affect the differences between the sexes. "It will always be more the man who shapes the outer world, always more the woman who cultivates the world of the soul, who educates and shapes inner life," she wrote. By shifting the terms of the debate from female self-interest to service, Lange had reformulated the woman question in ethical terms, constructing a new framework and set of justifications for women's issues. Lange was not the first in the women's movement to make this argument, but her formulations were particularly effective in the campaign for the Frauenstudium. 71 Although sexual difference was the basis on which full intellectual and personal development was denied women, Lange believed that women could achieve these goals by cultivating precisely this distinction. In an 1897 essay on the "Intellectual Boundaries between Man and Woman," she marshaled two biological "facts" in her defense. First, if one wanted to create a being that would be as similar as possible to a man without recreating him entirely, that would be a woman. Both men and women could learn scholarly methods and have the same powers of the soul. Second, men and women had a mental difference, not in brain structure but in the difference of their interests and feelings, which corresponded to their different physiological functions. "The female is destined for motherhood; this fate determines her physical and psychic uniqueness. The male is, corresponding to his physiological basis ... as a reproductive type, the more restless, mobile part, equipped with more initiative," as well as more variable. Although there might be exceptions to the sex types, Lange believed they were true overall. To her, women's motherliness was not an intellectual hindrance but a hint about the direction their academic interests should take. It was not yet possible to compare the intellectual accomplishments of men and women, she argued, because women had not accomplished enough. Moreover what they had created did not bear "the full stamp of female particularity," as women still accepted men's intellectual

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norms. For Lange femininity did not just mean the cult of motherhood and domesticity associated with the nineteenth century but also a chance for woman to explore an undeveloped potential. 72 Lange, in contrast to Hedwig Kettler, had a fully developed theory of the Studentin's place in society. Her ideas were predicated on the notion that female higher education would occasion no change in gender roles. "If tolerance and the spirit of sacrifice, unlimited capacity to love and personal devotion, which for me make up the character of woman, were actually endangered by intellectual development, I would be the first to refuse to do anything for it," she assured her readers. 73 Lange agreed that educating women would provide a new feminine ideal, a fitting counterpart to the idealized "strong man" of Wilhelmine Germany. She envisioned a "strong woman, strong through all the means of human education, strong in the assertion of her innermost nature, whose essence is motherliness." By rooting a potentially subversive attribute such as strength in the feminine context of motherhood, she guaranteed that this development would not be risky. Although women needed the freedom to develop themselves, this freedom would be tempered by the process of education itself. "Only the educated woman knows that only as woman can she be victorious" and contribute to the "ethical progress of humanity," Lange asserted.74 The reconfiguration of femininity as a full partner to masculinity would necessarily have reverberations in the cultural sphere or ethical life in general. "The sexes complementing one another has until now only occurred in the home," Lange wrote. She believed that public life was "missing exactly that element that the family lacked before the woman became an equal companion." Outside the home, culture was one-sided, created by men. Lange cited the argument that the classical world, a "purely male" culture, declined because it was unable to foster women's development. The development and differentiation of the social roles of the sexes was, she thought, a marker of civilization. The overall trend was toward an increase in each sex's particularity: "the man becomes always more man, the woman always more woman." Although the first division of labor gave woman the house and man the world, the correct distribution would bring the bear complementary forces on the same object. Thus according to Lange women would eventually exert special influence in areas such as the church and the law.75 By cultivating the difference between the sexes, Lange argued, society would benefit from "traits that man never had nor can ever have. " 76 What she aspired to for women was "the highest ideal of ethical life, the free personality," which had long "seemed reserved for men." She observed that "whenever a thinker uses the word human [Mensch] in the higher sense, some phrase correspondingly betrays that only man is meant." For Lange the Frauenstudium was above all about the cultivation of feminine culture and finding a way for women to become human. 77

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Lange's own intellectual interests were piqued during her Pensionszeit, a year spent learning housework with a pastor's family after finishing school at the age of r6 in r864. As a merchant's daughter from an unintellectual milieu in Oldenburg, she absorbed the learned atmosphere of the house, where many university-educated men and theology students came and went. Lange was fascinated by the conversations she overheard but was disappointed to be left out of them. "The topics and tone of conversation changed as soon as it included the women," she recalled. She learned that just as "the men were given the places of honor at the table ... so there was also intellectually a kind of ai tabu, an area reserved for men." This surprised Lange, who at home had been accustomed to "neither a separation nor a different estimation of the sexes, much less to a separation of intellectual spheres." She recalled once overhearing a conversation between her uncle and the son of the house, a theology student. The conversation was about the lectures he was attending: ethics, dogma, philosophy ... So there was such a thing! An overjoyed young man could attend all that; it was even counted to his credit if he didn't skip it! And from that we were excluded as a matter of course, even when inner and outer need compelled us! I knew I would have to make my way through life, but I would have to rely on substitutes. To draw from the springs that stood open to even the dumbest man ... was refused me. Perhaps this ... was the hour of birth of the 'Frauenrechtlerin' (fighter for women's rights).7 8 Lange first set about pursuing her education through alternative means. Coming of age in r87r, she defied her guardian's wishes and went to Berlin to prepare for the teaching exam. 79 After passing the exam in r872 and obtaining a position in the home of a liberal parliamentarian, Lange embarked on an ambitious program of independent study with other women. By learning Latin and reading philosophy, Lange began to assemble the foundations of a Weltanschauung. True to the German academic tradition, she noted that "one cannot pick a Weltanschauung, one must experience it." Writing her autobiography, Lange ascribed to her involvement with the women's movement the same independence that had driven her to pursue an education. She came into the movement not as a follower but as a result of "a will that stirred my whole being." Her first encounter with the woman's movement was through the writings of John Stuart Mill, who left a less than favorable impression on her. He missed what Lange considered to be the main point: "that there were many things that only women could do that men couldn't do so well or not all." For her, equal rights [Gleichberechtigung] should be demanded "not because of the equality but of the inequality of the sexes." One-sided male culture, Lange felt, had to be completed through a female one. Two of her role models for female-created culture were Henriette and Franziska Tiburtius, the first female dentist and

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physician, respectively, in the country. Lange remembered that Henriette Tiburtius "was a woman through and through, and sure of it, and she acted according to her nature without reflection, indifferent to whether or not she reached over into the so-called 'male sphere."' 80 Lange's first organizational involvement with women's issues came through her work at a private girls' school from 1876 to 1891, which sparked her interest in the theoretical side of girls' education and led her to join the board of a Berlin female teachers' organization,Bl At the same time she was also making the right social connections and learning to put the woman question in a wider political context. Crown Princess Victoria (briefly Empress Friedrich in 1888) received her many times to discuss Victoria's plans for female education and vocational training. Lange met the liberal politician Karl Schrader and his wife Henriette, a niece of the pedagogue Frobel, at the turn of the 188os. The leading minds of what Lange called "Kulturliberalismus" (cultural liberalism) gathered at their home. These persons shared political as well as cultural ideas. Their common philosophy was, as Lange remembered it, that "any change in economic, social, political conditions could only be attained from the inside out, through discipline and education, through self-help." Social progress, Lange emphasized, was to come in this way and not in the form of a "socialist new order imposed from the outside. " 82 This idea was to become a cornerstone of her work within the women's movement. As Lange later recalled, the immediate impetus for putting these principles into action in the case of the Frauenstudium was the news that the liberal crown prince, upon whom the women's movement had pinned its hopes, had cancer and would not rule long. The prospect of William II as emperor led her and others to fear that a whole generation of women might be lost to a renewed climate of hostility toward women's issues. Together with several other women, Lange drafted a petition to the Prussian education ministry and house of deputies in late 1887. 83 The petition was based on an idea she had first had at the end of the 187os, that women must lead girls' schools, 84 and was accompanied by a pamphlet by Lange titled "The Higher Girls' School and Its Mission," later to be known as the "Yellow Brochure." In this booklet Lange began her argument by noting that the 1872 German conference of girls' school pedagogues had resolved to make girls' education fit their nature, although the conference had issued no formal statement of what their nature was. The group had also stressed the need to educate women for the sake of German men, so that they would not be bored by their wives. 85 Lange took issue with exactly this point, arguing that women needed to be educated for their own sake and for that of the coming generations, whose fate lay in their hands. In addition, female educa-

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tion should be based on the fact that while all women might not marry, "almost without exception they are involved in some way with the education of youth." For a girl's education it was essential that female influence outweigh male, Lange asserted.H 6 Men could continue to teach subjects where a "culture of reason" was needed, but women should teach the "ethical" subjects such as religion and German, even history, "those subjects in which ... the feminine should be educated. " 87 To train new and better female teachers, she called for Frauenhochschulen, meaning separate women's training institutes. 88 For six weeks after its publication in November r887, the "Yellow Brochure" received mostly positive attention from the press. 89 In addition to the public discussion it sparked, the pamphlet was significant for the fact that it accompanied the first formal appeal by a women's group for the improvement of female education and was to accompany many other petitions over the next few years. The years from r887 to 1894 saw the greatest number of petitions submitted to the Reichstag, state legislatures, and state education ministries on behalf of the Frauenstudium. After Lange's opening volley of r887, several other women's groups had followed suit, among them Kettler's Reform and the ADF. Although Lange had undertaken her r887 petition independent of the ADF, she worked closely with it in the coming years, joining its board in 1893. As a member of the ADF's Berlin branch, Lange allowed the ADF to use her brochure in its petition of r889, and she filed several more petitions in 1895, r896, and r898. 90 In her writings Lange spoke of the Frauenstudium in terms appropriate to women in general, thus claiming as her subject all women. Yet she was clearly not suggesting that all girls prepare for university study. Higher education was such an elite province in Germany that Lange did not have to mention explicitly to her readers that she had the middle class in mind. Instead she conceived of the Studentin in ethical terms, that is, she was interested in attracting women of certain character and intellectual merit. This is clearest in her comments on the occasion of the first group of young women to complete Lange's own university-preparatory course (Gymnasialkurse) in r 896. The course had grown out of a program that Lange had established in r889 together with physician Franziska Tiburtius that came after the higher girls' school, instilling in girls "the intellectual discipline that in the boys' schools is attained mainly through mathematics and ancient languages." At first the courses tried to combine general and vocational education; in r893 the curriculum was modified to lead to the Abitur. Women, she said, had to achieve the same as men but did not have to take the same path in doing so. Her program would only take older girls, at least r6 but preferably r8, who no longer needed special care for "physiological reasons" (i.e. were past puberty). Lange noted with disapproval that

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Kettler's Gymnasium for girls in Karlsruhe admitted I 2-year-olds. 91 As will be discussed in the next chapter, physicians believed that any education beyond the pablum of the typical higher girls' school curriculum would irrevocably damage girls' health and reproductive development. Thus Lange was looking for mature young women who already had some idea of what they wanted to do with their lives, or who at the very least suspected that they might have to provide for themselves. She also sought minds that could meet the standards of the German university system and often stressed that only "qualified" women, meaning those who had passed the German Abitur, should study. 92 Lange had expounded further on her philosophy of female education at the I889 opening of the Gymnasia/kurse's predecessor, the Realkurse, which aimed to provide a more general education, not solely a universitytrack one. Women of the "educated circles," she proposed, had intellectual and spiritual needs as well as material ones. She believed that women yearned to remake themselves but lacked the tools. As a corrective to the current female role, she offered education as a way to develop one's individuality and world view. Fears that education would result in "crazy" women were misplaced, she wrote. "Women have rightly emphasized that it is the frivolity of the idle, who have no higher interests and who fritter away their time with social pleasures, which destroys the home, not the yearning for true education." If girls were raised to think for themselves, Lange argued, the family could only profit. She scolded fathers as well as mothers for treating daughters as "ornaments" of the home. One result of this was that girls grew up to believe the myth of the women's unsuitedness to mental work and lacked self-confidence. Logical thinking was the province of both sexes, she stressed. The Realkurse would be a first step toward making this a reality. The courses would not spoon-feed girls the results of scholarship but prepare the way to it. "We hope to stimulate thinking," she told the audience. The men of Berlin's Central Academic Association (Wissenschaftlicher Zentralverein) had sponsored the Realkurse, and Lange's comments on this occasion are a prime example of how she had mastered the concepts of the German scholarly tradition. 93 The spirit of open inquiry and wide-ranging free study that characterized this tradition, though, collided sharply with the issue of "appropriate" fields of study for women, which Lange and her allies defined in terms of two professions: medicine and teaching. Around the same time that Lange brought up the question of better-educated female teachers, Mathilde Weber raised the issue of female physicians independently in her I 8 8 8 book, Arztinnen fur Frauenkrankheiten (Female Physicians for Female Illnesses), which achieved a wide reception through numerous printings and reviews in the women's press. Weber, the widow of a Tiibingen professor, was a leading

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figure in the Swabian women's movement whose view overlapped with those of Lange on many issues. In contrast to Lange, Weber kept her arguments simple and on a practical level, calling for women-only tracks in the Gymnasium and medical school to train female doctors. She reassured her readers that although only a minority of women would ever want to study medicine, the need for female physicians was real and acute. The commonly supposed and reported reluctance of women to undergo gynecological examinations by male doctors gave the issue of female physicians its urgency and immediacy. A product of modernizing medicine, such procedures were relatively new at the time, since traditionally physicians had not done such invasive physical examinations. A review of the book in Neue Bahnen praised the women who studied medicine in Zurich and had "overcome their own modesty in order to save that of countless others." In the same spirit Weber made an emotional appeal "above all to the noble men who wish to spare the feelings of their wives and daughters." The desire for modesty combined with a popular perception that the incidence of "female trouble" was on the rise produced a very powerful argument. In Zurich Weber met a Viennese woman who decided to study medicine when a "dear girlfriend" fell terminally ill after having refused to go to the doctor out of modesty. By giving the young student a worthwhile goal, medical study had also banished the girlish ennui she had felt on the ball circuit. "The young lady ... is blooming and healthy and appears by virtue of her inner satisfaction far younger ... than her 28 years," Weber reported approvingly. Weber was also careful to defend the motives of young women to study medicine from charges of a "desire for emancipation," praising their serious attitude toward "their difficult calling." Although the demands for female physicians and better-educated teachers were not new, both became fixtures in the ADF's petition campaign and eventually in Reform's petitions as well and led to the standard formulation in these appeals that the philosophical, which trained mostly teachers, and medical faculties at the university be opened to women. Weber appended to later editions of her book a detailed report on her visit with female students in Switzerland in the early r 89os. She painted the life of the women in Zurich in glowing terms. "I found them looking fresh and strong. All of them behaved with fine feminine decorum and tact, dressed simply, in no way extravagantly," Weber raved. "Where," she asked with some satisfaction, "was the extravagantly unfeminine behavior predicted by Professor Bischoff? where the feared male apparel and cigars? where the pale, nervous hermaphrodite grown gloomy from mental overexertion?" The presence of women in the classroom was also quite harmless for the male students and the University of Zurich, which had "deteriorated neither morally nor academically," Weber proclaimed. The main obstacles

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that the female students faced were the very ones that Weber proposed to remove: a lack of rigorous preparation for university study and social prejudice. "The majority of these female pupils lead a strict, hard-working life in order to make up for their poor preparatory education, often even in a truly cloistered loneliness when connections to family or girlfriends are lacking, out of fear or virile gossip." She held up the first female Swiss physician, Dr. Heim, as a role model for these women. Her success was legendary in Zurich. Dr. Heim, Weber reported, informed her that she had only needed assistance in her work once and, being of normal strength, thought that most women could handle the physical demands of the job. Heim's exemplary domestic life impressed Weber even more. She praised the "idyllic beautiful home of a female doctor who is at the same time the happiest, most conscientious spouse and tenderest mother of two strong, pretty children. " 94 Heim was Weber's ideal because she had managed to combine feminine domestic virtues with the pursuit of knowledge and the exercise of a profession. For both Lange and Weber, the Frauenstudium was a way to give women access to selected professions best suited to their nurturing qualities. By emphasizing only certain fields, Weber and Lange minimized misgivings about female competition and offered compelling arguments about the cultural and moral importance of women in these areas. In painting their picture of the Studentin, the two women offered reassurances about gender roles, insisting that education would enhance womanly values, not erode them. Perhaps Lange's experience of egalitarian treatment in her childhood and the Tiburtius's not caring if they stepped into the "male sphere" helped her to envision the paradox of the Frauenstudium that she formulated: women stepping outside the family without losing their feminine qualities. By explaining their motivation for doing so in terms of a drive for Bildung and personal development, Lange headed off the standard objections to female emancipation and gave the Frauenstudium the legitimacy of the German academic tradition. Her view of the woman question as an ethical one underscored the importance of education as well as the potential of woman's unique contributions to culture.

VI The positions that Otto and Dohm mapped out in the I 86os and 187os had important consequences for how Kettler and Lange would approach the issue twenty years later. A consensus on the Studentin emerged slowly from the work of all four women. On the question of which women should study, Kettler and Lange largely concurred that this was a middleclass issue, although Dohm and Kettler might have encouraged a wider

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range of women to seek higher education. Lange and Kettler had greater disagreements on the proper preparation for university study. Whereas Kettler thought it essential to appropriate the academic legitimacy of the Gymnasium, Lange preferred to offer remedial coursework to those young women who would be more certain of their decision to pursue university study than Gymnasium-age schoolgirls. The question of appropriate professions for women was even more hotly contested, as the following chapter will demonstrate. Eventually Kettler's proposal to allow women access to all professions was whittled down to the fields of medicine and teaching. All of the reformers discussed how industrialization had robbed women of their work in the home. The four women also agreed that education was a way to help women support themselves and keep them from having to marry for money. Yet the women's movement, as represented by Lange and the ADF, was unwilling to accept university admission without a guarantee that the Studentin would retain her "true womanhood." It was again the paradoxical nature of reformers' arguments for women's higher education that allowed Lange and others to use femininity as a major rationale for women's admission. When Otto and Dohm first discussed women's higher education, they pictured the Studentin in the context of the woman question, not in that of the university. The Frauenstudium, seen as a partial solution to the woman question, mirrored some of its inner tensions. For instance, the issue of female students as well as the woman question could be phrased in terms of either material need, as Kettler argued, or cultural development, as Lange did. Precisely become both Kettler and Lange came to the problem of the Frauenstudium through the woman question, they brought a particular conceptual vocabulary with them. As we shall see in the following chapter, this led to a gap in understanding between the women's movement and university and state officials. Although Lange was beginning to bridge this gap through her appeals to the German traditions of Bildung, it is fair to say that by the 189os two vocabularies to discuss the Studentin had developed side by side. One of these was that of the woman question, which focused on the Studentin as a representative of her sex, not as a member of the academy. The other was the university's rhetoric of academic citizenship, which measured maturity, independence, and honor, all defined in masculine terms, as prerequisities for study. Given the gendered nature of academic citizenship, the idea of a female student practically required a new discourse, the woman question, in order to circumvent the old. By the turn of the century, Lange's articulation of the paradox of the Frauenstudium had proven more persuasive than Kettler's. Political circumstances changed along with the arguments in favor of the Frauenstudium. In the 187os the brief liberal upswing fanned the flame of interest

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in the Frauenstudium, only to snuff it out at the end of the decade. Liberal ideology invited women to demand their admission to the university on the basis of a universal privilege. This idea, however, was largely foreign to the notion of academic citizenship. At the time, its underlying traditional ideas of membership outweighed its Enlightenment ideals of education and selfcultivation. The r89os in Germany have been characterized as a period of conservative party politics and corporatist political ideas. In the broadest sense, corporatism here meant an appeal to a politics based on groups, not the individual. It was the corporatist focus on the group that allowed Lange and the women's movement's arguments to resonate more widely. As mentioned at the outset of the chapter, one way to view feminism is as a way of making a claim for individual rights on the basis of membership in an excluded group, in this case women. Kettler clung to the liberal ideology of the past, while Lange was quicker to adopt the new political discourse. The way in which reformers envisioned the Studentin was embedded in a whole set of views about various aspects of Imperial German society, including gender roles, the state, and culture. The women examined in this chapter were debating more than just higher education. For the women's movement, the Frauenstudium was part of a larger project that reached beyond the woman question. Reformers' ideas about class, femininity, and culture touched on larger issues of the nature of social and ethical life. Ultimately these women were discussing and constructing a new way of belonging, a new definition of membership in realms long closed to their sex. In her study of the women's movement in Imperial Germany, Ann Taylor Allen argues that while the German women's movement never won the vote, "the creation of a distinctively female form of citizenship based on organized motherhood ... nonetheless provided an extremely useful basis for defining the expanding sphere and interests of middle-class women during the prewar era." 95 Arguably education was the sphere that expanded the most for middle-class women of this time. Female reformers poured tremendous energy and effort into the cause of the Frauenstudium, with unexpected consequences. Perhaps the women's movement invested so heavily in the Studentin because it saw in her its future. Auguste Schmidt fully expected every female student to recognize her debt to the women's movement and join out of sheer gratitude. But by r 898 she noted with dismay that "a not inconsiderable number of the studying women ... reap for themselves the rewards of our efforts without thinking it necessary to express their thanks by entering into the struggle. " 96 Of course several university-educated women did go on to play major roles in the women's movement, but they by no means constituted a majority of their classmates. As we shall see in later chapters, upon entering the university, women found a world for which the women's movement could not have prepared them and that it did not understand.

CHAPTER

3

"Our Universities Are Men,s Universities,, THE DEBATE OVER WOMEN'S ADMISSION, I

86 s-r 9 oo

We are at a critical time. The German people have other things to do besides undertaking risky experiments with women's higher education. Let us ensure above all that our men remain men! -Law professor Otto Gierke, 189i

I

Oskar Hartmann, professor at Zurich, returned from years abroad to find that women had been admitted to his university. This new "apparition," he wrote in r876, occasioned much comment. "Every day I heard people say: the female students just aren't women any more, or their studies won't amount to much. Many ... just ignored the matter." Hartmann was not surprised. "A goodly amount of common sense is necessary to judge a new apparition correctly," he explained. He compared the shocked professors to a group of persons who see a white mouse for the first time and struggle to identify it. "One would say: this is no mouse at all; the other: it is a mouse, but it is not white, just a little pale; the third thinks: what do I care about this beast?" 2 Reaction in Germany was little different, where naming the white mouse, the heretofore unknown Studentin, was a difficult and drawn-out task. For over forty years, from around 1865 up to and beyond the formal enrollment of women between 1900 and 1909, reformers, academics, and state officials debated what a Studentin would be. Would she be a student or a woman first? As described in the previous chapter, reformers saw female higher education as an answer to the "woman question" of the late nineteenth century. The women's movement campaigned for the female student as someone who would reach out to the community and help to heal the social ills of Wilhelmine Germany. What state officials, bound by more practical concerns, were prepared to concede will be discussed in the following chapter. Mediating between the state bureaucracy and the women's movement was the professoriate. The academic response was important for several reasons. First, in the battle of public opinion that ensued, professors were often pitted against

ss

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female reformers. Some professors were privately sympathetic, but except for those who stood up for individual women who wanted to study with them, few took an active role in the campaign for women's admission. Moreover professors, not state officials, were put in the position of publicly "responding," in newspaper articles, essays, and books, to demands that women's organizations made. Second, the power and influence of the individual professor were not limited to his classroom but could reach the state education ministry through faculty and senate votes on important issues. 3 The Frauenstudium was a particularly delicate issue because it directly challenged each professor in his own classroom. Thus state governments proceeded cautiously, often soliciting the opinions not only of the university rector and senate but also of the members of the individual faculties before reaching a decision. 4 What is most interesting about the professors is not so much their direct contribution to policy but rather how their participation in the discussion helped to shape the way in which the issue of female students was resolved. As explained above, the women's movement and the professoriate approached the issue of the Frauenstudium from vastly different perspectives. Where female reformers saw a solution to a social problem, academics saw a threat to the idea of academic citizenship described in Chapter One. The fact that German universities were all-male was intrinsic to the shared vision of the institution. In educating the young man, the university prepared him for his future place in society and also sought to instill in him a certain kind of bourgeois masculine identity. Female students would have no place in this project. In the clash between the rhetoric of the woman question and academic citizenship that ensued, two main questions emerged. The more central of these was simply whether women should be admitted to the university. Yet the decisive factor in whether they would be allowed to pursue higher education at all would prove to be the subjects that women were expected to study and the careers they were expected to pursue. This chapter examines the resolution of these two interrelated problems, which lasted over three decades. The initial discussion of women students spanned the period from about 1865, when a handful of women had begun to audit university lectures, to the end of the 187os, by which time women had been explicitly banned at nearly all German universities. During this part of the debate, reformers focused on establishing the legitimacy of the woman question, which was itself at issue. The first section of the chapter details the themes that emerged here and colored later exchanges. The rest of the chapter deals with the period from 1887 to 1900, when the debate revived after a lull and reached its peak. These years encompassed the beginning of systematic agitation by the women's movement for the admission of women, as well as the first cases of women allowed to audit courses

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on an experimental basis since the early I87os. Here I will look at how academics deployed the rhetoric of academic citizenship in response to the women's movement's calls for female enrollment. The question of women's admission, however, could not be settled without considering what they would study. The issue of female physicians came to dominate the debate from I887 onward and was at the core of a compromise between the woman question and academic citizenship. The chapter then concludes with an examination of the accommodation reached between the social demands made by the women's movement and the German academy's view of membership in its own body. Through decades of debate, the question of the Frauenstudium became inextricably interwoven with more general issues and anxieties along the way. The German university of the I89os was undergoing tremendous changes associated with the development of the modern research university, among them an increase in enrollments and the rise of new disciplines, such as psychology. Moreover, the problems of professional competition, overcrowding, academic standards, and radical politics that worried German academics also attached themselves to the question of female students. In turn these changes placed tremendous pressure on the ethos of academic citizenship and its individual components, in particular academic freedom and the student's relationship to scholarship. The crisis of the university also reflected, if imperfectly, a new understanding of politics and the nature of the public in Wilhelmine Germany. The rise of corporatist thinking, which included a new emphasis on what one might think of anachronistically as identity politics, directly affected the way in which the admission of women was eventually conceived and implemented. II

Many of the issues surrounding the Frauenstudium after I887 had an interesting preview in a series of exchanges in the early I87os. As explained in the previous chapter, this first discussion of whether women should study was precipitated by three factors: the stirrings of an organized women's movement beginning in r86 s; the news of the admission of women at the University of Zurich in I867; and the reception of John Stuart Mill's writings in Germany after I 869. While the last chapter detailed Hedwig Dohm's writings in this early part of the debate of the I 87os, here I will sketch their contemporary context more fully to include the arguments to which she was responding. The discussion of the woman question and, by extension, women's education, was not the province of the women's movement alone. Other social reformers and intellectuals were quick to address these matters, and in the

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discussion over female higher education, professors naturally had an influential voice. The question of the Frauenstudium divided Germans into traditionalist and reformist camps, by no means always along gender lines. Several professors were sympathetic to the problem; some outspoken women were not. In 1892. Adele Crepaz, an Austrian writer, warned against the dangers of female emancipation in a call for women to return to their natural occupations as mothers and wives. Ten years later the Austrian novelist Sidonie Grunwald Zerkowitz held several speeches warning against "masculinizing study" that would decrease women's attractiveness on the marriage market and lead to devastating competition with (married) men. 5 Early in the debate, traditionalists rarely invoked the ideals of academic citizenship that defined the German university, challenging instead the premise of reformers' arguments, which rested upon the existence of the woman question. Thus the nature of women's abilities, both mental and physical, the question of professional competition, and the political implications of educated women were all important topics in these years. The first volley in this exchange came from Hermann Jakoby, professor of theology at Konigsberg, who reacted strongly in a twenty-page booklet to the 1869 translation of Mill's On the Subjection of Woman. In 1871 Jakoby rebutted Mill's writings point by point, arguing that long studies in adolescence would harm girls' health, not to mention the damage to their souls and the loss of their naivete and charm. After studying, women would become like men and lose their attractiveness. jakoby argued that the rounded form of the female body itself was a sign that woman was meant for a peaceful existence, while the angular, strong lines of man showed his ability to work. Women, he concluded, would not enrich science, having neither talent nor interest in it. Another professor of theology, Philip von Nathusius, published a commentary on the woman question at the same time as jakoby. Nathusius took issue with Protestant commentators more conservative than himself and argued that if a woman absolutely needed to work, there were certain professions to which she could be admitted, such as nursing (as a member of a Protestant nursing order), midwifery, and elementary school teaching. 6 The following year Dohm responded to both Nathusius and Jakoby in Was die Pastoren von den Frauen denken (What Pastors Think of Women). She attacked Nathusius for seeing woman's calling as limited to the home and allowing work outside it only for the unfortunate few who remained single. Dohm was particularly incensed by Nathusius's casual dismissal of the need for advanced education for women. 7 In the writings of all three authors, however, the question of the Frauenstudium in particular had not yet taken center stage. The discussion of new professions for women touched only peripherally on what was vaguely referred to as "higher studies." But the salvos of polemical books and tracts were typical of the materials to be used in this long discussion over female higher education.

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One of the most influential arguments used against women's study rested on the seemingly irrefutable evidence offered by the differences in male and female anatomy. The most prominent exponent of this view, and the first to lay it out systematically, was the Munich professor of anatomy Theodor von Bischoff, who published Das Studium und die Ausiibung der Medicin durch Frauen (The Study and Practice of Medicine by Women) in 1872. Writing over twenty years later, Arnold Dodel, professor at the University of Zurich, a self-described women's rights activist, attested to Bischoff's influence in the 187os: "a word from his mouth or his pen was taken as the authoritative truth. " 8 It was precisely the importance of Bischoff's book that later drove Dohm and others to respond to it. Bischoff set out to prove that the study of medicine by women was "contrary to nature." The differences between the sexes were not limited to physical characteristics but rather permeated "every bone, every muscle, every organ, every nerve." According to Bischoff, studies in comparative anatomy had shown woman's smaller brain and thus her basic academic incompetence. He explained in great detail the differences between male and female skulls and brains, pointing out that in every race the male brain outweighed the female. In an addendum to the text, Bischoff enumerated and documented all of the physical differences between the sexes' body weights, proportions, nervous systems, and digestive tracts, among others. 9 From these physical differences Bischoff drew conclusions about women's intellectual capacities. "The male mind is deeper ... the female mind judges things more by appearances ... man is the creative, woman the conservative principle of human society," he wrote. Women were unsuited to the duties of a physician, as they lacked both the necessary intellectual flexibility and physical strength. For example, female doctors would be incapacitated by menstruation and pregnancy. Bischoff emphasized that physicians were not craftsmen working according to a set pattern but rather scientific researchers, creative people who needed to think on their feet. Women could not bear the rigorous education necessary for this, especially since developing an adolescent girl's brain would come at the cost of her reproductive organs, as was widely believed at the time. Moreover, he argued, most girls would not know if they would remain unmarried until they reached the age of twenty-five or twenty-six, by which time it would be too late for their education. 10 Bischoff bolstered his scientific arguments with social and moral ones based on contemporary ideas about female nature and sensibilities. The study of anatomy would ruin feminine modesty and delicacy. "I can think of nothing more repulsive and disgusting than a young girl occupied at the dissection table," he declared. Bischoff also appealed to morality. How could anatomical lectures be given to mixed audiences? Would it be proper for young men and women in their "strongest and most lustful years" to

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attend suggestive medical lectures together? Bischoff even went so far as to say that it was "impossible" that these coeducational lectures would not give cause for sexual advances. For the students, the presence of many pretty and voluptuous girls in the lectures would be a constant cause for distraction .... The female students, though, would either fall prey to the continuous pressure on the part of the male public or, if they were to resist it, the inevitable consequence would be hostility, insults, mockery, quarrels among the students. 11

In short Bischoff held the admission of women to be not only detrimental to the university but dangerous to "the moral well-being of the male participants in the worst way." Women might be suited to be nurses, but they would never be able to contribute to medical science and art. His concluding argument was that men dominated society because they had literally conquered women in the course of history and proven their superiority. 12 The women's movement as a whole did not take a strong public stand against Bischoff. 13 Among the female reformers only Dohm did, responding to him in her 1874 book, Die wissenschaftliche Emanzipation der Frau (The Scholarly Emancipation of Woman). Dohm did not hesitate to make her points in a bitingly personal manner. Speculating on what would have become of Bischoff's career as an anatomist had he been born a woman, she asked rhetorically, "How and when, Herr von Bischoff, do you think your anatomical genius would have shown through?" Dohm also skewered the sense of male superiority that infused Bischoff's work. Men's longer legs might make them better-suited than women to be mail carriers, she reasoned sarcastically, but to link this physical trait to women's ability to learn Greek and Latin at the Gymnasium was illogical. Dohm countered Bischoff's comments on women's incapacitation by menstruation and pregnancy by noting men's susceptibility to rheumatism and gout. She further pointed out that no one had ever reproached Bismarck for taking some time off each year for a "nervous condition." Dohm then concluded that "if one bars women from study because of their insufficient intellectual capacity, then one would have to shut the university doors to all men of average and insignificant talent." 14 Dohm rebutted Bischoff point by point in her nearly 200-page work. Since Bischoff had drawn parallels between the sexual division of labor and the daily work performed by each sex, she first attacked the idea that men and women did different kinds of work. "Men sew, cook, wash, iron .... In aristocratic houses one finds instead of a female cook and a female housekeeper, a male cook and a male housekeeper." 15 In a similar fashion she disputed Bischoff's polarized characterization of male and female character traits. "Could you, Herr v.[on] Bischoff, imagine the female owner of a tavern as meek, delicate, patient, etc.?" 16 What Dohm found especially infuri-

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ating was his contention that nothing had kept woman from advanced studies except her own inferiority. She then explained in detail the ways in which women had been subtly discouraged from pursuing higher learningY Despite her own lack of a formal scientific education, Dohm took issue with Bischoff's phrenological conclusions, especially the "localization of mental powers" at a time when brain functions were still largely unknown. Furthermore she accused Bischoff of a major violation of the scientific method by citing only those studies that agreed with his theory. Other scientists such as Cuvier, Sommering, and Quetelet had drawn different conclusions about the meaning of the biological difference between the sexes, she noted. Dohm was also quick to mention Professor Reclam's study of some famous talented men, among them Gauss, Byron, and Cuvier, all of whom had very small brains. Assuming for the sake of argument that Bischoff was right about the female brain being smaller, she hypothesized ironically that, in women, the brain had perhaps become a "vestigial" organ through disuse. "Would it be a miracle that the mental eyes that had never been brought near the light of scholarship no longer could see?" she asked. 18 Dohm listed five of Bischoff's specific objections to female physicians and dismissed them one by one. First, Bischoff was firmly convinced that medical studies would disgust women. But, she asked, was that revulsion any less sickening than what nurses must bear? As to Bischoff's point that medical study and practice would erode female modesty, Dohm retorted that what really hurt female modesty was to have male doctors treat women. "I know how much worry and tears it costs even coarse women before they make the decision to consult a [male] doctor in the case of female diseases." She also attacked the false modesty and sexual innocence that women were supposed to cultivate, noting that even schoolboys were given classical texts mentioning things "that the most obscene and impudent writers of modern centuries never would have dared express." Bischoff's third objection was that women were by their very nature sickly. Dohm cited statistics to show that men took more sick days than women, and argued that women missed no more time for pregnancy than middle-aged men suffering from chronic ailments like rheumatism. The crudeness of the (male) students was another obstacle Bischoff believed to stand in the way of men and women ever sitting on the same auditorium bench. Yet Dohm was able to quote several women students as well as the opinion of the Zurich medical faculty to the contrary. The last reason Bischoff gave was woman's lack of authority. Dohm shot back with the observation that even directors could be bossed around at home. "I should think that the woman who has enough energy and strength to direct even [her husband] the director and ... obstinate servants, such a woman will also know to command obedience in a hospital," she argued. 19 In concluding, Dohm criticized Bischoff and others

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for invoking the laws of nature as proof of why women should not study and affirmed her own belief in the power of science to prove women's capabilities. 20 Outside the women's movement, Bischoff's arguments did not go unchallenged. Several Swiss professors who had recently taught coeducational classes in Zurich responded. In articles that originally appeared in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung and were later published as Das Studieren der Frauen (Women's University Study) in r 872, Victor Bohmert, professor at the University of Zurich, reported no unpleasant incidents in his six years of experience with coeducation. Bohmert was a prominent liberal German political economist and writer on social and economic issues. He pointed out that Bischoff had never taught a woman and had vowed never to do so. Although a handful of women had audited courses at the University of Zurich previously, women were formally admitted in r 8 67. In the medical faculty enrollment grew from one female auditor and 107 male students in r864 to 51 women out of 208 students in the summer of r872, or roughly one-quarter of the total. 21 Bohmert recalled that the first four or five years of the Frauenstudium in Zurich were a complete success, with well-prepared women and no "incidents" with their male fellow students. It was in fact the female students who insisted that a mandatory entrance examination be instituted to keep less-qualified women out and thus end the gossip about women being less qualified than men, he noted. 22 Arguing that only a colleague in the same specialty could dispute Bischoff, Bohmert cited the 1872 book on the Frauenstudium by Professor Hermann, who taught physiology at Zurich and had experienced no problems in adjusting to women students. Professor v[on] Bischoff finds it ... difficult to fathom how one could present certain parts of the anatomy and such to men and women without embarrassment .... The loftiness of scholarship and the seriousness of the lecture do not allow such sentiments to arise in teachers and pupils. Of course every joke, every double-entendre is omitted more strictly than usual in a lecture here under such circumstances; this omission is easy for all of us, and we gladly do without this harmful spice. 23

Relying on Hermann, Bohmert disputed Bischoff's ideas about brain weight, calling into question the relationship between brain weight and mental ability. Bohmert also offered the theory that perhaps the brain was developed through use like any other muscle. He summarily dismissed Bischoff's less scientific objections. Did women not exert themselves physically in agriculture and in the kitchen, thus proving their strength and stamina, Bohmert asked. He pointed out that the interruptions in a female doctor's work caused by pregnancy would be no different than men interrupting their work through trips. Replacements could easily be arranged. As for the dif-

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ficulty of a married woman practicing medicine, Bohmert observed that midwives had always combined family and work. 24 Critiques of Bischoff by German academics surfaced more slowly. In 1879, the Breslau professor of medicine Wilhelm Alexander Freund attacked Bischoff in an essay in favor of the Frauenstudium and professional careers for unmarried women. A year later Dr. Ludwig Schwerin wrote a short book supporting female physicians and casting doubt on Bischoff's theory of brain size. Although Schwerin acknowledged that the idea continued to be influential, he again emphasized the case of the mathematician Gauss's brain, which weighed less than that of a washerwoman who died at the same time. 25 Bischoff's argument was largely disproved by the mid188os by other scientists. Moreover, it did not help Bischoff's case that after his death in 1882 his own brain was found to have weighed less than that of the average woman's. 26 Still, the broader argument that he made about women's physical difference and consequent inferiority remained strongly in place. Traditionalists continued to cite Bischoff into the 189os. In addition to the scientific arguments brought up by Bischoff, another important issue that became permanently linked to Frauenstudium was the fear of female competition in the workplace. Those opposed to women's higher education clung to the ideology of separate spheres and painted the employment of women as a necessary but temporary deviation from this norm. "For us all women's work is undertaken out of necessity," declared the political economist Lorenz von Stein. Dismissing female emancipation as disruptive of the social order, Stein believed that "in our time the limits of women's work lie not in the laws but in the true nature and destiny of women." Work outside the domestic sphere may have been an economic necessity for some women, but work could never truly fulfill a woman as it could a man. In addition to being out of her place, the working woman was for Stein "the competitor of the man, and her earnings will always ... drive down the [male] worker's wage." Hedwig Dohm downplayed this consideration, noting, "if men are really the superior sex ... then they need not fear competition." Dohm observed that men always sought to keep women out of their own profession but thought they were perfectly wellsuited to others. The historian Heinrich von Sybel, she pointed out, maintained that women should study medicine rather than any other subject. In turn Bischoff believed women should not become doctors but had no doubts about allowing them to become postal workers. The Postmaster General, though, was of the opinion that women were suited to anything except the postal service, Dohm concluded archly. 27 Some supporters of the Frauenstudium saw competition in the labor market as inevitable. In his presidential address at the University of Bern in November 1873,28 the Swiss economist Hans von Scheel addressed the fear

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of female competition. He traced the emergence of the "woman question," and with it that of women's university study, to the progress of industrialization. As work was removed from the home, women were forced from their jobs. Combined with "the increased difficulty of marrying," this resulted in a "surplus" of female labor, which had to be put to work. Scheel dismissed fears of women competing with men for jobs requiring university training, asking if the men of the middle and upper classes had more to fear than male wage workers. Clearly some sacrifice would be needed to solve the woman question, which Bohmert called "one of the most difficult social problems" of his time.H Scheel made the Frauenstudium and its causes the subject ofhis festive speech precisely because the University of Bern had seen an exponential increase in the number of female students that semester. All but one of the twenty-one women that semester had just come to Bern from Zurich with, as Scheel emphasized, "the best grades." The reason for the sudden appearance of the women from Zurich was the order of the Russian Tsar mentioned in the previous chapter. 30 Many of the same professors at Swiss universities who had defended the Frauenstudium before the Tsar's decree restated their support. Bohmert published another book in 1874, as did Hermann. The Zurich professors of medicine Frey and Biermer reported good experiences with female studentsY Nevertheless, the story of the Russian women in Zurich added a note of explicitly political and moral suspicion to women's higher education that lasted well into the next century. Out of this first discussion and brief experience with the Frauenstudium

arose several themes that would continue to inform the debate throughout the coming decades. The most central of these was the concern with identifying the true nature of woman and the implications of this for her place in the family and society in general. In an era in which gender roles were strictly divided and hierarchical, suggesting that women could do something formerly reserved for men called everything else into question. Blurring these lines also brought issues of morality into play. The question of whether women were capable of higher learning soon settled into an argument about the relationship between anatomy and intellect. Did women's sexual difference imply a mental one as well? This issue could not be settled without some thought as to which careers women might pursue. Medicine was one of the most hotly contested fields. Reformers thought that women should study medicine because it was a subject with immediate social and cultural resonance. Not only would female doctors be provided with a job, but they would also be solving concrete social problems and, by devoting themselves exclusively to women and children, uphold moral standards and the line of sexual difference. Traditionalists opposed the entry of women into medicine on scientific grounds that the field itself supplied. Bischoff's

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argument about female inferiority represented the latest medical research at the time. Fear of competition was found everywhere but was especially intense in medicine, where physicians were still trying to establish a monopoly on medical practice in the r87os vis-a-vis midwives, folk healers, and others. The example of the female students in Zurich galvanized all sides in the debate but worked, at least until the Russian women's expulsion, largely in favor of the reformers. The authority of Swiss professors who had taught female students was virtually unassailable at a time when German professors lacked any practical experience in the matter. Neue Bahnen reported that an anonymous Swiss professor, later identified as Bohmert, had responded to Bischoff in pages of the Augsburger Allgemeine. 32 In a later issue a woman cited Bohmert's book as a counterargument to Bischoff, reasoning that if the latter had never had any female students, how could he know anything? 33 Other organizations for women, such as the vocationally oriented Lette Association, also followed the question of the Russian women in Zurich with interest. 34 The biological arguments that Bischoff put forth were certainly powerful. As Dohm did, reformers could only rebut them by on the one hand arguing that science had not yet really tested what women could achieve and on the other hand reaffirming their own faith in the power of science to do so. Reports of experience in Zurich explicitly disproved the "moral" objections that Bischoff had to women in the classroom and implicitly attested to women's capabilities. After the 1873 decree of the Tsar, all efforts on behalf of the Frauenstudium were undermined. Not only did discussion of the matter quickly die down, but as we shall see in the following chapter, the decree resulted in a crackdown on the very few female auditors present at German universities. Yet perhaps more was at work here. The female claims on the universalist rhetoric of Germany's liberal heyday in the late r86os and early r87osthe early writings of Hedwig Dohm discussed in the previous chapter, for example-were misplaced. Most members of liberal political parties were not feminists and did not concede the legitimacy of the woman question. This left the German middle-class women's movement in an awkward position. Although the women's movement was essentially an outgrowth of the liberal one, the former was not considered "equal enough" to stake a claim based on universal subjecthood. At the same time, women were excluded a priori from the particularist notion of academic citizenship. To complicate matters even further, women such as Dohm used the language of liberalism to demand admission on the basis of a universal privilege that was antithetical to the self-understanding of academic citizenship. Pushed to formulate a uniform policy on women, the universities of the I 87os found it easier to ban women altogether than to rethink the identity of the student. Twenty years later, the problem would not be solved so simply.

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III

The physical exclusion of women from university halls put an end to much of the public discussion surrounding the matter as well. In broad terms this silence overlapped with a general malaise afflicting German social reform groups in this period. The conservative climate induced by Bismarck's "second founding" of the Reich, his break with the liberals, and the antisocialist laws affected the women's movement, too.JS In the r89os, a new general willingness to examine social questions fed renewed interest in the Frauenstudium. The contours of the discussion, though, had changed. Supporters of women's study now emphasized the very qualities, such as emotion and intuition, that had made women inadmissible to the university, and by extension to public life and work, in the r87os. The reason that reformers could do this was that while they had not gained entrance to the university for women in this initial discussion, they had succeeded in the larger project of establishing the legitimacy of the more general discourse of the Frauenfrage. The validity of the woman question had been at the heart of the first exchanges surrounding the Frauenstudium in the late r86os and early r87os. For example, in discussing the reform of girls' education, Virchow had suggested that women merely needed to be taught to be better housewives. 36 By disputing women's need for higher education, traditionalists had not needed to invoke the ideal of academic citizenship. Public discussion took a different direction when the women's movement embarked on a concentrated campaign to petition state governments and the Reichstag, beginning in r887. 37 By that time, most middle-class men had accepted the legitimacy of the woman question and with it the need for some improvement in female education. 38 In responding to the women's movement's flurry of petitions and writings, professors now turned to the rhetoric of academic citizenship to justify their opinions. In this section I will first broadly sketch the forums in which the debate occurred in this period. Then I will examine two individual responses to the Frauenstudium, a traditional and a progressive one, to show how ideas about academic citizenship and the woman question collided within a single person's opinion. Following this, I will turn to the crisis of academic citizenship and how this shaped discussion of the Frauenstudium. The university of the r89os however was quite different from that of twenty years before, and it was this change that ultimately helped to make the admission of women possible. Agitation by reformers continued throughout the r 89os. Articles, pamphlets, and books in favor of the Frauenstudium appeared.J9 As James Albisetti points out, at this time members of the women's movement and its supporters were turning out encyclopedic works documenting the historical achievements of women in order to disprove the standard argument

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that women had contributed nothing to the progress of civilization. In 1894, Elise Oelsner compiled a list of female achievements over the centuries. Hermann Schelenz wrote a history of women in medicine from ancient times to the present. 40 In fact a recitation of the achievements of learned women throughout history was a standard argument in many of the books and pamphlets on this topic. 41 Reaction to the writings of the women's movement took several forms. The idea of female students captured journalistic interest. Newspapers covered reformers' lectures on the subject, and the press reported regularly on the first Studentinnen who began to appear at the university in the second half of the decade. 42 Helene Lange sparked an intense discussion in 1887 with her widely-read "Yellow Brochure," which accompanied a petition from Lange and four other women to the Prussian education ministry and parliament. Later she recalled that "in the next six weeks many of the large newspapers carried long, front-page articles on [the brochure]; speeches were held for and against it, and Berlin public schools were stirred into an uproar." The daily press, though, she remembered, was largely in favor of her booklet, which proposed a specifically female contribution in certain tasks outside the domestic arena, especially in girls' education. 43 In covering the Frauenstudium, the women's press reached out to "outside" opinion and engaged the mainstream press. Hedwig Kettler published the favorable comments of Swiss academics in her periodical, Frauenberuf, 44 which also witnessed a particularly pointed exchange with the conservative German newspaper Die Grenzboten. 45 As the case of the "Yellow Brochure" shows, petitions were another way of keeping the subject of the Frauenstudium before the public. Several women's organizations engaged in a concerted petition campaign aimed at both the Reichstag and state parliaments. Between 1893 and 1903 the Reichstag mentioned or discussed the question at least seventeen times and the Prussian diet at least nineteen times. 46 Nonetheless the response was often disappointing. A telling example is the ADF's mass petition of the early 189os, which had to be resubmitted three times before the interior minister decided that the Reich was not competent to decide this issue after all. 47 The Frauenstudium never really developed into a party-political issue. 48 Likewise it drew little in the way of an explicitly religious response. The liberal views of the Berlin Protestant theologian Adolf von Harnack, whose own daughter Agnes would later study, contrasted sharply with the violently opposed views of many theological faculties. Catholics also were slow to comment. 49 Instead the debate was fixed on a different level of political power and contested by state education ministries, academics, and the women's movement. As Albisetti has noted, petitions were unsuccessful in parliament but stimulated public discussion nonetheless. 50

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The academic response to the reformers' arguments covered the wide spectrum of opinion from progressive to traditional. These labels refer not just to whether a professor thought that women should be allowed to study but also to the kinds of reasons he gave for this. Here we will examine one representative from each extreme. The Berlin art historian Hermann Grimm can be characterized as progressive both because he favored the higher education of women under certain circumstances and because he was willing to try to reconcile the woman question with the demands of academic citizenship. Felix Lindner, a philologist at Rostock, represents the traditionalist position. Opposing the Frauenstudium absolutely except in cases of truly extraordinary talent, he refused to compromise academic citizenship, which he described in corporatist language very similar to that employed by Erdmann in the first chapter. Hermann Grimm gave a detailed exposition of his views on the Frauenstudium in the Nationai-Zeitung in 1892. Although Grimm rather grudgingly supported the admission of women to selected areas of study, he could not rid himself of the belief that women would nonetheless remain innately inferior. 5 1 He set out to address the problem from the perspectives of the national interest, the university, and the women themselves. This division alone demonstrated that Grimm had already conceded a certain legitimacy to women's needs and that he was willing to attempt to accommodate academic citizenship to them. First, Grimm turned his attention to the university and the needs of the state. Certainly it was in the national interest for women to be better educated, Grimm wrote, but did that mean that they should be admitted to the university as well? The very function of the university was to turn out "doctors, preachers, judges, state officials .. ,. or teachers." Since women could not aspire to those professions most closely linked to the state, the ministry, law, and civil service, it would be a question of admitting them only to the medical and philosophical faculties. Grimm felt it was clear that women doctors were needed and could only be trained at universities. On the other hand, female teachers were also needed, and their training should be improved. Whether teacher training should occur at the university, though, was another question. The main argument against it, Grimm explained, was not a lack of room or need for better-educated [gelehrten] teachers. Instead the problem was coeducation itself, which was "unwholesome." Grimm also believed that "the nature of the lectures could not be the same for both. " 52 Yet his general conclusion was that a case could in fact be made for the state providing young women with an education to earn a living as it did young men. This shows that although he continued to be concerned about the impact of women on the university, he had accepted part of the women's movement's critique of liberalism.

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Admitting women to the university would cause some conflicts of principle. Grimm explained that if he had women in his lecture audience, he would feel the need to change how he expressed himself. Not just with respect to all the kinds of nakedness that are impossible to avoid with art historical things, but also with regard to the train of thought. A public teacher must give himself up to his auditorium. A connection of souls must occur. This spiritual harmony of feeling ... would demand a completely different language for a mixed auditorium ... than if one were to speak to young men alone. Yet rather than adjust his style, Grimm planned simply to ignore any women. Female students, he said, he would treat "as if they were not there" and instead would "see the [male] students under all circumstances as those with whom I must make myself understood." 53 Grimm's way of upholding academic standards in dealing with women was to render the latter invisible. Here he refused to compromise the principles of Wissenschaft for the woman question. In practice, though, Grimm would prove unable simply to ignore the women. Six years later he would again use the pages of the NationalZeitung to announce that, although he continued to support the Frauenstudium, he no longer wished to allow women into his lectures, claiming that strain of addressing a mixed audience was too great. 54 But in 1892 Grimm believed that the question of whether coeducation at the university benefited both sexes must remain open, as Germany had no practical experience in the matter yet. He suggested that a few experiments with serious female auditors were needed. Coeducation, though, was potentially the biggest threat to academic citizenship that Grimm saw. It would be "unthinkable" to force professors to admit women, but just as unthinkable for professors not to be able to admit women in spite of "old bans." Here the academic freedom of the professors and prospective female students clearly conflicted, and the professors won. In his essay Grimm hardly mentioned academic freedom for women. Instead he concentrated on reaffirming the primacy of male students. Never can it be forgotten, however, that the university belongs to the young men and that the German student is one of the noblest blossoms of our people's life. Nowhere does the student occupy such a position as in Germany. Only here do the state and the public voice give them the right to represent the opinion of the whole German youth. It would be insupportable to change the universities in such a way that the least bit would be lost from this trait of the German student. It could not be tolerated that next to our students Studentinnen swagger, that they play a role in the assemblies, where humor and seriousness mingle. Still, he thought that women would get a better education at university than at special institutions. 55 But women were welcome only if they could measure up to the male standard and did not change it.

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The need to admit women, Grimm believed, was an imperative of the times, which demanded ever more attention to reason and justice. Gone were the days he recalled from his youth "when the liberal movement ... began, that the women were naturally active here, without ever leaving their housewifely domain." He seemed almost disappointed that liberalism taken this turn. 56 Now, however, women could not be denied the opportunity to prove their hitherto unknown abilities. Even so, Grimm echoed the feelings of reformers such as Helene Lange, who insisted that academicallytrained women would not threaten or change the nature of the German woman. He reassured his readers by observing that "it will always be the case in Germany that the mother who has not studied, with her sons, who know more than she, may remain the model of the German woman." Furthermore, women would only occasionally compete in public life with men. He strongly believed that it was necessary "that public offices that open to men after their examinations remain closed to women, even when they have passed the same examination." The main reason he gave for this was that public life demanded a certain "brutal defense" of which "even strong women" were incapable. "This weakness lies in the nature of women," Grimm concluded. 57 Letting women onto the playing field, in his view, did not mean they would necessarily play all positions. Felix Lindner, professor of Romance and English philology at Rostock, defended a more traditional and undifferentiated position in r 897. The University of Rostock had just begun its experiment with female students in the winter semester of I 89 5-1896, when a small group of women were allowed to audit. 58 While Lindner conceded the existence of the woman question, he was deeply opposed to the remedies that the women's movement proposed, in particular the Frauenstudium. First, he found the claim of women's intellectual equality problematic. Women, Lindner wrote, simply could not absorb themselves as deeply in their studies as men. "No one can dispute that the female mind is of a different nature than the male ... that the female mind prefers to occupy itself with petty things, that it finds it difficult to maintain a broad perspective," he wrote. Lindner averred that his experience reading women's essays and listening to their speeches only confirmed his opinions. As for the other main argument of the women's movement, the necessity of careers for unmarried women, he observed that teaching was already overcrowded. Moreover he doubted whether the state would create a large number of advanced girls' schools or Gymnasien for girls where these female teachers could be employed. In fact, all subjects of study were already overfilled with men, Lindner maintained. He pronounced the ominous warning that history showed that whenever women had misused or overstepped their freedom, they had been pushed back and had to launch new battles to regain it.

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Lindner demolished the claims of the women's movement most efficiently with arguments based on academic citizenship. His description of the education of a university student strongly stressed, as did the manuals examined in Chapter One, the importance of self-cultivation and identification with masculine models. At the Gymnasium, pupils experienced antiquity vicariously by reading classical texts. At the university, the student passed through the middle ages. "The duels take the place of jousting, the service of love is not lacking, and in happily carousing, [the student] tries to imitate the good drinker, our forefathers, more seldomly, luckily, the monk who in [his] lonely cell trains his tortured brain to scholastic learnedness." This medieval period was essential to the young man's development as a complete person, Lindner argued. He was outraged that "shortsighted morality" -i.e. the demands of the women's movement for greater fairness-would call for a change in the system. Admitting women would change the entire course of educational development. Schoolgirls could not model themselves on ancient heroes. "They would understand the spirit of antiquity even less than the boys because they would not be able, as these do, even if only in an incomplete and onesided way, to feel this in themselves," Lindner reasoned. The young woman's experience of the middle ages at the university would be even more incongruous, he believed. "Do they by chance want to lead a carefree existence in the role of the enslaved woman or of the patronized, intellectually inferior girl who is often ... exposed as an object of pleasure?" A third option open to women would be to play the maidens of the castle, but Lindner pointed out that "young ladies who intend to spend their lives alone must not lose themselves in such fantasies." The Studentin, he asserted, "may not dream the youthful dream of love that beautifies the life of the young man and that very often happily comes true." If a woman was to be admitted to the medieval theme park that was Lindner's university, she had first to be rendered harmless by being pledged to chastity. If women could not imitate these medieval forms, Lindner reasoned, what profit would they have from their studies? Most women would be engaged in a Brotstudium, or pre-professional curriculum, of one sort or the other. Thus he had no doubt that the women would work very hard and pass their exams, but they would have gained nothing else from their studies. "The Studentin would be a kind of study-machine that works perfectly. [Women] would leave the university not as innerly complete persons, as the men, but would have changed only slightly." The "inner development" of young women would have already stopped by the time they entered the university, Lindner stated. Female students would also miss out on the easy interaction with fellow students from different semesters and faculties that men found so valuable. In contrast, "the female students would naturally

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be left to themselves." Lindner found little to recommend here. For example, the conflicts that would inevitably break out in these "limited circles" would not be able to be resolved by dueling. "The German Studentin would for obvious reasons not be able to participate in and enjoy German student life," which Lindner considered to be one of the most important educational resources. This lack would leave her having more or less the same point of view as the foreign student, who was likewise excluded from certain parts of German student life. 59 According to Lindner, a woman, like a foreigner, could never enjoy all of the benefits of academic citizenship, and thus the entire process would be wasted on her. The professoriate's response to the Frauenstudium was not only colored by an idealized conception of academic citizenship, as in Lindner's speech, but was phrased in terms that betrayed the crisis of the university in the r 89os. At this point, the discussion of female students intersected with many other long-running debates. Here we will examine the relationship between the Frauenstudium and the issues of academic standards, morality, overcrowding and professional competition, the social question, and the character of the university itself. This broader discussion will demonstrate to what degree the elements of academic citizenship spelled out in the first chapter were being reformulated. Misgivings over the direction and purpose of science spilled over onto the Frauenstudium. First of all, what could women contribute to scholarship? Professors like Hermann Grimm saw women as a danger to the university's standards. Lindner worried that women would be single-minded careerists with little interest in scholarship itself. Otto Gierke, a well-known jurist at the University of Berlin, believed that admitting more than a few exceptional women would change the very nature of the German university. "Our universities are men's universities," Gierke wrote. "They are not just outwardly established as educational institutions for the male youth but also adapted to the male mind in their whole inner life," he continued. But if more women were admitted, they would begin to affect the way courses were taught. The heavy equipment of rigorous science will be increasingly banished from instruction, the pretty appearance preferred, the mental effort flattened. That would then no longer be the old German university, no longer the academy of masculine mental power, no longer the valiant fighter that helped to win the intellectual primacy of our nation. The German university, Gierke asserted, was no place for experiments. 60 Those supporting women students pointed to the positive effects of female difference on knowledge. Lujo Brentano, the liberal political economist, wrote enthusiastically of the role women could play in the study of economics, in which women's work had an important place. The Zurich

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economist Heinrich Herkner argued that the female character would provide a crucial difference in the field. Whereas male economists tended to see people only as group members, this tendency would be countered by "the opposing inclination of women to stress the specific and the personal," to examine things more emotionally than analytically. Another Swiss professor testified that the diligence of the female students raised the general academic level of discussion, and both men and women were motivated to work harder: the women, because they had to prove themselves, and the men, because they did not want to finish behind the women. 61 The debate over women's potential contribution to scholarship assessed their effects on their environment as well as their ability to meet academic standards. Student morality was a perpetual concern in Imperial Germany. Throughout the decade of the 189os there was increasing attention paid to the issue, in part because venereal disease among students was feared to be reaching new heights. 62 What effect would women have on this environment? The Berlin philosopher Eduard von Hartmann stated in 1896 that he was against the admission of women to Gymnasien and universities for "moral reasons." The same year the journalist Karl Pinn expressed his indignation at those who implied that women would be an open invitation to sin and that "the auditoriums will be degraded to places that abet prostitution." On the contrary, Pinn argued, women would have an uplifting effect on their environment. 63 Here he echoed the opinions of many supporters of female students, who argued from the basis of the successful Swiss example. A quarter century of female students in Zurich had disproved the theories of feminine inferiority, Dodel reported in 1896. The presence of women actually improved the moral atmosphere in the classroom, he noted, and in 2.1 years of teaching, he had experienced no unpleasant incidents with coeducation. In fact, Dodel wrote, "it was as if brothers and sisters were working on the same things together. " 64 The morality of coeducation was used by both sides in the debate, perhaps with equal success. Compounding the difficulty of integrating women into any of these professions was the fear of overcrowding that began in the 188os.65 Not the government but, as the historian Konrad Jarausch writes, "the Bildungsburgertum itself generated much of the concern about the excess of educated men, for it thought largely in static statist categories, rather than in terms of a ... changing society capable of employing increasing numbers of university graduates. " 66 This overcrowding not only affected the quality of the student's education but also eroded the promise of the career for which the university was supposed to prepare the young man. Adding women to the mix only complicated matters. Traditionalists expressed fear of professional competition with women. Still, many writers stressed, as if to reassure themselves, that women were bound to lose in any free competition with men. Neverthe-

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less the logical inconsistencies in these writings reveal a ritual invocation of the old value of gender roles in order to dispel the new appreciation of women's contribution. One physician claimed that if women were admitted to medicine, they would soon want to enter other professions, although they were ultimately fated to fail at any competition with men. Until women did fail in this contest, though, they would make life difficult for men. Gierke painted a dark picture of "cheap women's labor" depriving men and their families of support. "The male professions, for which the four faculties prepare one, must remain male," Gierke emphasizedY The Frauenstudium was also linked to larger problems such as the social question. In I 894 an anonymous pamphlet on the question of female doctors from a Christian perspective was subtitled a "contribution towards the solution of the social question." Two years later Karl Pinn associated women's higher education directly with social reform: "The state helplessly faces the social question, which daily takes on a more threatening form, and fears an increase of the crisis by permitting the Frauenstudium. " 68 Brentano endorsed the idea of female students in part because he believed the "social question" affected women as much as men. Writing in 1899, the Zurich economist Herkner viewed the push for women's higher education as unstoppable, "like the workers' movement." He supported higher education for women, albeit as a kind of social control. "The woman without deeper education ... is far more dangerous to the peace of the home, state, and society than the one trained in the strict discipline of scholarship. " 69 Herkner's language echoed the tone in which academics at this time described the almost animal vitality of the lower classes and how it should be kept in check. Still, many of his colleagues could not yet imagine how letting women into the public sphere could, at the same time, be a way of containing them. Many professors saw female students not only as a threat to the university but to society at large. Gierke explained this in terms of a two-level perspective on the issue. If one were to look only at the individual level, he contended, one might be inclined to admit women. Surely there were always individual women who were better at a certain discipline than many men. Indeed, as Gierke noted with horror, the "purely individualistic perspective" would endorse things like the complete equality of men and women in family law and woman suffrage "because some women surpass many men in political judgment." But this view ignored the common good, and in the case of the Frauenstudium, it would have a double effect, not only changing the university but also the "public professional structure" determined by university studies. Ludwig von Bar, professor of law at Gottingen, believed that the study of law by women should be confined to its history, not its practice. Bar wrote that "if women should also act publicly as lawyers

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and judges, it would then be impossible to continue to deny them political rights." To grant them rights, however, would "damage the general culture markedly. " 70 These comments attest to the close relationship that Germans conceived among the university, the state, and their society as a whole. The discussion around female students revealed that certain components of academic citizenship were being renegotiated or were in transition. The idea of Bildung as a universal longing and cultural ideal was one general area where the rhetoric of reformers and academics intersected. Here both sides disputed Wissenschaft and the student's relationship to scholarship and learning. As will be explained below, this connection could not be resolved until it became clear which subjects women would study. Other parts of academic citizenship, although also under attack, were still defined in masculine ways. The notion of student honor was challenged by the increasing presence of nondueling students, mostly Catholics and Jews; however, honor continued to be at the core of masculine identity in the Kaiserreich in general. Likewise the discussion over admitting students with nonclassical secondary educations (from Realgymnasien and Oberrealschulen) to university study meant that the concept of maturity and academic preparedness would be redefined. Still, maturity in the form of an emancipation from the parental household continued to apply only to young men. While the transformation of academic citizenship was not yet complete, important changes were underway that would affect the admission of women. The women's movement responded to these concerns of academics by making key concessions to them. On the issue of standards, the women's movement never wavered from its stance that would-be Studentinnen pass the Abitur just like male students. When in 1909 the Prussian state education ministry decided that female teachers possessing the usual seminar

training and who had taught for three years could be admitted on that basis alone to the philosophical faculty, reformers such as Helene Lange were outraged and insisted in vain that these women be held to the same standard.71 In terms of morality, Lina Morgenstern wrote that women would exert an "ennobling" influence on their fellow students who spent more and more time at the pub. 72 As discussed in the previous chapter, Helene Lange managed to assuage fears of female careerism through constant references to the benefits of Bildung for women's personal development. Yet she and others were also quick to stress that higher education would not change women's intrinsic nature. Lange promised that the Frauenstudium would help solve the social question because women would put their motherly talents to work for the common good. Thus the higher education of women was not a threat to the state and society but instead a benefit to all. Casting the Frauenstudium as a solution to the social question marked a shift in the kind of academic membership that reformers demanded for

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women. This was precisely the question that Lindner had raised when he compared the education that women would receive with that of visiting foreign students: women, like foreigners, might look on, but they could never take part in the proceedings. Reformers now asked for women's access not as individuals on an equal footing with men but as members of a particular group, women. To give this new group a purpose, even a kind of corporate privilege, and to allay male fears of competition, reformers sought to carve out a niche for female work that would not threaten professional, university-educated men.

IV The creation of a niche was crucial for women's entrance into the university, since discussion did not long focus on the abstract idea of female students but rather on what they would study once they arrived. Reformers and the women's movement soon found that certain careers would be easier to push for than others. 73 In establishing women's claim to study and practice medicine, the women's movement made a central compromise between academic citizenship and the woman question. Particularly illuminating here is the exchange that arose in I 888 over remarks by the medical professor and anthropologist Wilhelm Waldeyer. As mentioned above, the state employed virtually all graduates of the theological faculty and over two-thirds of those of the legal faculty. 74 Such figures help explain why law and theology remained taboo professions even after medicine and higher teaching positions had been opened to women. Indeed, as will be discussed in the following chapter, when women were admitted to the university, it was with the explicit expectation that they would limit themselves to the medical and philosophical faculties, although academic freedom meant that they could not be banned outright from the other two faculties. 75 Even one of the most radical representatives of the women's movement, Hedwig Kettler, did not expect that legal careers would be opened to women. Most lawyers were civil servants, and at this point there was no question of admitting women to their ranks. Women were also barred from the private practice of law in Germany until 1922. Thus those few women who wanted to study law had to earn a doctorate (a fight in itself) instead of taking the state examination. They then could pursue careers associated with law but not with its practice. For example, Marie Raschke, who in 1896 was one of the very first women to be allowed to audit in the Berlin faculty of law, reasoned that the state would need teachers who knew the law. Another limited employment prospect was as a counselor at the legal advice centers for women that spread in German cities after 1894. Theology was a forbidden subject for more obvious rea-

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sons. The few women allowed to study in this faculty were training to be religion teachers, not clergymen. 76 In terms of the variety and flexibility of study, the philosophical faculty was more promising, as it did not prepare its students exclusively for one profession but offered the closest equivalent to a liberal arts or general education program in the German university. Yet even here women encountered obstacles. Although women could earn a doctorate despite being auditors, they usually had to petition the state education ministry, the university, and the faculty in question to be granted the degree. Since they were barred from pursuing an academic career at the university, female holders of doctorates had to look elsewhere for their employment. The main profession for which the philosophical faculty trained its students was upper-level teaching, but women were barred from the state examination that would certify them as Gymnasium teachers in Prussia until 1905. In fact female teachers were largely restricted to the lower grades of girls' schools, and because by the 189os teaching was an overcrowded profession, there was little support for better educated women teachers who could then claim higher positions. Many programs of advanced courses for female teachers were organized, but these courses stopped short of a university education, even though most of them drew on university professors as instructors. This training furthermore did not lead to the secondary school teaching exam, which was only available after university study. A final institutional obstacle was that there were not many girls' schools that could employ female teachers at the secondary level [Oberlerherin] for such advanced classes. For example, the first Gymnasium courses for girls operated on a relatively small scale. Moreover it was extremely rare that women were allowed to teach at boys' schools. 77 There were several reasons why reformers focused on gaining women's admission to medicine instead of other fields. As we have seen, the other two pre-professional faculties, law and theology, offered women little hope for a career afterwards, whereas the philosophical faculty, while more accessible, did not, in the case of women, lead directly into a career track. Medicine at this time had the advantage of being a clearly pre-professional discipline with some ties to a traditional female sphere of influence. The expectation was that female physicians would treat only women and children, not men. The women's movement saw the healing arts as a natural extension of feminine domestic talent. Nursing, however, was dominated by orders of Protestant and Catholic sisters and did not offer the social prestige that the women's movement sought for middle-class women. Finally, medicine itself was not yet completely professionalized. In I 869 the practice of medicine in Prussia, and later in all of Germany, had been thrown open to non-physicians as well. The struggle of German physicians to establish a monopoly was one reason that they fought the Frauenstudium so bitterly. 7 s

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The convergence of all of these practical factors was significant. Still, even though many women enrolled in the medical faculty once it was possible, medicine was by no means the most popular faculty and usually lagged well behind the philosophical faculty in numbers of female students. Thus the importance accorded medicine makes more sense on a discursive level than in terms of solving the problem of jobs for single middle-class women. Perhaps the decisive reason that reformers concentrated their efforts on opening medicine to women was that this field was an area where the language of the woman question and that of academic citizenship converged. Medicine was a discipline that had a particularist side in terms of treating female patients through gynecology and obstetrics. As described in the previous chapter, Mathilde Weber's pamphlet on the need for female physicians for reasons of moral decency and modesty became a standard point of reference in the petition campaign of the women's movement. Reformers were able to seize on a particularist niche, which in turn provided them with a justification for demanding the admission of women in spite of the fact that their very sex should have disqualified them. During the r89os, the debate over female physicians reached its height. The first German women to study medicine earned their degrees in Zurich and Paris, and several of them wrote and spoke publicly on behalf of the admission of women to medical study in Germany. 79 Professors of medicine took up the topic, 80 and the women's movement responded. 81 Out of theseries of lively exchanges that ensued, 82 we will examine one to show what issues were being contested. The main element of academic citizenship that was in dispute here was the idea of Wissenschaft. Would women be able both to master science and contribute to it? In a speech to the Congress of German Natural Scientists and Physicians, Waldeyer responded directly to Mathilde Weber's influential r888 tract, which had demanded female physicians for "moral" and "sanitary" reasons. He sought to counter Weber's alarmed and morally outraged tone from a dispassionate scientific viewpoint. "Every question ... has its strictly scientific side and cannot be solved without conscientious consideration."83 Science was also Waldeyer's main counterargument to Weber's contention that women needed female doctors for reasons of decency. 84 This was a difficult argument to rebut, as the public reaction showed. In his memoirs, Waldeyer recalled that after the speech, "I raised a hornet's nest, for in various newspapers, in anonymous and signed letters I was more or less strongly attacked, especially since I also denied women entry into my lectures on anatomy and to the dissection exercises [at the University of Berlin]." 85 Waldeyer rejected women's study "in the interest of the progress of medical science, in the interest of women themselves, and in the interest of all

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mankind." He first turned to the question of whether women were capable of making a contribution to science. History, Waldeyer argued, proved that in all the time women had "practiced" medicine, chiefly as midwives, they had made no scientific progress. Men were responsible for all "improvements" in gynecology. He cited the medical professor Freund's remarks of the previous year approvingly: "Everything that marks modern obstetrics as a science and an art is the fruit of male work." Women, Waldeyer remarked, had not even invented the forceps. For him female intellectual inferiority was inborn and not a product of poor education or limited opportunity. "At no time were women prevented from learning medicine, practicing it, even teaching at universities. And that has remained so to our day," Waldeyer maintained. 86 Waldeyer did concede a certain legitimacy to the arguments of the women's movement. He acknowledged that the number of marriages was declining, and that women as well as men had a right to "free self-determination [and] a secure living." Waldeyer even said that he recognized that it was not just the drive toward emancipation that led women to seek to open up medical study, and some exceptions could be allowed for truly outstanding women. Still, he thought, women should be kept out of medicine "in the interest of the development of our medical science, in the interest of the women themselves, and in the interest of all of humanity. " 87 Waldeyer proceeded to justify his objections on the basis of female physical and intellectual inferiority. He declared that wherever men and women had competed, women had lost. 88 Over the centuries, woman allowed herself to be put in second place, due not just to the male's greater strength but his greater intellectual capacity as well. In the singular difference of the mental, natural predisposition, as it manifests

itself between man and woman, and in which the productive side has fallen more to man, the receptive more to woman, lies the deepest reason for the difference in the social position between woman and man .... On this point I agree completely with my respected deceased colleague v[on] Bischoff, who, however, sometimes in his zeal against the Frauenstudium overshot the mark.

Waldeyer went on to qualify his agreement with Bischoff; the former did not ascribe so much importance to the difference in weight between male and female brains but rather to the development of the cerebral convolutions. Waldeyer admitted that women seemed even to have a slightly higher relative weight of brain to body mass. He was quick to point out that he did not see woman as inferior, just different. Man was naturally more suited to make progress in science and art. This had implications for medical study. Waldeyer quoted the Geneva anatomist Karl Vogt who said that women needed more attention in the lab than men. 89 The difference between the sexes, however inconvenient for the study of medicine by women, was, Waldeyer believed,

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essential. He compared men to the "active" right hand and women to the "passive" left. In Waldeyer's view, civilization itself rested upon the difference between the sexes. "The division of the human race into two sexes is itself one of the greatest, perhaps the most significant of the civilizing [kulturfordernde] elements," he told his audience. 90 Not only were women not capable of measuring up to an academic standard, Waldeyer maintained, but the very act of trying to do so would necessarily threaten society as a whole if women moved into a male domain. Perhaps the most thorough response to Waldeyer was a pamphlet by Lina Morgenstern, who was well-known in Berlin for her pioneering work on behalf of the working class and women. 91 Morgenstern began her response to Waldeyer by pointing out the strategic positions occupied by reformers and traditionalists. Morgenstern called his address "highly significant" for the women's movement because of its topic, audience, and the position of the speaker himself. In fact his speech had had the effect of "a declaration of war from a hostile camp," especially since the doctors who applauded this speech were the "natural enemies of the Frauenstudium." She found Waldeyer's talk all the more dangerous because of his "certain benevolence." Morgenstern reminded her readers that "it was not so long ago that German professors passed over in silence, or grandly shrugged their shoulders during its discussion, the question that other countries long ago answered satisfactorily for the female sex." Throughout the pamphlet she repeatedly stressed that Germany lagged behind other nations. To dramatize her point, she observed that "whereas in the land of the thinkers, in Germany, women are denied the right to study medicine, the institutes for the education of native women for the medical profession in the English colonies, in faraway India, are multiplying. " 92 In replying to Waldeyer, Morgenstern used arguments rooted in ideas about equality and difference between men and women. Her starting point was women's fundamental inequality. She agreed with Waldeyer that woman's first calling was in the home but then pointed out Germany's surplus of women, which she put at two million. Women, she believed, had never had a fair chance because of the "sex-despotism of man," which led to the "slavery of women, whose despicable consequences we not only see in wild and barbaric tribes but today still in our own country." The example Morgenstern gave was of the stark contrast between the view of woman as "the priestess of morality" in the home and the existence of "a prostitution tolerated and supervised by the state." Women, she said, lacked the power to win their rights. Men's laws did not just oppress women outwardly, for example through the lack of suffrage, but inwardly as well, condemning women to "mental serfdom." 93 The only remedy for this intellectual inferiority, Morgenstern argued, was education. She listed examples of learned women throughout history,

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concluding that some women had reached the intellectual level of educated men. In a direct response to Waldeyer, Morgenstern noted that obstetrics had remained undeveloped because female midwives were poorly educated. In contrast female doctors would enjoy the same training as men, and she named several contemporary female doctors. Only a few women would choose to study/ 4 but those few should be given the chance to prove themselves. She quoted the Norwegian medical professor Heiberg at length, who said that more men than women had the necessary "calm, cold consideration and judgment .... If however a woman has this trait to a high degree, one must give her the same opportunity to test herself." Female doctors, Morgenstern believed, would meet the male standard. 95 She disputed Waldeyer's claim that only the prospect of employment was pushing women into medicine, praising women's "scientific, higher drive." It was natural for a woman to study medicine because at home she was already "the natural caretaker of healthy and sick" and because as a mother she saw necessity of educating female doctors for women's diseases. 96 Morgenstern argued that women had the intellectual capacity for Wissenschaft and, in the case of medicine, both a natural predisposition and a firm sense of social responsibility. Paradoxically, Morgenstern promised that educating women would ultimately reinforce existing gender roles. "Do not believe, dear Herr Professor, that the women's movement, as you fear, wants to blur the differences that nature gave to both sexes," she reassured him. 97 At the same time, however, Morgenstern claimed the rights of one sex for the other. We demand of state and society that they enable us to realize our talents by admitting us to study like a man.... The battle for survival should not be made yet more difficult for the weaker sex than for the stronger sex. As long as the impossibility exists to give each woman a husband ... women may not be refused to choose a profession that will secure her a self-supporting position as a useful member of society.

A female doctor, she argued, would "help to keep girls and women chaste and healthy." Moreover female physicians would be a boon to the common good. "Health and morality are the roots of a good marriage," Morgenstern declared. Furthermore, since marriage was "the basis of the family and of the state," keeping women from medical study would undermine "the basic conditions for morality and health in thousands of families. " 98 The emphasis on employing female difference in service of the whole society was typical of the rhetoric of the women's movement of the 189os, as shown in the previous chapter. In a book published in 1893, a physician named Hermann Ritter worked out a position halfway between that of Morgenstern and Waldeyer. Ritter shared Morgenstern's outrage that in being examined by a male doctor,

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women had to compromise their modesty, which Ritter termed their most important feeling and the equivalent to a man's honor. While Ritter made it clear that he did not support female emancipation in general, he endorsed the idea of women doctors, if they were educated separately from men. He responded to Waldeyer by pointing out that hundreds of female doctors abroad had proven that women could study. Ritter also faulted Waldeyer for overlooking that, in relation to the female body, the female brain was at least as big as men's, as shown by other studies. In addition Ritter reproached Waldeyer for treating his patients like scientific material instead of putting their welfare first. 99 Ritter's book showed that among German physicians, there were some differences on important issues such as the implications of female brain size, whether physicians were scientists or healers first, and the importance of morality. In his inaugural address as rector of the University of Berlin in 1898, Waldeyer told his audience that he had changed his mind about the Frauenstudium. He seemed to have accepted the arguments of the women's movement about the woman question. "To me the women's movement appears not at all as an artificially made and supported but as the natural consequence of the current social condition of our civilized countries," he stated. Waldeyer now believed that women should be admitted under the same requirements as men. He was, however, careful to emphasize that professors should not be forced to admit women to their lectures, as this would violate the former's academic freedom. Moreover Waldeyer remained staunchly against coeducation. He told his listeners, "we want to raise neither effeminate men in our state nor amazons!" Because each sex learned differently, he argued, if a larger number of women were to attend the university, professors would begin to adjust their lectures to them, which would hurt standards. Instead Waldeyer called for the establishment of women's universities at which women could serve as professors. He was even prepared to go as far as suggesting that both sexes could teach at each other's universities.100 Waldeyer's solution to the conflict between the woman question and academic citizenship was the establishment of separate institutions. Women were admitted to medical certification in 1899 but not to the study of medicine until between I 900 and I 909, depending on the German state in question. Medical certification meant that women trained outside of Germany could now be licensed to practice as German physicians, whereas previously they could only list themselves as physicians approved in another country. The fact that women were admitted to the profession before they were admitted to the course of study points to the complexity of the issues that presented themselves. Whereas medical certification involved only one field, medical studies raised the expectation that women would have to be admitted to all areas of study. 101 Professors' "scientific" argu-

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ments against the Frauenstudium were frequently linked to other objections, such as fear of professional competition. One frequently discussed topic was women's capacity for original thought and their past contributions to science. In general professors acknowledged women's "different" mental processes, characterizing them as emotional, intuitive, and uninventive. Seeing their field threatened by a female onslaught, many physicians were especially pessimistic. Another commonly held view was a willingness to make an exception for the talented woman or two, if the professor in question agreed. The conflict of academic citizenship and the woman question was partially resolved in that reformers restricted themselves to demanding access to particular fields that would threaten men as little as possible. The women's movement focused on the issue of female doctors. Female teachers were also important and controversial, but were less prominent in the discussion because women physicians appeared to be more of a threat. For example there was only talk of women as gynecologists, obstetricians and pediatricians; there was no question that women would treat men. The women's movement was successful in convincing men that educated women would only go into certain professions, and it was with this tacit understanding that the tide turned in favor of women's admission.

v In many ways Waldeyer's views on the Frauenstudium were typical. In 1897 the Berlin journalist Arthur Kirchhoff published the results of his review of over one hundred academic opinions on the matter. Although not conducted in a representative or scientific fashion, Kirchhoff's survey is enormously useful for the detailed commentary on the Frauenstudium that

it coaxed from a broad range of German academics. Respondents readily acknowledged the validity of the woman question and the need for improved female education. Many favored making exceptions for extraordinarily talented women to audit university courses. A large number of respondents favored the introduction of female physicians to treat women and children and seemed to accept the women's movement's arguments on behalf of modesty and morality. Like Waldeyer, the greater part of those supporting study in some subject for women also expressed a desire for separate institutions. Kirchhoff's survey marked a sea-change in professorial opinion on the Frauenstudium, although the latter would remain hotly contested even after the official admission of women. The consensus described by Kirchhoff was long in the making. The skirmish of the early r87os, the first response of academics to the idea of a Studentin, shaped the arguments of later years. In this exchange among Dohm, Bischoff, and others, professors concentrated on contesting the legitimacy

114

"OUR UNIVERSITIES ARE MEN'S UNIVERSITIES"

of the woman question, leaving aside the issues tied to academic citizenship. Many disputed the idea that women needed or could profit from a better education. By the 188os, middle-class men had largely accepted the women's movement and with it the need to improve female education. 102 After 1887 reformers embarked on a persistent series of petitions and agitation on the subject of female students. The women's movement, spearheaded by the efforts of Helene Lange, easily convinced academics that female education must be improved and new careers opened to women. But academics still were not convinced of the need for university study. Having conceded the premise of the woman question, professors now objected principally on the basis of academic citizenship. Over the next decade, academics gradually became convinced by parts of the women's movement's arguments, although significant reservations remained. Through the debate itself, many professors came to adopt some of the rhetoric of the woman question, just as some in the women's movement, Lange in particular, wove the language of academic citizenship into their proposals. The question of which subjects women would study ended with academics giving in to plans of the moderate wing of the women's movement to have female doctors and teachers. The women's movement got its way, but at a price. In the end women were admitted to the university because they were able to position themselves into a narrow academic niche where they would not threaten men professionally. The debate came to focus on the issue of female physicians because this was where reformers and traditionalists could work out a compromise between the woman question and academic citizenship. This compromise was possible in large part because of the crisis of the university of the 189os and the beginning of a reconfiguration of academic citizenship, in which prospective female students would be able to make some claim on the Enlightenment ideals of education and scholarship embedded in it. Women were matriculated on the condition that they not exacerbate existing tensions and problems at the university, and some professors, as we shall see in the next chapter, even considered using the Studentinnen as a way to reform the whole institution. The way in which this question became politicized was crucial for its ultimate resolution. The final decision to admit women, though, would not come directly from the professoriate but rather from state governments, which by the late 1 89os had already begun their "experiments" with female auditors.

FIGURE 1. "The real student." Father: "Tell me, boy, what did you learn at the university, anyway?" Son: "Nothing, father, and on top of that I drank beer!" Fliegende Blatter (186o). Reprinted from Paul Ssymank, Bruder Studio (Stuttgart, 1929), 50·

FIGURE 2. "Outrage. 'No, Herr Doctor ... you cannot keep bringing home your fiancee, and each night a different one!'" Illustration by Bruno Paul in Simplicissimus, ca. 190 5. Reprinted from Paul Ssymank, Bruder Studio (Stuttgart, 1929), n.p.

FIGuRE 3 . Louise Otto, democrat and founder of the German middle-class women's movement. Reprinted from Die Gartenlaube, no. 48 (1871): 817.

F 1G u R E

4 . Hedwig Dohm, witty polemicist on behalf of women's rights. Reprinted from Henrike Hulsbergen, ed., Stadtbild und Frauenleben (Berlin, 1997), 44· Courtesy of Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.

FIGURE 5. Hedwig Kettler, energetic and innovative reformer of girls' and women's education. Reprinted from Hugo Willich, "Hedwig Kettler," in Niedersiichsische Lebensbilder, ed. 0. H. May (Hildesheim, 1960), photo before 4:1 55·

FIGURE 6. Helene Lange, skillful and successful in her appeals for female higher education. Rerinted from Helene Lange, Was ich hier ge/iebt (Ti.ibingen, 1957), photo following 224.

FIGURE 7 . Theodor von Bischoff, professor of medicine and influential campaigner against women in medicine. Reprinted from Hadumod Bussmann, Stieftochter der Alma Mater (Munich, 1993), 22. Courtesy of Stadtarchiv Miinchen.

F 1 G u RE 8. Wilhelm von Waldeyer, professor of medicine and opponent of female physicians who eventually changed his mind. Reprinted from Wilhelm von Waldeyer-Hartz, Lebenserinnerungen (Bonn, 1920), frontispiece.

F 1 G u R E 9 . A woman's doctoral celebration at the university of Berlin, I 899. Reprinted from Bussmann, Stie(tOchter, 41. Courtesy of AKG London. This almost certainly depicts Elsa Neumann, who earned a degree in physics as the University of Berlin's first female Ph.D. Annette Vogt, "Die Spielregeln der Objektivitiit," in Johanna Bieker, ed., Der Eintritt der Frauen in die Gelehrtenrepublik (Husum, 1998), 3 I, 3 5·

F 1 G u R E r o . Officers of the nationalistic and anti-Semitic German League of Academic Women's Associations (Deutsch-Akademischer Frauenbund), 1914. Reprinted from Bussmann, Stie(tachter, 4 5. Courtesy of DIZ, Mi.inchen.

F 1 G u R E I I. Female students attired for the formal inauguration of the rector of the University of Berlin, September I9I7. Reprinted from Ulla Bock and Dagmar Jank, Studierende, /ehrende und forschende Frauen in Berlin (Berlin, I990), Io. Courtesy of Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin.

2.. Else Ury, author of the college girls' story Studierte Mi:idel, in 1938. Reprinted from Hiilsbergen, 2.96. Originally appeared in Marianne Brentzel, Nesthi:ikchen kommit in KZ (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), after u8. FIGURE 1

FJ G URE 13. The fictional Schlamponia sisters sing student songs at an evening of ritual drinking. Reprinted from Max Brinkmann, Das Corps Schlamponia (Berlin, r899; reprint Gottingen, 1981), 10. Courtesy of Hans 0. Arnold Verlag.

Schlamponia sister Dora Matz reading Nietzsche's "Superwoman" to her sweetheart, Otto. Reprinted from Brinkmann, 45· Courtesy of Hans 0. Arnold Verlag. FIGURE 14.

F 1G u R E 1

5. Countess Maria von Linden as a young woman in strongly masculine attire. Reprinted from Annette Kuhn eta!., eds., Ioo jahre Frauenstudium. Frauen der Rheinischen Friedrich- Wilhelms-Universitdt Bonn (Dortmund, 1996), 26. Courtesy of edition ebersbach and Wi.imembergische Landesbibliothek.

F 1 G u R E I 6. Hildegard Wegscheider shortly after receiving her doctorate in I 898 as the second woman to do so in Prussia. Reprinted from Hildegard Wegscheider, Weite Welt im engen Spiegel (Berlin-Grunewald, I953), photo following p. I?.

F 1 G u R E 1 7 . Alice Salomon around I 908, shortly after receiving her doctorate two years earlier in Berlin. Reprinted from Alice Salomon, Charakter ist Schicksal (Weinheim, 1983), 115. Courtesy of Alice-Salomon-Archiv, ASFH, Berlin.

FIGURE 18. Hermine Heusler-Edenhuizen as a student in Halle, 1900. In contrast to Linden, Heusler-Edenhuizen, a protegee of Helene Lange, took pains to dress more conventionally. Reprinted from Hermine Heusler-Edenhuizen, Die erste deutsche Frauenarztin (Opladen, 1997), 58.

FIGURE 19. Medical student and future psychoanalyst Karen Horney in a commemorative photo with male classmates after passing the Physikum medical exam, Freiburg, 1908. The men hold traditional student sabers; Horney holds a skull, representing their medical studies. Reprinted from jack L. Rubins, Gentle Rebel of Psychoanalysis (New York, 1978}, photo following 172. Courtesy of B. Swarzenski.

CHAPTER 4

Selecting the ''Better

Elements~~

THE REGULATION OF THE ENTRANCE OF WOMEN INTO THE UNIVERSITY, 1890-1909

I

After World War I, the Heidelberg mathematician Leo Koenigsberger reminisced about his first meeting with Sofia Kovalevskaia, a Russian noblewoman who later held a professorship of mathematics in Stockholm and who is often mentioned as a pioneer of the Frauenstudium in Germany. In r869, at the age of nineteen, Kovalevskaia left Russia, seeking to continue her mathematical studies at Heidelberg. Koenigsberger recalled that he was standing with his colleagues before class when "a young, extremely graceful lady" approached him and asked permission to attend his lectures. Such a request was an unheard of novelty, and after inquiring about her preparation, he hesitated for a moment, unsure of what the rest of the faculty and the academic senate would say. Then, Koenigsberger wrote, the physicist Tyndall, "a friend of feminine beauty, took me aside and, making fun of my philistine

rigorousness, said 'how can one want to refuse such a beautiful woman anything?'" Persuaded, at least for the moment, Koenigs berger granted her permission and entered the auditorium with Kovalevskaia and his colleagues, "to the astonishment of the young [male] students." Kovalevskaia's marital status would prove even more decisive than her good looks. When her official request to audit courses reached the faculty, many doubted that she was newly married, as her petition stated. Koenigsberget and a colleague were sent off to her landlord to ascertain if she were really married and registered as such with the police. When it turned out that this was indeed the case, the faculty grudgingly allowed her to audit courses but without being truly convinced that her mysterious companion was actually her husband. Koenigsberger's colleague Hermann Helmholtz would often tease Koenigsberger by saying, "But you shall marry her." In the fall of 1870, Kovalevskaia moved to Berlin to study with the mathematician Karl Weierstrass, who would become her great mentor. Before the

II6

SELECTING THE "BETTER ELEMENTS"

Berlin academic senate's discussion of Kovalevskaia's petition to study, Weierstrass wrote to Koenigsberger, asking for his opinion of her work and character. "One cannot reconcile oneself to the unusual phenomenon that a young lady should study mathematics and not shy away from entering a place like our auditorium 14," the puzzled Weierstrass wrote. 1 Koenigsberger's recollections demonstrated the peculiar double vision that professors had with respect to Kovalevskaia. On the one hand, they respected her extraordinary mathematical talent, still recognized today. Koenigsberger wrote that Kovalevskaia learned quickly and presented work in seminar "with great clarity and complete mastery of the material." On the other hand, professors could not help treating her like a woman: noticing her appearance, inquiring about her marital status and morals, and even fantasizing about marrying her themselves. The same double vision affected German academics and bureaucrats during the long process of regulating women's access to the university. On one side they saw talent and credentials, on the other simply women. The previous chapter demonstrated how the discussion about the Frauenstudium created a discursive opening for women at the university as future physicians and teachers. This chapter will examine how that space was filled. The admission of women to German universities was no smooth, even transition but one of trial and error that at most universities took over a decade to complete, from the time when women were allowed to audit courses in the 1890s to their formal matriculation in the years after 1900. During this process, the question changed from whether to admit women to which women to admit. At first officials lumped all female applicants together as unqualified for study. But admitting women was to prove more complicated than merely waiting for them to submit the proper credential. Traditionally the formal requirements to study at a German university had been easily met. In order to audit a lecture course, a person had only to demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the subject under discussion. In order to be matriculated as a regular student, a German needed the Abitur, which entitled him to enroll at the university of his choice and to move freely from one institution to the other. Foreign students generally required whatever entitled them to study in their home country. French students could usually show a diploma from a lycee or a Gymnasium, while the Swiss, Austrians, and Russians had to produce a certificate from a secondary school. The English and the Americans, whose secondary school diplomas reflected a less rigorous preparation than the Abitur, were required to have a bachelor's degree. 2 Of course, guidelines for both auditing and matriculation were intended for men. When faced with female applicants, existing policies were set aside while officials scrambled to respond. State and university officials had to choose between extending the same principles to women and creating new standards for them. Women could

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117

not just present the necessary credentials because they generally were not allowed to obtain these credentials in the first place. In fact women were not allowed to take the Abitur, and had no schools to prepare for it, until the 189os. If women were to be admitted only as auditors, however, officials would not need to demand the Abitur from them in the first place. In this case women might have the option of presenting other credentials such as the female teacher's exam or the diploma of the secondary girls' schools [habere Tochterschulen], but these were constantly faulted for their inferiority to men's credentials. After petitioning the state education ministry for permission, the first women passed the Abitur in the early 189os. It was not until after 1900 that larger numbers of women began to take the Abitur, and only between 1900 and 1909 did the individual German states start to admit female students on the basis of this exam. Before admission, universities allowed women solely as auditors. Throughout this period of auditing, roughly from the mid189os to well after 1900, depending on the state in question, university officials searched for a way to control the flow of women. Ironically, restricting women to auditing left officials with little to guide them in their admissions decisions because the traditional auditing guidelines were so lax. As the ranks of female auditors swelled, it became obvious to state education ministries that formally admitting women would actually limit their numbers by holding women to a much higher standard than that required merely to sit in on courses. Yet the ensuing decision to enroll women on the basis of the Abitur was no simple step but a highly political one. By setting the Abitur as the standard for women's admission, German officials were also deliberately moving to exclude foreign women, in particular those from Russia, who were mostly Jews. So far this study has focused on the discursive limits imposed on the Frauenstudium. Now we turn to how these discursive limits came to be inscribed in the policies that universities and state governments made in order to regulate female students. A brief survey of university policies regarding women from the 187os through the 189os will set the stage. When women were again formally allowed to audit courses in the 189os, they at times drew vocal protests from the male students, and individual professors took care to avoid "incidents" in their classes. By the latter part of this decade, the number of women students had grown too large for individual professors to regulate. Instead, university and government officials stepped in to restrict women's access to the lecture hall. The state guidelines for female auditors announced from 1900 to 1902 hit foreign women disproportionately hard, as I will demonstrate in an analysis of the policies at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig. The cultural anxiety surrounding the Russian women students in Zurich in the 187os, along with a fear of political radicalism and anti-Semitism, would come back to shape both auditing and, eventually,

II8

SELECTING THE "BETTER ELEMENTS"

admission policies, as a examination of the official matirculation regulations at Berlin, Heidelberg, and Leipzig will show. Matriculation resulted in the restriction of formal enrollment to a group of almost exclusively German women that was select both in terms of its academic credentials and its social background. II

Kovalevskaia's inquiries led both the Universities of Heidelberg and Berlin to some of their first deliberations on the matter of female auditors. After Kovalevskaia's arrival in I 869, Heidelberg's academic senate decided not to enroll women but to allow them to attend lectures with the professor's permission. Kovalevskaia studied there for three semesters with Konigsberger and his fellow mathematician Paul DuBois-Reymond, the physical chemist Gustav Kirchhoff, the chemist Wilhelm Bunsen, and the physiologist Hermann Helmholtz, among others. Although by I871 only five or six women had followed Kovalevskaia's example, the senate resolved that professors should only allow exceptional women to audit and in most cases should refuse permission outright. A wave of requests from the Russian women whom the tsar had ordered to leave Zurich led the university to ban women entirely in I 873. Only the eight female auditors already at Heidelberg were allowed to remain for a time. In what may have been a reference to Kovalevskaia, Berlin responded to an I 873 inquiry by the University of Leipzig on female students by saying that four years earlier a woman had requested permission to study but been turned down. Kovalevskaia's case came up in I87o, when the Berlin faculty senate refused her application for admission, although it was supported by such prominent professors as Emil DuBois-Reymond, Rudolf Virchow, and Helmholtz. Nevertheless Kovalevskaia proceeded to study privately with Weierstrass for four years, becoming his "favorite pupil." In a highly exceptional move, the faculty at Gottingen awarded her a doctorate in absentia in I874· In Berlin, a few women visited lectures in the early I87os without official permission. 3 An article in the Academische Rundschau in 1 89 7-I 89 8 traced the official banning of women "fifty semesters ago" (i.e. in I 872) to Karl Werder's famous lectures on dramatic art in which he "analyzed Shakespeare and recited entire scenes." A broad audience of actors and many women flocked to these lectures. When a young man insulted a married woman, the university had a "welcome opportunity" to bar women, the article claimed. 4 In I878 the Prussian education ministry wrote to all university rectors in the state, telling them that the admission of women as

REGULATING WOMEN'S ADMISSION,

1890-1909

II9

auditors would occur only in highly exceptional cases and only with the permission of the ministry, university senate, faculty, and individual professor. 5 Few if any women seem to have been granted permission after this decree. The loopholes and irregular policies that had allowed women to audit courses at several German universities in the late r86os and early I 87os were formally closed almost everywhere by 188o. The case of Leipzig is illustrative of the kinds of policies followed at other universities. Beginning in I 870, a few women audited courses. One Russian woman, a cousin of Kovalevskaia, even earned a doctorate in law in I 873. In July I 873 the Leipzig medical faculty had proposed opening matriculation for women to study medicine. Part of the medical faculty believed that there was a need for female doctors in view of the general shortage then perceived in the profession. The resolution failed before the academic senate, and by December the senate had decided to continue its old policy of leaving it to the individual professor to decide whether to admit women to his lectures. This arrangement continued until I 879, when, at the prodding of the state education minister, the university adopted a new matriculation regulation stipulating that female auditors must have the approval of the ministry. The university rector mentioned to the minister that there were ten female auditors among the n8 auditors total in the winter semester of I879-I88o, reassuring the minister that '"among them is, however, no Russian woman."' Over the preceding six years, a total of thirty-four women, ten of whom were Russian, had audited courses. After the winter semester of I879-I88o, however, no further women received permission to audit until I896. 6 In Leipzig the banning of women had to do with the extension of state bureaucratic authority into university matters as well as with a fear of Russian Studentinnen. Although formal auditing by women was forbidden almost everywhere, some cases apparently did occur, as James Albisetti has noted. Prussia's education minister restated the ban on women auditors in r886 after a few cases of unofficial auditing. At Leipzig about twenty women appear to have studied without official permission, beginning in the late I88os. In 1898 the National-Zeitung quoted the Saxon education minister von Seydewitz as saying that until recently women had been banned entirely from the university and that if women had attended nonetheless, it was without the ministry's knowledge. 7 By the I89os, most universities began to allow auditing by women again, at first on an experimental basis, then in a more systematic way. In I896 women were formally allowed to return to Leipzig. 8 At Heidelberg, women were allowed to audit courses in the faculty of mathematics and natural sciences in I891, and in the philosophical faculty in I895, provided that they obtained special permission from the university and the professor concerned.

120

SELECTING THE "BETTER ELEMENTS"

The University of Berlin admitted a lone American woman, Ruth Gentry, to audit lectures in 1892 and thereafter began slowly to allow female auditors on a regular basis. 9 In I896 Hedwig Dohm applied for and received permission to audit Adolph Wagner's lectures on socialism there. 10 Berlin had the highest number of registered female auditors. During the winter semester of I895-I896, there were a total of seventy women; by the winter of I907-I9o8, on the eve of women's official enrollment, their number had increased to 777. 11 Gentry's case as Berlin's pioneer female auditor spurred the Prussian education minister, Count Robert von Zedlitz-Triitzschler, to take the first survey of university opinion in the state on the admission of female auditors in I892. As a whole, the University of Berlin stood squarely against the Frauenstudium. The rector and academic senate reported that most of the faculties believed that women should be admitted only after "an appropriate and separate preparation" (i.e. a Gymnasium-level preparation but not obtained in a boys' Gymnasium) and should attend separate universities. A majority also agreed that even under those conditions, women should not be allowed into the medical or theological faculties because women already had access to these fields as midwives and members of religious nursing orders. In its opinion, the philosophical faculty recognized the need to improve female education and called for the establishment of separate women's Gymnasien and universities. Citing the opinion of his faculty, Dean Hermann Diels wrote, "The universities of men ought not to be opened to women." The dean of the medical faculty, Emil du Bois-Reymond, noted that his faculty was already overfilled, and the presence of women would make anatomical instruction awkward. Moreover a flood of foreign women was certainly to be expected. 12 The type of "foreign women" that du Bois-Reymond feared would stream into German universities were the "Russinnen," or women from the Russian Empire. Judging from the names preserved in university archives, the Russinnen were ethnically largely non-Russian, mostly Jews, some Poles, and a few Armenians. Because these women had difficulty gaining entrance to universities inside Russia, they went abroad, often to Germany. There they attracted attention for a variety of reasons, including the memory of the radical Russian women in Switzerland in the I 87os as well as a growing climate of anti-Semitism and prejudice against Slavs. Here I will continue to use the term "Russinnen" because it was used at the time, but I want to emphasize how the term was often used as shorthand for Russian Jewish women because so many of the Russian women were Jewish. For example, records on the nationality of the foreign female students show that of the twenty-six Russian women auditing at Berlin in the winter semester of I 898, twenty-one were Jewish. 13 Jack Wertheimer writes that at

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121

the time, Russian Jews were also often referred to simply as "Russians" by both German gentiles and Jews. 14 Further complicating the definition of the "Russian," male or female, was the treatment of the increasing number of foreigners inside the Reich. It was exceedingly difficult for them to acquire German citizenship. As Wertheimer points out, especially strict measures were taken against Jews from the Russian Empire and in many cases those from the Austro-Hungarian Empire as well. Those foreigners in Germany who attempted naturalization drew attention to themselves, and if their petitions for citizenship did not succed, risked likely expulsion. Thus many were advised by local German officials not to apply for citizenship in the first place. This led to a large population of foreign nationals in Germany, some of whom had been born and raised there. 15 Wertheimer explains that any aspiring university students from this group were treated like "foreign" applicants. 16 In this study, the label Russin will apply largely to foreign-born women, but in some cases the sources do not distinguish between recent arrivals and those whose families had already been in Germany for some time. Overall the profile of the female foreign students resembled somewhat that of the foreign male students. Until the r89os, American men had made up the majority of foreign students, when the balance shifted to Russian men. Although this term included all men from the Russian Empire, among them Russians, Poles, Jews, and Baltic Germans, the Prussian education ministry estimated at one point that ninety percent of the Russian male students were Jewish. Similarly, although American women were among the first women to audit courses in Germany, they were soon overtaken by the Russian women. At the University of Berlin, forty-seven Americans and twelve Russian women audited in the winter semester of

I

89 5-1896,

shortly after women were allowed to hear lectures at Berlin. Three years later the Russians had pulled ahead of the Americans, fifty-nine to fifty, and continued to increase. 17 As Chaim Weizmann recalled in his memoirs, Russian Jews were motivated "by persecution, by discrimination, and by intellectual starvation" to seek their education abroad in the tsarist period. "In Berlin, Berne, Zurich, Geneva, Munich, Paris ... Heidelberg, young Russian Jews ... constituted special and identifiable groups." Women, Weizmann noted, were nearly as numerous as the men. Medicine was the most popular subject of study, "for it offered the most obvious road to a livelihood; besides, it was associated with the idea of social service, of contact with the masses." Other practical subjects such as engineering, chemistry, and law were also favored. The Russians, he wrote, were "vague about the future; were they to return to Russia, or ... commit themselves to the West? They did not know." While Russian Jewish men were kept out of Russian universities by

12.2.

SELECTING THE "BETTER ELEMENTS"

quotas, educational prospects for women were starker still. Higher courses for women founded in the r87os were closed in the next decade. In 1897 an independent medical school for women was established in St. Petersburg. Another medical institute was not established until I 906, and two others followed by I9IO. University courses were entirely closed to women throughout this period, except for a brief spell between I906 and I908, when women could audit. 18 Finally, the few institutions open to women often severely limited the proportion of Jewish students, as appears to have been the case at the St. Petersburg women's medical school. 19 Although German officials and professors feared that it was too easy for women to audit courses, in fact the obstacles for both foreign and German women were great. In I 896 the liberal newspaper Berliner Tageblatt enumerated the hurdles women faced to gain permission to audit. First they had to get the approval of the state minister of education, which involved writing a letter listing the intended subjects of study, the petitioner's education, and her personal circumstances. Only with the minister's permission could the university rector issue a permission slip, to be presented during the routine inspections of the auditorium. The would-be Studentin still had to call on individual professors to obtain their approval for each course or risk causing a scene in the classroom. With some indignation the newspaper repeated the story about Treitschke escorting a woman out of his lecture on his arm. 20 The following month, Prussian education minister Robert Bosse delegated his authority on the matter to the universities themselves, thus cutting one step out of the bureaucratic process. 21 Similarly, in Baden the decision rested not with the ministry but with the universities, and at the University of Freiburg the professor alone determined if a woman could audit. In other states, though, obtaining permission from the state education ministry, the university, and the instructor was standard. Once a university allowed women to audit lectures, each professor nonetheless retained the authority to admit women or to bar them from the course entirely.22 Until the formal matriculation of women as students on a par with men, the policies governing female students were uneven, idiosyncratic, and frequently changed. Through trial and error, a wide variety of policies developed to stem the rising tide of female auditors. One alternative, the idea of separate women's colleges, received relatively little attention from academics and state officials until a group of Prussian university rectors suggested it in March 1904, presumably as a way to stave off the by then looming admission of women to the established universities. In a proposal to the Prussian state education ministry, the rectors mentioned that they knew the ministry was seriously considering the admission of women, to which the rectors were unanimously opposed.

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While the rectors admitted that there had only been occasional "incidents" at Prussian universities involving female auditors, they warned that with the proliferation of Gymnasium courses for girls in cities across Germany, the Frauenstudium would no longer remain an elite phenomenon. Once matriculation was opened to women, the universities would face a direct threat, both demographically and culturally. First, "a steadily increasing stream of women with the Abitur" was certain, the rectors predicted. Currently the difficulty of preparatory education itself regulated the number of women, combined with the state admissions policy and the ability of professors to decide whether to admit women to their courses. After matriculation, though, the rectors feared that "all lectures will soon have female listeners next to the males" and some lectures might have "predominantly female listeners." The second danger came from foreign women, "especially from the east," a direct allusion to the Russinnen. The rectors wrote that the changes the admission of women would cause in the character of the Prussian universities "need[ed] no further comment." Responding to the argument that all other "civilized nations" had admitted women to the university with good results, the rectors emphasized that the German university needed different conditions to thrive. Although the rectors conceded that the claim of women with the Abitur to matriculate was justified, their enrollment at existing universities would be "reprehensible." The main reason, however, that women should not be enrolled at Prussian universities was that a considerable number of professors opposed teaching mixed classes, partly as a matter of principle, partly because it was "awkward" for them to discuss certain subjects in mixed company. This was the case not just in medical courses but also in philosophical and historical ones. It was no longer a matter of not offending the women, the rectors wrote, "the university instructor, too, has a right that his sensibilities be taken into consideration." The solution they proposed was a women's university, which, the rectors argued, should have been the women's movement's goal from the start. The arguments of female reformers against women's universities focused on the concern that a female institution would be a second-class one. This the rectors emphatically denied. They envisioned the women's university as a small university that would operate under the same conditions as small male universities and would start off with a young, frequently changing faculty. Before long, though, the faculty positions at the women's university would be opened to "the best academic talent among the women," whereas a female professor at a male university would "for a long time remain a rare exception." The further development of the women's universities would depend on women themselves. The rectors cited the women's colleges in the United States and Britain as successful

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examples of self-sustaining institutions. The only problem, the rectors conceded, would be financing. 23 This last point proved correct. It appears that the ministry never took the rectors' suggestion seriously as a way to deal with the increasing number of female students. Interestingly, this proposal for a women's university shows the Prussian education ministry as a reluctant supporter of coeducation but a supporter nonetheless. III

The first female auditors in the I 89os had an ambiguous welcome. Some women, particularly those who were the first and only Studentinnen in small university towns like Tiibingen and Gottingen, were the objects of much curiosity but were often treated with a generous chivalry. Tiibingen's first official female auditor, Maria von Linden, recalled that in 1892 the town had three new "sensations, a porter, a hackney-carriage, and ... even a Studentin." As we shall see in chapter six, she reported that her personal relations with professors and their families were friendly. 24 In other cases, however, the appearance of women provoked spontaneous protests by the male students ranging from the traditional student practice of foot trampling [Scharren] during lecture to petitions to the dean. These reactions were more common at universities that drew larger numbers of women, such as Berlin and Leipzig. Although the faculty generally acted quickly to quell such protests, professors in turn made the avoidance of such outbreaks the cornerstone of their own classroom policy on how to treat women. German university students made for a lively audience, reacting to the professor's lecture with a wave of knocking to "applaud" the speaker and with trampling or stomping to indicate disapproval. In December 1899 the Hamburgische Correspondent reported that a middle-aged headmistress had been trying to attend Professor Behrend's lecture on prostitution at the University of Berlin. When she entered the auditorium on the first day of class, 200 students "stomped" her out of the hall. This performance was repeated every week until she stopped coming at the professor's request. Behrend announced that he would repeat his lecture for women in the following summer semester. 25 The women's movement reacted quickly to this incident. Anita Augspurg submitted a formal complaint about the incident to the University of Berlin senate on behalf of her Association for Women's University Study.26 Interestingly, an angry response to Augspurg appeared in Die Frauenbewegung signed by 119 women at the University of Berlin, over a quarter of the female auditors that semester. The women blamed Augspurg for stirring up resentment against them at the university.27 Helene Lange used the Behrend affair to restate the moderate bourgeois women's movement's support of

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coeducation, citing the favorable opinions of Swiss professors surveyed by the imperial government in 1896. 28 But the so-called "Behrend affair" was hardly the last of its kind. In one incident, women were trampled out of the auditorium at Gustav Roethe's inaugural lecture on German literary history at Berlin in 1903. Even after women were admitted there in 1908, Roethe was well-known for systematically excluding them from his courses. 29 A more serious protest against female students occurred in Halle, a small university town in Sachsen-Anhalt, then part of Prussia. Hildegard Wegscheider, its first German woman auditor with an Abitur, had arrived in 1895 and earned a doctorate with the historian Droysen in 1898. Wegscheider's reception was not as warm as Linden's, but Wegscheider reported no major outbursts against her, as will be seen in Chapter Six. 30 But this changed once women began appearing in greater numbers, concentrated in the medical faculty. A protest by male medical students in February 1899 drew national press attention as well as the involvement of the Prussian ministry of education. 31 Clinical students informed the medical faculty that a few days earlier they had met and decided to protest against the admission of women to medical studies. The students cited several reasons in their complaint. First, the clinical students resented the fact that women did not have the same qualifications or educational background. Second, the presence of women and the subsequent demands of modesty had led to certain standard cases not being shown on the clinical rounds. Moreover, the students continued, it made them uncomfortable when they recognized that patients with "discrete" cases, who were reticent even before male doctors, were yet more embarrassed to face "persons of the female sex, to whom [the patients] ... [were] even turned over for special examination." Dean Weber of the medical faculty reported to the education ministry that he did not understand what all the fuss was about because the women behaved properly and modestly and worked harder, in part, than the men. The students then responded by accusing Weber of revealing only individual body parts (when a view of the entire body was needed), out of consideration for the female students. Gonorrhea cases were also not shown, the men said. A week later the students issued an "Appeal to the Clinical Students of German Universities," which explained the Halle students' written protest to the dean. It stated that the admission of female auditors had resulted in a "profusion of unwholesomeness and abuses." The students labeled Halle's attempt to let women study medicine as having "thoroughly failed." Cynicism, they argued, had entered "the places of honest striving" along with the women, resulting in "scandalous" scenes. The women's movement had gone too far, they implied. "Here the emancipation of woman becomes a calamity, here it conflicts with morality, and thus it must be stopped here"

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(emphasis in the original), the students wrote. In a last letter to the ministry in March 1899, the dean again denied any impropriety or grounds for complaint, disputing the students' examples point by point. 32 In order to avoid such incidents, professors developed their own special policies on the Frauenstudium. Some professors refused women outright as a matter of principle. In this category belonged men such as Roethe, Treitschke, and many theology professors. Other professors would admit women to lectures but not seminars, or to the initial years of study but not the final ones. Still others were willing to help a few exceptional women obtain the doctorate after years of auditing, something that was possible, but difficult, before women were formally admitted. For example, at Tiibingen, Maria von Linden could count on the support of her mentor, the zoologist Gustav Eimer, in earning her doctorate. As late as the summer semester of I 907, the Berliner Akademische Wochenschrift published a list of Berlin professors organized according to their position on the question. Fifteen professors, including Roethe and the anatomist Wilhelm Waldeyer, did not allow women into their classes at all. Four barred women from some courses, such as a Dr. Lesser, who asked that ladies not come to his lecture on the "Dangers of Venereal Disease." Another fifty-nine instructors required written permission beforehand. 33 Perhaps the most extreme instance of a professor seeking to regulate the Frauenstudium in his own classroom was that of Professor Roux, director of the anatomical institute at Halle. In March 1901 Raux reported to the Prussian education ministry that female medical students could study for the first four semesters with himself and another professor in the medical faculty, as well as in the philosophical faculty. After that, all the medical professors except one let in only women with a German Abitur. In order to avoid problems, Roux chose women carefully, telling them he would drop them from the class at the slightest hint of scandal, even if they proved to be innocent. A bad attitude was likewise cause for dismissal. Roux wrote that he told one woman, "who during class used to make a dissatisfied face, shrug her shoulders negatively, and put her foot down," not to come back the following semester. 34 In November of the same year, Raux clarified his system in a letter to the Prussian education minister Konrad von Studt. During the current semester, two German women and thirty Russian women were occupied with dissections. Of the Russians, thirteen had only a teaching certificate and no additional Latin instruction. Roux had admitted them as an experiment to determine how much background in Latin was necessary for medical study, which at the time was a controversial topic for both male and female students. He had admitted an additional six Russians who later did not come, he suspected, because of his strict rules, which read as follows.

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r. Ladies will not only not be put ahead of the gentlemen, but as the citizens of something new ... more likely put back, in the case of doubt as well as in the case of a conflict. 2.. They are asked to avoid anything ostentatious in behavior or clothing. 3· I wish for them to leave the first two benches in the auditorium free and not to push themselves forward during demonstrations. 4· Ladies who violate this order will not be accepted again in the coming semester. 5. If through one or more ladies a public conflict develops with the gentlemen or any other public scandal, all the ladies will be turned out in the next semester. 6. In their own self-interest, the Russian women must be watchful that no immoral lady of their nationality and no political agitators (for Polish intrigues, nihilism, etc.) comes here; or, as the case may be, they must see to it that if such a lady does come here, that she leaves immediately, since in the case of one sole scandal ... the government will throw out all the Russian women studying here.

While the Russian women had to follow all of the rules, German women had only to abide by the first three. So far, Roux concluded, he had done well with this policy. Despite five hours of work together daily, no unpleasant incidents had occurred. Roux managed his dissection course extremely carefully. At the beginning of the semester, he wrote, he took all the ladies and put them in the smaller room. Only those who were "suited" were assigned to share cadavers with the men when necessary, Roux explained. The women were eager to sit with the men to show them that they could do just as well and were not treated differently. The presence of the women had contradictory effects on the male students, Roux felt. "Many gentlemen feel spurred on to work by the often deeper knowledge of the ladies, who live only for their studies and are distracted by nothing," he observed. Other men were afraid of being exposed or shown up by the women. Roux attributed much of the tension between the men and women that had been reported to the ministry to the fact the "the older students see in the thoroughly hardworking and mostly quick-learning women already the dangerous competitor Of tomorrOW. " 35 The disturbances at Berlin and Halle demonstrated how the reactions of professors and students were colored by years of prior debate over the Frauenstudium. The question of precisely who the future Studentin would be was crucial. The incidents revolved around questions of qualification and nationality, issues that found a wider resonance in the more general crisis of the fin-de-siecle German university. In turn events, newspaper coverage, and reports filtering back to the state education ministry influenced

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higher-level discussion over women's higher education. As we shall see below, it was precisely to avoid such incidents that the rules regarding female students were tightened. IV

After the first batch of test cases at each university, the numbers of auditing women increased rapidly. The Frauenstudium soon proved to be too overwhelming a phenomenon for professors to deal with individually, but it was not yet entirely clear how administrators and academics would respond to the problem. Many modifications in auditing policy occurred before the decision was reached to enroll women on an equal basis with men. The most significant changes occurred between 1900 and 1902, when the requirements for female auditors were made stricter at several universities. The revised guidelines did not set a higher educational standard but instead were directed against foreign women, concretely the Russians, who were coming to German universities in increasing numbers. Bureaucrats were not the only ones to single out the Russian women; German students of both sexes did as well. The widespread belief was that the Russinnen were unqualified to study and that their education was not equivalent to that of German girls' schools. Albisetti writes that even the name of the Russian girls' school, the "Gymnasium for girls," confused German officials because "its name implied that it resembled German Gymnasien as much as the Russian boys' schools did." Of course the Russian Gymnasium for girls was no Gymnasium in the German sense. Instead it was comparable to the standard German school for girls, the higher girls' school. Generally speaking, both institutions differed from boys' Gymnasien in that they offered less mathematics and no Latin. In contrast, the few existing German Gymnasien for girls did provide more or less the same curriculum for girls as the boys' and thus offered a more challenging course of study than the Russian Gymnasien for girls. The question, then, was to what degree Russian girls' schools resembled their German counterparts. Even today historians are divided on whether the Russinnen were indeed less qualified. At the time, the discussion was extremely one-sided and dominated by German officials. Few voices from the Russinnen were heard. 36 More important than whether these women had an education equal to the Germans' is that foreign women were treated far differently than foreign men. The "foreigner question" (Auslanderfrage] was a burning issue at German universities from about 1901 on. The largest contingent among the foreign students was composed of Russian men, mostly Jewish, whose numbers nearly quadrupled in the period from 1900 to 1914 and concen-

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trated mostly in the medical faculties. Many of the prejudices surrounding the Russinnen clung to their male countrymen as well, most notably antiSemitism and the suspicion of socialism and political radicalism. Although in the period before the First World War many students and professors called for a crackdown on foreign students, particularly Russians, state education officials had a more internationalist outlook and shied away from limiting foreign enrollment. 37 When it came to female foreign students, though, both ministries and faculties were of another opinion. The change in auditing guidelines for women between 1900 and 1902. that occurred in many German states was not so much a step towards the admission of women as a group as towards the determination of what kind of woman would eventually be admitted. Two cases from Berlin and Leipzig illustrate two different and contradictory pressures that led to the policy change: in Leipzig the pressure came from male students, professors, and state bureaucrats, while in Berlin pressure came from German women with an Abitur. Around I 900 at the University of Leipzig, the credentials of foreign female auditors, especially Russians and Americans, were called into question. While the matter of the Americans was soon solved, opposition to the Russian women continued, especially in the medical faculty. As at Halle, male medical students again protested against female students. This time, though, their complaints were directed mainly at foreign women. 38 In apetition submitted to the medical faculty in January 1901, the men asked that women without a German Abitur not be allowed to study medicine. The male students saw the admission of such women as "an injustice and a danger to the reputation" of their "estate." It quickly became apparent that their main demand was to ban foreign women without distinction. Citing the rising numbers of foreign women, the petitioners feared overcrowding in their courses as reportedly was the case in Zurich, "where forty percent of the medical students are women." The presence of women disadvantaged German men, who had worked for years in order to enroll in the medical faculty (implying, of course, that the women had not). The Leipzig medical students also saw the foreign women as a threat to the standards and honor of the medical profession. The Russinnen, the petitioners argued, might well settle in Germany as "quacks." The male medical students assembled a wide array of common arguments against the admission of women to medical studies at all. Women labored under the "greater lability of their nervous systems and their physiological weaknesses." More worrisome still was the prospect of competition in a field seen as already overcrowded. Medicine, the petitioners feared, was the only logical place for women to turn. "A flooding of our lecture halls by women will ... occur for the simple reason that medicine, next to the [faculty of] philosophy, is the only subject ... with which the women

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can earn a living." It was not fair, the men pointed out, that medicine was open to women while law and theology remained closed. "It could almost appear to be a degradation of our estate [of physicians] if it is intended to function, in a manner of speaking, as a means of support for emancipated women," the petitioners complained. Women driven into medicine by the need to support themselves could hardly be expected to share the same ideal view of the medical profession as men who had chosen it freely. If women were to be admitted at all, the petitioners concluded, they should have the same qualifications as men. 39 As the male medical students had demanded, the medical faculty passed their concerns along to the Saxon education ministry in February 1901. The dean reported to the ministry that at the beginning of the current winter semester 190D-1901, twenty-two women had arrived in Leipzig with the intent of studying medicine. Their petitions for auditor's certificates had been approved by the ministry, so they were allowed to take part in medical lectures and dissection courses. In the meantime, however, the medical faculty had discovered that the preparation that the Russian women had received "lag[ged] substantially behind that required from German women studying medicine." Closer investigation revealed that the majority of the Russinnen had attended Russian Gymnasien for girls where no Latin was taught. In fact, the medical faculty had learned that the education that most of these women had would not even qualify them for courses at the medical women's academy in St. Petersburg, which required Latin. The dean argued that it would hurt the reputation of the university if many foreign female auditors came to study medicine who were not even qualified to do so in their own country. He added that it seemed unfair that German women had to meet a higher standard than foreign women in terms of their preparation. Almost all of the Russinnen were Jewish, the dean added, and not admitted to the female medical academy in St. Petersburg. A large number of female students in clinics and "practical" lectures would lead to serious "abuses" -the appearance of the Russinnen had already led to the enclosed petition. The dean contended that the university was sure to be "flooded" by foreign women. Academic freedom, he noted, meant that each individual professor could simply turn the women away, but it would be easier not to admit them in the first place. The medical faculty asked the minister not to let in any female foreigner without the equivalent of the male qualification for any subject, not just medicine. The minister rapidly agreed. 40 In November 1901 the Saxon education ministry announced that it would not accept certificates from Russian Gymnasien for girls anymore. At the same time it decided to extend auditing certificates for five years (in the case of medicine, seven years) for women with the German Abitur. 41 The new standards resulted in the ministry granting only thirty of fifty-six requests to audit that semester.42

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This change in policy provoked an immediate response from twenty-one Russinnen, who petitioned the education minister in December 1901. The women explained that in October, at the beginning of the semester, they had asked for permission to audit in the philosophical faculty, assuming that their Russian Gymnasium for girls certificate would suffice, as it had in the past. The demand that they show a German Abitur was a "terrible blow to us all." Trusting in the continuing validity of the prior policy, we made the long trip, some from Siberia, mostly under unspeakably difficult material sacrifice for ourselves and our families, rented apartments here ... only to find out now, when every opportunity to attend another German or foreign university is closed to us ... that the gates of the University of Leipzig are closed to us.

The women, of whom at least eight appear to have been Jewish and one Armenian, asked to be allowed to audit on the old terms, and two of them appeared to plead their case personally in the ministry. 43 Although the policy was not changed, the women were allowed to stay for the rest of the semester. 44 Similar changes to those instituted at Leipzig with regard to Russian credentials occurred at other German universities around the same time. Moreover, as the experience at Berlin shows, male students, professors, and bureaucrats were not the only ones worried about the influx of foreign women. Beginning in 1900, pressure began to come from the first sizable cohorts of German women who had passed the Abitur. The particular concerns of German women with the Abitur as an interest group first came to the attention of the Prussian education ministry in a petition submitted in February 1900 by Anita Augspurg on behalf of her Association for Women's University Study in Berlin. In general the petition asked the ministry to raise its standards for the Frauenstudium. Admitting insufficiently prepared women would degrade the whole idea of women's university studies, Augspurg asserted. German women should be required to have an Abitur. Male and female foreigners alike should be admitted only on the basis of a separate entrance examination such as that administered in Switzerland. Furthermore, the prerequisites for auditing should be made the same for men and women. The collegia publica, general lectures free to students, were geared to a nonspecialist level, so men and women who studied part-time or on the side should be admitted on equal terms. Augspurg contrasted these dilettantes with "such women who take up a course of study in the sense of a serious life calling." These women, who had achieved the right to take the Abitur in all German states, should be given the chance to fulfill the same requirements demanded of male students. Such a policy was in the best interests of the male students, the female students, and scholarship itself, Augspurg argued:u

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Although the ministry ignored Augspurg's demand that women be matriculated, her mistrust of the qualifications of many foreign women was shared by state officials. Only recently Professor Schliemann of the University of Berlin had assured both the university and the ministry that German girls' schools provided more advanced instruction than Russian Gymnasien for girls in all subjects except pedagogy. He believed that the only Russian women qualified to audit were those who had attained the title of "governess" [Erzieherin]. 46 In the same month as Augspurg's petition, the University of Berlin announced that it had changed the requirements for female auditors. Wom.en still needed to get the rector's permission every semester. German women would now need one of four credentials: a certificate for at least the Obersekunda class of a German Gymnasium, Realgymnasium, or Oberrealschule; a teaching exam; the completion of the higher girls' school along with good grades from state art institutes; or certificates attesting to outstanding achievement as a writer or artist. Foreign women had to show that their preparation was the same as that demanded of German women. Certificates from Russian Gymnasien for girls would only suffice if they were at the level of "governess," given after the seventh class [Selecta]. But most Russian women had completed only the sixth class, since this entitled them to pursue higher education in Russia. Russian women already in Berlin were allowed to continue their studies, but newcomers would have to meet the new standardY The implications of this new policy were immediately clear. Already in June

1900,

Berlin newspapers reported that the new admission guidelines

for women were perceived by the Russinnen as discriminatory. No other German or Russian university was this picky, one article commented, explaining that few women earned the certificate of "governess" now required at Berlin. Those who did usually remained in Russia because they received preferential admission to special female "higher courses" and other benefits. Because Jews and Armenians were barred from such courses, they came to Berlin. If the policy persisted, the Russinnen would be as good as barred, the article concluded. 48 In fact the numbers of female auditors in the winter semester of 1900-1901 showed a slight increase over those of the previous winter, from 431 to 454· But by the summer of 1901, the effect of the policy became more apparent as the growth in the number of female auditors (temporarily) stopped. The number of women held virtually steady compared with the previous summer semester of 1900. Yet stricter standards for the Russian women notwithstanding, the number of female auditors at Berlin continued to rise, reaching 634 in the winter semester of 1901-1902. 49

The change in auditing guidelines, which amounted to tougher standards only for foreign women, pleased neither Augspurg nor German

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women with an Abitur. In March 1900, an anonymous article, almost certainly by Augspurg, appeared in Parlamentarische Angelegenheiten und Gesetzgebung, which she edited. Striking a pessimistic tone, the article repeated many of the arguments of the petition Augspurg had submitted the previous month. The adoption of the new policy had imposed "the official seal of inadequacy on the study by women at the University of Berlin." The new standards would cultivate only "dilettantism" and revealed "the intention of holding the academic study by women from the very start at the level of an academic proletariat, in order to attach to it the unmistakable label of its inferiority." Augspurg's Association for Frauenstudium had tried to avoid this through its petition to the University of Berlin senate and the education ministry, which demanded "equal rights on the basis of equally performed duties," but in vain. Stricter preparation for university work was needed if female students were to be taken seriously. As long as women were not enrolled, they could not be held to the male standard, so the only thing women could do in the meantime was to try to reach the higher standard themselves, the article concluded. 50 German women who had done so by passing the Abitur continued to petition the education ministry to recognize their achievement and enroll them officially. One letter from the Association of Women Studying in Berlin in March 1901 appealed for the matriculation of women with the Abitur. The petition asked the ministry to distinguish between serious, qualified women and others. Although no overt mention of foreigners was made, the implication was clear that women with the Abitur would almost certainly be German. 51 Other letters were more direct. In July 1901 Elise Taube, a Berlin medical student, wrote to the Prussian interior minister Posadowsky requesting that she and other women at Berlin with an Abitur be allowed to complete their medical studies there. Currently they were barred from dissection courses and clinical exercises. The surgical clinic refused to take any women on the grounds that it would then have to take all of them. Taube pointed out that all women should not be lumped together. Most of the foreign women were badly prepared and spoke poor German. "The foreign women crush us with their superior numbers, and in addition to the foreign women come a number of German women as well who, also without the appropriate educational background," merely dabbled in medicine, she wrote. The official who received Taube's letter noted that in the Berlin medical faculty there were twenty-nine women, of whom six were German and seventeen Russian. Only two of the Germans had the Abitur. 52 A third petition from fifty-one women at Prussian universities reached Prussian education minister Studt in February 1902. The women argued that those with a German Abitur should be formally enrolled, since those with the credential were at a disadvantage compared to those without it. In

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Berlin, the petitioners claimed, only thirty-one out of 6 I I auditing women had an Abitur. The letter also pointed out that since Baden had matriculated women in I 900, admitting them to Pruss ian universities would keep them in the state. 53 There is some evidence that this last petition prompted the education minister to survey Prussian universities on the question of the matriculation of women with a Prussian Abitur the same month. Despite the auditing policy changes with regard to foreign women, the University of Berlin's opinion on female students in general remained deeply ambivalent, as shown by its response in May 1902. The philosophical faculty was in favor, as was, surprisingly, the theological faculty. What explained the latter's positive stance was that even the arguments in favor of the Frauenstudium focused on the fact that a career as a theologian or lawyer was not an issue, so the question was really a matter of women in medical and philosophical faculties. Although some members opposed enrolling women in the theological faculty because no corresponding career was open to them, the same persons recognized that if women were matriculated, academic freedom would not allow their wholesale exclusion from the faculty. The legal faculty deemed matriculation "pointless" since no profession requiring university study was yet open to women. Strictly speaking, this was not true, as women had been admitted to state certification as physicians in r899 on the basis of audited coursework. The medical faculty opposed the idea, as did the Universitiitskuratorium, the intermediary body between the university and the state education ministry. 54 In July I902, forty-three Russian women at Berlin wrote to the education ministry protesting the decision not to recognize the credential of the Russian Gymnasium for girls. They argued that their final exam was not inferior to the German female teachers' exam or even the Abitur. Comparing the Russian Gymnasium for girls with the German female teachers' exam, which was the minimum standard for German women, the Russians claimed that their curriculum was comparable and even offered more math. The only difference was, of course, less German. The petitioners also argued that the Russian courses were more academically oriented, while in Germany girls' schools were more practical and pedagogical. 55 Despite the Russian women's appeal, the University of Berlin announced stricter standards for them in the fall of I902. Russian Gymnasium for girls certificates, even at the level of "governess," would no longer suffice. Instead the Russinnen would need to have finished the academic women's courses in St. Petersburg or to prove outstanding scholarly achievement. 56 Although the ministry stood by its decision, women who had already been allowed to audit on the basis of these papers were permitted to continue. 57 The effect of the new policy was quite dramatic in the short run and noted

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in the women's press. Neue Bahnen reported in July 1903 that the number of women auditing at German universities had gone from 1,271 in the winter semester of I 902-1903 to only about 8 so in the following summer semester of 1903. In Prussia the numbers had decreased even more in the same period, from about 900 to 5 29; in the case of Berlin, female auditors had gone from 560 to 293 and had fallen by about half at other Prussian universities, too. 58 Neue Bahnen had put its finger on a key point: the reforms of fall 1902 helped to slow sharply the rate of increase in female enrollment. The number of female auditors at Berlin had increased an average of sixty percent every winter semester from 1895-1896 to I899-1900. In the summer semester of 1900, just before the first restrictions aimed at the Russinnen, the number of all women at the university increased another sixty percent from the previous summer semester. Nominal increases in female enrollment followed until the winter semester of I90I-I902, which saw a forty percent jump, and the summer semester of 1902, which saw a twenty-two percent increase. The effect of the stricter standards for Russian women announced in the fall of 1902 seems to have extended right up to the time of women's matriculation in 1908: between the winter semester of 1902-1903 and that of I907-1908, the number of women at Berlin increased only an average of four percent each winter semester. 59 Specific data on the nationality of the auditors at Berlin is not available for all semesters, so it is difficult to determine if the measures against the Russinnen were really triggered by a significant increase in their numbers or by their mere presence. Available data suggest that the proportion of Russians among the women rose from about fourteen percent in the winter semester of 1898-1899 to about twenty-one percent in the summer of 1901. 60 That the absolute numbers of Russian women then sank after the reform of fall 1902, which was harsher than that of the summer of I9oo, seems probable. Anja Burchardt shows that the absolute number of female Russian auditors in the medical faculty alone dropped from thirty in the winter term of I90I-I902 to thirteen a year later and ten in the winter term of I903-1904. 61 The figures from Leipzig also show a decrease in the absolute number of Russian women and their proportion among the female students. At Leipzig in the summer of 1900, there were twenty-nine female auditors, of whom twenty were German and seven Russian. In the medical faculty there were four German and two Russian women. The next semester the number of female auditors shot up to eighty-nine, including thirty-two Germans and forty-one Russians. Suddenly the medical faculty found itself with eight German and twenty-three Russian women. In the summer of 1901, there were seventy-one female auditors, twenty-six Germans and thirty-two Russians; the medical faculty had eight German and eighteen Russian female

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students. Although the university tightened its standards for Russian women in November I90I, the twenty-two Russian women currently auditing were allowed to complete the semester. That winter there were seventy-three female auditors, of whom twelve Germans and ten Russians were medical students. In the following winter of I902-1903, the Russians numbered only seven out of the eighty-one female auditors. By the winter semester of 1904-I9b5, the absolute number of Russian women began to increase, but they remained a small fraction of all female auditors; that winter Russian women numbered eleven out of 102 women total, the following year fifteen out of 123.62 Prussia and Saxony were not the only German states to crack down on foreign women. In the case of Baden, standards for Russian women were raised after the matriculation of women was allowed at Heidelberg and Freiburg in 1900. A few years following admission, the medical faculty at Freiburg complained that foreign female auditors, especially Russians, were not well prepared enough and asked for stricter enforcement of the auditing rules. The education ministry complied in December 1903, with stunning results. From one semester to the next, the number of auditors at Freiburg was nearly halved: in the winter semester of 1903-1904 there had been ninety-nine female auditors but just fifty-four the next semester. 63 A further example of officials' desire to keep the auditing process under tight control through special vigilance against foreign women is illustrated in an incident from 1904. When a Swedish woman lost her Gymnasium for girls certificate, the machinery of state was set in motion on her behalf. The Swedish embassy alerted the German foreign office, which in turn contacted the Prussian education ministry. A female Jewish student of medicine (presumably Russian) was suspected of stealing the paper with the intention of using it to apply to German universities. To combat this potential swindle, the education ministry passed the word on to the individual universities. 64 In the wake of the auditing reforms, a consensus developed around the issue of the Russian women. A 1902 article in the liberal Berlin newspaper Vossische Zeitung summarized neatly the dilemma at hand. Noting the stricter standards for Russinnen at Halle, the reporter observed that many problems with foreign students stemmed from the German university rule that the foreign student's credential for university study was valid in Germany as well. Because standards in each country were different, though, it was important to hold foreign students to the same standards as Germans, the writer argued. 65 Yet as we have seen, it was only the female foreign students, not the male ones, who were made to measure up to the German standard and found lacking. Complicating matters further was that this standard itself was still in dispute. In the contest over who the Studentin would be and what qualifications she would have, male medical students at

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Leipzig and German Abiturientinnen at Berlin both converged on the Russin, who became the scapegoat for both groups. Only by sacrificing her could the admission of women proceed from the efforts of bureaucrats and faculty to control the Frauenstudium.

v The formal matriculation of women was decided state by state between 1900 and 1909. Baden was the first to admit women in 1900. Elsewhere women's formal enroHment took several years longer, coming in 1903 in Bavaria and 1904 in Wiirttemberg. Saxony followed in 1906, Prussia in 1908, and Mecklenburg in 1909. Almost everywhere, admitting women was, ironicaHy, a course of last resort to control a "problem" that could not be solved by simply reforming auditing policies. In various contexts, it became dear that only by admitting women could their numbers be decreased. I will focus here on the case of the University of Berlin, taking the universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg as comparison cases. Located in the Kaiserreich's dominant state, Prussia, Berlin was the preeminent university in Imperial Germany. Heidelberg was selected because it is in Baden,66 the first state to admit women in 1900, and Leipzig was chosen because the relatively high proportion of female and foreign students there spurred a particularly intense discussion. Developments at the University of Berlin iHustrated many of the issues at stake. After the initial petition on behalf of German Abiturientinnen at Berlin in 1900, many similar requests were submitted to the Prussian state education ministry. Several of these explicitly addressed the question of foreign women. One petition from December 1904 asked that women with an Abitur be aUowed to matriculate at Berlin. Because only ten percent of the current female auditors at Berlin had the Abitur, there would be no chance of overcrowding, the petitioners assured the ministry. 67 If it had not occurred to ministry officials earlier, then this is certainly where they got the idea that admitting women on the same basis as men would in fact decrease their numbers, contrary to many academics' fears. Another petition reached the ministry in March I 906. Here female medical students at Berlin asked that women be formaHy enrolled under same conditions as men and that an entrance exam be given for foreign women without equivalent credentials. The petitioners also emphasized that the number of Russian women had increased at Berlin following stricter regulations at southern German universities, which had already matriculated women. Again it was dear that admitting "qualified" women would mean fewer of them. The petitioners pointed out that of the 104 female auditors in the medical faculty, fifty-eight were Russian and only two others had the Abitur. 68 In

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fact, the petitioners did not need to make overt references to the Russian women at all. Simply setting the German Abitur as the standard was enough to exclude the Russians, who could not earn this credential at home and usually could not afford the expense and effort that obtaining the diploma in Germany would entail. Making the Abitur the standard for female students was attractive to different constituencies for different reasons. German women auditors demanded it on the basis of fairness. One I 90 5 petition came from eleven graduates of the girls' Gymnasium courses in Hannover, who stressed that they had the same education as men and thus the same rights. 69 A similar argument was voiced in a petition to the Prussian parliament from the German Federation of the Associations of Studying Women (Verband der Vereine studierender Frauen Deutschlands, later the German Federation of Female Student Associations) in November I 907. 70 Other constituencies supported the Abitur because of its status as the traditional credential. In March I 907, I 4 2 professors at Prussian universities signed a petition to the state education ministry in favor of admitting women with the Abitur. Among the nine Berlin academics who signed were Erich Schmidt, Gustav Schmoller, and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Mollendorf. 71 A few months later the German Free Student League (Deutsche Freie Studentenschaft), a progressive student association with some female members, submitted a similar request. 72 While these petitions were coming in, the Prussian education ministry began to take serious steps towards official enrollment. In March I 90 5 Friedrich Althoff, a senior official in charge of university policy, tipped his hand on the matter before the Prussian House of Deputies. He noted that foreign women accounted for 657 of the female auditors in Berlin alone, which raised the question of whether women should not then be matriculated. Matriculation, he continued, "would not be ... an expansion in the admission of women but rather a limitation." Althoff then explained how standards for auditors were lower than for enrolled students. He urged the deputies to see the admission of women as a "a regulation through which firm and specific guidelines will be introduced for the admission of women ... in place of the lax test, with which the admission of the female auditors is usually associated." Such a policy, Althoff argued, would "benefit the better elements" and "keep away the less desirable ones, namely those from foreign countries. " 73 Two weeks later Althoff called a meeting of Prussian and Saxon education ministry officials in Berlin to discuss the Frauenstudium. There he mentioned that Prussia was considering matriculating German women with the Abitur, and foreign women only with the ministry's permission. Furthermore, he stressed, professors should be able to bar women from their classes entirely with the permission of the ministry. 74

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Althoff's basic strategy was revealed in more detail when the Prussian Ministry of State considered the idea of officially enrolling women between February and March 1905. Education Minister Studt carefully explained to the other ministers why reform was needed. Women, he stressed, were being admitted to lectures in a way that was "untenable" in the long run. Because women came under the rules for auditors, they could be admitted to lectures if they had at least the equivalent of the mitt/ere Reife, the completion of the first six years of the nine-year Gymnasium. The consequence, he asserted, was that "the universities are frequently attended by insufficiently prepared women, especially foreigners and among these, namely Russian women." This was a development that had to be stopped in the interest of the universities themselves, he declared. To do this, the Frauenstudium would have to be "steered onto an orderly track." The way to do this was to admit women under the "same conditions" as men, Studt proposed, which would entail requiring the Abitur. Any woman with an intermediate qualification equivalent to the mitt/ere Reife would need the minister's permission to study. Foreign women would be required to get ministerial permission to matriculate in all cases. This proposal had several advantages, as Studt made clear. First, these rules would restore the original intention of the auditing policy, which was to allow attendance at certain lectures for particular reasons and not as a mechanism for completing an entire education, as the women were then using it. The new policy would not expand the Frauenstudium but rather limit it, he reiterated. Second, professors currently had too much discretion with women students in being able to ban them at random. On the other hand, he noted, there were considerations that justified excluding women from individual lectures; thus the draft of the policy would allow this with ministerial permission. The Prussian minister offered a third compelling reason for the reform. There was a danger that if women were not matriculated in Prussia, qualified ones would go to states where they could formally enroll, leaving the less qualified women in Prussia, he explained. The minister also downplayed the other ministers' fear that university study would give women a claim to enter new professions, saying that student status and state examinations had little connection. Studt pointed out that women were already admitted to the state medical exam although they were not regular students.75 Negotiations with the Prussian Ministry of State dragged on for the next three years. In the interim the ministers considered the reform of girls' schools and whether new professions should be opened to women (the consensus on the latter was no). The objections of the other ministers in the group recapitulated the arguments that dominated the long debate, highlighting the difficulties of any potential direct relationship between the state and women. In January 1907, Studt raised the issue again, restating many

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of his earlier points. First, other German states were already enrolling women. Second, keeping women as auditors left them outside the university's structure of fees and laws, and because the requirements for auditing were minimal, many unqualified women, especially foreigners, continued to stream into the university. Again Studt stressed how matriculation would actually limit the Frauenstudium. He rejected the idea of matriculating women only in the medical and philosophical faculties, explaining that study in a faculty did not give one the right to a profession: the way in which women were admitted to state exams for medicine and higher teaching positions had nothing to do with being matriculated. Here Studt emphasized the university's role in general education, not just preparation for the civil service. For this reason he suggested appending a sort of disclaimer to the decree, stating that the matriculation of women in no way gave them a right, as it did not give men a right, to admission to a state or church exam, the doctorate or university-level teaching credential [Habilitation], which were all governed by their own sets of rules. 76 The other state ministers were still not persuaded. Minister of Justice Max von Beseler again expressed concern that enrolling women would lead to irresistible demands to open more professions to them. Once women were admitted to the law faculty, he wrote, they would have to be admitted to careers as lawyers and judges. Minister of Finance Georg von Rheinbaben saw the disclaimer as a "self-deception." The whole reason women wanted to study was to gain access to professions closed to them, Rheinbaben argued; matriculation alone would not satisfy them. Even if one hoped that the authorities did not give in, Rheinbaben continued, one ran the risk of turning women into "bitter characters, who for lack of a useful and satisfying occupation turn their activity to political agitation." He concluded by saying that certainly all the ministers could agree that women should be banned from all branches of law and administration, as well as the church. Minister of the Interior and future chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg felt that women with the Abitur should be able to enroll formally and pursue a career. At the same time, he exhorted Studt not to encourage the radical wing of the women's movement to push to open all professions. 77 In his reply, Studt again explained that the matriculation of women could not be restricted to a particular faculty. The formal ceremony of matriculation, by which the rector entered the student into the Matrikel, or registry of students, and inscription, where the dean received the student into a faculty, gave the student academic citizenship, which included the right to hear all lectures at the university, not just those in his faculty. But Studt also repeated that inscription in a faculty conferred no right to take a state professional examination. 78 Shortly after this exchange, Studt was succeeded as minister by Ludwig Holle, who continued to push for female admission. 79 At the ministry of

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state meeting in February 1908, last-minute differences were ironed out. Again Holle argued that women should be admitted to all four faculties. The finance minister advocated limiting women to only the philosophical and medical faculties, so as not to raise false hopes. Conversely, the minister of trade thought that the fewer barriers were put in front of the study of law and theology, the fewer women would want to pursue it. The justice minister expressed concern that the admission of women would aggravate existing overcrowding in the legal faculty. Still, he agreed that it would be more dangerous to expose Prussia to charges of backwardness after most other German states had gone ahead with admission. 80 The ministers finally agreed on the decree in the form the education minister had proposed earlier, with the attached disclaimer that matriculation alone gave women no further claims to take state exams or doctoral degrees. Foreign women, the decree stated, could be matriculated only with the permission of the education minister. In addition, professors would be allowed to bar women from certain lectures with ministerial approval. 81 The effect of the decree reverberated throughout Prussia. In 1909 Albert Tilman, an official in the Prussian education ministry, reported in the Monatschrift fur hohere Schulen that before matriculation, the university had suffered under large numbers of "the insufficiently prepared," of which foreign women constituted a great part. The formal admission of women had limited the Frauenstudium, Tilman explained, although the numbers for the winter semester of 1908-1909 still showed a period of transition, as women admitted in the 1907 summer semester were allowed to complete their studies as auditors. During the last winter semester before matriculation in 1907-1908, 1,773 women were auditing courses at Prussian universities. A year later in the winter semester of 1908-1909, the total number of women had fallen slightly, to 1,68o, of whom 718 were formally enrolled. Tilman noted with some satisfaction that "the expected decrease in attendance has thus actually occurred. " 82 Still, the absolute numbers of women at Prussian universities continued to grow, reaching 3,007, of whom 2,305 were enrolled Studentinnen, in the winter semester of 1913-1914. 83 At the University of Berlin, the numbers of women overall, both as auditors and regular students, increased about eight percent per year after matriculation. In the winter of 1908-1909 there were 405 regular women students, who made up five percent of all students and 316 female auditors, who were about six percent of all auditors. By the winter of 1912-1913, the last winter before the war for which figures are available, there were 8 59 regular female students, representing over nine percent of all students. The auditors numbered 225 and were about five percent of all auditors. The philosophical faculty continued to draw more female students than any other. In 1908-1909 312 women were formally enrolled in philosophy, eighty-eight in medicine, three in law, and

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two in theology. Four years later the distribution was much the same, with the exception of the law faculty, which had attracted twenty regular female students, although women would not be admitted to the practice of law until the Weimar Republic. Berlin's admission policies had the desired effect on Russian women. Among the matriculated Studentinnen, Russian women continued to make up the largest group of foreigners, but the percentage of all matriculated Studentinnen that they represented was far smaller than in the summer of I90I, when they had been twenty-one percent of all women. In the winter semester of 1908-1909, Russian women were about ten percent of all women, and four years later their share had fallen to seven percent. In both cases the Russinnen were less than one percent of all students at the university. When one considers that in I 9 II-I 9 I 2 male Russians made up about seventeen percent of the medical students at Berlin, the discrepancy in the treatment of the male and female Russians becomes apparent. While the nationality of female auditors after matriculation is unclear, given the policies described here, Russian women were almost certainly far less likely to be admitted than their German counterparts. 84 The few women of Russian nationality to slip through the cracks of this system were likely to be the daughters of immigrant families who had long resided in Germany; these women then would have had easier access to the Abitur and thus perhaps could have been admitted under certain circumstances. In other states, women's formal admission was also undertaken with a view to limit the number of women and control the type of Studentin who enrolled. When the Saxon education ministry decided to admit women as of the summer semester of 1906, it stressed that there was no intention of allowing women to take either the theological or legal state examinations. 85 The prerequisites for admission were the German Abitur or one from a similar foreign institution with German language instruction; certain Saxon teachers were also eligible. Foreigners without these qualifications and German women with less preparation than needed to follow lectures could only be admitted as auditors as before. 86 As was later explained at a 1907 conference of education officials from the German states, the Saxons had instituted the requirement of instruction in the German language "to keep out undesirable foreign women. " 87 As shown above, the number of Russian women at Leipzig fell sharply after standards for them were tightened in the winter semester of 19o1-I902. Although the absolute number of Russinnen began to rise again in 1904, the total number of women at the university was increasing, so the Russian women were proportionately a far smaller group. After matriculation was granted in the summer of 1906, they continued to constitute ten percent to twenty percent of all female auditors. In the figures available for the first

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four semesters after matriculation, no Russian women are listed as regular students; the only foreigners admitted were Austrians and Rumanians. Despite officials' anxiety about the hordes of women who would flood into Leipzig once matriculation was opened, the number of female students remained very low before the First World War. In the summer of I9o6, the first formally enrolled twenty-seven women made up less than one percent of all matriculated students, while the seventy-one female auditors constituted less than ten percent of all auditors. By the summer of I 9 I I the number of regular female students had risen to eighty-one, but this was still less than two percent of all regular students; the number of female auditors held steady at seventy-one, now less than nine percent of all auditors. 88 The number of women auditing in the philosophical faculty at Leipzig surpassed that in the medical faculty by the summer of 1900, four years after women were again allowed to audit there. After matriculation, the distribution was the same. Of the thirty-three women matriculated in the winter semester of I906-I907, twenty studied in the philosophical faculty compared with twelve in medicine and one in law. Four years later the total number of matriculated Studentinnen had increased to eighty, of whom fifty-one were enrolled in philosophy and twenty-five in medicine. 89 In the case of Baden, pressure from German Abiturientinnen, in particular the first graduates of the Karlsruhe Gymnasium for girls in 1899, led the state education ministry to relent. In February 1900 the ministry allowed matriculation on the basis of a German Abitur in the coming summer semester. The language of the decree was tentative," permitting female matriculation "only on approval and as an experiment," but the policy was never revoked. Although Heidelberg, along with Freiburg, was the first German university to enroll women on an equal basis with men, this hardly meant a welcoming climate for women. Only the philosophical and natural sciences faculties supported the admission of women; medicine, law, and theology remained resolutely against it and had allowed no female auditors prior to matriculation.9° In fact one reason that Heidelberg had relatively few female auditors was that the medical faculty, which elsewhere had attracted large numbers of Russinnen, was closed to women before 1900. In the winter semester of I899-1900, the last before matriculation, Heidelberg's thirteen female auditors made up less than one percent of the total student body. For comparison, during the same semester Berlin had 431 women, who constituted about seven percent of the total number of students. 91 Although women had been expected to confine themselves to the medical and philosophical faculties, academic freedom meant that women had to be admitted to all subjects, even law and theology, which some women studied even though they were barred from the state examinations that would qualify them for employment in these fields. Huerkamp lists twenty-

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three women enrolled in law in German universities in 1908. Those who studied law might provide general legal advice but not official legal counsel or representation. Exams and internships for lawyers and judges were first opened to women between 1918 and 1922. 92 The theological faculty produced other problems. The handful of women to enroll here, almost exclusively in the Lutheran faculties, studied either for their own sake or taught religion in the schools. There were no opportunities for them in the stateadministered churches, outside of women's traditional religious vocations (which did not require a university degree). 93 Despite differences in university and state politics among Prussia, Saxony and Baden, all three states arrived at similar policies with regard to the Frauenstudium. All took steps to bar "unqualified" foreign women in the years between 1900 and 1903. In all three states, matriculation came about as a last resort after years of frustration with auditing policies. Finally, the states all set the Abitur as the standard for women, which had the effect of keeping foreign women away as well as limiting the absolute numbers of women who entered the university. Institutionally this cooperation and uniformity in policy owed much to regular meetings among the states, such as the Hochschulkonferenzen organized for state education officials beginning in I 898. 94 The policy itself, though, bore witness to state officials' involvement in the larger public discussion of the Frauenstudium.

VI The policies outlined above resulted in a female student body with a particular sociological profile. Apparently the only attempt to quantify and describe the living conditions for female students before the First World War was a survey of women at the University of Berlin undertaken in the winter term of 1913-1914 by Gerta Stiicklen, herself a student and budding sociologist.95 Stiicklen, born in 1889 to a Protestant Berlin factory owner, trained with the prominent political economists Adolf Wagner, Gustav Schmoller, and Alfred Weber at the universities of Freiburg, Berlin, and Heidelberg. 96 She surveyed female students at the University of Berlin on topics ranging from their religion and father's occupation to their reasons for university study and its financial cost. 97 The resulting study became her 1916 Heidelberg dissertation for the political economist Eberhard Gothein. 98 It was also the first dissertation about university women, written only sixteen years after they had been formally admitted at Heidelberg. For all of these reasons, Stiicklen's work is worth a closer look. After admission, women like Stiicklen could wander more freely from one university to the next, as Stiicklen herself had done and as was customary for male students. Women tended to favor Berlin, Munich, and Leipzig

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for the winter term and Freiburg, Marburg, and Kiel for the summer. 99 Stiicklen chose to focus on Berlin because she said it had always had the largest number of female students. 100 In December 1913 Stiicklen sent 845 questionnaires to all female students enrolled at the University of Berlin,101 who represented nearly a quarter of all the women inscribed at universities across Germany. 102 Because so few of the ninety-nine foreign women (among them thirty-nine Russians) responded, she focused on the replies of German citizens. 103 The relatively high number of Russians Stiicklen found may be explained by the fact that, as outlined above, many long-settled immigrants in Germany did not seek German citizenship but rather retained their old legal status. Growing up in Germany gave these "foreign" women easier access to credentials for admission like the Abitur. Stiicklen writes that women students consistently came from more socially exclusive backgrounds than their male peers. While men seemed to be coming increasingly from the non-university-educated population (threequarters of total male students), women students were disproportionately of the educated upper-middle class. Daughters of fathers in university-trained careers accounted for forty-two percent of academic women in Prussia, and businessmen's daughters made up thirty percent. Of the rest, fourteen percent were daughters of middle- and lower-level civil servants or elementary teachers and four to five percent of officers, pensioners, and landowners. Stiicklen notes that "the lower circles, whose participation we can discern among the male students, are not represented here at all." 104 Stiicklen cites statistics for Prussian universities in 19II and finds that sixty-six percent of the women were Protestant, twenty-one percent Catholic, and thirteen percent Jewish; at Berlin only nine percent were Catholic and twenty-two percent Jewish. Women medical students were mostly Jewish, she notes. 105 Stiicklen's findings on the social backgrounds of the Studentinnen are confirmed by the more recent work of Claudia Huerkamp. Along with the dominance of women from the educated middle class, Huerkamp notes that Protestants were proportionately represented while Jews and Catholics were significantly over- and underrepresented, respectively, to an even greater degree than with male students. 106 Stiicklen presents fascinating data on women's personal and academic backgrounds. Overall women students in Prussia were still older than men because of longer and more circuitous paths to the Abitur: forty-one percent of the women were between twenty and twenty-five, thirty-two percent between twenty-five and thirty, and twenty-one percent over thirty. 107 Of Stiicklen's sample, less than forty percent had enjoyed a "regular" preparation through Gymnasium classes for girls. Another quarter had no Abitur but had entered through the so-called "fourth way," which allowed female teachers to enroll at Prussian universities. 108 Once at the university, almost

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two-thirds of women students nationwide were enrolled in the philosophical faculty in the winter term of I908-1909, and by winter I9I3-I9I4, the proportion had risen to three-quarters. Since hardly any women were enrolled in the legal or theological faculties, this increase came at the cost of the medical faculty, Stiicklen argued. Favored subjects in the philosophical faculty included modern languages and historical disciplines, followed by mathematics and natural sciences. 109 Despite coming from the upper-middle class, women in Stiicklen's survey ranked material considerations as factors in their decisions to study. The vast majority of women (eighty-four percent) anticipated exercising a profession, with twelve percent expressing a desire for general education only (including the four percent of the sample that was married). Many women (forty-one percent) reported an urgent need to earn a living, 110 and about a third of the sample had been professionally active before commencing their studies.11 1 Stiicklen found that most women studied for idealistic reasons, yet also wished for a practical profession as a way to support themselves afterward. 112 The cost of study itself was also a major consideration for those in the sample. Supported by family members or their own earnings, women students had monthly incomes that ranged from r 69 Reichsmarks for the philosophical faculty to 197 Reichmarks for medicine, a more expensive course of study. For comparison's sake, their average monthly rent was forty-one Reichsmarks and board, fifty-one Reichsmarks; books and lecture fees ran to thirty-seven Reichsmarks per month. 113 Of Stiicklen's 433 Berlin respondents, 129, or thirty percent, were fatherless, twenty-six motherless, and twenty-five without both parents. 114 The large contingent of women without fathers or both parents confirms my frequent observation in this book that many of the fathers of women students were deceased, and that this factor hastened women's commencement of their studies, first because much of the familial opposition to their project was gone and second because of these women's need to support themselves. While Sti.icklen's enquete presents one image of the Studentinnen as a group, another image emerges from the records of their institutional presence at the university, the Studentin clubs. Initially local groups, some later affiliated with one of three loose national associations of clubs for women, modeled along the lines of national student club leagues for men. The oldest was established in 1906 as the German Federation of Studying Women (Verband der studierenden Frauen Deutschlands), later the German Federation of Female Student Associations (Verband der Studentinnenvereine Deutschlands), which grew to 508 members in the winter term of I9I2-I9I3· The league's mandate was to work for women's admission and had petitioned the Prussian parliament in 1907 as mentioned above. After women's admission, the group provided a politically neutral network of student socia-

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bility. The two other umbrella organizations were the League of Catholic German Female Student Clubs (Verband der katholischen deutschen Studentinnenvereine), established in I9I3, and the German League of Academic Women's Associations (Deutsch-Akademischer Frauenbund), founded in 19I4, which pursued a nationalistic and anti-Semitic agenda. In this period, between fifteen percent and twenty percent of female students belonged to a club. Club records tell a disturbing story, that of the gradual exclusion of foreign and German Jewish women from many groups. As other scholars have noted, this mirrored what occurred with male student associations, which had earlier moved against foreign and German Jewish men. us Although student groups are by their nature exclusive, it seems no accident that women's associations moved against the same groups that had been marginalized in the debate over the Frauenstudium, as was the case in at Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Berlin. In Heidelberg, the Association of Women Students in Heidelberg (Verein studierender Frauen in Heidelberg) was founded in January I902 for the "cultivation of collegiality" and the "support of interest in literary and scholarly questions." Yet this new collegiality did not last, and in I905 a new group of women moved to exclude all "strangers" [FremdeJ, including Jews. Rahel Straus recalled, "Our entire group- I was the only Jewish memberresigned en bloc." As more women studied at Heidelberg, the number of associations for them multiplied, leading to a Jewish women's club in I 9 I 3 and a Catholic women's club in I9I6.11 6 In Leipzig foreign women were excluded from women's associational life from the start when in December I904 Kathe Windscheid, the first woman to receive a Ph.D. from Heidelberg in I89 5, petitioned the university successfully for the establishment of an Association of German Women Students (Verein deutscher studierenden Frauen). Once women were allowed to enroll at Leipzig, the Association of Enrolled Women Students in Leipzig (Verein immatrikulierten Studentinnen in Leipzig), understood as a successor organization, was established in May I906. The club's statutes specified that only registered women could become regular members, although auditors would be allowed a special category of membership. There was no mention of foreign women students being allowed or not. Given Saxony's restrictions on the formal enrollment of foreign women, however, it may have seemed superfluous to spell out the exclusion of foreigners explicitly here. 117 Competing clubs arose quickly in Berlin. Upon women's matriculation, the Association of Women Students (Verein studierenden Frauen) was established in November I908 to take the place of an organization that had operated outside the university, the Free Union of Women Students at Berlin (Freie Vereinigung studierender Frauen zu Berlin). Any registered Studentin

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might join the new organization, which boasted forty-nine members. The association counted sixty-nine members in the summer term of 1910 but only thirty-four members the following year. In 1909 the club added to its statutes an explicit warning against "religious and political goals," wishing to emphasize instead the "personal development [of members] through mutual exchange of ideas." This was likely a direct response to the establishment that year of the German Academic Women's League, which listed as its purpose the "protection of the academic and national interests of its members." Membership was expressly restricted to enrolled Studentinnen who were "Christian" and "of German nationality." In May 1909 the club had nineteen members. Numerous women left the more inclusive Association of Women Students for the new club, among them Ilse Tesch and Hanni Bussenius, who had been president and vice-president, respectively, of the older association and now held the same positions in the new one. A comparison of membership lists for February 1909 shows no overlap between the two associations. The German Academic Women's League grew slowly, reaching a prewar membership high of forty in the winter semester of 191 r. The club would later be a founding member of the nationalist German League of Academic Women's Associations, whose motto was "Remember that you are a German woman." 118 The group portrait of the first officially enrolled female students that emerged after 1900 in Stiicklen's survey and elsewhere made clear that university admission policies had produced a group of matriculated women with an even more elite and exceptional social profile than their male peers. The Studentinnen were almost all from the upper-middle class and heavily from that group we now call the Bidungsburgertum. In the often latently antiCatholic climate of German academia, Catholic women were markedly underrepresented, even more so than Catholic men. In contrast, the overrepresentation of Jewish women was more pronounced than that of Jewish men. Echoes of the admission policies also resounded in the student associations some women founded along nationalistic and anti-Semitic lines.

VII Ultimately the solution to the problem of women at the university was more symbolic than absolute. Female enrollment continued to rise as more Gymnasien for girls were founded, producing more graduates with an Abitur, although their numbers never approached the flood traditionalists had feared: in 1914, less than seven percent of all students at German universities were female. 119 To stem the tide of women students, university and state officials had first toughened the requirements for auditing, targeting foreign women in particular. While this had an immediate effect in the

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short run, it was ineffectual against the mounting numbers of women in search of education. Instead officials eventually limited the Frauenstudium by distinguishing between "qualified" and "unqualified" women, thus reasserting the university's exclusivity. Suddenly German women holding the Abitur gained tremendous academic legitimacy. State education and university officials all over Germany saw that admitting these few women who possessed a higher, though more difficult to obtain, credential would at the same time curb the number of female students. The decision about which credential women should present was crucial in controlling not just how many women got in but which women. Instituting the German Abitur, or its equivalent, as the standard eliminated many of the foreign women. In the winter semester of I909-I9IO, the first term in which all German universities admitted women, the 2,3 58 women accounted for 4·4 percent of Germany's 53,351 students. Of the female students, 2 73 were foreigners, representing o. 5 percent of all students; for comparison's sake, the 2067 foreign men accounted for 3·4 percent. Two years later, the national student body had grown to 55,486, including 2727 women, or 4·9 percent of the total. The 269 foreign women accounted for marginally less than their previous 0.5 percent share, while foreign men had more than doubled to 4320, 7.8 percent of the total. The percentage of foreign women continued to decline: when Stiicklen completed her study in I9I6, she put their share at about o.I percent.l2° Thus the new admission standards proved very effective in restricting foreign female students, even though the absolute number of Studentinnen continued to rise. On a side note, it is likely that many of the foreign women who remained were not recent arrivals but were children of long-settled immigrants to Germany who had retained their old nationality rather then risk applying for German citizenship as explained above. These few women could more easily meet the requirements of a German Abitur. In the end, foreign women were held to a different and stricter standard than their male counterparts, who for the most part continued to enjoy the tradition of German academic hospitality: what qualified men to study at home was also recognized in Germany. The disparate policies for foreign men and women are evident in a I 9 I 2 inquiry that the rector at Leipzig made of other universities regarding their admission policies for foreigners, especially Russians. At the University of Berlin, foreign men needed the equivalent of a Gymnasium education and proof of sufficient funds to support themselves, but foreign women needed the explicit approval of the state education minister, who could scrutinize their personal backgrounds and even commission police reports. In Baden foreign men could present whatever entitled them to study in their own country. Foreign women, however, had to meet the same standard as German women, the German Abitur. 121 A

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few other universities took even harsher measures against foreign women. As of 1908, the University of Tiibingen admitted foreign women neither as regular students nor as auditors, although German women had been admitted since 1904, and at Jena only German women could be admitted.U2 In fact, if it were in the state's interest, academic standards for German women could even be lowered, as occurred in Prussia with the introduction of the so-called "fourth way" in 1909, which allowed German women with a teacher's exam and some teaching experience (but no Abitur) to enroll. In this case, the education ministry made its policy more lenient, against the wishes of the women's movement, precisely because the government needed more highly trained secondary school teachers [Oberlehrerinnen]. Saxony, Wiirttemberg, and Bavaria pursued similar policies. 123 The disparity between foreign men and women persisted despite the "foreigner question," the lengthy, xenophobic discussion about the large numbers of foreign students at German university. The foreigners targeted here were Russian Jewish students. One incidient occurred, in Leipzig, one semester after women were admitted, when representatives of the aristocratic Corps wrote to the rector and academic senate complaining that the aftermath of the failed Russian revolution of 1905 had brought a "floodtide of Russian [male] students and so-called Studentinnen" into German cities. The students protested the "unlimited acceptance of those Slavs," who endangered "the pure German character of our university" and asked the university to take steps to stop the "Slavic elements. " 124 Indeed, Russian students as a group did come under more pressure after the Revolution of 1905 and were often spied on by German and Russian agents. Protests similar to that in Leipzig took place elsewhere. University officials responded by enacting a quota for all Russian students at Munich in 19II and in Prussia in 1913; at the same time, academic standards were raised for men's admission.125 Yet while Russian students of both sexes became the object of discriminatory policies, harsher measures were enacted against women than men from the beginning, and it remained so. The fact that female foreigners were restricted and not their male counterparts proves that German women gained admission through a corporatist-style logic. The latter were admitted not as individuals who happened to be women but as members of a group that had a part to play in the German nation, whereas foreign women did not and could not. As explained in the previous chapter, the rhetorical compromise that emerged from the long debate over the Frauenstudium was that women would study only certain subjects and pursue socially useful careers. The argument for female physicians was extremely forceful in this sense. As a group, foreign men were also useful to the university, as they preserved the universal aspirations of its cosmopolitan cult of science. One writer described ideal foreign students as hard-working and mature young men, who upon returning home

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would remain in contact with "German science" and "support a fruitful intellectual interaction. " 126 In contrast, foreign women, as particular creatures, could not share in the male esprit of the university nor in the sense of national and group purpose that eased the way of the German women. How are we to evaluate the ultimate significance of the way in which the admission of women to German universities proceeded? On the one hand, the admission of German women on basis of the Abitur, the same basis as German men, can be read as a blow for equality. Indeed this could even be considered a greater sign of progress than the conditions that prevailed in the United States and England at the time, where women continued to be excluded from the most prestigious institutions. On the other hand, the criterion for women's admission in Germany, the Abitur, was not a neutral standard but part of a political strategy to limit the number of female students, with particular emphasis on excluding foreign women. I do not wish to make a case for German exceptionalism here. Other industrialized nations, including the United States, regularly excluded minority groups such as Jews and blacks at the time. Instead, within Germany's encounter with modernity, as in that of other nations, liberal and illiberal elements exist side by side. The admission of German women as a particular group with a function to fulfill betrays a corporatist-influenced bias that is profoundly disturbing in light of later history, but it is by no means a direct line to the Third Reich. This chapter has shown how the results of universities' first experiments with women students entered the general discussion on the Frauenstudium and shaped its outcome. A circular process was at work in which ideas from the debate surfaced in incidents at the university, or more precisely, in the way incidents were described. In turn the story of these incidents became part of the debate. The case of Sofia Kovalevskaia is a good example. Initially, the account of her attempt to audit at Berlin mirrored the way in which the liberal women's movement of the 187os argued for women's individual rights, based on universalist principles, to an education. Later, the story of Kovalevskaia herself became part of the debate. It is ironic that while her biography reflected all the things most feared in association with the Russin-she had undergone a sham marriage to a nihilist pursue her mathematical studies abroad-she was never classed with all the other Russian women who later came to German universities. 127 Instead, female reformers made the tale of the brilliant aristocrat's struggle against the odds a paradigm for every Studentin. In contrast, conservatives used the story to justify the continued exclusion of women. Many academics would shake their heads and sigh, "if only every woman were so talented," then note that most were not. This stance allowed professors to claim that entrance to the university was a matter of pure academic merit. Instead, as we have seen, the question of precisely which women would in the end be allowed to study was decided in a way that was anything but objective.

CHAPTER

5

'Fraulein Doktor' LITERARY IMAGES OF THE FIRST FEMALE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

I In Vicki Baum's popular 1928 novel Stud. chem. Helene Will{Uer (Helene Willfi.ier, Chemistry Student), 1 the main focus of the story is not on the protagonist's decision to study chemistry but rather on the numerous adventures she embarks on afterwards, including her affair with a fellow student who commits suicide, her own near-suicide, and her decision to keep the baby resulting from her liaison with the student. The simpler question of whether Helene will complete her studies is resolved in the novel's first few pages. As she tells her professor, "No, I won't allow myself to be torn away from my studies, I won't give in to that. I'm stubborn, thank God. " 2 This relative neglect of Helene's educational options-whether she will finish her degree-is striking when Baum's novel is compared with comparable works of a prior generation. Only thirty years earlier, popular authors thematizing the Studentin, or German woman student, were obsessed with her novelty. Thus the very decision by a woman to obtain an education often took the entire length of the novel or drama to explore. As we saw in the previous chapter, the way in which women were admitted to the university and the kind of women who eventually gained entrance were both worked out between 1890 and 1910 in a process of trial and error. In a similar fashion, writers of fiction and light entertainment during the same period experimented with the figure of the Studentin. Novels, plays, and satirical poems composed yet another arena in which the question was debated, alongside the feminist tracts, scientific studies, and newspaper articles examined earlier in this book. Yet the depiction of the female student in literature was no mere ancillary aspect of the debate over women's higher education but played a crucial role. Even before the woman student assumed definite contours in everyday life, she had become a familiar figure in numerous novels and plays. In works that ranged from carefully weighted

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naturalist dramas and light rhyming satires to sentimental girls' stories and socially critical novels, writers were able try out different scenarios and suggestions that had surfaced in the decades-long discussion. What is more, these ostensibly fictional writings show the concrete ways in which the Studentin challenged the cultural assumptions about gender and social order in late Wilhelmine society. While American and British literature of this sort has been studied extensively,3 few scholars have examined the Studentin as a character in German literature, probably because she tended to appear in non-canonical, "popular" writings that long escaped scholarly notice. More broadly, the profusion of depictions of female students at the beginning of the twentieth century notwithstanding, the picture of university life that continued to prevail in the German popular imagination was that of the male university student. University novels [Studentenromane], 4 such as Walter Bloem's Der krasse Fuchs (The Freshman), often depicted the travails of a first-year university student: joining a fraternity, drinking, and most important, dueling. In this way, these works drew upon the long-established, and heavily masculine, German tradition of academic citizenship. While academic citizenship waned institutionally in the course of the twentieth century, its popular resonance continued. Thus the same tradition of academic citizenship that rendered the female student almost unimaginable in late nineteenthcentury Germany helped ensure that her male counterpart would continue to overshadow her in German literary culture even after she became a fleshand-blood reality. This chapter will show how different fiction writers emplotted and envisioned the Studentin during the period when female participation in higher education was most intensely debated. 5 The novels I will discuss represent four different approaches to the figure of the Studentin, beginning with her appearance as an icon of modern values in Gerhart Hauptmann's famous 1891 avant-garde drama, Einsame Menchen (Lonely Lives). 6 Later, she became the object of satire, e.g. in Max Brinkmann's Das Corps Schlamponia (The Schlamponia Corps) (1899), which was built around the incongruities resulting from women entering the male academic world.? In a third group of works, she became the object of fantasy and emulation. Else Ury's popular girls' story, Studierte Madel (Educated Girls) (1906), is a well-known example of this genre. 8 Another approach to the Studentin is best exemplified by Aimee Due's Sind es Frauen? (Are They Women?) (1901), a polemical novel that advocates on behalf of the "third sex," depicted by Due as women who preferred elite intellectualism and same-sex erotic friendships to traditional female roles. 9 All of the works under examination in this article were produced by "outside observers," that is, by male authors or by women who did not themselves study. Unconstrained by actual knowledge of what it was like to be a woman university student,

154

'FRAULEIN DOKTOR'

these writers fashioned varied images ranging from wish-fulfilling fantasies of female emancipation to demonized projections of embattled masculinity, reflecting an entire spectrum of aspirations and anxieties regarding gender in modern German society. II

Gerhart Hauptmann's drama Einsame Menschen premiered at the Residenztheater in Berlin in January 1891 and was popular there; the play was produced ten times in that city by 1918. 10 In addition to the theatergoing public, the work reached a much wider audience in published form. By 1903, the work had been printed eighteen times, and the jacket listed fourteen other titles by Hauptmann. He, like many other naturalist writers, had found a patron in Samuel Fischer and his publishing house. 11 The protagonist of the play is Johannes Vockerat, a young, married academic who has to choose between two women, his wife and a charming stranger, and two belief systems, the religious tradition he was raised in and the new individualism of the 189os. Johannes' traditional parents and mildmannered wife represent a loving but suffocating atmosphere. Anna Mahr, the interloper, is a young Russian student from Zurich and a harbinger of the new concern with the self, individual fulfillment, and freedom. Johannes is already juggling these two Weltanschauungen before Anna appears, when her arrival completes his despair. He develops an intellectual and erotically charged friendship with Anna. When this relationship threatens his anxious wife and parents, he throws himself into a Berlin lake, the Miiggelsee. Einsame Menschen has often been read for its depiction of a man caught between two women, who in turn represent two different philosophies of life. Here Hauptmann was inspired by events in his own family. His brother Carl had once been tempted by a young Polish female student, an avowed socialist from a wealthy family. Hauptmann wrote that "this young student was surrounded by a bit of the Russian romance of a Turgenyev.... Perhaps she would have fit somehow into the novel 'The Nihilists.'" 12 Wherever Hauptmann's inspiration for Anna came from, his naturalistic depiction of her was consistent with what one critic has described as "his objective, reality-based portrayal of the plight of modern man." 13 Hauptmann uses Anna to articulate, among other things, his views on the emancipation of women and its impact on the family. Rather than seeing the "woman question" in isolation, Hauptmann embeds it in the larger issue of modernity and its ethical challenges. Hauptmann describes Anna repeatedly as a Baltic German university student from Zurich. Nonetheless, for Hauptmann, Anna counts as a "Russian," which was a sort of catch-all term at time in view of the Russian em-

LITERARY IMAGES OF THE 'STUDENTIN'

1

55

pire's many ethnicities. Significantly, Anna is studying in Zurich, which was notorious as a magnet for foreign women seeking to study as well as for a colony of radical Russians, men and women, dating from the I 87os. These associations suggest that Anna embodies not only the women's movement 14 but also an alternative lifestyle. At the very least, the playwright suggests a certain tension in Anna's character between her ambitions and her femininity. A student of philosophy, she is described as "twenty-four ... with small head, dark, smooth hair, and delicate, mobile features .... A certain decision and liveliness of manner are softened down by so much modesty and tact that the impression 15 of womanliness is preserved." 16 Anna contrasts sharply in both coloring and personality with Johannes's wife, Kiithe, who is "twenty-one ... slightly built, pale, brunette, gentle in manner ... [and in an] advanced stage of convalescence. " 17 Anna's extraordinary independence is evident in the unconventional way she comes into the household: she is actually looking for Braun, Johannes's friend, an artist whom she had already met outside the social confines of carefully sheltered middle-class daughters. As an educated woman, Anna elicits both curiosity and hurt feelings from the female Vockerats. Frau Vockerat, Johannes's mother, cannot believe that Anna studies at the University of Zurich: "Well, well, I never! You are a student [Studentin], then? That's most interesting! A real student [Studentin]." She continues, "And do you mean to tell me that you like all that learning?" 18 Kiithe remarks, observing Anna ruefully and impressed that she seems to understand the manuscript Johannes is working on, "It's a poor figure we cut compared with these highly educated women." 19 Johannes then praises Anna to Kiithe. "I say K[iithe], that's a splendid girl! Stores of learning! Wonderful independence of judgment! ... You can learn no end from a woman like that. " 20 But Anna's impact on the Vockerat household is not only as a curiosity. Although she is a polite guest and is solicitous of Kiithe, Anna becomes a catalyst, accelerating conflicts and tensions already present. The strain in Kiithe's relationship with her husband grows even more evident when she comments to her mother-in-law, "[Anna] was saying lately that we women live in a condition of degradation. I think she's quite right there. It is what I feel very often. " 21 By the end, Anna's presence has fully demoralized Kathe, not only by making her aware of her intellectual limits but by capturing Johannes's affections. Johannes's attraction to Anna is clear to the other characters, but they initially hesitate to interfere, fearful of her power. Braun criticizes Anna's hold on Johannes by telling Kiithe, "Miss Mahr may be a clever woman, but there is no doubt that she is a determined and egotistical one, unscrupulous in the pursuit of her aims. " 22 Near the end of the play, Frau Vockerat despairs that Johannes "hears and sees no one but

'FRAULEIN DOKTOR'

this woman. " 23 In the end, Anna's influence proves disastrous; her intellectual rigor and self-control attack Johannes at his weakest point. They discuss formalizing their relationship by both promising to abide by the same spiritual and ethical law. She asks him to make a vow always to think of her but never to try to see her, telling him, "If we meet again, we are lost. " 24 When Johannes asks her how he is to bear this, she says, "What does not overcome us strengthens us. " 25 The Nietzschean echoes Hauptmann gives Anna here are unmistakable. Shortly thereafter, Anna leaves, and Johannes drowns himself in the lake. In developing his characterization of Anna, Hauptmann places her within a far larger context than that of the debate over women's higher education. Indeed, Anna represents the push toward a new age, and it is this force that is behind her emancipated lifestyle. Yet modernity cannot arrive without a price, and this comes in the havoc that descends on the Vockerats. Hauptmann's naturalist style leads him to attempt to "document" what occurs in the Vockerat household, without assigning direct blame to any one character, although one might guess that some of his sympathy lies with the confused Johannes. In his depiction of Anna, he taps several tropes of the debate. The first of these is the educated woman, emancipated by definition. Second, the socialist scare among Russian women in Zurich in the r87os was mentioned in the German discussion of the Frauenstudium for thirty years afterwards. Third, at times this concern coalesced into a broad cultural anxiety about Russian women students, usually Jewish, who were associated in the popular imagination with nihilism and free love. Elements of Einsame Menschen resonate with other works from the period. In J. E. Poritzky's Die Studentin (The Female Student), a male student is faced with a choice between his fiancee at home and an attractive Russian Jewish student. When he opts for the former, the latter has to be taken home to Warsaw, goes crazy, and dies. Although in this case the tragedy befalls the woman, Poritzky's novel, like Hauptmann's play, centers around a weak-willed male protagonist. Johannes's and Anna's search for an ethical framework that would also contain new, more egalitarian roles for men and women has its parallel in Alt-Heidelberg, Du feine (Old Heidelberg, You Fine Town) by Rudolf Stratz. This novel follows a female student faced with a long engagement. She persuades her lover to wait three years for her to finish her training with the words, "Then you will be masterbut different than now! My master and companion, who loves me with head and heart because he has found that I am worthy of him!" In this case the exoticism of the Studentin is reinforced not by giving her a Russian heritage, as Hauptmann does, but by Stratz's choice of similarly "romantic" subjects for his other novels such as glaciers, the Middle Ages, and the Russian city of Odessa. The world of the Studentin was just as titillating and remote. 26 Like Hauptmann, E. G. Kolbenheyer describes the collision

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of traditional values with modernity in Montsalvasch, a 1912 novel that draws on his own student days in Vienna between 1900 and 1904. 27 Yet unlike Hauptmann, his "emancipated" woman student is far less sympathetic and seems to express every ounce of her author's disapproval of her. Kolbenheyer's novel tells the story of a woman student, Martha, whom he depicts with a mixture of fascination and cynicism as a radical feminist. When she gets pregnant by a fellow student, Ulrich, she explains that she cannot marry him and become a typical housewife. "Your studies are a hobby, my studies ... are my salvation and my anchor. " 28 She chooses to end the pregnancy. Ulrich is helpless, although in the end he is told by her uncle that all was for the best. "So think, Ulrich, that Martha is a poor thing, poor from birth. Whoever fights as hard for his freedom as Martha does must give it up for lost. But you, Ulrich, you have a life to gain. You would have had to sacrifice that and-it would also have been Martha's child." 29 Here the author pictures feminism's battle for the body and soul as extending into, and threatening, the next generation. III

If writings like Hauptmann's viewed, with some detachment, female students as one more manifestation of modernity, satires expressed the dismay and discomfort that the women students stirred up in many male observers. Many of the early satires focused on Zurich and its university because women had been studying there since r867. 30 Oskar Walther's and Leo Stein's Fraulein Doktor (Miss Doctor), which premiered in Nuremburg in 189 5, opens with the proud yet puzzled parents of Germany's seventh female Ph.D., who has just earned her law degree in Zurich. Personifying several stereotypes about Zurich Studentinnen at once, Johanna, who prefers to be called Hans, appears in a bicycling costume and announces that in taking on her first case, she feels that she has to prove women can succeed "in spite of their smaller brains. " 31 At the same time, she releases a pamphlet on "woman in the modern state," which is promptly censored and confiscated. 32 The unlikely resolution of the plot includes Hans falling in love with her father's old lawyer, who has been her bete noir throughout, and her withdrawal of her pamphlet, which she thinks people only want to read because it is banned, not because of her ideas. 33 A lighter piece than Fraulein Doktor is Josef Blum's Die Studentin (The Female Student) from 1897· Here it is the mother who wants her daughter to study, while the daughter longs simply to get married. In the end, however, the mother is put off by the bad manners and masculine style of a visiting female student, who displays every negative trait associated with the women at Zurich: pushiness, smoking, and drinking.

'FRAULEIN DOKTOR'

German authors soon turned their attention to women at their own universities. Max Brinkmann's Das Corps Schlamponia from 1899 is the most detailed satirical vision to focus on women during their studies. In this sense it plays directly off the standard plotlines of the novels of (male) student life described above. Brinkmann's work is a humorous story told in verse with lively illustrations, by turns charming and adolescent. Brinkmann's publisher, A. Hofmann, published many humorous books and brought out several other volumes at the same time for the satirical publication Kladderadatsch; it is likely Brinkmann's work shared an audience with these. 34 The story opens with the worldly Berlin narrator suggesting to his friend from the provinces that his daughters pursue careers. The friend explodes: "Have you lost your mind?" The two head for a pub, where women's rights are being discussed by women "of mature years." 35 When the discussion grows raucous, both men flee. The premise for the rest of the story is set when the friend, shaking his head over a world gone mad, proclaims: And if we're in a house of fools Then I can risk it, true, All of my girls, you see, old pal, Should now go study, too! Und sind wir denn im Narrenhaus, So kann ich's auch riskieren, Auch m e i n e Weiher sollen, Freund, Jetzt allesammt studierenf3 6

Now the narrative moves to the story of the Corps Schlamponia. The first joke here is, of course, the title: "Schlamponia" comes from the German word for slob or slattern. The second joke is that women could be associated with a Corps, or the traditional German fraternity. The received wisdom that both Corps and university cultivated masculinity is parodied in the line: Only the corps looks after good True womanhood. Im C o r p s nur pflegt man allezeit Die wahre WeiberhaftigkeitY The chapter titles themselves mock the idea of a female student. In "The Beer Party" (Die "Festkneipe" oder der "Doktorschmaus"), women imitate male student drinking rituals, chugging beer and gulping shots of spirits according to custom to celebrate a recent doctorate. 38 The chapter titled "The Son of the House" (Der filius hospitalis) is, of course, a play on the (ilia haspita/is, or landlady's daughter, whose charms are described in detail in the old student song of the same name quoted in the first chapter.J9 Perhaps the

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most pointed and daring chapter is "The Relationship" (Das Verhaltnis), which is based on the male student custom of a relationship with a lowerclass young woman, but this time the roles are reversed. 40 Schlamponia sister Dora Matz has a sweetheart, Otto, who is a junior barrister from the district court: He's pretty small and tiny, sure But what a charming figure! Zwar ziemlich klein und winzig nur, Doch welch' entziickende Figur! 41

Matz, taking the traditional "male" role in this kind of relationship, tries to educate him and bring him up to her level: And reads with him to pass the time Often from 'Nietzsche's 'Super-woman.' Und liest mit ihm zum Zeitvertreib Von 'Nietzsche' oft das 'Ueberweib. 42

The relationship described here provides the dramatic impetus for the rest of the plot. Matz overhears another Studentin talking about Otto. The other woman gloats: She thinks she was the first one there, Hee hee hee hee-ha ha ha ha. Sie glaubt, sie war die erste daHi hi hi hi-ha ha ha ha.

The matter is only partially settled when Matz pushes her cake in the other woman's face. 43 When Matz confronts Otto with these accusations, he admits he knows the other woman but then, in a parody of the female role here, says: Look, my innocence lies in tatters, Would you have me sink further into these matters? Sieh', meine Unschuld liegt in Scherben, Willst du noch mehr an mir verderben? 44

Matz decides to defend his honor with a duel, in which she (literally) skewers her opponent. 45 The story ends on a decidedly sour note with a chapter entitled "The Catastophe" (Die Katastrophe), in which one of the sisters gets pregnant, leading the university to expel her and suspend the sorority.46 In the end, all the other female students leave the university or fail their exams. All of their hard work comes to nothing. The only one to do well in the long run is the fraternity "sister" who gets pregnant. Brinkmann allows her to redeem herself by marrying a customs inspector and having eight(!) sons after her first.

r6o

'FRAULEIN DOKTOR'

So Daubenspeck works pretty sprightly As a good housewife quiet and rightly But often, every now and then she felt a silent yen, And if she'd see a [fraternity] ribbon and beer, she'd weep many a tear: Because there's not a one Just like the landlady's son. So schafft die Daubenspeck recht tiichtig Als brave Hausfrau still und richtig. Doch ofters in so manchen Stunden Hat stille Sehnsucht sie empfunden, Und sah sie Band und Cerevis, Sie manche Thrane fallen liei~: Denn keiner ist aequalis Dem filius HospitalisY

It seems that even in a satire, women cannot get away from that curse of womanhood, unwanted pregnancy. But according to the narrator, all of the other female students fail anyway, so only the Studentin who returns to tradition-in this case a husband and nine sons-can be saved. Brinkmann's plot is a conservative one: his goal is to rescue an important social institution from attack. According to his reasoning, women would ruin the university and literally make a mockery of it. Moreover, he portrays women as by their very nature not really fit to study, as is shown both by the story's general silliness and by the ending with pregnancy and dropouts. These themes are echoed in another satire, Die Korpsstudentin (The Fraternity Sister) by Ernst Gohlis. What is interesting about this example is that Gohlis puts his Studentin into an all-male world instead of into the all-female chaos of the "Schlamponen." In Gohlis' story, a female law student presents herself to the members of the Korps Frankonia and asks to be allowed to join. Flabbergasted at first, the men agree because they think she will balk at their rule that every member try, "at least once, to reproduce himself." Much to their surprise, she readily assents, saying that this is in tune with the women's movement's demand for "the right to motherhood for every woman, the right to free love with a man who appears to us worthy of being the father of our children. " 48 Outfitted in new fraternity regalia, she assumes the probationary status of a first-year member. When a man bothers her in a cafe, she challenges him to a duel. Although she fences well, the Korps decides to get rid of her anyway, noting that "our reputation has already suffered tremendously. " 49 Expelling her, however, proves unnecessary when she suddenly announces her engagement to the doctor who tends to her post-duel wounds. She admits to her fiance that she only became a feminist because she was angry at men for

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not pursuing her. 50 Like Brinkmann, Gohlis' work is a pointed defense of traditional student life. Again, the plot's "problem" of combining women and academia is solved by having the woman fail at being a student and "fall back" on getting married. Both Brinkmann and Gohlis use their plots to reassert the masculine nature of academic citizenship. IV One of the relatively few Wilhelmine writers to paint the Studentin in a positive light was Else Ury. Written between 1905 and 1933, Ury's wildly successful "Nesthakchen" series and her other books for girls are still remembered fondly by women who grew up in West Germany in the I 9 5os and I 9 6os. Almost seven million copies have been printed of the "Nesthakchen" series alone, which followed the much-doted-upon daughter of one family from her preschool years through the First World War and into an old age filled with grandchildren. 51 Although her characters found a place in their readers' hearts, and Ury herself was once a household name, her biography today is little known. Else Ury was born in I877 to a Berlin Jewish family, the third of four children of a tobacco factory owner. She attended the Luisenschule, a girls' school, until the age of I7. While her brothers studied law and medicine, and her sister earned her teaching certificate, the young Else Ury presumably led the life of a proper upper-middle-class daughter [hohere Tochter], going to the theater and to balls. Around 1900 she began writing articles under a pseudonym for the Vossische Zeitung, the leading liberal Berlin newspaper. In I 90 5 she published her first book, Was das Sonntagskind er/auscht (What Sunday's Child Overheard). But it was her next book, Studierte Madel (Educated Girls), published the following year, which first garnered wide acclaim and made her famous. Never married, Ury supported herself and her extended family from her writing, turning out at least forty children's books. In January I943 Else Ury was deported from Berlin to Auschwitz and died there. 52 Studierte Madel was in its fifth printing by I9IO and its twenty-fifth by 1922... Ury modified the book somewhat in I929 and published it again as Studierte Madel von heute (Today's Educated Girls). 53 Her publisher, Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, catered to a broad spectrum of tastes, from the latest fairy tale by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach to scholarly works and dissertations. While Ury's later books about Nesthakchen and other young heroines must have reached a very broad audience among girls, Studierte Madel would have appealed to a much more exclusively middle-class audience. 54 As opposed to the works examined above, which mostly condemn the Frauenstudium and portray it in ominous terms, Studierte Madel endorses

'FRAULEIN DOKTOR'

women's higher education, presenting two wholesome, attractive, and cheerful girls, Hilde and Daisy, who, as much at home in the lecture hall as at a skating party, study at the university and later marry. 55 Ury's novel, as well as similar stories such as Carola von Eynatten's Student Annchen ([University] Student Annie), Anna Schober's Das "Doktor-Lorchen" (Doctor "Little Laura"), Sophie Stein's Vor Tagesanbruch (Before Daybreak), and Marie von Felseneck's Fri. Studentin (Miss [University] Student), are fundamentally fantasies about the aspirations of their authors. 56 Not only are they fantasies in the sense of being projections of their authors' wishes, the works are "literally" fantasies because they were written by women with little or no experience of the university. In contrast to other fiction about the Studentin, Ury's novel succeeds in painting a new and upbeat picture of female destiny and mapping a new road for girls to follow. The idea of femininity that emerges from the book has strong parallels with that promoted by the German women's movement at the turn of the century. Whereas the satires about female students "spoke for" the academics and professors who opposed women's entrance into the university by drawing on the rhetoric of academic tradition, Ury's writings echo the discourse of the German bourgeois women's movement. Like its most articulate exponent, Helene Lange, Ury sought a way to combine intellectual development and self-fulfillment with true femininity. 57 This attempt at balance is apparent in key aspects of the novel, among them the protagonists' decision to study and the role of romance in their personal fulfillment. The story opens with sixteen-year-old Hilde's struggle to get permission to attend a Gymnasium for girls, at the time an extremely recent innovation; when Ury wrote the story, no more than ten of these university preparatory schools for girls could have existed in all of Germany. Hilde is presented as carefree and tomboyish, with a lively natural intelligence and a strong will. While Hilde comes from a secure and nurturing upper-middle class family, her best friend, Daisy, is an orphan being raised by aristocratic relatives who disdain their poor relation. It is significant that she is half American and that she is the one who originally wants to study, as she cannot expect to have a dowry to make a good marriage or to be supported by her relatives. Here Ury draws on several ideas propagated by the German women's movement. First, American women were considered to be more emancipated and independent; the members of the German women's movement were constantly drawing comparisons between themselves on one hand and English and American women on the other. Second, the idea that middle-class women who could or would not marry should be educated so as to later support themselves had become almost a mantra in feminist circles by 1900. 58 The decision to send a daughter to university was a classic dramatic moment that figured in many fictional accounts of the Frauenstudium. In

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Studierte Madel, Ury offers us a scenario for how this decision might proceed in an idealized middle-class family. We already see at the beginning of the story that Hilde is brave enough to stand up to her father; perhaps the first figment of Ury's Wilhelmine imagination is that such a thing would be possible. While the subject has hardly been studied exhaustively, some scholars believe that women who studied had close relationships to their fathers and that fathers often had a strong influence on their daughters' decision to study. 59 In my own research I have come to the opposite conclusion. First, many of the published autobiographies I have found emphasize a dead or absent father, as in the memoirs of Maria von Linden, Alice Salomon, and Edith Stein. Moreover, feminist literary scholars inform us that female writers of the day tended to downplay their own agency, which would explain Salomon's account of deciding to study simply because she followed up on a suggestion made to her by the progressive professor of political economy Max Sering at a dinner party. 60 When Hilde informs her father that she would like to study, he begins to laugh and remarks, "I have no idea how my daughter got such an crazy idea-a girl belongs in the kitchen, at the stove-and not at the university!" Hilde has a ready retort, which, Ury notes in passing, Hilde had read "somewhere": "We women now occupy a quite different position, nowadays we have quite another sphere of endeavor."61 The language here of a "new sphere of endeavor" shows how the rhetoric of the women's movement in the general debate over the Frauenstudium "leaks" into Hilde's plea. While Hilde's first attempt at convincing her father fails, she enlists her mother's help. In the end, the mother overcomes her husband's reluctance. The close bond between mother and daughter is only one of the many ways in which Ury sought to portray the Studentin as no different from any other well-brought up (i.e. middle-class) young girl. In this Ury echoed the opinions of other writers such as Hedwig Dohm, Louise Otto, and Helene Lange, who all envisioned female students as combining intelligence with bourgeois family values. Ury emphasizes the "normality" of the Studentin in other ways as well. Until she goes away to the university, Hilde's parents continue to insist that she combine her studies with the household duties expected of an industrious middle-class daughter. 62 Moreover, throughout the book Ury is at pains to point out that studious young women do not differ visibly from their less-educated peers, which is a crucial counterargument to the stereotypes of Zurich women students with short hair and masculine-styled attire mentioned above. She described the students from the Gymnasium for girls on an excursion with their teachers. It could not be a school, the young girls all looked grown up, perhaps the members of a pension or ladies' seminary making their summer outing. It did not enter anyone's mind that these lovely girlish creatures could be college prepara-

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tory students hungry for knowledge, that Latin and mathematics haunted the droll little heads, that the young flock in a short time would flutter out into the world to take up the battle for survival and to compete with men. 63

By showing that young women could be intelligent and attractive, Ury implicitly opposed those who claimed that studying drained girls of their femininity and beauty. Like many advocates of the women's movement, Ury was bent on proving otherwise. Ury also tackled a more difficult problem: the reconciliation of family duty with self-interest and the hunger for education. After a difficult first year of study in Berlin, where women could only audit courses and the two still cause quite a stir, Daisy and Hilde want to go to Heidelberg, which is far from home but offers a more welcoming environment to female students, having enrolled them officially in 1900.64 Hilde would like to go but does not want to leave her now-widowed mother alone. Hilde confides in Frau Werner, the mother of Hilde's admirer and future husband. Frau Werner then tells Hilde's mother to allow Hilde to go. Furthermore, when Hilde insists on staying to keep her mother company, the latter announces that she will move in with Frau Werner, who just happens to have two rooms and a kitchen free. 65 While Ury found a neat way for Hilde to balance her obligations to her family and even smooth relations between her mother and future mother-in-law, this was ultimately a facile and unrealistic solution, as we shall see in the autobiographical accounts of Studentinnen. What is perhaps even more fantastic is Ury's account of Hilde's and Daisy's stay in Heidelberg. They arrive and easily find a place to live. Their rooms are "spotless," their landlady, a "jewel." After only a week, they have both settled in-a very optimistic estimate for their adjustment to the university and its adjustment to them. Ury describes their time there in idyllic terms: "The only thing that Hilde didn't like was that as a young lady she could not visit the famous student pubs, but during the day she went everywhere and dragged Daisy in tow." 66 Here, again, Ury's description of their study in Heidelberg is far rosier than the recollections of women students, as will be clear in the next chapter. Most likely because she herself did not study, Ury glosses over Hilde's and Daisy's intellectual experience at the university. As Sally Mitchell has observed of Victorian college-girl novels and male "university novels," both ignored academics to concentrate on student life. The problem of women grappling with an intellectual subject did not interest Ury. Instead, the focus in Studierte Madel is on a new life plan for (middle-class) women, on the femininity and ultimately marriageability of university-educated women. Although Ury never married, in all of her books there is no protagonist who does notY In Studierte Madel, Ury offers the reader two different templates for romance in the cases of Hilde and Daisy.

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Hilde changes from a lively and stubborn young girl to a mature woman, tamed, in the end, by her love for Professor Werner, her mathematics teacher and later private tutor. Nicknamed "Germanicus" by the schoolgirls, the blond Werner is the object of their fantasy: "One could easily imagine his strong figure, dressed in bearskin, stretched out before the fire in the woods, emptying the horn of mead in one drink." 68 Werner is described as almost mythical in his masculinity; Ury seems to think that it will take precisely such a strong male character to subdue Hilde. Werner, in turn, is attracted to Hilde's youthful and naive chann. 69 When Hilde's father dies in the middle of her studies, she is transformed by this experience, as it becomes clear that she, like Daisy, must now be prepared to support herself, as her father did not leave much money. Werner consoles Hilde in her grief but thinks she needs to grow up more before he can propose to her. 70 A few years after he taught her, Hilde re-encounters Werner on a hiking trip in the mountains, where he rescues her in a snowstorm and they become engaged. Thereupon Ury wraps up Hilde's fate in one short sentence: "Hilde hung her learned books on the wall; the young student became an eager and prudent little housewife. " 71 In Hilde's case, Ury shows that a young woman can study in order to satisfy her own headstrong curiosity, yet remain attractive enough to marry. Whereas Hilde channels her considerable energies that once went into studying into making a home, throughout the novel Daisy quietly pursues her education and later her career as a doctor. The crush she has on Hilde's brother's friend Gunther is nipped in the bud when she overhears him discussing her and Hilde's plans to study. Gunther confesses, "I have full respect for these industrious women, I admire them-but love them, nevera man can never love a girl who has been to university or even desire her; such emancipated wenches lack any feminine charms! " 72 Ironically, this comment makes Daisy weak in the knees, so when Gunther, a medical student, finds her, he makes her lie on a chaise longue. From this stereotypical vantage point of the weak, hysterical woman, Daisy reflects on Gunther's remarks. "Should a girl then be nothing more than a beautiful empty vase?" she asks herself. At that moment, she resolves to study and work hard, and she decides that she is not in love with Gunther. 73 When Gunther comes back to check on her, he at first is attracted to her. "Right, she wanted to become a college girl, he had completely forgotten it as he saw her lying there in her graceful loveliness with closed eyes. " 74 Again, Ury emphasizes here that nothing differentiates Daisy from other young women. When they meet again by chance, she spurns him, and he thinks to himself that studying is already making her "moody" and "unfeminine. " 75 Here Ury implies that Gunther falls back on stereotypes about bluestockings instead of asking himself what other reasons she could have to be upset.

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Only after several years do Daisy and Gunther find themselves together again when Daisy, now a pediatrician, needs an internship and Gunther gives her one in his clinic. As he watches her with the young patients, he thinks to himself, "How did the delicate feminine, almost motherly way in which the young physician spoke to the little one match the emancipated picture, devoid of any femininity, that his fantasy had made of Daisy? There was nothing rough, nothing harshly unfriendly, as he had expected from a girl who had studied. " 76 Impressed by Daisy's motherly way with her patients, Gunther, her supervisor, asks her to be his partner in life as well as work. "Not only shall you become my beloved wife ... you shall also be a loyal companion in [our] profession-! have realized that both can be combined."77 As in Hilde's case, Ury is using Daisy to point out that women can study and still remain feminine. Daisy's story reinforces the argument commonly made by the women's movement that there were some professions for which women, by virtue of their femininity and motherly nature, were actually better suited than men, such as pediatrics and gynecology. Indeed this is what finally convinces Gunther that it is acceptable to love Daisy and to allow her to continue to work. By depicting the fates of Daisy and Hilde, Ury seeks to explore how some of the ideas of the women's movement might be applied to young women's lives and what sorts of challenges and pleasures girls and young women could anticipate. Just as members of the women's movement were inspired by liberal political ideas, Else Ury outlined a fundamentally "liberal" plot in which a woman could reconcile her academic interests and desire for a family. Her vision is liberal in the broadest nineteenth-century sense of the word: she imagines a world in which all individuals, including women, would participate in the bourgeois ideals of education and self-cultivation. Through her characters, Else Ury enabled her readers to envision a new female "calling." By incorporating the idea of a female student and doctor into a girls' story, she furthered the pedagogical aims of the German bourgeois women's movement. Seen in wider perspective, Studierte Madel stands in the middle of a spectrum of girl's stories that center on Studentinnen. At one extreme are novels in which the protagonist ultimately gives up her career after studying. In these accounts, all she needed was to get the studying out of her system and then to meet a good man. At the other extreme are more explicitly political and pedagogical books, which make their reformist points by leaving their heroines single. 78 The prolific children's author Anna Schober, a minister's wife, offers one such example of a more conservative plot in Das "Doktor-Lorchen".7 9 Nora, a pediatrician fresh out of school, returns to her parents' small-town home and meets her cousin, Reinhard, whom she has not seen in four years. When Reinhard tells Nora he hopes to be good

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friends, she replies, "You know, Reinhard, since I have finished my studies, I feel so independent, I daresay so masculine, and would far prefer to associate with all men on a friendly footing!" As she leaves, Reinhard thinks she will never be his ideal because his future wife "should be above all else truly womanly. " 80 This scene has strong similarities to that between Ury's Gunther and Daisy. Schober and her characters puzzled over how to integrate an educated woman into small-town life. Nora's mother reminds her that "in spite of your doctoral exam, you are still a young girl!" Nora's father, on the other hand, tries to be understanding. "Our Nora has taken up a masculine course of study and has now become in a certain sense a hybrid (Zwitterding) of man and woman; that has, of course, its difficulties. " 81 As we see here, the idea of an educated woman as neither male nor female was explored not only by biologists and anatomists, as noted in Chapter Three, but in fiction as well (see the discussion below of Sind es Frauen?). In fact, even at her first ball, Nora does not come across as being completely feminine. Depressed about being a wallflower, she goes over to talk to her father and Professor Peters. Soon she is immersed in a scientific conversation with the professor. Her eyes shine and her cheeks are flushed. Her mother thinks her daughter now looks pretty, and suddenly young men notice her. On the sidelines, though, their mothers watch and comment, "Just look at how she is wisecracking with the professor, now is that feminine?" 82 Throughout the book, Reinhard and Nora each think the other loves someone else, but this confusion is resolved. At the end of the novel, Nora's parents and future in-laws discuss what is to become of Nora. Her motherin-law-to-be comments that Nora studied for nothing. But her father defends her: "Nora had ... the desire to take up a profession, and if we had refused her it, she would have been unhappy!" When the future in-law points to all the hardship Nora has endured, her father shoots back, "That has been the best steeling of her character, and without all that suffering she wouldn't be able to feel the happiness now so." 83 Nora's destiny is resolved when she and Reinhard agree she will give up her job and only occasionally tend to the poor, with Reinhard as an escort. 84 Schober's plot is more conservative than Ury's in that the protagonist completes her studies but then does the "right thing" by marrying and is in fact even happier after realizing her "true" vocation. Interestingly, it was another pastor's wife who produced a girls' story with a far more modern message than Schober's. Anna Sophie Charlotte Klapp-Osten wrote her first book in I882 and devoted herself thereafter both to children's literature and to the "woman question" in her writings and through speaking tours. In I 893 she founded the Association for the Reform of Children's Literature. In I 896 she published, as Sophie Stein,

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Vor Tagesanbruch (Before Daybreak), whose plot can be seen as more of a "reform" girls' story than either Schober's or Ury's, that is, a story meant to educate rather than to entertain. 85 The plot centers on Elisabeth, the daughter of a country doctor with enlightened views, who is sent by her father to learn Latin and math in order to tutor her less talented brother. Elisabeth implores her friend Hertha not to tell anyone, as she is afraid of being teased. While she enjoys her studies, she says, she does not want to be seen as "emancipated." 86 Her father recognizes her talent and suggests to his wife that Elisabeth and not her brother study medicine. Elisabeth's mother is appalled and asks if their daughter will really want to give up balls and "femininity." The father replies that Elisabeth is cut out for great things and should not focus her energies on the small household tasks that come so naturally to her sisters and not to her. The father reassures his wife that "true womanhood can never be destroyed, not even through university study and a career." The father would like for Elisabeth to succeed him. When his wife points out that in Germany female doctors are not allowed to practice, he tells her, "We stand before a change in time as happens only once in centuries .... A more just conception will take its place in the new century ... and in Germany, too, the free development of all the strengths of your sex will be allowed. " 87 Initially Elisabeth is none too happy with her father's plans for her. "So I should go out ... into the hostile world, to which only men belong .... And my sisters may stay here in [our] cozy home .... Is that not cruel?" 88 Nonetheless, she goes off with a girlfriend to study in Zurich. Conditions there are described in glowing terms. 89 Elisabeth even manages to stand up to the medical professor who peppers his lectures with crude comments. 90 As will be shown in the next chapter, the most successful Studentinnen learned to live with such comments although some, like Maria von Linden, gave as well as they got. Although Elisabeth receives two marriage proposals, she turns both down easily. In the end she is forced to return to Zurich to earn a living because female doctors are still not licensed to practice in Germany, but she faces the future with confidence. Klapp-Osten's story is more progressive or modern than either Ury's or Schober's because Elisabeth is allowed to remain single. Moreover, being single is not depicted here as a lesser choice but as an equally valuable one, and the only characters who do marry in Vor Tagesanbruch are the young women who do not study.

v The literary texts examined above suggest that reconciling the idea of the Studentin to ideals of masculinity and femininity posed a powerful challenge to Wilhelmine society. Indeed, the concept of two complementary

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genders was central to the self-understanding of bourgeois European society in the nineteenth century and was stressed repeatedly throughout the debate. The prominent medical anatomist Wilhelm Waldeyer proclaimed in 1888 that the division of mankind into two sexes was a sign of civilization. Because society had such a tremendous investment in this division, the prospect of an individual or group that did not fit into this scheme was highly threatening. Thus the question of whether the Studentin could be a "real" woman formed the subtext of our literary examples. Whereas the other authors we have examined have either strenuously affirmed (Ury) or denied this (Brinkmann), one author, Minna Wettstein-Adelt, put the Studentin into her own category. In her 1901 novel, Sind es Frauen? (Are They Women?), written under the pseudonym "Aimee Due," Wettstein-Adelt argues for seeing the Studentinnen as part of a "third sex." The term "third sex" was used loosely at the turn of the century to refer to homosexuals. While most often applied to men, the idea of a third sex was still new enough that Wettstein-Adelt could allow her female characters to adopt the label. Thus her work occurs at an intriguing intersection between the higher education of women and an early articulation of homosexual identity. Wettstein-Adelt wrote professionally for most of her adult life, but little is known about her to scholars even today. Born in Strassburg in 1869 and raised in France, she later married a Swiss writer, a Dr. Wettstein, and lived mostly in Berlin, with extended stays in Dresden and Munich. Minna Wettstein-Adelt wrote under her own name and the pseudonyms Aimee Due and Helvetia. She edited Draisena, a journal for "lady travelers," and was also the publisher of the Berlin Modekorrespondenz (Fashion Letter). Her works reveal an ongoing interest in both women and the working class, or, perhaps more generally, in marginal groups. 91 Although the observations and characterizations in Sind es Frauen? hint at some familiarity with the Swiss university milieu and its population of international female students, it is not known whether Wettstein-Adelt ever audited courses there; she almost certainly did not complete a university degree in Germany or in Switzerland. She may have drawn her characters from visits with women students in Geneva and Munich; some appear to be closely modeled on Anita Augspurg and her associates in Munich. 92 Originally Sind es Frauen? was published in a run of 1o,ooo copies in a series that boasted "really modern" themes. 93 The publisher, Richard Eckstein Nachfolger, seems to have been quite daring for the time, having offered another novel about the "third sex," Ernst von Wolzogen's Das dritte Gesch/echt (The Third Sex) in 1899. Interestingly, this work also feaures fictionalized portraits of Augspurg and others prominent in the women's movement, as well as a titillating portrait of the Munich sexual climate at the fin-de-siecle. Unlike Wettstein-Adelt, though, Wolzogen is

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utimately hostile to the third sex, and his account expresses much anxiety about the role of educated and "emancipated" women in general. 94 Lesbian relationships began to figure in several literary works at the turn of the century. James Jones points to the homoerotic friendship in Gabriele Reuter's I897 Aus guter Familie (From a Good Family). Fiction with stronger lesbian themes includes Elisabeth Dauthendey's Vom neuen Weihe und seiner Liebe (On the New Female and Her Love) from I900 and Maria Janitschek's short story, "Neue Erziehung und alte Moral" (New Upbringing and Old Morality) from I9o2, as well as Frank Wedekind's I904 play, Pandora's Box. 95 Johanna Elberskirchen made a more direct plea for understanding for homosexuals in her Die Liebe des dritten Geschlechts (The Love of the Third Sex), which appeared the same year in the publishing house of Max Spohr. In I 897 Spohr had been a co-founder with his friend Magnus Hirschfeld, the pioneering sex researcher, of the ScientificHumanitarian Committee (Wissenschaftlich-humanitares Komitee), Germany's first interest group devoted to tolerance for homosexuals. A few years after Sind es Frauen, Hirschfeld would publish Der urnische Mensch (I 903) and other significant scholarly works on homosexuality. 96 Also important to the context of Wettstein-Adelt's novel is the increasing social visibility of lesbians during this period, as the circle of women around Sophie Goudstikker's and Anita Augspurg's photo studio in Munich demonstrates.97 While recent critics have praised Sind es Frauen? as "a unique statement in defense of lesbian love during this period," 98 the novel, read in its historical context, adds to our understanding of the long discussion of women's university education. On the surface, Sind es Frauen? is a love story set among a group of international students of the "third sex" in Geneva. Minotschka Fernando££, a Russian emigre student, is engaged in a passionate relationship with Marta, a Polish duchess; together they form the center of Geneva's small but close-knit lesbian community. When Marta is called back to Warsaw after her father's death, she leaves Minotschka for a Polish man with whom she believes she shares her love of music. But Marta soon realizes the error of her ways, and when her husband dies suddenly, the two women are reunited and promise never to part. The novel is short and often transparently political; the characters' long speeches clearly reflect the concerns of the author. Wettstein-Adelt uses her thin plot as a vehicle to promote understanding for both female homosexuality and the higher education of women. Yet in formulating her critique of bourgeois society and gender roles, she also succeeds in cementing the link between intellectual women and lesbianism implicit in the standard arguments used by traditionalists against the education of women. As seen in earlier chapters, the idea that educated women were "mannish" and that the process of education stripped

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them of their femininity or that an intellectual woman could not possibly be a "real" woman was an influential concept, reinforced in the r87os and beyond by the scientific tracts written by famous anatomists such as Theodor von Bischoff. While Wettstein-Adelt supported the education of women, she used her novel to define intellectual women as a separate group, both sexually and intellectually, deserving of social recognition. The novel's title reflects the puzzle its protagonists posed to society when it asks whether they were women at all. Wettstein-Adelt reinforces this uneasiness even as she seeks to depict Minotschka, her heroine, in flattering terms. She is "strong and well-built, with curves, look[ing] interesting enough" but also displays many of the traits that signaled lesbianism in late nineteenth-century Europe, in particular her clothing. With her tailored black dress she wore "a white stiff collar, a man's tie ... and a man's simple straw hat." Even her bearing gave her away, as she appeared as "too solid and strong" for a woman. 99 Furthermore her status as an emigre Russian also gave Minotschka a certain elan and an air of nihilist radicalism, both political and sexual. While partially drawing on stereotypes for her characterization of Minotschka, Wettstein-Adelt also wanted to make a point about the universality of the third sex, so she peoples her story with women who vary in background and appearance. Whereas Zeline Ardy is described as a student of medicine who does not place much weight on her appearance, Berta Cohn of Prague is "a voluptuous blonde Jewess." A young German woman, "pale and anemic," can be found next to a "second-rate" Geneva actress and a Byelorussian gynecologist. In this crowd, Marta fits right in as a "millionaire's daughter [who] studied only 'for her own pleasure.'" The women all speak several languages with each other, alternating among French, German, and Russian, which reinforces the cosmopolitan atmosphere. 100 Proclivity towards romantic same-sex relationships is clearly a defining characteristic of the third sex; nevertheless, the group's sexuality remains ultimately somewhat ambiguous. The new gender often appears more as a vehicle for avoiding marriage and attendant sexual bondage than for erotic fulfillment. Thus, Minotschka, herself a divorcee, having once been married to a student, equates conditions in marriage with the "social question" and compares the oppression of wives with that of workers. 101 Marriage, she argues, combines the worst features of the paths traditionally open to women. "The one who has subservience, endurance, and faith should thus become a deaconess [member of a Protestant nursing order], and the one who doesn't want to-a whore! ... And marriage fits in as something in between!" 102 Indeed, Wettstein-Adelt places greater emphasis on the third sex's intellectual characteristics than on the group's sexual ones. The novel tends to

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suggest that its members are uncomfortable with physical love altogether. For example, Minotschka remarks, after her withering criticism of heterosexual unions, that love affairs are a waste of time anyway and that intellectual people are by their very nature less interested in them. 103 Minotschka again stresses the intellectual dimensions of the third sex when she declares: "my principle is the right of the stronger. Not of the physically but of the mentally stronger. Whether man or woman, only the intellect [Intelligenz] has rights, not the sex!" 104 Here she echoes the radical merit-based thinking evident in the writings of the early German reformer Hedwig Dohm. In fact, its intellectual distinction cements the third sex's identity as a separate group. As Minotschka remarks, "The delicate ... woman can never become a doctor or achieve anything of significance in public life. These women belong in the home ... Please do not confuse us with these very estimable women-we form another category!" 105 Minotschka struggles to articulate a definition of woman that is not androcentric or dependent on a contrast with men: Then what is ... femininity? A wish dictated ... by a man [in order to] model a woman after his taste. One thus mistakes cause and effect when one terms women who are found to be very 'feminine' by men as such. The real 'feminine ones' would be those who keep their own individuality for themselves and constitute a special species, psychically and physically. 106

In Minotschka's arguments, true femininity is based on extreme individualism. She rejects the late nineteenth-century model of two entirely different and complementary sexes-physically, intellectually, and emotionally-in favor of a nondualistic model featuring three (or even four) sexes, each of which is independent of the others. While Wettstein-Adelt enmeshes her female students in a radical plot, she softens some of the points that would have been most shocking to Wilhelmine society. She desexualizes the characters, perhaps because of her own ambivalent relationship to the group she describes. Furthermore, the happy ending arguably "normalizes" the third sex by superimposing the story line of a typical (heterosexual) love story. 107 Nonetheless, as a "third sex," Wettstein-Adelt's characters challenged well-accepted assumptions about the essential difference between the sexes in a way that could only have produced profound social anxieties. Indeed, she articulates an ideal of absolute intellectual equivalence between the sexes that the moderate German women's movement consciously avoided endorsing. Unwittingly, Wettstein-Adelt's novel was consistent with ideas about "mannish women" and the limitations of "regular" women that were fodder for satirists like Brinkmann. As Esther Newton has noted for the masculine-tinged sexuality of some turn-of-the-century American women, the characters in Sind es Frauen? appeared partially masculine because intellectual endeavors had

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until then been coded male. 108 In addition, Wettstein-Adelt's depiction of intellectual women as a rarefied elite was reconcilable with the views of many conservatives, who despite their principled objections often were willing to cede a place at university to the truly exceptional female prodigy, such as in the often-cited case of Sofia Kovalevskaia. Thus, paradoxically, WettsteinAdelt's novel tended to reinforce conventional notions about gender differences, even in attempting to envision a society that would transcend them. VI The texts examined here echo the broader debate concerning women's higher education that occurred in late nineteenth-century Germany. Would the Studentin, if permitted to become a reality, be the modern hurricane of Anna Mahr, Brinkmann's caricature come to life, Ury's nonthreatening middle-class girl, or a militant member of the "third sex?" Each work treated here attempts to imagine the woman student of the future and reflects a range of anxieties and associations about German society in its transition to modernity, about the university, new gender roles, and the new sexual science. In their writings, the authors articulate different responses to the challenge of modernity along a spectrum ranging from the radical and avant-garde, through the liberal, to the conservative. Gerhart Hauptmann presents an artistically avant-garde vision of the Studentin as an embodiment of profound forces transforming human society. In his drama, the Studentin appears as nothing less than a natural disaster. As suggested by her repeated apologies, she herself may be nothing more than a cipher for the forces she unleashes, but the domestic havoc she wrecks is terrifying and destructive all the same. Hauptmann situates his catastrophic Studentin in his conflicted view of modernity. Like his character Johannes, Hauptmann sees German society at a crossroads and wants to find a way to move forward but is dissatisfied with the options at hand. For Hauptmann, the Studentin is a consequence of the crisis of modernity, not its cause. In contrast, for Brinkmann, the mere appearance of the Studentin is an indicator of a university in crisis and a world turned upside down, although Brinkmann, like Hauptmann, gives the Studentin neither her own voice nor a fully independent wil1. 109 Brinkmann reacts to the potential for disorder that the Studentin represents by trying to contain it. His satire effectively dismisses the very notion that woman could study by plugging the Studentin into the formula for the (male) student novel, such as Der krasse Fuchs. By ridiculing the disparities that inevitably result, Brinkmann reinforces the polarized gender roles of the fin-de-siede, roles that are polarized precisely because they are in crisis. His is a traditionalist response, unlike

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Hauptmann's more experimental one. In Brinkmann's conservative view, women were unfit to study and would only ruin academic life by trying. Else Ury constructs a liberal and idealized plotline for her girls' story. In her view, women certainly deserved the chance to develop themselves at the university, and some might even prove well-suited to their chosen careers. She explores ideas of the middle-class women's movement in fiction, trying on different scenarios that might result from applying its ideas and then presenting the best one. With Sind es Frauen? Minna Wettstein-Adelt struck a blow simultaneously for educational opportunity and an early kind of lesbian identity. Yet the very fact that she joins these two elements in her plot ended up reinforcing conservative arguments about education destroying women's femininity (although there is little explicit discussion of the future Studentin as a lesbian). Moreover her argument, pursued to its logical conclusion, would still have only opened the university doors to a very small group of women willing to be "not-women." Again, the similarities here with conservatives who argued for only accepting the occasional "truly exceptional" woman are apparent. This bizarre case of "les extremes se touchent" lays bare the dilemma reformers and would-be female students had faced all along: could the Studentin be a "real" woman in accordance with the standards of the day, or would she have to deny her femininity and make some sort of claim on masculine privilege, as do Wettstein-Adelt's characters, in order to be admitted? This contradictory position was not of the reformers' making but rather indicative of the fundamental paradox that Joan Scott points out in feminist appeals. Here claims for both women's equality with men and difference from them operate in a tension that can never be fully resolved. Due's figures are at once not-women and women because of the discursive position in which a claim to higher education puts them. That one strategy or the other is in the end more effective comes to depend not on the strategy itself but on the discursive environment in which it operates. Thus the line of argumentation pursued by the women's movement, which pressed for the admission of women (and preferably German women) as a group with something special to contribute to the national project, succeeded because of its resonance with the increasingly right-wing and corporatist political discourse of the late Kaiserreich. More liberal appeals by the middleclass women's movement in the early r87os had failed both because the liberal movement refused to see women's groups as one of their own and also because of the eclipse of liberal politics more generally by the end of the r87os. 110 Each author ultimately addressed broader questions. Hauptmann asked what larger cultural forces were behind women's emancipation. Satirists like Brinkmann revealed their anxieties about how women would fit into

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university life. Girls' authors such as Ury wanted to know whether an educated woman was marriageable and capable of happiness. Wettstein-Adelt posed a difficult question that was on everyone's mind: did an educated woman belong to her sex, or was she a different creature entirely? By linking their plots to some of the main themes of the debate surrounding the Frauenstudium, all of the authors were involved in contesting the larger issue of exactly what sort of woman the Studentin would be. In the decades between Hauptmann's Anna Mahr and Vicki Baum's Helene Willfiier, plotlines would change when female students themselves picked up their pens and poured out their stories in memoirs and autobiographical novels, but that is yet another chapter in the story of the Studentin.

CHAPTER

~~A

6

Student Who Can,t Get Drunk?,,

WOMEN STUDENTS AND THE PROBLEM OF IDENTITY

I

How did women negotiate the transition to the university? What problems presented themselves when the idea of the female student, argued about for decades, suddenly became reality? Would, for example, Hermine Heusler-Edenhuizen's experience come to be typical? Heusler-Edenhuizen, a protegee of Helene Lange and graduate of the first class of Lange's Gymnasium courses for girls, studied medicine in Berlin, Zurich, and Halle before coming to Bonn for her clinical semesters in 1900. In her autobiography, Heusler-Edenhuizen writes that the male students there were chivalrous and flirtatious. The women students, who were older, easily fended off their advances, if sometimes rather harshly. At one point a very stubborn "admirer" followed them home, ranting against the Frauenstudium and ending with the exasperated remark "We'll marry you all off anyhow!" HeuslerEdenhuizen reports with some satisfaction that five years later, when she was an intern [Assistenziirztin] at the Bonn university gynecological clinic, this same student "asked her politely for help" when she was to supervise his medical examination. 1 Unflappable and feminine, Heusler-Edenhuizen later married and adopted two children, becoming all that her mentor Helene Lange could have desired of the university-educated woman. Kathe Frankenthal's story represents the other extreme of the wide range of university experience. In her memoirs, Frankenthal recalls that she had been a nervous and sickly child and was often advised to "think of her health." Upon moving to Berlin to study, she decided to test her physical limits with plenty of drinking and smoking. "Since that time I have never needed a doctor again." She learned fencing, boxing, and jujitsu, acquiring a "physical strength unusual for a girl and was proud of it." Her preferred response "to any type of impudence" on the part of male students was a firm slap. 2 As a medical student she also took on the bad manners of a male student: "I smoked a lot, answered questions with a haughty expres-

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sion and contributed nothing to a conversation. After all, I was 'Fraulein Doktor' (with three years to go) and could not be labeled a conceited and boring person." Frankenthal was introduced to socialism during her student years 3 and later served as a deputy for the Social Democrats in the Prussian state legislature and in the Berlin city council. In contrast to Heusler-Edenhuizen, Frankenthal rejected domesticity for the heady mix of career and politics. Indeed, the degree to which the.first women students would seek or be able to conform to the dictates of the male model of academic citizenship was a question that proponents of women's education had not addressed. By conceiving of female higher education as the solution to the social problem of unmarried daughters of the middle class, the women's movement gave little consideration to how women would come to terms with the university itself. In contrast, traditionalists continued to insist that academic citizenship was a male domain. They feared that women who studied would never measure up to male scholarly standards and lose their femininity in the process. Many professors also were concerned about the possible influx of Russian Jewish women, seen as bearers of political radicalism and an "inferior" culture. The first Studentinnen were caught between the expectations of both camps. As we shall see, the first female students experimented with a variety of strategies, and co~sequently the world of the Studentin was not as firmly fixed as that of her male counterpart, described in chapter one. Perhaps the best way to answer the question posed by Gerta Stiicklen in her 1913 survey of Berlin Studentinnen, "How does the woman student create a life for whose new context she must find a new form?" 4 is to turn to the records left behind by women students themselves. The first academic women left a wide range of materials documenting their activities. These sources include polemical books and newspaper articles; letters and diaries; novels; and autobiographies in both published and manuscript form. The public debate over women's admission saw numerous contributions by women students and university graduates. The first German woman physician, Franziska Tiburtius, joined the fight, as did two other early female doctors, Agnes Bluhm and Anna Kuhnow; all three had trained in Zurich. 5 Other women studying in Germany spoke up on subjects ranging from girls' Gymnasien to the state of women's education overall. 6 In their reports on the women students in Zurich, Clare SchubertFeder and Kiithe Schirmacher, both Zurich Ph.D.s, reassured German readers about conditions there/ Later Margarethe Heine, who earned her doctorate in Munich in 1902, and Julie Ohr, a student, presented a picture of women at German universities; Stiicklen followed with her enquete in 1916.8 Private documents such as letters and diaries might reveal other evidence, yet these are very hard to find. 9

"A STUDENT WHO CAN'T GET DRUNK?"

The university evoked a variety of responses in fiction from the women who passed through its doors. In her 1903 novel Auf Vorposten (On Outpost Duty), Ella Mensch's sober plot depicts the university years as hard work, 10 but it is a far cry from the tragic storylines of her fellow Zurich student lise Frapan, who wrote Die Betrogenen (The Betrayed) (1898) and Wir Frauen haben kein Vaterland (We Women Have No Fatherland) (r899).U At the same time, several authors describe the Frauenstudium in a more positive light. The novelist and historian Ricarda Huch's darkly romantic account of her student years in Zurich appeared in her r893 Erinnerungen von LudolfUrsleu dem]ungeren (Memories ofLudolfUrsten the Younger).U Schirmacher attacked the male moral double standard and struck a blow for the women's movement in her r89r Die Libertad. 13 Elsa Asenijeff, a Viennese who at the age of thirty audited courses in Leipzig in r898, went so far as to evoke the sexual emancipation of the Studentin in her 1902 Tagebuchbliitter einer Emancipierten (Diary Pages of an Emancipated Woman). 14 A more conventional plot appears in Else Croner's 1908 Das Tagebuch eines Fraulein Doktor (The Diary of a Miss Ph.D.), where a Studentin falls in love with her married professor, drifts away from him, and then is reunited with him when his wife dies. After they marry, she is a brilliant hostess and helps her husband to complete his most significant work. 15 Women students even produced some light, humorous works such as Johanna CohnPhilippson's brief theatrical farce of r 894. 16 This chapter explores how the first generation of female students portrayed its university experience in its autobiographical writingsY In fact

autobiographies may be the best sources to answer the question posed at the outset of the chapter, namely how women students created a new life for themselves. Our chief focus will be on women's negotiation of and performance in a public place, the university. Women who entered it created a type of public persona, whether they intended to or not. Some of them later chose to describe this experience in a memoir or an autobiography and by so doing engaged in another public act, for the very writing of these kinds of documents posits a potential audience. James Olney calls autobiography "the most rarefied and self-conscious of literary performances. " 18 I am particularly interested in the extent to which the competing rhetorics of academic citizenship and the woman question left an imprint on women's reports of their experience. The autobiographies also have much to tell us about the place that university study ultimately came to occupy in a woman's life. While many of the autobiographies highlight women's accounts of their success, we must also be sensitive to conflicts and emotions that cannot be expressed in the autobiographies. Because women's autobiographies from the period observe certain constraints, one must be especially careful to read for standard plotlines and conventions and deviations from these. 19 A

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focus on autobiography brings with it several general considerations. First, one must consider that autobiographies and memoirs were usually written much later in life. The author is looking back at her studies from a distance, and the university years may be dwarfed by a very important career or an eventful later life. Second, women often needed great self-confidence in order to share their life stories. Thus women who were professionally successful are overrepresented in this sample. We do not have accounts from women who broke off their studies or only audited a few classes, except where these women went on to be prominent for other reasons, as was the case with the author Gertrud von LeFort. 20 As we shall see, gender is not the only marker of difference operating in these works: boundaries of religion, class, region, educational background and motivation mark the terrain as well. 21 While women's entrance into the university did not go flawlessly, women emphasized their studies as a fulfilling and exciting time in their lives. 22 Female students doubtlessly experienced what we would call sexual discrimination but often took it as a given. The ways in which they described incidents of discrimination are embedded in a larger story about what it meant to be one of the first women at the university. Looking back at the age of ninety-two, Elisabeth Flitner recalled her 1915 decision to study. Just fifteen years after the first two German universities officially opened their doors to women, it was clear to Flitner that these first Studentinnen were a special breed. They had overcome the obstacles in their way with tremendous energy, she wrote empathetically, but she was a little more troubled by her observation that "they often cultivated a pronounced masculine air and did not correspond to the womanly ideal of their time." Flitner put herself and her fellow women students into a different category, remarking, "Although we, too, encountered obstacles before the Abitur, we did not feel constrained but freed from fetters, full of gratitude for the privilege of being permitted to study. " 23 Flitner's comments point to a demarcation between the first female academic pioneers and later woman students. This study examines female student life up until 1914, which allows us to consider academic pioneers as well as the first women to study as formally enrollled students. For the purposes of our discussion here, I have divided the students into two groups. Leaving aside the handful of German women who matriculated at Swiss universities in the I 87os, as did Franziska Tiburtius, the first group of women is composed of those who audited classes at German universities from the 189os until admission, which came in the various states between 1900 and 1909. This group includes women such as the biologist Maria von Linden, the social work pioneer Alice Salomon, and the teacher and elected representative Hildegard Wegscheider. The second group comprises those women who were able to do all or most of their academic training after they were formally admitted; this would encompass the years

r8o

"A STUDENT WHO CAN'T GET DRUNK?"

190o-1909 until the outbreak of the First World War. Members of this cohort include Frankenthal and Rabel Goitein, both physicians, Marie-Elisabeth Liiders, a politician, and Edith Stein, the philosopher and recently-canonized Roman Catholic saint. This chapter will concentrate on the autobiographies of three members of the first group of women. Maria von Linden was the first woman to attain a doctorate at Tiibingen in r 89 5. Hildegard Wegschieder was the second to earn a Prussian degree at Halle in 1898 (after Dorothea Erxleben in 1754). Alice Salomon received her doctorate in Berlin in 1906, two years before women were formally admitted. 24 Demographically, these three women form a generation, as all were born within three years of each other. Their lives span a broad spectrum of experience. Each can be seen as representing something of an "ideal type" in the contest between the two discourses of the woman question and academic citizenship that formed the debate over the Frauenstudium. While Linden was devoted to science and chose to follow the dictates of academic citizenship, Salomon was lead to study by her involvement in the women's movement. Wegscheider shared both women's concerns; perhaps that is why she paints the most ambivalent picture of her university years. All of the women in question sought higher education as a way of "solving" the problem of a young middleand upper-class woman's existence. In looking at these examples, I will map out the strategy that each woman used to gain access to the university and make a place for herself there. After examining how this first generation set the stage for the second cohort of women, I will briefly reflect on educated women's choices and dilemmas in private life.

II

Maria von Linden sat down in 1929 in Bonn at the age of sixty to dictate to her nephew her autobiography, which was first published in 1991. Originally she entitled the manuscript "A Sunday's Child's Experiences and Aspirations. " 25 Although Linden had long wanted to write her memoirs, she maintains that it was the encouragement of others that finally led her to do so. In the forward she tells her reader that she is writing her memoirs because she has "mostly amusing" material to recount and refers to being the Sunday's child of the title: "I belong in any case to the happy ones with the waterproof hide, who shake off the rain and are dry again before the sun can even laugh." 26 Her story emphasizes her resiliency, constantly pointing out how exceptional she was in order to become the University of Tiibingen's first female student and Germany's first female university professor. In Maria von Linden's account of her life, rules were made to be ignored. She paints a picture of a smart woman, extremely tough and hard-

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working, rising to every challenge. Academic citizenship would prove to be one of her toughest. The Countess Maria von Linden was born into an influential aristocratic Catholic family in the southern German state of Wiirttemberg in 1869P In her autobiography, Linden explains that she had long felt that she was exceptional, both in her intelligence and in her gender identity. On her family's country estate, she grew up remarkably free of the conventions governing a young countess's behavior. Instead she played with the village boys and was certain that one day she would become a boy, too. As a child, she was quite attached to a small porcelain figure of a man with long flowing hair. She writes, "This man was my ideal for the very reason that I wished one day ... [that I would] become a man, in spite of my long hair." Linden kept the figurine her whole life as a reminder that, as she said, "long hair does not rule out masculine deeds." With her deep voice and self-described "boyish charm," she remembered puzzling her young schoolmates to such an extent that they complained to the headmistress that Linden was a boy in disguise. In her schoolgirl's autograph album, some entries remarked on her "male-oriented tendencies and aptitudes," she recalled. 28 As a child, Linden was inspired by ideals of masculine values and courage. She kept herself from crying by repeating to herself "Count, be tough." Her ambition to do well in school went hand-in-hand with this iron resolve. Although she was often ill with tonsillitis, she did not want to miss class and concealed her bouts of infection from everyone. "This maneuver of secrecy ... was the best training in self-discipline, and what I learned then I made good use of in later life," she observed. 29 Her subordination of her (female) body to her intellect, conceived by her as masculine, is a recurring topic in the memoir. Around this time, her intellectual interests blossomed. Upon meeting her school headmistress's niece, a woman who had studied at a Swiss university, Linden decided to devote her life to natural science. After finishing school, she began to write independentlyresearched biology essays, which were published in scientific and agricultural journals. 30 Having such a strong and unconventional self-image, Linden wrote that she knew that she wished neither to marry nor to depend on family members for support. She explained that she could not remain at her family's estate because it would be passed through the male line to her brother or cousin. Nor could she depend on her sickly father to support her, although her parents assumed that when she had finished school, they now had their daughter to themselves and that she would help in managing the estate. At first, Linden did not mention anything to them but continued her studies by correspondence with her old teachers at the girls' school. While her parents humored her interests at first, they soon began to pressure her to marry.

"A STUDENT WHO CAN'T GET DRUNK?"

She recounts purposely sabotaging her first and last introduction to a potential suitor by wearing an ill-fitting and inappropriate dress. 31 Meanwhile, Linden's intellectual ambitions continued to grow stronger. When her brother teased her about the incompatibility of her plans with the "natural destiny" of woman, Linden replied by emphasizing her extraordinary ability. She recalled that she told her brother that it was "the destiny of the broad masses to reproduce humanity." Rising from the mass, however, were certain individuals, "male as well as female, who are called ... to make progress on intellectual territory their life's task." She added that she thought women could be just as good scholars as men, citing the example of the mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaia. This argument, of course, had been made repeatedly in the course of the larger discussion about female higher education. Clearly Linden felt she was exceptional as well. Linden's family and friends remained critical of her plans to obtain a university education. 32 Since her father opposed her ambitions, she turned for assistance to her great-uncle, Joseph von Linden, a former minister in the Wiirttemberg state government. He viewed his nineteen-year-old niece's case as a matter of principle. Drawing upon his powerful connections, he planned the campaign for her university education, which he saw as an individual solution to an individual problem. There is no indication that he wished to raise this as a general issue for all women. Joseph von Linden was also motivated by regional pride. Why should his niece have to go to Switzerland if she could study right there in Wiirttemberg at the University of Tiibingen? His first inquiry went directly to the state education minister and was, for r888, dazzlingly audacious: could a woman earn a doctorate at Tiibingen? By asking this question outright, Joseph von Linden knew that along the way the issue of his niece studying at the university would have to be raised, she later surmised. Although Linden's uncle was able to write to personal acquaintances in the university and state administrations, the initial response was less than enthusiastic. One official wrote that she was probably ill-prepared to study, since girls' schools didn't teach Latin, which, the official commented, a doctor needed to read his own diploma. "Moreover," he concluded, "I've always believed that for a young woman who wishes to be called 'doctor,' it is far easier and more comfortable to offer her hand to a doctor[ ... and thus become Frau Doctor ...] than to pass the final oral examination." Decades later, Linden would recall that upon receiving a copy of this letter, she responded indignantly that she did indeed know Latin. Furthermore, she thought his tone condescending in view of her sincere academic aspirations. Linden's angry reaction delighted her uncle .. He praised her "male seriousness in a graceful feminine form" and forwarded her response to the official. Her uncle apparently thought the balance between male and female characteristics in her letter was the key element in making her case. 33

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Once the bureaucratic apparatus had been set in motion, Linden's path was clear and greatly facilitated by her aristocratic status. The faculty of mathematics and natural sciences at Tiibingen replied that for her doctorate, it would first require an Abitur taken at a Wiirttemberg Gymnasium or Rea/gymnasium and a period of study at a German university. The state education minister said that he would have nothing against Linden taking the Abitur if a school headmaster approved it. In her account, it appears that the fact that each institution pushed responsibility for her acceptance to another was a sign not only of the unconventionality of the request but of how uncomfortable it made officials feel. Whatever the official rationale behind these moves might have been, Linden asked her great-uncle to contact the head of the Stuttgart Rea/gymnasium. She then went for a interview with the headmaster in the winter of 1889. At first he discouraged her, saying that all others who were not regular students of the school [Externe] had failed. He then relented, gave her a brief exam on the spot, and advised her to prepare for one more year. Family pride finally induced Linden's father to pay for her Latin tutor, she recalled. In the summer of 1891, Linden reported for the examination in Stuttgart. The director informed her that the education minister had ordered that she be examined alone; however, the former thought it better that she take the regular exam along with the others in order to avoid charges of favoritism. On the first day of the week-long test in a hot summer, the director worried about his first female examinee's delicacy. He gave her a bunch of roses, as he put it, "to sniff when it smells really bad" in the stuffy examination room. With this feminine gift for an anything but feminine occasion, she passed without passing out. Linden writes that her success drew press coverage, and there was a round of parties in her honor. 34 Armed with her exam results, Linden traveled to Tiibingen twice to make her case for admission personally, as her great-uncle had advised. By staying with Professor Froriep and his wife, who had a salon where the Frauenstudium was debated, Linden met, in a few days, all the important professors for her case. By this time, the town's most influential member of the women's movement, Mathilde Weber, had also taken up the fight, much to Linden's unease. She thought that Weber lacked the tact that the matter required. Linden and her uncle had been pursuing a strategy of personal influence and persuasion. Weber, on the other hand, had already written a widely-read book on the need for female higher education. She approached Linden's case as an issue for all women, thus making the argument in a more public and strident manner than the private inquiries Linden preferred.35 Despite Linden's unease, the two strategies were successful. In the fall of 1892, at the age of twenty-three, Linden was allowed to audit courses at the university as the first and only woman in the state. She was, she recalled, quite a sensation. She compared herself to Sofia Kovalevskaia in

"A STUDENT WHO CAN'T GET DRUNK?"

Heidelberg twenty-two years earlier, who, Linden said, was made to sit behind a screen in the auditorium. While this story was probably apocryphal, it served to heighten Linden's sense of exceptionalism. She pointed out that she was the first to be allowed to attend classes on the same basis as male students and with a view to a doctorate. Yet because she was not formally enrolled, she still felt, as she wrote, that she was the not entirely legitimate child of her alma mater. Although she saw the double standard at work, she was happy to sit unbidden on same bench as the men. Before Linden's first class, there was some discussion of where she should sit in the lecture hall and whether she should enter from the professor's entrance, walking before him, as befitted a lady. Linden, however, chose the first row and the general entrance. Later she found out that her fellow students approved of this choice. 36 Even if she was not officially matriculated, Linden apparently gave much thought to trying to be a "regular" student. In contrast to the awkward official treatment of her case, many of her professors and their families received Linden warmly. The university chancellor himself even came and insisted on seeing her "Bude," or student room, as if to prove to himself that she did indeed live like a real student. But upon leaving, he was quick to remind her that, as a woman, she was still an exception. His advice was to be "respectable, go to no parties in the evening, and be in bed at ten, because you must do us credit!" This was an explicit warning against leading the dissipated life typical of male students. In Linden's case, however, his warning was unnecessary. She recalled that she was actually grateful for his advice, as she was still so worn down from studying for the Abitur that her landlady took pains to pamper her. 37 During her first year of study, Linden reluctantly called on Mathilde Weber. Among other things, she and Weber clashed over the proper behavior and dress for a young female academic pioneer. Weber was eager to disprove opponents of female higher education, who maintained that only mannish women could study. She urged Linden to maintain her femininity. Linden, on the other hand, felt that she had none to lose and dressed accordingly. She writes that Weber simply could not accept that "1, who had waited so long to become a boy, really did tend quite strongly toward the embodiment of the 'third sex.' I wore ladies' two-piece suits with stiff collars, men's hats, [and] shoes that bordered on the masculine with their massiveness."38 Although for Linden her wardrobe was the realization of a longheld wish, her clothing can also be read a sign of how she tried to fit in at the university. Linden's desire to be part of the university's male spirit took on life-threatening dimensions during her first year of study. Before the end of her first semester, in January 1893, her father died. Because of an inheritance quarrel, a relative who had been paying her way withdrew his support. When Linden's

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professors learned of her plight, they returned their lecture fees, and Mathilde Weber arranged for her to get a scholarship from the ADF, the influential women's organization to which she had close ties. Around the same time, Linden fell very ill, suffering from a lung condition. For the rest of the term she worked in bed, losing weight. Looking back, she wrote that it would take her six years to regain her health. As she became sicker, the doctor told her to go to the spa town of Davos in the Swiss Alps to recover completely, or else she would die in two years. That, she told him determinedly, would be just enough time for her to earn her doctorate; she would stay, she wrote with some satisfaction. At her request, her mother moved to Tiibingen the following semester and kept house for her daughter; Linden recalls that she was especially happy to have her mother with her, as her situation had been changed by the death of Linden's father. 39 By insisting on remaining at the university despite her illness, Linden repeated her old pattern of denying her (female) body and elevating her (male) mind, just as she had at school. Linden's respiratory illness marked a turning point in her life, but not her story. In her narrative, Linden devotes far more space to her studies than to her poor health, which is not mentioned again until she completes her studies. After her dissertation defense, she weighed eighty-six pounds and had to rest before she could publish her dissertation, the last requirement for the doctorate. 40 Linden's dissertation supervisor was the zoologist Gustav Heinrich Theodor Eimer, who seemed to have no strong feelings against women's education, she said. She later recalled that Eimer's lectures had been laced with risque jokes, but her presence did not deter him. Indeed, she said she found it rather amusing when he would announce to the class, "I usually make a joke here," then look at her roguishly and tell the joke. As soon as he said the punchline, though, he would turn away red-faced. Linden appears to have won his approval by being a good sport. Eimer liked her and showed it by teasing her a lot, she recalled. In one of her first courses with him, Eimer turned to her and said, "Isn't it true, countess, that the human being is created from dirt?" Linden replied, without missing a beat, "Yes, Herr Professor, but only the male." Linden said that the peals of laughter that followed showed Eimer and the male students that she was "neither prudish nor dull-witted," nor easily intimidated. 41 Linden was just as firm and clever in her dealings with fellow students. The son of her landlady, also a first-year student, had previously occupied Linden's room. As a freshman fraternity member, he spent many hours in the pub learning the ceremonial drinking drill. One night she was awakened from a deep sleep to see him stagger in and lie "stiff as a broomstick" (German slang for drunk) across her. Linden stood him up with the words "one flight higher, please," and handed him over to his fraternity brother,

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who escorted him up to his bed. In the laboratory Linden was often accompanied by her bulldog, Lump. Her fellow students would often exclaim in mock exaggeration, "Ach, if only you were as nice to us as to Lump," and, "When we come back to earth, we'd like to be your dog!" The students, Linden observed, had to put up with seeing Lump showered with petting and not getting any of it themselves. Linden also tolerated the students' pranks with good humor, such as the time the men painted Lump to resemble Eimer's theory of how the patterns on animals' coats develop. 42 Linden took pains to maintain good relations with the other students. Her use of humor was a way of negotiating a potentially explosive situation. Linden drew on a tradition of student pranks and jokes, showing she could take it as well as dish it out. After three years, Linden earned her doctorate in August I895· Her written work had received the highest grade, but in the oral exam Eimer had asked her unexpected questions on the history of zoology, her weak point. Her overall rating was thus only cum laude. Eimer, she believed, had "spoiled it for [her] ... in a malicious way." She speculated that "perhaps he wanted to show ... that he was not patronizing me." Although she did not deny her disappointment, Linden interpreted Eimer's actions as being for her own good. Eimer's toughness would prove that she had not been coddled. Her work had in fact taken an incredible physical toll on her, as related above. Linden's doctorate, like her Abitur, did not escape the attention of the newspapers. 43 Eimer had been one of the last Lamarckians, a believer in the inheritance

of acquired traits. After his death in I898, Linden had to find a new scientific direction for her work. In I 899 she took a position at the Hygiene Institute in Bonn. In I 908 she became the head of a parasitological institute established especially for her at the University of Bonn. In I9IO she received a special professorship [au{?erordentliche Professur] there and thus became the only female professor at a university during the Kaiserreich. Still, she was not allowed to teach but was confined to research in her laboratory, where she was very productive. It was at the end of this period that Linden drafted her memoirs, although they would not be published in her lifetime, indeed, not until I99I, when Gabriele Junginger, the editor of the published edition, recovered the manuscript from the family archive with the permission of another Linden nephew. Under the Nazis Maria von Linden lost her professorship and consequently emigrated to Liechtenstein, where she died in I936. 44 Interestingly, Linden chose to focus her autobiography only on her childhood and education, largely ignoring her later career. Linden's story of her student years highlights three important themes in the life stories of the first wave of women students: their single-minded pursuit of their academic

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goals; health concerns; and gender ambiguities. The first of these is the struggle for the degree itself. Her account culminates in her getting her doctorate, whereupon she mentions in passing that she is now a professor and head of an institute. Although the description of her student years is shorter than that of her upbringing and schooling, all of the detail in the earlier part of the manuscript goes to support her motivation for her later studies. The second theme Linden returns to again and again is illness. Her concerns about her health and physical toughness are voiced throughout the autobiography. In the context of nineteenth-century society's view of female weakness, the concerns are not unusual. Linden's refusal to put her health first is a rejection of Victorian norms about women and illness and is a reflection of her single-minded pursuit of her degree. Moreover, Linden must have been aware of tracts like Theodor von Bischoff's that gave scientific reasons why she should not be able to accomplish what she was in fact doing. Given her faith in science, this may have powerfully undermined her resolve at points. The third leitmotiv of Linden's memoirs is the idea of the third sex. Throughout her account, Linden tells of supportive women in her life. Not only does she profess great affection for her mother, but during her schooldays she becomes life-long friends with Gabriele von Andrian (later Countess Wartensleben-Andrian). After Andrian's divorce, Linden visited her when she was studying philology in Zurich and Heidelberg at the same time as Linden was in Ttibingen. Nothing more is said about their relationship. 45 On the other hand, Linden felt little solidarity with the women's movement and found their ideas about femininity, as articulated by Mathilde Weber, utterly stifling. Linden's desire to be a boy and appropriation of masculine mannerisms can be read in several ways. Masculine traits and "deeds" were tied to her plans to study and become a scientist. In a society where intellectual life was marked male, it makes sense that, in Linden's case, intellectual and gender identity were intertwined. Androgyny was a powerful strategy in a system where professors had trouble reconciling a woman's intellectual talents with her womanhood. Linden's "masculine" elements legitimized her, while her "feminine" elements signaled to men that she was non-threatening and "respectable." Interestingly, the women in my study who appear most dedicated to the ideals of academic citizenship often also appear the most masculine. Their strategy for appropriating a male prerogative, education, is to claim it by adopting some masculine traits and habits: clothing, shoes, walking sticks, and dogs, as we see in Linden's case. 46 Marianne Weber, Max Weber's wife and a prominent member of the women's movement, considered this type of behavior a type of camouflage. "By approximating

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one's appearance to that of a male one, as an intruder one took on the protective color of the new environment, in order to blend into it as inconspicuously as possible. " 47 Guided by a love of science and a masculine selfimage, Linden measured up to academic citizenship's male standard as much as possible. Linden is at pains to paint a happy picture of her student days. But some issues, in particular those of sexuality and gender, might have been more difficult to negotiate than we can know. In this case it is helpful to turn to a similar account of a first student that is told in the form of a novel, where these topics could be more easily explored. Ella Mensch, who had to go abroad to Zurich to earn her degree in 1886, wrote an explicitly autobiographical novel Auf Vorposten (On Outpost Duty) that appeared in 1903. In contrast to the fiction examined in the previous chapter, Mensch's story makes a bold case for a new women's life choice, in this case academic excellence coupled with personal independence from men. Ella Mensch was born in 1859 in Lubben, Niederlausitz (Prussia) and grew up in Gollnow bei Stettin. In 1879 Mensch passed the teaching exam in Berlin after attending the teachers' seminar but still yearned for a more complete education. The next year she headed south to Zurich, where she completed her dissertation magna cum laude in 1886. Afterwards, Mensch made her living teaching in girls' schools as well as doing freelance writing. She supported herself as a single woman 48 by writing numerous volumes on literary topics. Little is known about Mensch's life after this spate of literary activity. 49 She died in I935· Openly autobiographical, Au{Vorposten is

subtitled a "novel from my student days in Zurich." Expressing herself through "fiction," Mensch was able to articulate opinions, conflicts, and desires that would have been muted or out of place in an autobiography, most significantly in her case the prominence of androgyny in the life of her protagonist, Fanny Stantien. Having encouraged women to get an education, many female reformers did not appreciate the academic pressure that women at the university faced. One of these difficulties, as we see in the life of Maria von Linden, was a student culture that drew heavily on male customs. At one point in the story Fanny's friend Fransizka is described as entering the room with "warm tomboyish happiness" [kordialburschikose Frohlichkeit]. Both call each other by last name, a male ritual, but then also use endearments such as "dear Norbert," "child," "dearest." 5° Fanny in particular seems to slip easily into this androgynous sociability. At the beginning of the novel, Mensch describes her as combining "the calm confidence of a well-bred boy who can fix his eye on target and opponent with the emotional sensitivity of a woman, who instinctively avoids all risque situations. " 51 Indeed, in many respects Fanny closely resembles the characters in Sind es Frauen? Like them, she re-

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jects male suitors and sees herself as part of an intellectual elite. Mensch emphasizes how deeply rooted both Fanny's sexuality and intellect are in her character. Fanny's younger sister, Hedi, is a more sensitive soul who is a once a complement to and double of Fanny (Hedi is said to resemble their dashing dead male cousin). Hedi shares her sister's indifference to men, as Mensch points out repeatedly. 52 Fittingly, Hedi dies trying to rescue a beloved female singer who falls through thin ice (perhaps another metaphor). Fanny herself makes a good friend in Zurich, a Russian medical student and Germanophile named Maschinka Biirenfels. Fanny and Maschinka seem at once to be on very close terms but in the end too busy to make a life together, especially given Fanny's individualistic tendencies, which Mensch emphasizes throughout the novel. The last thing the two friends do together is attend a performance of Klara Ziegler playing Sappho, surely a not so subtle point for the contemporary reader. 53 As a Russian, Maschinka awakens stereotypes of free love and libertinism that Mensch quashes by having Fanny's German childhood friend, Linda, experiment with free love with a German man. Giving her friend an utterly conventional sermon on "respectability," Fanny cuts Linda out of her life when she begins the liaison, yet welcomes Linda back once the relationship has failed. After being forgiven, Linda hints again at Fanny's sexual difference, complaining that Fanny cannot understand Linda's romantic problems because Fanny is a "woman who cannot at all feel like a woman. " 54 Because the novel is so transparently autobiographical, it may be useful to probe Fanny's resemblance to Mensch on this point. Literary scholars such as Sabine Streiter assume Mensch was a lesbian based on her association with others who were openly homosexual and their social circle. 55 Yet scholars of female homosexuality have been more cautious, labelling Mensch's sexuality "ambiguous. " 56 Mensch's own writings are strongly suggestive, although not definitive on this point. In her 1907 book Bildersturmer in der Berliner Frauenbewegung (Iconoclasts in the Berlin Women's Movement) she wrote that "interest in [the third sex] has almost become a fashionable preoccupation. Just as one must have seen the latest Hauptmann or Sudermann, 'enjoyed' an evening reading by Wedekind, in order to 'keep up in Berlin,' one must also have knowledge of the 'third sex."' 57 In this book Mensch tries to correct the impression that members of the third sex dominated the women's movement, going so far as to state that "it is even my own private opinion that only normal [i.e. heterosexual] women can be the leaders of the movement because homosexuals ["das Urningtum"] have a tendency toward solitude and so not give themselves willingly to the general cause." 58 Mensch took great care not to label herself here, but the homosocial and mildly homoerotic atmosphere that she creates for the heroine of her novel was likely a bold public stance in a novel so plainly taken from her own

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life. Although we cannot be sure if Linden intended for her memoirs to appear in her lifetime, her caution and circumspection about her friendship with the Countess Wartensleben-Andrian become more comprehensible. Certain aspects of Linden's university experience resonate with those of several other women who studied at the time. The Catholic author Gertrud von LeFort, who audited classes in Heidelberg before women's formal admission there, also had an uneasy relationship with the women's movement, although she liked Marianne Weber, one of its "representatives" there. 59 A medical student in Halle in I 900, Heusler-Edenhuizen recalled that a fellow medical student, Elisabeth Cords, dressed in a very masculine style. HeuslerEdenhuizen observed that Cords always wore "black dresses ... and had cut her hair short.... We often defended her when they would call out, 'Is that a man or a woman?' " 60 The mathematician Emmy Noether had a career that paralleled Linden's in its seriousness and success, again with a masculine touch. Noether earned her doctorate in I907 at Erlangen and in I9I9 became the first woman at Gottingen to qualify for university teaching, winning a brief professorial appointment at the same level as Linden. Observers noted that she lived for her work. Like Linden, Noether was distinctly unfeminine; she reportedly dressed in shapeless clothes and clunky shoes and was seen as loud and outspoken. Her students called her "Der Noether," turning her name into a masculine one. 61 The cases of LeFort, Cords, and Noether all show that Linden's response to and accomodation with the academy, which could be summarized as a whole-hearted embrace of academic citizenship, shown in an intellectual seriousness and masculine

demeanor, was shared by other women as well. III

In sharp contrast to Linden, Alice Salomon sided with the women's movement. In her autobiographical writings, composed in exile after the Nazis' rise to power, Salomon looked back on a highly successful career in social work. Obtaining a doctorate was just one of her many achievements. She founded Germany's first school for professional social workers, took an active role in the women's movement, and published widely. Salomon may have kept her distance from university life, but the pull of education would remain strong throughout her career. The story of Salomon's experience at the university demonstrates that some women who followed the women's movement's call found that their commitments and goals swept them out of the academy that the movement had worked so hard to open to them. Salomon was born in Berlin in I 872 to a highly assimilated Jewish family. Her father worked in the leather trade, and her mother was from a Silesian

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banking family. Salomon was an eager pupil, although she recalled that the level of her schooling had been "quite low." 62 Her father died when she was fourteen, bringing to an end her previous secure upper-middle-class lifestyle. Around the same time, she writes, she began to feel a "vague aspiration" for a career in which she could help others. 63 The crisis became acute when Salomon finished school shortly before the age of fifteen. Looking back, she believed that had her father lived, he would have allowed her to continue her education. While Salomon may have continued to fantasize about a "good" father, for many other women who studied it was precisely the death of their fathers that allowed them to study or made it necessary. But Salomon was still too young to be admitted to a teachers' seminar, the only institution open to women that would have furthered her education somewhat. In her memoirs, she reminded her readers that no Gymnasium or university had existed for women in 1886. "Even if there had been one, I would hardly have known it. I had not even heard that there were German women who studied in Switzerland or the United States of America." Her family firmly opposed her plans to prepare for a career and refused for several years her request to enter a teachers' seminar. Finally she settled on a school for needlework. "That was considered appropriate and met with no resistance," she notes. "For five years I spent many hours a day over my embroidery frame, convinced that any occupation was better than none. I sewed all my dreams into the linen. " 64 Salomon also occupied herself with cooking classes and the lectures for ladies offered at the Viktoria-Lyzeum. In retrospect, she found the years between fifteen and twenty "the unhappiest of my life." The life of the hohere Tochter, the wellbred daughter waiting at home to marry, was "quite unbearable" for her. 65 It was precisely this type of enforced idleness of middle-class girls and their distraction with busy work that the women's movement sought to abolish. Moreover, Salomon would never be able to support herself with embroidery. Female reformers such as Helene Lange and Hedwig Kettler decried the fact that many women were forced to marry for material security. Salomon does not appear to have consciously rejected the traditional path to marriage. She was often asked why she did not marry and usually replied, "Because I couldn't have the men I wanted and didn't want the ones I could have had." Her mother, who had born many children in an unhappy union, did not pressure her. Still, "between my twentieth and thirtieth year it never occurred to me that I wouldn't marry," she mused, recalling that as a child, she had thought old maids "strange." Salomon wryly pinned her failure to find a husband squarely on herself. "I wasn't goodlooking, I wasn't rich, and what was worse, I was serious, reflective, and intellectual." She added that she had expected men to live up to the same moral norms as women, but she found that few did "in a bourgeois society

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that forced them to forego marriage until they could support a family." What Salomon was referring to was the double standard prevailing at the time whereby men's sexuality was accommodated before and after marriage, whereas women were expected to abstain before marriage and then remain faithful to their husbands. Overall, she wrote, her work kept her from any marriage that did not combine love and mutual interests [i.e. where she could have continued to work]. Most of all Salomon seems to have regretted not having children: "For years I could not look at children without feeling anguish over my lost hopes. " 66 Social work would prove a productive outlet for Salomon's strong maternal desires. As she tells it, Salomon found what would become her life's work almost by accident. In late 1893 she attended the inaugural meeting of the Girls' and Women's Groups for Social Aid Work, to which many of the young women in her neighborhood were invited. The group, led by persons such as the liberal parliamentarian Karl Schrader and the women's activists Minna Cauer and Jeannette Schwerin, was one of the first efforts, to organize female volunteers for systematic social work among Berlin's poor, similar to the Anglo-American settlement movement. Later Salomon recalled that she had not really understood the invitation. For example, the meeting was to be held in the citizen's room of the Berlin Rathaus (city hall), but she had no idea, she claimed, that citizens could actually go into the Rathaus. Moreover, she writes, "I would have hardly considered myself a citizen." Certainly this term did not really apply to women at the time. She had also never heard the word "sozia/," which in its German form means not just "social" but more broadly that which benefits the common social welfare. "Reading the announcement, I understood only one thing: that here was work, a task, a position for which I was needed, a content that would be given to my life," she explained. "My real life I have always dated from that October 1893 on." By framing her discovery of her life's work as a near-coincidence, Salomon seems to fall into the pattern Jill Ker Conway finds in the memoirs of leading American women reformers of the Progressive era. Conway explains that "these lifelong activists represent themselves as larger than life maternal figures, to whom involvement in important social causes just happened. " 67 Salomon began to volunteer with the groups' projects, at first gaining her family's permission because it was not paid work. Later, though, her relatives disapproved. "Our families were anything but excited about our work," she wrote. Her involvement changed her view of the world. During her childhood, severe poverty had been unknown, she claimed, and she could recall no trace of class conflict among the people she knew. "But my world was changing.... For some social groups technical progress made life easier and more pleasant, for others however more hopeless and uncer-

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rain," she observed. The fact that she was doing something to ameliorate the problem did not ease her feelings of guilt. "During the first ten years of my work ... I could not see a man doing hard and dirty work without wondering why he didn't simply attack people like me who were free from such drudgery." Salomon emphasized how this work may have helped the volunteering women more than the poor because middle-class women gained social awareness and a useful occupation. Perhaps even more important, there was room for women in this new field. Social work had "no history, no rules, no examples." Thus it needed "creative personalities," Salomon explained. These appeared in the form of women of "indefatigable spirit." In its early stages, social work appealed to a "certain type of woman" with "a strong motherly instinct, creative mind, and independent spirit," she writes. These women needed work where they could take "initiative" and "responsibility," which ruled out professions such as nursing or being a governess or teacher, where one was closely supervised. Salomon was, of course, describing herself. The women's movement had argued that the effects of Germany's rapid industrialization made a "feminine" healing touch desirable. Social work carved out a new sphere for feminine careers that would not compete with men, an important goal for the women's movement. 68 In the work of the Girls' and Women's Groups for Social Aid Work, Salomon soon emerged as the protegee of Schwerin, one of its leaders. Salomon described Schwerin's home as a "cultural center for many prominent men and women." Salomon credited Schwerin with inspiring the other members and holding the group together with a vision of social motherhood: "Although she was a very feminine woman, she felt with the intensity of a confession of faith that women must have a place in public life and also the opportunity to protect and defend people everywhere." In addition to her practical work, Schwerin gave Salomon books by Tolstoy, Disraeli, and John Ruskin, which helped her to form a social philosophy. Through her contact with Schwerin, Salomon also became a liberal. "I learned there that liberalism is more than a political and economic doctrine-more than an oppositional movement against a conservative state." Salomon became Schwerin's secretary and deputy. In 1898 she represented Schwerin at a BDF meeting in Hamburg and in London the following year. Schwerin's sudden death in I 899 was a terrible blow to Salomon. 69 That same year Salomon was elected to succeed Schwerin in heading the Girls' and Women's Groups for Social Aid Work. One of Salomon's first actions was to organize what she called the first course in professional social work on the continent. She had long felt that social work required a "systematic preparation." Although social work as yet offered few career possibilities, Salomon saw changes at work in Wilhelmine society. "The age of

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economic liberalism neared its end. The universities began to emphasize the social sciences and social research," she observed.7° In leading the group, Salomon had to decide where she stood on socialism and workers' movement. "[August] Bebel [head of the German socialists] made many attempts to win me for the socialist party," she wrote, reasoning that she would have been a valuable acquisition as a "socially conscious woman of the privileged class." But Salomon said that she rejected any movement that did not embrace reconciliation between the classes. 71 Schwerin had also introduced Salomon to the organized middle-class women's movement. In 1900 the BDF elected Salomon to its governing board. This development was quite "sensational," she recalled. Until then the youngest on the board was hardly under 6o years old. A contemporary writer had described the women in such meetings as 'black shadows,' and now I was there-twenty-six years old, in a very short, pale dress, radiating eagerness and boundless enthusiasm. 72

Younger women followed Salomon into the BDF. She recalled her interesting and talented colleagues with affection: "We felt like a family." Salomon described the need for a "golden age after centuries of the oppression of women in which they had been without ... opportunities for development, without property rights and even without the right to raise their own children." The BDF's conferences were full of meetings during the day and long conversations at night about "work, family, love, friendship-between women, between a woman and a married man; love without marriage, education, [the] workers' movement, politics ... women in academic professions."73 Salomon's ties to the women's movement would have profound implications for her experience at the university. Although Salomon said she had never considered studying at the university, she and her colleagues in social work were quite excited when the University of Berlin began to admit women as auditors in larger numbers after 1900. But she maintained that the idea of studying herself did not occur to her until she attended a dinner party in honor of an acquaintance, Else von Richthofen, who had just received her doctorate in economics from Berlin in 1901 after initial studies with Max Weber in Heidelberg. In fact, Salomon attributed the inspiration for her studies to the progressive Berlin professor of political economy Max Sering, a founding member of the Girls' and Women's Groups for Social Aid Work. As Sering escorted Salomon to the dinner table, he asked her why she did not study. When she protested that she did not meet the requirements to audit, he replied that exceptions could be made for "deserving persons" and offered to help her. Sering knew the writings that Salomon had begun to publish on social work and thought that her essays would suffice to gain her admission to lectures on economics. 74

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Salomon's application was accepted, and she began her studies in economics at Berlin in the fall of 1902. At first she did not plan to study fulltime, as she feared that she was not well enough prepared, having only a girls' school education. She also wanted to continue leading the social work group, a job that had taken on "professional proportions." Finally, she saw herself as a pragmatic person with a distaste for theory. Private circumstances, however, changed her mind. "At that time I had just gone through a sad personal experience and had buried a youthful dream." Although Salomon did not write more about this, she almost certainly meant a disappointed love affair. She was ready for a change and young enough, she added "to be attracted by the romance which university study still had for women." 75 In contrast to Linden, Salomon never attempted to imitate the lifestyle of male students. She lived at home with her mother/6 and she earned her tuition by writing articles and teaching. "Nevertheless, it was a boundlessly happy time," she wrote. Looking back after 1933, she did not think that the current female students, prepared for university study in school, could understand the "bliss that drinking from the cup of knowledge meant for us who thirsted after it. At last I found what I had ... always wanted: tools ... to look for a Weltanschauung and a philosophy of life." This enthusiastic description of her studies echoed the rhetoric of academic citizenship, which held one of the purposes of study to be the acquisition of one's own world view. Salomon explored new interests, filled gaps in her knowledge, and mastered systematic economic analysis. She studied with the economists Gustav Schmoller and Adolf Wagner, becoming closely acquainted with them and friendly with Sering. All of this gave her life "a new, unheard-of charm. " 77 At the university, Salomon was keenly aware of her exposed position as one of the first Studentinnen. "We knew that the standards for us were higher than those for men, but that was fine with us," she recalled. This also meant that "every success ... belonged not to the individual but to all [women]," imputing a kind of sisterhood of female students. Coming from a family of businessmen, she had taken for granted that someone had to be exceptionally talented in order to get a university degree. "Now I saw how many mediocre men got one," she commented. Here Salomon unwittingly, perhaps, concurred with the sentiments of female reformers such as Hedwig Dohm and Hedwig Kettler.78 Despite her drive to do well, Salomon maintains that she did not originally intend to write a dissertation. In her account it was again a generous professor, this time Alfred Weber, who gave her a gentle push. In Weber's seminar on economic theory during her second year of study, Salomon had proposed that marginal utility theory might explain the unequal wages of

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men and women. Her research paper was, from the perspective of the liberal bourgeois women's movement to which she belonged, "pure heresy, because it proved that unequal wages were an inherent regularity of a free and uncontrolled economic system," she noted. Weber praised her work and asked her if she wanted to submit it as a dissertation. She hesitated, pointing out that she was not enrolled and moreover she knew nothing about philosophy, a required subject. Salomon recalled that he told her, "You should not hesitate to take your place where you belong. " 79 Her thesis would break new scholarly ground as one of the first to integrate the concerns of the women's movement into academic research and in particular into the fields of economics and social policy. Writing the dissertation, however, proved easier than getting it accepted. In order to be admitted to the doctoral exam, Salomon needed a dispensation from the Abitur from the Prussian education minister, who would grant it only if the philosophical faculty approved unanimously. She remembered that this "appeared not very likely in a faculty that counted over sixty members and in which enemies of the Frauenstudium such as [the German literature professor] Roethe sat." Sering brought the matter before the faculty with the support of Schmoller and Wagner, but Salomon had not yet studied for the required minimum of six semesters. At the beginning of her sixth semester in 1905, she submitted her petition to the dean of the philosophical faculty, the Egyptologist Adolf Ermann. He threw her papers to the floor in disgust and told her that she had had no proper education at all. Ermann prevented the petition from coming before the faculty. Salomon's disappointment was "enormous." Her teachers, though, were "indignant," especially since such a waiver was routinely granted to men, in particular foreigners lacking a German Abitur. Her professors insisted that the education ministry intervene, which it did. Salomon speculated that this occurred because she was already fairly well-known. Had she gone to another state to get her degree, Prussia's reputation would have suffered. Thus the matter was presented to the faculty but failed due to the opposition of Roethe and Ermann. After the election of a new dean the following year, in r 906, Salomon was finally admitted to the doctoral exam. 80 Her situation illustrates the extent to which auditing Studentinnen tended to be at the mercy of individual professors, as do many of the petitions by female students mentioned in Chapter Four. Salomon was just as unassuming about the doctoral examination as she had been about her dissertation. The new dean informed Salomon that for the exam, "the gentlemen appear in evening dress, the women in black, without jewelry." When the day arrived, she told none of her friends and slipped out of her home through the back door without a word to her mother. Upon returning, Salomon sat down with her mother and let her talk about her day.

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Suddenly, Salomon recalled, her mother looked at her and said, "You're wearing a new dress. You know that I don't like to see you in black. Why did you buy it?" Salomon answered, "I bought it for my doctoral exam. I just passed it with honors." Salomon's discretion with her mother is hard to read here. Salomon never mentions whether her mother approved of her studies. The reason for not inviting her friends to witness the doctoral disputation, as was customary, may have been rooted in either real modesty or a fear of failure. Salomon had the traditional party to celebrate her doctorate but with "mountains of cake and whipped cream" instead of the usual wine and beer. 81 Salomon's story shows the difficulties of reconciling the bourgeois feminine virtues of modesty and temperance with the masculine ones of self-display-usually one invited a whole audience to the examand the bacchanalian celebrations that typified the life of the traditional (male) student. Looking back over twenty years later, Salomon said that at first she regarded her new title "merely as an ornament," since she did not think she could use anything she had learned at the university in her social work afterwards. But soon her title proved "indispensable" for her work life. "The times in which amateurs could lead the [social work] movement were gone," she observed. 82 Beyond serving as a professional credential, her doctorate was the impetus for her career in the education of social work professionals. In her thesis, Salomon wrote that women's inferior wages would not improve until "the dilettantish, provisional, and casual nature of women's work is swept away across the board. " 83 The way in which she sought to remedy this was to link one new kind of women's work, social work, to a thorough preparation and respected institutional credential. Professional training for social work at the university was neither possible nor practical, she believed. Thus in 1908 she established the Women's School for Social Work (Soziale Frauenschule) in Berlin-Schoneberg, which still exists today as the College for Social Work and Instruction (Fachhochschule fiir Sozialarbeit und Sozialpiidagogik), now named in her honor, in Berlin. Salomon intended it to be a "university-like place for women that should not replace the university and not prepare for an academic career." Instead it should train women for "tasks that in a special sense are female tasks ... female careers." Salomon used her university background to create an institution to prepare women to do the socially responsible work for the common good that reformers such as Helene Lange had called for them to do. 84 In her later career Salomon continued to teach at the Frauenschule and founded national and international associations for other such schools. Her term on the board of the BDF lasted from 1900 until 1920. In 1932 the medical faculty of the University of Berlin gave her an honorary doctorate, and her school was renamed in her honor on her sixtieth birthday the same

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year. Yet by the following year, I933, she had been stripped of all her public offices, eventually finding work with an aid committee for Jewish emigrants. Following her I937 interrogation by the Gestapo, Salomon was forced to emigrate, going first to England, then to the United States. She settled in New York City, where the press covered her arrival, heralding her as the "German Jane Addams." At first, her reception was warm: Eleanor Roosevelt had her to tea in the winter of I938, and Salomon could draw on a special fund set up by colleagues and friends for her support. Although she did not resume full-time employment, she supported herself with speaking engagements. Once the war began, however, her situation became difficult. Although in I 94 5 she was named honorary president of the International Committee on Women and the International Association of Schools of Social Work, she died nearly forgotten in New York City in I948. 85 The story of Salomon's memoirs deserves some commentary of its own. It is uncertain when Salomon began to write these, perhaps even before her exile in I937· Nonetheless she seems to have undertaken the project in her sixties, writing from the start in English for an American audience. Thus it seems likely that she approached it as a means of securing income for herself; however, despite initial interest from the University of Chicago Press, she was unable to publish it in the United States. After the war ended, Salomon also attempted to publish the book in German and sent the manuscript to her colleague Emmy Wolff and her assistant Dora Peyser. These two were reluctant to publish it in Germany because of what they felt to be Salomon's harsh critique of Imperial Germany and the bitterness they thought she expressed. In I 9 58 Peyser published a shortened and muchrevised version in German. The manuscript, which existed in a few different forms, both in English and German, was "lost" until Joachim Wieler, a social work instructor originally trained at the successor to the school for social work that Salomon had established, found the manuscript in I98I and had it translated back into German and published in I983. 86 Salomon gives little attention to her years as a university student in her memoir. Her book embeds her life in wider German developments until her exile in I 9 37. Perhaps the book was purposely structured around political events so that a wartime or postwar American audience could follow the story and find it interesting on a couple of levels. A glance at the table of contents reveals only brief attention to her university years, which are buried among 300 pages on Salomon's own career as well as political developments in Weimar and Nazi Germany. Salomon came to the university later in life than Linden and Wegscheider, motivated almost exclusively by the concerns of the woman question and unfamiliar with any of the dictates of academic citizenship. But it was her involvement with the women's movement that led Salomon to do pioneer-

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ing academic work there: her research can be considered as part of the beginning of women's studies in Germany. Her dissertation on the disparity between male and female wages was a first step toward the solution of a pressing social problem that is still with us today. Furthermore she was acutely aware of the importance of the Frauenstudium for the woman question. More important to her than whether female students gained the approval of professors and fellow students was the progress they achieved for their sex by studying. While at the university, Salomon strove to meet the required academic standard but did not show much interest in breaking into male student culture, presumably because she had already taken on a powerful identity as a professional social reformer, one that accommodated feminine traits much more easily at the time. Salomon's pursuit of her studies in conjunction with her work for the women's movement was a pattern followed by several other young women studying at the same time. Danzig native Kathe Schirmacher became active in the women's movement in Danzig around I 890 and earned a doctorate from Zurich in I 89 5. Schirmacher spent the rest of her life as one of the first "professional" feminists, supporting herself through her writings and lectures on women's issues. 87 The future leader of the BDF and Weimar politician Gertrud Baumer initially came to Berlin to study at the university, but her thirty-year partnership with Helene Lange, whose assistant she became in I899, literally changed her life. 88 Baumer writes, "The purpose and core of my life had to serve the equal and full entrance of women into the cultural forces of their people." 89 Finishing her doctorate in I904, Baumer purposely chose her courses "in order to have a solid basis for work on the woman question," which proved tremendously fruitful for her work for women's movement. 90 Anita Augspurg's study of law in Zurich, which ended in I897, prepared her for a lifetime of engagement in the radical wing of the bourgeois women's movement. 91 Heusler-Edenhuizen had been inspired to study at twenty-one by the article "What We Want" (Was wir wollen) in the inaugural issue of Helene Lange's periodical Die Frau in r893. 92 The combination of academic and practical social engagement was a powerful one for Salomon as well as these other women.

v Of the same generation as Salomon and Linden, Hildegard Wegscheider, nee Ziegler, was far different from both in terms of temperament, family background, and political convictions. Her autobiography is a collection of reminiscences originally published in Berlin's Das sozialistische fahrhundert (The Socialist Century) in I947. 93 Looking back in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the seventy-six-year-old Wegscheider stressed her socialist

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and progressive credentials, pointing out how she and her family had always resisted knee-jerk nationalism. She saw her life as a fight for social justice, and her university studies as part of that. As a pioneering woman student in Prussia, she was also keenly aware of the different positions of male and female students and tried, more than either Salomon or Linden, to establish some sort of female community at the university. Wegscheider was born in r87r to a liberal Protestant family. She recalled that her parents, already "vocal opponents of Bismarck," resisted the suggestion of one godmother, a Fraulein von BlUcher, to name the baby "Sedania" in honor of the first anniversary of Germany's great victory at the battle of Sedan during the Franco-Prussian War of r87o-r87I. (Sedan Day would go on to become a national holiday in Imperial Germany.) Interestingly, both her grandfathers were heads of Gymnasien in small towns and liberals who opposed Bismarck. There, however, the similarity ended. Her paternal grandfather, who lived in the eastern town of Polnisch-Lissa, was himself half Polish. According to Wegscheider, he managed German and Polish students equally well until Bismarck's Kulturkampf, a campaign of official discrimination against Germany's Catholics, removed him from office in r 87 5. Wegscheider presents this grandfather as a music-loving and artistic soul, whose connections with his Polish relations and neighbors ran deep. Her maternal grandfather had been a delegate to the r848 democratic Berlin assembly; this liberal involvement, Wegscheider writes, would later cost him dearly, both during the reactionary period that followed (he was apparently watched by the Prussian police until I866) and after unifi-

cation, when his liberal views began clashing with those of others in Landsberg an der Warthe, a provincial town east of Berlin. Her father, a pastor, was soon called to a church in the Silesian town of Liegnitz, where she grew up among her parents' circle of liberal friends. 94 For an upper-middle-class girl of the time, Wegscheider had an unusual upbringing in that she was prepared for both marriage and a career. Although she knew that her family ultimately expected her to marry, she planned to get her teaching certificate first, as had her mother and grandmother before her. After completing her schooling and a stay at a finishing school-style Pension, Wegscheider returned home to learn to keep house. In her memoirs she criticized her education as a middle-class daughter, which entailed hours of singing, piano, and even painting lessons, for which "no shred of talent" existed. She believed her superficial education and naivete were most apparent at parties, where, she later confessed, she regarded "every university-educated man as a fountain of wisdom." 95 As a teenager, she discovered the German socialist leader August Bebel's Woman under Socialism on her mother's night table. Since the book was still forbidden in Germany, she read it secretly. It hit her "like a thunder-

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bolt." In her family, John Stuart Mill's call for the equality of the sexes had been long accepted, she maintained. But it was Bebel who had an "enormous" effect on her. Suddenly she realized that she was the product of "the helpless bourgeois education of a young girl whom one wanted to send into the marriage market and educate only on the side" that Bebel described. Wegscheider's first interest in socialism was sparked by his call for women to assume the "female task in the life of the people. " 96 Passages from Bebel's book such as "there can be no emancipation of humanity without the social independence and equality of the sexes" surely must have inspired her. Her discovery of Marx would come later. 97 Wegscheider began to study for her teaching certificate and suddenly found herself engaged to a young theology student, as she described it. At first, her parents declared her too young for this but then called the young man back at her request. In time, though, she fell away from the church and became more interested in Bebel's predictions for the future than the Gospels', she claimed. After nearly two years she broke off the engagement and passed the teaching exam shortly thereafter in October 1892.98 By this time, Wegscheider writes, she had heard of German women who had used this credential to study at Swiss universities and decided to do the same. "I hardly dared mention it to my parents," she recalled, fearing the expense and intending to pay her own way as a governess. Her mother, however, took it upon herself to consult Helene Lange in Berlin and Auguste Schmidt, head of the ADF, in Leipzig. Both women urged Wegscheider's mother to let her daughter go, and Schmidt arranged a scholarship from the ADF. In her memoirs, Wegscheider emphasizes how supportive her parents were and how they had to suffer the gossip buzzing around their daughter in the small town in which they lived. The encouraging attitude of Wegscheider's parents was highly atypical among the first generation of women university students. Fathers in particular were usually deeply opposed. 99 Wegscheider arrived in Zurich in October 1893. She recounts that she found a room-dirty but cheap-on her first day and went to the opera that night. Upon returning, she had trouble finding her house and had to go to the police station for help. Bright and early the next morning, she was summoned to the university president's office. The president informed her curtly that she could not be admitted to the university because she wandered around at night and had taken a room in a house of ill repute. Befitting a young lady of her background, she had no idea what he was talking about and started to cry. On her way out the door, she handed the president a letter from her father, who just happened to have studied with him. Only her family's connections saved Wegscheider's reputation. This anecdote demonstrates the precarious and ambiguous status of the female student. 100

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Wegscheider recalls that she "floated" through her two years in Zurich, so rich and rewarding were her experiences. In Zurich she studied psychology with Richard Avenarius, who also received her in his home. At first she found her studies a little disappointing, as her schooling had not prepared her for such abstractions. Soon, however, she recognized that serious intellectual effort was being required of her and began to work hard. She also studied modern history with Alfred Stern, who instilled in her a deep skepticism of Treitschke and the celebratory tone of many Prussian histories that would serve her well in her later historical studies and teaching. But the education Wegscheider valued most occurred outside the classroom. She became a convinced socialist early in her stay in Zurich. At the matriculation ceremony, the rector had encouraged students to express their political opinions. "So I signed up with the social democrats the next day," she explains. While in Zurich she learned much from being in the party as well as from reading the Swiss and German constitutions. With some of her fellow Studentinnen she read Karl Marx, whereupon the "scales fell from my eyes," she writes. She also read Nietzsche, which she described as a "great, exciting, purifying experience." 101 After two years in Switzerland, Wegscheider applied to take the Prussian college entrance exam. Her request was approved as an experiment, making her the first woman in Prussia to be allowed to take the Abitur. She recounts that since the first class was to graduate from Helene Lange's Gymnasium courses for girls the following year, state officials wanted to try a test case first. The Prussian state education ministry arranged for Wegscheider to take

the exam in a small Catholic town in the part of Prussia closest to Zurich. Although the male examinees had been forbidden any contact with her, she remembered they were all at the train station when she arrived to get a look at her. The director of the school received her politely but had forbidden his daughter from meeting Wegscheider. This social ostracization shows what a taboo she was breaking. Others in town offered her a warmer welcome. Wegscheider's lone fellow Lutheran examinee met her secretly and assured her of the whole class's admiration and eagerness to help her; during the review period, the boys found a way to smuggle messages to her about test questions (a practice common among the boys themselves). On the second day of the exam, the only Lutheran female teacher in town approached Wegscheider on the street and thanked her for what she was doing for women. In a Catholic area, being Lutheran brought her a solidarity that she might otherwise not have found. Despite the transgressive nature of taking the Abitur, the very fact of taking it marked her again as a member of the educated middle class, this time on her own merit, not as a pastor's daughter. The importance of class distinctions is apparent in one story Wegscheider told. While walking

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in the rain, she was stopped by a "simple" woman, who offered Wegscheider an umbrella with the words: "You are after all our Abiturientin (female examinee), you should not walk without an umbrella." 102 In this case, the woman acknowledged Wegscheider's new social status that would be conferred on her by the Abitur, usually the first stepping stone for men into the educated middle class. After Wegscheider passed the Abitur, she attempted to matriculate at Berlin in the fall of 189 5, going so far as to discuss her dissertation topic with a certain Professor Scheffer-Boichhorst. In the meantime, her case had drawn the attention of the press. The Vossische Zeitung observed that "whatever one may think about women's emancipation, a lady who has passed the Abitur must also have the right to attend the university." Another Berlin newspaper reported that the university senate had voted against her admission, and the ministry had left the decision in the university's hands. Wegscheider recalled that in the end she could not even be admitted as an auditor at Berlin because the historian Treitschke had sought out the rector, exclaiming in disbelief, "A student who can't get drunk? Impossible!"103 1\t least three other women had been allowed to audit at Berlin by this time. 104 Perhaps it was because Wegscheider wished to study history that Treitschke intervened. Instead, Wegscheider was granted permission to audit courses in Halle, a small Prussian university town. The contrast between Zurich and Halle figures strongly in her memoirs. In Zurich she had been part of a lively intellectual circle and was received socially by professors. After that experience, Halle was a bitter disappointment for Wegscheider. Whereas in Zurich women had been studying for over twenty years, in Halle, Wegscheider found herself an experiment. The professors, totally unaccustomed to female students, had trouble taking a young woman seriously. For the same reason, the matter-of-fact camaraderie with male students that she had experienced in Zurich was totally lacking. Kathe Schirmacher, who studied in Zurich at the same time as Wegscheider and along with her was a regular at Professor Avenarius's home, also claimed that what made Zurich unique was the cordial, matter-of-fact interaction between male and female students. Schirmacher noted that the fact that the lectures were very "clean" (no dirty jokes) added to the women's comfort level. 105 The kind of sociability Wegscheider missed is hinted at by a fellow female student, Johanna Cohn-Philippson and her 1894 Studentinnen-Ulk (Female Students' Joke), a Mardigras play that spoofs the Studentinnen of the future as fraternity girls celebrating Helene Lange's centennial by swearing by the pacifist Bertha von Suttner. The situation improved somewhat in Wegscheider's second semester after her sister and a few other women began to study. The two sisters were

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often called in by the university rector for attending meetings of the Social Democratic Party, which had been banned in Germany just a few years earlier. For Wegscheider, education and political awareness were closely linked. It had, after all, been Bebel's writings that had inspired her to attend the university in the first place. In the German academy, though, suspicion of any student political activity, especially socialist, ran high. Instead, the atmosphere was "dull and dry." The students were pragmatic and already had "the faint tinge of civil servants," she recalled. Nonetheless Wegscheider persevered and earned her doctorate in history at Halle in 1898. 106 Upon graduation Wegscheider went to work for Helene Lange's Gymnasium courses for girls in Berlin. When Wegscheider married in 1899, Lange dismissed her. Wegscheider speculated that Lange was unwilling to risk having a Social Democrat, and eventually a young mother, as a teacher at a time when the full viability and respectability of girls' Gymnasien were only beginning to be established. Moreover, Wegscheider as a middle-class woman was unusual in wanting to continue to work after her marriage. Usually teaching was conceived of as a kind of "living" to be offered to single women to support themselves. 107 In this period celibacy for female teachers was the norm, so Lange's dismissal of Wegscheider conformed to the expectations of the day. 108 It seems that Wegscheider and her husband Max Wegscheider, a socialist physician whom she had met in the movement, believed strongly in a married woman's right to work. She writes, "My husband was as convinced as I that a married woman was also entitled to professional work." 109 The couple sought new opportunities for Wegscheider, who at first tutored women privately for the Abitur. After bearing her first child in 1900, Wegscheider established the first Gymnasium-style school for girls that had a six-year program in Charlottenburg, then a suburb of Berlin, with the assistance of the Berlin chapter of the women's club Women's Welfare (Frauenwohl), headed by Minna Cauer. Because of problems with accreditation, each class in the school operated as a "family school" under the supervision of parents. Wegscheider taught one class a day and held office hours at her home to accommodate her family. When she was expecting her second child, Wegscheider was asked by the parents to continue teaching and to demonstrate the "beauty and sanctity of motherhood" to the children. But soon she was dismissed from the school by a state official for "reasons of morality," i.e. her pregnant state. Wegscheider continued to teach where she could (at the Humboldt Academy, for example, which offered general education classes for adults). She also threw her energies increasingly into the workers' temperance movement.uo Wegscheider writes that her involvement with the party and politics strained her marriage, leading to a divorce. While she was awarded cus-

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tody of her two sons, she wanted to be economically independent and so moved to Bonn as a secondary school teacher [Oberlehrerin]. During the Weimar Republic, when women received the vote and were drawn into electoral politics, Wegscheider sat in the Prussian state legislature for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) from I9I9 until I933. 111 Susanne Suhr, who wrote the introduction to Wegscheider's memoirs, called Wegscheider's Berlin apartment "a place of refuge" during the Nazi period. Wegscheider died in West Berlin in I 9 53. According to Suhr, it was very difficult to persuade the modest Wegscheider to write her memoirs. The periodical Das sozia/istische ]ahrhundert finally convinced her and serialized them in I947· She had wanted to revise the pieces for publication as a book but could not complete the project. The articles were then assembled by Suhr and published six months after Wegscheider's death in 19 53. 112 For Wegscheider, higher education was part of a larger emancipatory project, linked to both the women's movement and socialism. Reading Bebel drew her attention not just to the problem of the idle bourgeois daughter but also the need for female cooperation in the making of a new society. Yet she was also intellectually driven and enjoyed the camaraderie and intellectual stimulus of life in Zurich. Furthermore, by taking and passing the Abitur she demonstrated her willingness to measure up to a male standard and to compete with her fellow (male) students on an equal basis. At Halle, however, she soon recognized that she would not be accepted as an equal. Moreover, combining her social, political, and academic interests proved much harder at Halle than in Zurich. Wegscheider attempted to construct a feminine, socially-conscious sphere at Halle, one that for example welcomed her sister after Wegscheider's first year. Through her later work as a teacher, Wegscheider was involved with preparing the next generation of women for further study. Just as she had tried to reconcile the woman question with academic citizenship in her student years, Wegscheider later went on to combine a career with a political career in the SPD and a family. In both cases she sought to integrate disparate realms and experiences. Hildegard Wegscheider was not the only Studentin of her generation to value sociability among her fellow women students. Several other women have described the important part that this played in their university years. Marie Baum from Danzig studied chemistry in Zurich, where she earned her doctorate in I 899 at 2 5. In her autobiography, she looks back on a dense network of female friendship that enriched her time there. She was briefly the head of the female students' club, which she helped revive. Like Wegscheider, Baum maintained close ties to the women's movement throughout her professionallife. 113 In Zurich Baum became lifelong friends with another student, Ricarda Huch, who memorialized her women student friends later in her novelsY 4 The bonds between academic women

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were important both for the support they offered a new and marginal group and because of the high value traditionally placed on male student friendship and sociability.

VI The generation of women who studied at German universities once the doors were officially opened to them between 1900 and 1909 continued the academic experiment that the first generation had begun in the mid-189os. The two groups are not separated by very many years, and there is even some overlap between the two because it took close to a decade for all German universities to decide to admit women. Had Gertrud Baumer gotten her 1904 Ph.D. at Heidelberg, which admitted women in 1900, and not Berlin, she could have enrolled as a regular student and bypassed the bureaucratic headaches of the capital, where women were admitted in 1908. One factor that distinguished this second group is that women could now simply enroll without special permission. Another is that the number of female students kept increasing, so the university years were not as lonely for these women as they were for Linden or Wegscheider. A closer look at a handful of their autobiographies reveals that this second group developed similar strategies to those of the first. Because the debate over women students was still so much a part of the culture, the enrolled women, like the first group, also describe their experience in ways that are informed by this discussion. Two autobiographies, by Frankenthal and Stein, echo Linden's engagement with the ethos of academic citizenship. 115 Like Linden, Kiel native Frankenthal engaged the social side of academic citizenship, pushing herself to her physical limits (albeit in a healthier way than Linden) and relishing the (male) student's temporary release from social graces as discussed above. Before completing her studies in 1914 at age twenty-five, Frankenthal attended six universities over the course of ten semesters, taking full advantage of the German student tradition of moving from town to town. 116 In a piece of bravado worthy of any male student, Frankenthalleft Erlangen, where she had been studying, on the day before a major exam to go to nearby Nuremberg, where she got very drunk. She stumbled home on the 5 a.m. train and, she boasted, still passed the exam. 117 In contrast to Frankenthal, Stein laid claim to the intellectual side of academic citizenship. Born in Breslau in 1891, Stein passed the Abitur in March 1911 and began to study at the university there, a goal that had been hers alone. 118 Stein shared Linden's feeling of exceptionalism from childhood: "I was convinced that I was destined for greatness."119 She had such a deep affection for the University of Breslau that it was difficult for her to decide to go to Gottingen and work with the philoso-

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pher Edmund Husser!, her later mentor. "It might have appeared that I was so entwined with her [the university] that I would not part from her freely," she wrote. 12° Frankenthal and Stein both identified with different sides of the student role, but their disparate experiences helped to integrate them into the academic community. Working in the women's movement continued to motivate women to study, as it had Alice Salomon. Marie-Elisabeth Lliders was born in 1878 in Berlin and came under the strong influence of the BDF and its leaders as a young woman. 121 From 1901 to 1906 Liiders was a volunteer in the social work group for girls and women that Salomon had organized. At the relatively late age of thirty-two, she completed her Abitur and quickly thereafter her doctorate in government [Staatswissenschaft] (1912). 122 Sheremembers herself and Agnes von Harnack as the first women to formally enroll at the University of Berlin in 1909. Only one page of her memoirs is devoted to her studies, where she describes constant harassment by the male students, who trampled their feet in a student sign of disapproval whenever she entered the lecture hall. 123 As an older student and someone who had already started to establish herself professionally in the women's movement, Li.iders had little interest in student life and was more interested in her degree as a credential. Li.iders's autobiography dwells even less than Salomon's on her university years, most likely because of the enormously eventful and successful career that she had in the German women's movement and in politics. She served as a delegate to the Reichstag from 1919 to 1932 for the democrats (Deutsche Demokratische Partei) and after the war as a delegate to the Bundestag for the liberal democrats (Freie Demokratische Partei) from 1953 to 1961. 124 While her report of her studies is brief, it is ironic that many of her achievements, in particular her political career, would have been near-impossible without her doctorate. Some women chose a third tactic for their university years. Like Wegscheider, many of those who studied after her combined a strong desire to study with social consciousness and appreciation for student sociability.125 Born in 188o, Rabel Straus grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household in Karlsruhe. When her mother asked her if she would like to attend the then brand-new Gymnasium for girls established by Hedwig Kettler in that city in 1893, Straus agreed "without hesitation." 126 As a young woman, Straus followed German women's issues and the English suffragettes with a "burning" interest. Gerhart Hauptmann's Die Weber (The Weavers) introduced her to socialism and Theodor Herzl's Der ]udenstaat (The Jewish State) to Zionism. 127 Straus passed her Abitur in 1899 and, accompanied by her brother, began her studies as an auditor in Heidelberg, enrolling in the summer semester of 1900 when women were first admitted. For three semesters she was the only woman in her medical

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courses. Coming from a small town and religious home, Straus writes that she did not realize how naive she was at the time, noting that she was, "despite the Abitur, so much a 'little girl' that all [my] colleagues were immediately ready to see themselves as protectors and to ensure that no one even told a risque joke in my presence. " 128 Straus recalled that she had gotten along well with her male fellow students, but she seems to have drawn more support from the other women students. She headed the Studentin association for many semesters and stood up for an independent club for women students, resisting pressure from the women's movement and the university. Both the Heidelberg branch of the Frauenstudium-Frauenbildung association, headed by Marianne Weber, and the German Free Student League (Deutsche Freie Studentenschaft), a reform-oriented university group, wanted to "annex" the club. 129 By promoting female student sociability, Straus, like Wegscheider, aimed at integrating the best of the promises held by academic citizenship and the women's movement in order to create a haven for academic women.

VII These autobiographies reveal how women negotiated the university, which was essentially a public space. Yet how did their education affect their private lives? One telling example is the case of Heusler-Edenhuizen, whom we saw at the outset of the chapter being teased by her male fellow students that she would just get married after all. After beginning her medical career, Heusler-Edenhuizen fell in love with a fellow physician, who was already married. Braving great social pressure, he divorced his wife to be with Heusler-Edenhuizen. At this point many shunned or looked askance at the couple, but her old teacher and mentor, Helene Lange, came to the rescue. Lange helped cobble the family together, providing social support and later even arranging the adoption of two children but not before making the future husband sign what amounted to a prenuptial agreement guaranteeing Heusler-Edenhuizen's right to work and control her own income during the marriage. 13 For despite their academic degrees, married women could not work without their husband's permission, and whatever they earned belonged to the men. Heusler-Edenhuizen exemplified the dilemma that her fellow graduates faced: as educated women, they could have a public professional life, but how would this impact their existence in the private domestic sphere? A thorough investigation of this question is beyond the scope of this study, but we can glean a few hints about the personal choices these women made from their autobiographies. For some women, merely the prospect of marriage, in the form of an unwelcome proposal, was enough to strengthen their resolve to study. After

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her stay at a Pension but before she had made concrete university plans, Linden was taken to meet a prospective suitor but rebelled by wearing an ill-fitting dress. Similarly, Frankenthal turned down her first suitor after finishing at the Pension but before deciding to study. Stein rejected a young admirer just as she was planning to attend the Breslau girls' Gymnasium. After a two-year engagement, Wegscheider found she had outgrown her fiance intellectually and was soon off to the University of Zurich. 131 Perhaps no one used the institution of marriage as boldly as Sofia Kovalevskaia, who engaged in a sham marriage in order to be able to leave her native Russia for study in Germany; in Russia, single women could not get their own passports. 132 Still, many Studentinnen had marriages that were quite sincere. Some women fell in love with their professors. A wellknown case is that of Hedwig Hintze, who married her doctoral supervisor, the historian Otto Hintze, in 1912, and continued her career. 133 Frida Busch, who was a good friend of Heusler-Edenhuizen and a fellow pioneering student with her, worked for two years after finishing her medical degree in 1903 and then married her Gymnasium-course teacher after a long, secret engagement. 134 Quite a few Studentinnen chose to marry someone closer to their own age who also had a university degree. Perhaps the happiest marriage on record is that of Rabel Straus. Although her future fiance had pronounced early on that "one cannot marry a female doctor," she embarked on the study of medicine. 135 She fell in love with her cousin at fifteen, but was grateful that they did not get engaged right away, writing that otherwise "I could never have matured into an individual personality. " 136 The couple got engaged partway through her studies in 1901 and married at the end of her exams in 190 5. 137 Looking back, Straus remarked that she had been privileged to have both "a completely fulfilled woman's life at the side of a beloved man and a great, independent sphere of activity as a physician." 138 The couple had several children, and Straus worked even when they were infants. 139 Not everyone was able to balance her career with husband and children as readily as Straus. Many other peer marriages were quite troubled. As we saw, Wegscheider's marriage failed. Having met her future husband at the university before finishing her degree in 1914, Else Ullich-Beil tried to combine career and family, but the couple divorced in 1929. 140 More tragic is the case of Clara Immerwahr, the University of Breslau's first female Ph.D. and a bright young chemist, who married Fritz Haber in I90I hoping she might continue her work. Instead she had to subordinate herself to her husband's work. When she bore a child, she commented that she would have rather written "another 10 dissertations." During the First World War, she was upset by her husband's work on Germany's poison gas program and killed herself, some say in protest, in I 9 I 5. 141

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Some married graduates sought solace in their children and lovers. In 1898 Else von Richthofen had started work on her Heidelberg studies with

Max Weber, but his nervous breakdown led her to Berlin to finish her doctorate in I90L 142 Richthofen then became the first female factory inspector in Baden but shortly thereafter gave up her career and married Edgar Jaffe, a Weber protege and Heidelberg instructor, in I 902. 143 While she never divorced Jaffe, Richthofen had a series of extramarital involvements, including an affair in I9II with Weber's brother Alfred, then also a Heidelberg professor. Although Richthofen had rebuffed Max Weber's advances in I 9 I o, 144 his feelings for her persisted. They renewed contact at the end of World War I and had an intense relationship until Max Weber's death in 1920. 145 Many Studentinnen never married, but in this group there were few truly single women in the sense of women living completely on their own. 146 Some organized their lives around living with their mothers or other relatives, and some chose to organize households with other unmarried women. Salomon lived with her mother for much of the former's adult life. Baumer settled down with Lange from 1899 until the latter's death in 1930. Baumer wrote of their intense personal and professional relationship, "The most beautiful thing one can experience is to be needed with everything that one can give there where one loves most worshipfully." 147 Lesbian relationships were important for several graduates. Schirmacher entered into a long partnership with Klara Schlecker some years after finishing her degree. Schirmacher observed of their relationship, "We were brothers-in-arms, and we were Prussians." 148 Likewise, Augspurg made her life with Lida Gustava Heymann for decades. 149 Women students faced complicated choices in arranging their private lives. In her memoir, Frankenthal is surprisingly candid about her sexuality, writing, "I had intimate friendships with two students." During her student years, she made it clear to them that marriage was out of the question. Almost as scandalous at the time was her declared preference for Christian over Jewish men, although she herself was Jewish. 150 On the opposite end of the spectrum is Edith Stein, who lived for a long time with her family and eventually became a nun. 151 What is important to note is that higher education gave these women the courage or the insight to make the life choices that they did. As a Berlin female student observed in I913, "A woman who has become independent both inwardly and outwardly can arrange her life in a satisfying and pleasing way without marriage. " 152

VIII The accounts examined here reveal a wide variety of strategies for negotiating the landmines awaiting the first Studentinnen. Maria von Linden used her strong belief in her membership in an intellectual elite usually re-

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served for men and androgyny as a way of expressing her feeling of belonging to that elite as well as her own sexuality. Alice Salomon was led to the university through her involvement with the women's movement and although she expected her degree to be little more than a brief dalliance, she used her talents to produce as a dissertation one of the first modern examples of feminist scholarship. Hildegard Wegscheider trod the middle ground between Linden and Salomon in seeking a female way to fit in at the university; she was deeply aware of the need for an academic community of women. The tension between the rhetoric of academic citizenship and that of the woman question was ever-present for the first generation of Studentinnen. As Kathe Schirmacher wrote in her 1896 sketch of Zurich student life, In the modern relationship between professor and (female) pupil, however, the woman question comes to the fore: for the (male) teacher, who knows the world and surveys modern developments, this fighting woman-individuality, this new type that is just trying to establish itself, is precisely the most interesting. 153

The accounts in this chapter examine this encounter. Linden rejected the woman question out of hand, while Salomon embraced it. Wegscheider was in the position of trying to balance both. The woman question was the unspoken framework for all the women's accounts of their adolescence and career choice. Even if they were unaware of the women's movement at the time, looking back they used ideas drawn from the women's movement to characterize their experiences. The most powerful of these is the critique of the role of the passive well-bred daughter [hohere Tochter]. All three women were unhappy with being a "bourgeois daughter" and sought a deeper purpose for their lives. Linden rebelled against the role completely. Salomon did so more gradually, scheduling her first volunteer activities on days when she was not needed at home. 154 She also recalled never thinking that she would not marry, whereas it appears that marriage never crossed Linden's mind. Wegscheider consciously sought to combine family with her work. By being the first women with an Abitur to study, Wegscheider and Linden set out, intentionally or not, to prove the claims of the women's movement that women with equal preparation could be expected to do as well as men at the university. The ADF, the main bourgeois women's organization, supported this claim financially as well by giving both Linden and Wegscheider scholarships. The mere fact that all three women sought useful, meaningful work was enough to show that even if they did not directly concern themselves with the woman question, they themselves were a part of it. On the face of it, Wegscheider, Linden, and Salomon confronted academic citizenship in a similar fashion. Once at the university, all of the women had to contend with the ambiguities of being a female student. Wegscheider's, Salomon's, and Linden's strategies at the university had several common

2.12.

"A STUDENT WHO CAN'T GET DRUNK?"

elements. All three won over reluctant university officials and struggled to prove themselves. Moreover, each of the women fulfilled part of traditionalists' worst nightmares about female students. Linden dressed more and more like a man each year, Wegscheider was a socialist, and Salomon, with her girls' school education, was not as well-qualified as the two Abiturientinnen. Yet their very unconventionality worked in their favor. Had they remained within traditional female roles, they would have stood little chance of being taken seriously. The ways in which they deviated from such roles gave them a claim to individuality. This individuality gave them some legitimacy in terms of German academic culture, which placed a premium on developing the particular within each student. Combining their individuality with their quest for education allowed each of these women to own at least that most progressive part of academic citizenship, Bildung. Linden, Wegscheider, and Salomon combined aspects from the German student's cherished academic freedom and contemporary ideas about femininity to create a broad range of responses to who the Studentin would be. At this time, the decision to study was still a profoundly personal one and by no means easy. Because university study had not yet become an established option for women, there was still room for experimentation, both on the part of female students, as well as on the part of universities in responding to them. In this period, Studentinnen remained a fragmented group with a fragmented identity, despite the sense of mission that had accompanied their admission to the academy. In fact, these three women were all experiments of the kind alluded to in Chapter Four. Wegscheider and Linden were indeed "test cases" and as a pastor's daughter and a countess, respectively, very safe ones at first glance. Salomon is also an extraordinary case, given her strong ties to both individual faculty members such as Alfred Weber and Max Sering, and her high position in the BDF, the largest association of German women's groups. The lives of these women illustrate how university and state authorities' encounters with "exceptional" women ultimately had two consequences, as seen in Chapter Four. First, their performance convinced some reluctant professors and state officials that admitting women might not destroy academic standards. On the other hand, dealing with exceptional women made these policy-makers believe that if women were to be admitted, it should be a very select group of women, both socially and intellectually. In this way, the formal admission of some women to the university was ultimately contingent on excluding other women.

Conclusion

The formal admission of women did not change attitudes at the university overnight. In most states professors still had the right to bar women from all or at least some of their courses with the permission of the state education minister. Nonetheless some of the first Studentinnen granted full admission expressed surprise to encounter lingering prejudices among the faculty. Luise Berthold began to study German literature in Berlin in 1909, even though Gustav Roethe, the principal professor for the subject, did not allow women in any of his courses. Berthold recalled that, buoyed by the confidence that her schooling had given her, she saw Roethe's attitude as a "prejudice" that was already "completely obsolete." Eventually, however, Roethe's intransigence forced her to go to another university in order to complete the coursework necessary for her degree. Berthold also remembered participating in the celebration of the University of Berlin's centennial in 1910. The presence of Berthold and her fellow Studentinnen drew sharp criticism from the Berlin historian Hans Delbriick in the pages of the Preussische ]arhrbiicher. Delbriick complained that in contrast to the male students in their elegant fraternity uniforms, the women had appeared "intentionally" poorly dressed and looked "frightful." Berthold denied the charge of poor grooming, but the issue reached beyond the state of the women's dresses. 1 Learning to see the Studentin as a legitimate part of the university was a lengthy and difficult process that continued long after women were formally admitted. The issues raised during the debate continued to color opinions about the Studentinnen even after the last German state, Mecklenburg, allowed women to matriculate in 1909. In 1912, Arnold Ruge feared that women students would erode the "hard male principles of scholarship," making scholarship more "pragmatic" and "banal." For Ruge the Studentin was just another manifestation of the "creeping, strength-sapping effeminateness" attacking the "male rigor" of German culture in general. Traditionalists like Ernst Bumm, a professor of medicine at Berlin, insisted that university study 213

CONCLUSION

was an option only for exceptionally talented women. In a 1917 speech, Bumm conceded that there were "women who complete the preparatory Gymnasium studies and the university with ease and who fully master the tasks of the[ir] chosen profession." These, however, were "women with [a] male or still without [a] pronounced female predisposition, who crop up just as effeminate men do." Experience, Bumm maintained, had taught him that "the more pronouncedly female the disposition, the more superficial and less innerly assimilated remains what is learned." Thus the majority of women were not suited to study at all but were better advised to save their energy for raising children. The ones who were capable of study Bumm did not consider "real" women but rather some naturally occurring intermediary between the sexes. His denigrating remarks about women's abilities echoed those of Theodor von Bischoff over forty years earlier and called into question the gender identity of every woman who did study, while revealing a hostility toward those who embraced that gender ambiguity. Bumm's comments also prove that the women's movement did not succeed in getting all academics to appreciate the value of the educated woman's contribution to society. In addition, his words plainly show that women were expected to meet masculine standards at the university. 2 The slow pace of change in the academy was a testimony to the strength of the traditional ideal of academic citizenship. In addition to providing a template for student life, academic citizenship played a key role in the production of masculine identity in the educated middle class. This connection continued to be taken for granted even after several states had admitted women. In 1906, the state government of Mecklenburg justified its intransigence to women's admission on the grounds that "the universities are not just teaching and research institutions of the arts and sciences but also serve ... to train the students in masculine excellence." 3 This rationale served as a reminder that the German university was not a neutral public space but belonged instead to a particular group, the "estate" of academic citizens. These citizens had a complex set of rights and duties. Once certified as intellectually "mature" by the Abitur, the student enjoyed a remarkable independence in both his intellectual and personal life. The neohumanist ideals that underlay the German philosophy of higher education emphasized that the student could only become a truly educated and cultivated individual through scholarship. An elaborate code of honor regulated conflict among students. Outside the university, the student stood in an attenuated relationship to his family, which he would soon leave to start his own. The university years also prepared the student for his future role in civil society and the state. In the Hegelian categories that infused prescriptions for student life, the university years were intended to enable young men to reflect on the sum of social mores and institutions that made up ethical life.

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215

The mere suggestion of female students threw this finely tuned system into disarray, as the basic elements of academic citizenship appeared to leave little room for women. First, university education was still seen as an opportunity for sons to go out into the world to sow their wild oats. For Wilhelmine society, such freedom was clearly unthinkable for the daughters of the middle class, who lived under the authority of either their fathers or husbands. Women were accorded neither the personal nor the intellectual independence that a university education required. Second, women were seen as unsuited to the broader social rights and responsibilities of academic citizenship, which again were tailored along masculine lines. Furthermore, the close relationship between the university and the state meant that educated women might have a claim on a civil service position and, eventually, political participation. Thus in addition to threatening the highly gendered conception of what it meant to be a university student, women's university admission challenged ideas about women's place at home and in public. The first calls for female higher education came not from the university but from the middle-class women's movement. These groups, however, were not initially able to propose satisfactory answers to questions about women's future place in the academic community. This was in part because most female reformers had not studied at the university and did not understand the centrality of the ethos of academic citizenship. Instead, female reformers argued from the perspective of the "woman question" that occupied Europeans at the time. The former linked university education with the issue of suitable careers for middle-class women. As Margarethe Heine, who earned a doctorate in 1902, wrote four years later, "The attempt to answer a small part of the woman question in a practical way-that is the significance of the university woman!" 4 By the end of the debate, the women's movement

had succeeded in achieving a compromise with male academics who feared competition from female professionals by promoting the idea of "feminine" occupations such as gynecology and pediatrics. Female reformers emphasized that in these professions educated women would serve the nation and extend much-needed feminine influence to a disproportionately masculine culture. By stressing the benefit to the national good, the women's movement legitimized academic women and defused the threat posed by the example of the "radical" Russian women in Zurich. At the same time, female reformers promised that educated women would maintain their femininity and ultimately would reinforce rather than disturb gender roles. In its campaign for female higher education, the women's movement "ignored" the masculine values that kept women out of the university and emphasized the very femininity of the Studentin as the reason for her admission. This seemingly contradictory strategy derived from the roots of the women's movement itself. Joan Scott has emphasized the deep connection between liberalism and feminist movements. She argues that feminist

216

CONCLUSION

groups must at once claim the rights of man for themselves but do so as a group that is "different" and that has been heretofore excluded from these rights. In this sense the relationship between German liberals and the women's movement was no different from the French example Scott uses. 5 Female reformers could call for the enrollment of the Studentin on the basis of her individuality and at the same time on the basis of her difference (in this case, her femininity). In terms of party politics, liberals were willing to give a weak nod to goals of female progress but refused to recognize feminists as equal partners in the struggle. 6 Thus female reformers, while conscious of their intellectual and political debt to liberalism, did not yet have to choose between being a feminist or being a liberal, as would happen once women could join political parties in 1908. Indeed, the women's movement found itself using both liberal and corporatist arguments to argue for a change in academic citizenship, which itself had a vein of Enlightenment thinking in the primacy accorded education and scholarship amidst the many older corporatist elements. The debate over the Frauenstudium would prove to be extremely longlived. The discussion was particularly intense at two periods, first from around 1865 through the mid-187os and then from 1887 until about 1900. The earlier exchanges were characterized by the efforts of the women's movement to establish the validity and legitimacy of the woman question, which was continually questioned by academics. In the later discussion, most professors had accepted the woman question and the concomitant need to reform female education, but many could not reconcile the rhetoric of the woman question with that of academic citizenship. Opinion was divided among those academics who, like Hermann Grimm, sought somehow to combine the two, and those such as Felix Lindner, who insisted on placing academic citizenship first. The ensuing clash of the two discourses opened the door to reformers like Helene Lange, who tried to bridge the gap. True to the ideals of neohumanism, Lange emphasized the importance of Bitdung, but she simultaneously reassured officials and the public by emphasizing that motherliness was at the core of female nature even for educated women. By the end of the I 89os, a broad consensus on the Frauenstudium was in the making: the women's movement had succeeded in convincing many of the social need for female doctors and better-educated girls' teachers. Medicine was especially important to this conclusion, as it symbolized the discursive intersection of academic citizenship and the woman question. Eventually female reformers phrased demands for women's admission in terms of a social group that would then retain a "corporate" privilege, such as the study of medicine, or, as later happened in greater numbers, as teachers. This strategy further restricted who could become part of the group, as

CONCLUSION

2.17

demonstrated in the university's restrictive policies on foreign women. In the end the women's movement persuaded the authorities at the cost of limiting the Frauenstudium to a select group of women. Academic citizenship was thrown into sharp relief by the crisis of the university in the 189os, with which the height of the debate over the Frauenstudium coincided. Thus the problem of female students became associated with a host of other issues. At a time when so much else about the German university seemed uncertain, the prospect of female students was viewed as the last straw. But eventually women were admitted to university precisely because of the crisis facing it. On the one hand, their admission was another manifestation of the crisis-the fact that persons formerly considered undeserving gained access to the university at all showed that the institution had been weakened. On the other hand, the admission of women was tailored to address the crisis of the university. One way in which this was done was to enforce higher standards for foreign women than for foreign men, at a time when both groups were increasingly unwelcome in the academy. Similarly, when German women were required to present an Abitur, like German men, this standard was in effect much higher for the women, who faced far greater difficulties in gaining access to instruction and courses leading to the Abitur. Had the university of the 189os not already been under great strain, the question of female higher education might have been resolved in a different way, perhaps by the establishment of separate women's colleges or professional schools, which were proposed during the debate but never drew much support. Regulating women's entrance into the university was a complicated matter. The final decision to matriculate women was the result of a long series of experiments with female auditors all over Germany. The most funda-

mental issue to be decided was whether women should be formally enrolled or merely allowed to audit courses. After years of experience with female auditors, university and state officials recognized that formal admission was the best way to control the phenomenon of the Frauenstudium. The question then became that of which standard to set for women's admission. Between 1900 and 1902 universities searched for ways in which to limit foreign female auditors, who were in fact mostly Russian Jews. About the same time, a critical mass of German Abiturientinnen began to petition for admission on the same basis as German men. It became clear to many officials that setting the Abitur as the standard for female admission would sharply reduce the numbers of Russian women, who could not present its equivalent, and hold the numbers of German women at the university in check as well. Although it fell to bureaucrats to decide which women would finally gain admission to higher education, the task of the cultural integration of

218

CONCLUSION

the Studentin was an issue for the whole society. While in dialogue with the debate around the Frauenstudium, German writers spun out diverse visions of this figure. For some, the Studentin was the irresistible force of modernity come to life, for others, fodder for satire. Girls' stories took up the topic as well as more radical, polemical novels that sought a utopia for an intellectual and sexual elite. Fictional representations of women students show the Studentin as a contested cultural symbol, epitomizing both women's emancipatory strivings and male anxieties about social change and modernity. Once women were allowed to study, the debate over their admission colored the way in which they later recalled their university experiences. In their autobiographies, the first Studentinnen described their university experience in ways that frequently resounded with the canonical descriptions of student life examined in the first chapter. The degree to which some tried to live up to the ideals of academic citizenship differed. Linden conformed as much as possible to the world of the male student, whereas Salomon made little effort in this direction, and Wegscheider steered a middle course. Similarly, by the mere fact of being among the first female students, these women were confronted with the woman question also. Wegscheider tried to combine elements of this with academic tradition. Linden rejected women's issues entirely, while Salomon had been led to the university by them. In making their way at the university, the first women were confronted with the demands not only of the academy but of the women's movement as well. Women's entrance to the university at once challenged and reinforced the ethos of academic citizenship, which did not change radically but rather in its contradictory elements gave women a point of entry in two ways. First, the neohumanist ideals of education and scholarship, products of the Enlightenment that were embedded in the older corporate structure, gave reformers a chance to make a case for female higher education on the basis of individual cultivation and development. At the same time, the women's movement bowed to the corporate elements in academic citizenship by arguing for women's admission as a group, not as individuals. This strategy was countered by the readiness of many academics to admit individual, highly talented women but who vehemently opposed the idea of admitting women on a regular basis. Both pressures resulted in the matriculation of a highly select group of women. As explained in Chapter One, two classes of academic citizenship, one for men and one for women, would not have been consistent with German university tradition. Thus in the process of admitting women, "undesirable" ones were jettisoned to salvage the myth of one class of students. When we understand that the long debate over women's admission was really about which women to admit, we see the general category of "woman" redefined as "German woman with an Abitur." 7 A similar restriction operated in terms of the subjects women were expected to study. Academic freedom compelled the admission of women to

CONCLUSION

219

all fields, but the discussion surrounding the Frauenstudium made clear that women were expected to go into certain fields and not others, i.e. medicine and not theology or law. The admission of foreign men but not of foreign women again proves that German women entered the university through a corporatist logic: not as individuals but as members of a group with a part to play in the German nation. Even though academic citizenship was broadened to accommodate women, an arena of "universal" membership remained for German men, while women were consigned to a more particular and limited membership in which they were expected to pursue subjects suited to their feminine nature. As Martha Ruben, a member of the Freistudentenschaft, a reform-oriented student association, matter-of-factly explained in 1907, "Just as we generally look to the university for the intellectual leaders of the nation, university-educated women must one day take over the intellectual leadership of the alliance of working, thinking women." 8 Here Ruben's ambition is not that educated women walk on to the national stage but rather that they direct their efforts to a smaller, more particular, and entirely female part of the public. This wish was entirely in keeping with the strategy of leaders of the middle-class women's movement like Helene Lange. Although the numbers of female students remained relatively small, the intensity and length of the debate surrounding their admission demonstrated the threat that women's study posed to the highly-gendered order of German society in several areas, including conceptions of the family, class, education, and the state. The first and most fundamental level of society at stake was the family. What happened when the heretofore dutiful daughter wished to study instead of wait for a suitor? Whereas sons had easily been emancipated from the home, the case of daughters was more complex. As we have mentioned, young women had limited personal freedom in this period. One way around "the conflict of duties between family and study," one female student observed in 1913, was to study at a university away from home. 9 Many women, though, continued to live at home and still occupied the position of a daughter of the house [Haustochter], if not all of its duties. In her survey, Stiicklen noticed that this caused conflicts for both parents and daughters. Mothers who in theory approved of their daughter's education missed her help around the house. In turn daughters felt guilty for shirking not only their share of the housework but also their share in the emotional work of sustaining a family. Furthermore, sending a daughter to university was an expensive proposition, just as a son's educational expenses were. Stiicklen wrote of the sacrifices parents made for their daughters, "just as for the sons," to enable them to study. Many daughters tried to make this up to their families once they started to work, she observed. 10 In yet other cases, a family's lack of financial security helped to motivate a daughter to study in order to later support herself as well as a mother or sisters. A daughter's

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CONCLUSION

desire for a university education was a claim on her family's financial resources and at the same time a demand for a kind of emancipation. Once a woman had studied, however, her family status would continue to be problematic. If she married, she would almost certainly give up her career, leading to speculation that her education had been a "waste." If she did not marry, then she was not fulfilling her natural destiny as a womanor she was not a "real" woman, as Bumm indicated above. Moreover, single middle-class women generally did not live alone, especially if they still had family. One of Stiicklen's respondents wrote, "My personal life has been greatly enriched by common work and interests with peers of different sexes." 11 This coeducational cameraderie would not likely exist for the typical sheltered single middle-class woman waiting to marry. Having gotten an education, most of the first Studentinnen intended to put it to use in a profession. The type of personal life they constructed to support them in this endeavor, though, still needs to be illuminated. Educated women blurred the boundaries of class identity as well as pushing the limits of family. In the context of the Frauenstudium, contemporaries rarely mentioned class explicity because it was obvious to them that the issue involved only the so-called educated classes, which historians have come to group together as the Bildungsburgertum. In Imperial Germany, university study was the province of a tiny elite. The women's movement was fighting for the improved treatment of women within this small group, not calling for university education for all women. Instead, the focus was on the problem of "suitable" careers for middle-class women. Professional groups such as physicians and teachers resisted competition not only for economic reasons but because the entrance of women diluted their claim to exclusive expertise and authority, vital parts of their upper-middle class status. Since the educated middle class had defined itself around the idea of its men being educated, one might ask whether notions of class identity changed once women began earning equivalent degrees. I follow Huerkamp and others in seeing the educated middle class [Bildungsburgertum] as a group and not as a class in a Marxist sense. Yet the question of what a Bildungsburgerin might look like is complex. Huerkamp defines all academically trained women as Bildungsburgerinnen, explaining that "the opening of the universities ... gave women ... the opportunity to become Bildungsburgerinnen ... on the basis of their own education and performance, instead of marrying a Bildungsburger." 12 This study, however, suggests that the admission of women to higher eduction could not but have profoundly affected what it meant both to belong to the educated middle class as well as female identity within that class. The overwhelmingly masculine character of the university, "grown out of exclusively male Being for centuries," as one young woman student noted, confronted the first female students at every turn. Yet by her mere presence

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the Stu dentin challenged the idea of what it meant to be educated. Gertrud Baumer, who began to study at Berlin in 1900, recalled "the inner tension between the student spirit of the university and the new participation [in courses] by the women." Baumer noted that the female students "did not quite fit in there, despite all the collegiality one-on-one that the students certainly had without reservation when they respected [one's-a woman's] performance." She felt the "difference of the academic mind" keenly. Although both male and female students were young and intellectual, she observed, "the organic melding of the male and female kind, however, had yet to be found." This was especially true of the approach to liberal arts subjects. She reported that professors such as the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey and the theologian Adolf von Harnack rose above this "gendered attitude and judgement," occupying a "zone of human wisdom" as accessible to the female as to the male student. Other professors could not reconcile their desire to be fair with their moral compunctions, in some cases establishing a separate "ladies' seminar" or banning women altogether. 13 It would indeed take a long time to integrate female students into the educational mission of the university. The careers of the women discussed in chapter six shed some light on the new relationship inaugurated between educated women and the state. Maria von Linden, who became the only female university professor in Imperial Germany, was given her own laboratory but was not allowed to teach. Apparently neither the Prussian education ministry nor the University of Bonn was ready to have a woman as a public representative of the state and the institution. As a married woman, Hildegard Wegscheider ran her own small girls' school. When it became known that she was pregnant, Prussian authorities ordered her immediate dismissal, against the wishes of her pupils' parents. Even though Wegscheider was not a public official, a married teacher, let alone a pregnant one, was still cause for scandal, no matter what her level of qualification. 14 During and after her studies, Alice Salomon fought for women's entry into local and state social services. Salomon used her university training to set up a school for the education of professional social workers who would eventually be employed by government agencies. 15 In this case, the state was more eager to allow women into a public area that the women's movement had defined as female. By virtue of their education and professional activity, university women pushed at the limits of public life sanctioned by the state in Imperial Germany. The debate over the Frauenstudium, and the rhetorical clash of academic citizenship and the woman question, was part of a larger discourse about the definition of the Kaiserreich as a society and women's place in it. Arguments over female higher education were deeply marked by the different phases of German political discourse. The liberal upswing of the late r 86os and early I 87os allowed for the first discussion of the matter. But

:z.:z.:z.

CONCLUSION

liberals were not yet convinced of the validity of the woman question, and academic citizenship appeared still too unassailable. Along with other social issues, the Frauenstudium was swept out of public discussion by the end of the r 87os. Ironically, it would be the corporatist politics of the I 89os that would allow the women's movement to make a more persuasive set of arguments. The effect of this political sea change, which the university reinforced through its project of a conservative and nationalist political education, was not lost on female students. The philosopher and later Catholic nun Edith Stein, who began her studies in I 9 I I, recalled that at the university, she freed herself from the "liberal ideas" with which she had grown up. "I now came to hold a positive, nearly conservative view of the state .... Added to purely theoretical considerations was a personal motive of deep gratitude to the state which had granted me academic citizenship." 16 This study has shown that the decision to admit women to German universities was no simple bureaucratic decision but a lengthy and contested process that tells us much about Imperial Germany as a society. One of its most important institutions, the university, was profoundly gendered. Admitting women to it demonstrated that there would be no separate intellectual arena, as in women's colleges in England and the United States. What German women did receive was the chance to compete on a male playing field. For women formerly confined to a role that had given them little chance for intellectual development, the opportunity for university study was a kind of emancipation and a way to try out a new social role, that of the (male) student. But this social role was actually tightly circumscribed for men, and that of the Studentin would be no less so. Upon entering the university, German women confronted a male-oriented institution that they could not fully reshape for their own needs. This meant that each generation of women would have to refight the old battles; women would be tolerated if they measured up to male standards, but hardly welcomed. This study ends in 1914 because the novelty of the Studentin was brought to a sharp halt by the First World War. In fact women would continue to attend university, although under the rapidly changing circumstances of the war, the economic roller-coaster of the Weimar Republic, and the contradictory policies on women's higher education pursued by the Nazis. The basic institutional structure of the German university would survive two world wars and a Great Depression. Yet given the terms on which women were admitted, they left no real female imprimatur upon the "classical" model of German higher education. Ultimately the concept of academic citizenship would be radically transformed, but this would happen as a result of the student protests of the r96os. They brought down the "old" university and pushed for more educational opportunity and less authoritarian methods of instruction, with largely

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positive results in the form of the establishment of more universities, a larger total student population, and increased government financial aid. This reorganization of higher education presented an opening to re-orient the institution towards women's needs. While more responsive than the old elite university of the 1950s and before, the newly established or reorganized universities were still slow or even openly hostile in their response to the new women's movement. Today men and women tend to enter German universities, and even certain Ph.D. fields, in roughly equal numbers. Yet the professoriate remains overwhelmingly male, largely due to the requirement of a second dissertation or Habilitationsschrift, which is more difficult for women to acquire because its completion often coincides with the last of their childbearing years. Other inequalities remain, as testified to by the crushing burden of the Frauenbeauftragte (person responsible for women's issues) in every department. Ironically, just when Radcliffe College is closing its last links to women's undergraduate education and fully merging instruction with Harvard, some German women are pushing for a women's university, funded by the state, which for them represents a path not taken earlier.17 On the other hand, the perpetual crisis in German higher education in the last fifteen years also raises hopes for changes and reforms that will benefit women. Readers of studies such as this one often wish to know what happened to women students on a personal level. Did they change the university, or did the university change them? On balance, this is a difficult question to answer because the goal of university education, as explained in the first chapter, was to inculcate the student with the ethos of Bildung, which itself implies change in the form of self-cultivation and the acquisition of a philosophy of life. In essence, this is what we still believe today in American higher education. Thus the question becomes whether one can embark upon an education and remain "unchanged" when one has willingly given oneself up to be made intellectually new.

REFERENCE MATTER

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. Max Brinkmann, Das Corps Schlamponia: eine Studentin-Geschichte aus dem 2o.jahrhundert (Berlin, 1899; reprint, Gottingen, 1981). "Schlamponia" comes from the German word for slob or slattern. 2. This anecdote was widely reported. See, e.g., Richard Wulckow, "Die Erschwerung des Frauenstudiums an der Berliner Universitiit," Berliner Tageblatt 25, 286 (6 August 1896), in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 1 Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. IV, 433· Hochschui-Nachrichten, no. 63 (1895-I896; December 1895): 12, charged that journalists had made up this story. 3· Hildegard Wegscheider (nee Ziegler), Weite Welt im engen Spiegel (Berlin, I953). 31. 4· Frauenstudium refers to the phenomenon of women studying at universities, or "study by women." The term implies nothing about the content of those studies. The present-day disciplines of feminist studies, women's history, and gender history are, for example, rendered as feministische Studien, Frauengeschichte, and Geschlechtergeschichte respectively. 5· National-Zeitung, no. 389 (26 June 1892, morning ed.), in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. 2, 6-6c. Nationai-Zeitung, 22 April 1898, morning ed., ISt suppl., in ibid., vol. 6, 312. The phrase Grimm uses here is "sich genieren." 6. On Bischoff, see James Albisetti, Schooling German Girls and Women (Princeton, N.J., 1988), I85. Arthur Kirchoff, Die akademische Frau (Berlin, I897), 23. 7· Deutsches Tageblatt, no. 204 (2 May 1889, morning ed.), in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. I, 87. 8. LUA Rep. II Kap. XIII Nr. 119, 5· 9· To avoid confusion, I use the terms "academy" and "academic" here only in the American sense, which is very broad. In German, "academic" refers exclusively to the university or one of its graduates. Io. Rudolf Vierhaus, "Bildung," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, ed. Otto Brunner et al. (Stuttgart, I972), I: 508-551. I I. On the unique importance of the educated bourgeoisie in Germany, see Jiirgen Kocka, "Biirgertum und biirgerliche Gesellschaft im I9. jahrhundert. Europiiische Entwicklungen und deutsche Eigenarten," in id., Biirgertum im 19. jahrhundert (Munich, I988) I: 11-78. 227

228

NOTES TO PAGES 6-8

12. George Weisz, The Emergence of Modern Universities in France, r863I9I4 (Princeton, N.J., 1983), 369. 13. The classic account of the close relationship between interest groups and the state is Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Das deutsche Kaiserreich (Gottingen, 1973), 69-72, 90-96.

14· Blackbourn notes that "this process was hardly confined to Germany. But ... Germany may be considered the paradigm case." David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History (Oxford, 1984), 289. 1 5. For an overview of populist conservatism, see Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German Right (New Haven, Conn., 1980). On the Pan-German League, see Roger Chickering, We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League, r886-I9I4 (Boston, 1984). On the Agrarian League, see Hans-Jiirgen Puhle, Agrarische Interessenpo/itik und preu{Sischer Konservatismus im wilhleminischen Reich (Hannover, 1967). 16. On the importance of regional identity, see Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, Calif., 1990), and Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor : Wurttemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, r87I-I9I8 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1997). On the Catholic Center party, see David Blackbourn, Class, Religion, and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (New Haven, Conn., 1980), and Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Windthorst: A Political Biography (New York, 1981). On Protestant identity and the liberal parties, see Gangolf Hiibinger, Kulturprotestantismus und Politik (Tiibingen, 1994). 17. On Imperial Germany's corporatist turn, see Wehler, Das deutsche Kaiserreich. On the eclipse of German liberalism, see James Sheehan, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1978), and Dieter Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main, 1988). For two discussions of the increasingly conservative political tone of the German middle-class women's movement, see Ann Taylor Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, r8oo-1914 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991), and Nancy R. Reagin, A German Women's Movement: Class and Gender in Hannover, r88o-1933 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995). 18. Blackbourn and Eley, 10, 287. "In many respects ... the German experience constituted a heightened version of what occurred elsewhere," David Blackbourn writes (ibid., 291-292). 19. Hannah Arendt, Imperialism, part 2 of The Origins ofTotalitarianism (San Diego, 1968), 171. Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), 2-18. 20. See Lani Guinier, Michelle Fine, and Jane Balin, Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law School, and Institutional Change (Boston, 1997), 1-2.. 21. Michael Sanderson, ed., The Universities in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1975), 1-2.5. Llewellyn Woodward, The Age of Reform, I8IJ-I87o (Oxford, 1962.), 49 I. See also Sheldon Roth blatt, The Revolution of the Dons: Cambridge and Society in Victorian England (1968; reprint, New York, 1981). 2.2.. Weisz, 18-54, 369-376. Theodore Zeldin, France, r848-1945 (Oxford, 1977), 2: 316-324· Fritz Ringer, Education and Society in Modern Europe (Bloomington, Ind., 1979), 114-127, 147.

NOTES TO PAGES

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229

23. For a contemporary comparison of the American, English, and German universities, see James Morgan Hart, German Universities (New York, 1874). On the influence of German universities on the development of American ones, see Charles Franklin Thwing, The American and the German University (New York, 1928). Christopher J. Lucas, American Higher Education (New York, 1994), 171. 24. Du Bois ultimately did not receive his Ph.D. from Berlin, because he could not get his scholarship renewed for a required extra semester. David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. DuBois-Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 (New York, 1993), 127, IJ0-131, 145-146. 25. SeeM. Carey Thomas, The Making of a Feminist, ed. Marjorie Housepian Dobkin (Kent, Ohio, 1979). Alice Hamilton, "Edith and Alice Hamilton: Students in Germany," Atlantic Mor.thly 215 (March 1965): I29-132. Ida Hyde, "Before Women Were Human Beings," Journal of the American Association of University Women 31,4 (June 1938). 26. Bonnie G. Smith, "Gender and the Practices of Scientific History: The Seminar and Archival Research in the Nineteenth Century," American Historical Review 100,4 (I995): 1150-1176, here 1158. On the impact of the persistence of this model on American graduate education in the discipline of history, see Smith's chapter on "Women Professionals: A Third Sex?" in her The Gender of History (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), I85-2I2. 27. Hartmut Lehmann and James J. Sheehan, eds., An Interrupted Past: German-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States After 1933 (New York, I991). 28. Jeffrey Allan Johnson, The Kaiser's Chemists: Science and Modernization in Imperial Germany (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1990). Rebecca S. Lowen, Creating the Cold War University (Berkeley, Calif., I997). See also Hugh Davis Graham and Nancy Diamond, The Rise of American Research Universities (Baltimore, 1997). 29. The chronology I trace here follows to a large extent both James Albisetti's excellent study and Elisabeth Boedeker's detailed timeline. Albisetti, Schooling, esp. ch. 4, "The First Wave of Reform, 1865-1879," 93-135. and ch. 5, "The Petition Campaigns, r887-1894," 136-167. Elisabeth Boedeker, 25 Jahre Frauenstudium in Deutschland (Hannover, 1935-1939). 30. Theodor von Hippe!, Vber die biirgerliche Verbesserung der Weiher (Berlin, 1792). Boedeker, xxii. The question came up at least occasionally in the eighteenth century. Between Nicolaus Hermann Gundling's call for all-female schools and universities with female instructors in 1707 and Hippel's work of 1792 lie twenty other items cited in Wilhelm Erman and Ewald Horn's authoritative work, Bibliographie der deutschen Universitiiten (Leipzig, 1904 ), r: 2 I 6-226. By the I 8 50s, calls for female physicians began to trickle in; at least one appears here. 31. Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 245-260; Boedeker, lxii-lxx. On Schlozer, see Barbel Kern and Horst Kern, Madame Doctorin Schlozer (Munich, 1988). See also Peter Petschauer, "Eighteenth-Century German Opinions About Education for Women," Central European History 19, 3 (1986), 262-292. 3 2. Boedeker, lviii-lxx; xxxviii-xlii.

NOTES TO PAGES

II-I2

33· Elisabeth Gnauck-Kiinhe, Das Universitiitsstudium der Frauen (Oldenburg, I 892). This drew a positive reaction. The university historian Friedrich Paulsen, a

long-time foe of women's admission, wrote her, "ich zweifle nicht ... dag Ihre in der Sache ebenso scharfen wie in der Form milden Beweisgriinde der Sache nur Freunde gewinnen werden." Paulsen quoted in Helene Simon, Elisabeth GnauckKiihne (M. Gladbach, I928), I: 48. Gnauck-Kiihne revisited the woman surplus in her sociological study Die deutsche Frau urn die ]ahrhundertwende (1904; reprint, Berlin I914). 34· Simon, 1: 9, 45-46. Ute Gerhard, Unerhort: Die Geschichte der deutschen Frauenbewegung (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1990), 203-206. Hedwig Dransfeld, who led the Catholic women's movement after Gnauck-Kiihne, stressed the importance of women's higher education in a speech to the Hildegardisverein for the support of Catholic Studentinnen in I9IO. Her remarks were reprinted in Hochland two years later. Hedwig Dransfeld, "Bedeutung des akademischen Frauenstudiums fiir die Gegenwart," Hochland 9, nos. 4 and 6 (1912): 435-447 and 713-733. 35· Gerhart, 206-207. On the Jewish Women's League, see Marion Kaplan, The jewish Feminist Movement in Germany (Westport, Conn., 1979). 36. See Lisa Swartout, "Culture Wars: Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism at German Universities, r88o-1914" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2002), and Hiibinger, Kulturprotestantismus. 37· Friedrich Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitiiten und das Universitiitsstudium (Berlin, 1902), 142-144. Eduard Spranger followed Paulsen with Wand/ungen im Wesen der Universitiit seit roo ]ahren (Leipzig, 1913), which does not contain much on the Frauenstudium, surely at that time the topic still generating the most heat in discussions about the academy. j.H. Mitagu's handbook Der Student (Heidelberg, 1926) ignores women, who had been admitted for about two decades at that point. 38. See the passing mention of female students in Konrad Jarausch, Deutsche Studenten 18oo-1970 (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), 76, 79, and Charles E. McClelland, State, Society and University in Germany, 1700-I9I4 (Cambridge, 198o), 234, 242, 250, 251. jarausch gives a little more attention to female students in his Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany (Princeton, N.j., 1982). Women do not figure in Fritz Ringer's Decline of the German Mandarins (Cambridge, Mass., 1969). Similarly, the Frauenstudium does not receive much attention in Norbert Andernach, Der EinfluP der Parteien auf das Hochschulwesen in Preu{Jen r 848-1918 (Gottingen, 1972). 39· There are only two articles on women in the four-volume series edited by Werner Conze and Jiirgen Kocka, Bildungsburgertum im 19. ]ahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1985-1992). There are also only two articles on women in the three volumes edited by Jiirgen Kocka, Burgertum im 19. ]ahrhundert (Munich, 1988). 40. A good overview of recent secondary literature is Edith Glaser, "Emancipation or Marginalisation: New Research on Women Students in the German-Speaking World," Oxford Review of Education 23, 2 (1997), 169-184. 41. Theresa Wobbe's Wahlverwandtschaften (Frankfurt am Main, 1997) is about Germany's first female sociologists, whereas Johanna Bieker and Sabine Schleiermacher present a group biography of Germany's first women physicians in

NOTES TO PAGES I

2-12

Arztinnen aus dem Kaiserreich (Weinheim, 2ooo). See also the collection of biographical essays edited by Barbara Hahn, Frauen in den Kulturwissenschaften (Munich, 1994), which contains articles on sixteen early Studentinnen and female intellectuals, and the collection edited by Johanna Bieker, Der Eintritt der Frauen in die Gelehrtenrepublik (Husum, 1998). 42. lise Costas, "Der Beginn des Frauenstudiums an der Universitiit Gottingen," in Gottingen ohne Giinseliesel, ed. Kornelia Duwe and Marianne Korner (Gudensberg-Gieichen, 1988), 185-193· Renate Drucker, "Zur Vorgeschichte des Frauenstudiums an der Universitiit Leipzig," in Vom Mitte/alter zur Neuzeit, ed. Hellmut Kretzschmar (Berlin, 1956), 278-290. Hans Krabusch, "Die Vorgeschichte des Frauenstudiums an der Universitiit Heidelberg," Ruperto-Carola 8, 19 (June 1956): 135-139. Ernst Theodor Nauck, Das Frauenstudium an der Universitiit Freiburg (Freiburg, 1953). Elke Rupp, Der Beginn des Frauenstudiums an der Universitiit Tiibingen (Tiibingen, 1978). Annette Vogt, "Zur Geschichte des Frauenstudiums am Beispiel der Berliner Universitiit," in Wissenschaft und Staat. Beitriige zum XVIII. Internationalen Kongress fur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, itw- Kolloquien 68 (Berlin, 1989), 133-151. L. Buchheim, "Ais die ersten Medizinerinnen in Leipzig promoviert wurden," Wissenschaftliche Zeitschri(t der KMU, Mathematics and Natural Science Series 6 (1956-1957): 363-381. 43· Hadumod Bussmann, ed., Stieft&hter der Alma Mater. 90 Jahre Frauenstudium in Bayern-am Beispiel der Universitiit Miinchen (Munich, 1994). Irene Franken with Saskia Morrell and Marina Wittka, "fa, das Studium der Weiher ist schwer!" Studentinnen und Dozentinnen an der Kolner Universitiit bis 1933 (Cologne, 1995). Annette Kuhn et al., eds., 100 Jahre Frauenstudium: Frauen der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitiit Bonn (Dortmund, 1996). Elke Lehnert, "AusschluBAufbruch-Zulassung. Von der geduldeten Gasthorerin zur Studentin," Frauen an der Humboldt-Universitiit 1908-1998, Offentliche Vorlesungen No. 99 (Berlin, 1999), 7-19. 44· Annemarie Blumenthal, "Diskussionen urn das medizinische Frauenstudium in Berlin" (Med. diss., Free University of Berlin, 1965). Erika Ganss, "Die En-

twicklung des Frauenmedizinstudiums an deutschen Universitiiten unter besonderer Beriicksichtigung der Philipps-Universitiit in Marburg" (Ph.D. diss., Marburg, 1983). Antke Luhn, "Geschichte des Frstudiums an der medizinische Fakultiit der Universitiit Gottingen" (Med. diss., Gottingen, 1972). Barbara Mehlan, "Dber das Frauenstudium an der medizinische Fakultiit der Universitiit Rostock" (Med. diss., Rostock, 1964). Irmgard Schlotfeldt-Schiifer, "Das Frauenstudium in Kiel unter besonderer Beriicksichtigung der Medizin" (Ph.D. diss., Kiel, 1981). Renate Schopf, "Die Bedeutung des Frauenstudiums fiir die Stellung der Frau in der Gesellschaft und im Erwerbsleben" (Ph.D. diss., Tiibingen, 1957). One especially thorough study that Claudia Huerkamp called to my attention is Raymond Hollmann, "Die Stellungnahme der Arzte im Streit urn das Medizinstudium der Frauen bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts" (Med. diss., Munster, 1976). Two other dissertations address the admission of women in a thoughtful and original way: Hildegard Ries, "Die Geschichte des Gendankens der Frauenhochschulbildung in Deutschland" (Ph.D. diss., Munster; Westerstede, 1927) and Dorothea Gotze, "Der publizistische Kampf urn die hohere Frauenbildung in Deutschland von den Anfangen bis zur Zulassung der

232

NOTES TO PAGES I 2-I 3

Frau zum Hochschulstudium" (Ph.D. diss., Munich, 1957). The latest and most solid dissertation is Anja Burchardt, Blaustrumpf-Modestudentin-Anarchistin? Deutsche und russische Medizinstudentinnen in Berlin 1896-I9I8 (Stuttgart, 1997). 45· Albisetti, Schooling. Also see James Albisetti's other work on this issue: "The Fight for Female Physicians in Imperial Germany," Central European History 15, 2 (June 1982): 99-123 and "Women and the Professions in Imperial Germany," in German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres and Mary Jo Maynes (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), 94-109. 46. Claudia Huerkamp, "Frauen, Universitaten und Bildungsbtirgertum," in Burgerliche Berufe, ed. Hannes Siegrist (Gottingen, 1988), 201-204, 218. Claudia Huerkamp, "Frauen in akademischen Berufen," ]ahrbuch fur historische Bildungsforschung, 3 (Weinheim, 1996), 209-240. This thesis is broadly supported by the sociological work of Lothar Mertens, who concludes that the first Studentinnen were disproportionately upper-middle-class, and that Protestants and Jews were markedly overrepresented in their ranks. Lothar Mertens, Vernachliif5igte Tochter der Alma Mater (Berlin, 1991). Huerkamp has expanded her work on the social background of Studentinnen from I90D-I945 in her Bildungsbiigerinnen (Gottingen, 1996). 47· Schiebinger concludes that "despite their efforts, Erxleben and Schlozer were unable to establish precedents for the regular admission of women to universities." Erxleben, who wrote a book in 1742 on the reasons "keeping the female sex from studying," clearly had strong feelings on this matter. Still, there is no indication that either she or Schlozer agitated in other ways to open higher education to all women. Schiebinger, 245-260. Dorothea Erxleben, Grundliche Untersuchung der Ursachen, die das weibliche Geschlecht vom Studiren abhalten, darin deren Unerheblichkeit gezeigt (Berlin, I742). 48. Edith Glaser, Hindernisse, Umwege, Sackgassen (Weinheim, 1992). A less

differentiated view of the situation of the Studentin is offered by three scholars who all examine the struggle of women students against an unrelenting patriarchy. Anne Schluter, ed., Pionierinnen-Feministinnen-Karrierefrauen? Zur Geschichte des Frauenstudiums in Deutschland (Pfaffenweiler, 1992). Kristine von Soden and Gaby Zipfel, eds., 70 jahre Frauenstudium (Cologne, 1979). Irmgard Weyrather, "'Die Frau im Lebensraum des Mannes.' Studentinnen in der Weimarer Republik," in Beitrage zur feministische Theorie und Praxis, vol. s: Frauengeschichte. Dokumentation des 3· Historikerinnentreffens in Bielefeld, April 1981 (Munich, 1981), 25-39. Harriet Pass Freidenreich, Female, Jewish, and Educated: The Lives of Central European University Women (Bloomington, Ind., 2002) came to my attention too late to be considered for this book. 49· Gitta Benker and Senta Stormer, Grenzuberschreitungen. Studentinnen in der Weimarer Republik (Pfaffenweiler, 1991), 2. 50. For two extended formulations of the Sonderweg as applied to modern Germany, see Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (London, 1968), and Wehler, Das deutsche Kaiserreich. The most thorough and systematic critique of this school of thought has been Black bourn and Eley's Peculiarities of German History.

NOTES TO PAGES

13-15

23J

51. One discussion of the women's movement in Imperial Germany informed by the Sonderweg argument is Richard Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany, r894-1933 (London, 1976). On the German League to Combat Female Emancipation, established in 1912, see Ute Planert, Antifeminismus im Kaiserreich (Gottingen, 1998). 52. Costas, 185-193. 53· Albisetti, Schooling, xxii-xxiii, 24o-241, 250, 304-305. 54· Thomas Neville Bonner's To the Ends of the Earth: Women's Search for Education in Medicine (Cambridge, Mass., 1992) compares the conditions for women's study of medicine in Switzerland, France, Russia, Germany, Britain, and the United States between 1850 and 1914. 55. Schweizerischer Verband der Akademikerinnen, ed., Das Frauenstudium an den Schweizer Hochschulen (Zurich, 1928), 21. Barbara Alpern Engel, Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge, 1983), 54-55,61. Een Wereldcorrespondentie van Meisjes-Studenten (Rotterdam, 1910), 37, 41, 71, 113. Waltraud Heindl and Marina Tichy, eds., "Durch Erkenntnis zu Freiheit und GlUck ... ":Frauen an der Universitiit Wien (ab 1897) (Vienna, 1990), 17-18. s6. Friinkische Kurier, April I897. in Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich, MK IIII5. 57· There are numerous accounts of American women in academic life; one of the most useful surveys is Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America (Baltimore, 1982). Particularly interesting here is Rossiter's report on how American women went to Germany to study, or tried to, and the role of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae (later the American Association of University Women) in funding their studies. Rossiter, 29-50. For the AAUW's perpective, see two brief publications: Margaret Eliza Maltby, A Few Points of Comparison Between German and American Universities ([n.p.], 1896), and American Association of University Women Committee on Fellowships, History of the Fellowships Awarded by the American Assocation of University Women, r888-1929 ... ([New York], [1929)). On some of the difficulties women faced at large state universities, see Ruth Bordin, Women at Michigan (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1999). For an example of women's experience at an Ivy League institution, see Polly Welts Kaufman, ed., The Search for Equity: Women at Brown University, I89I-I99I (Providence, R.I., 1991). 58. Carol Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities, r87o1939 (London, 1995), 239, II. 59· The exclusion of a female auditor at Berlin from a lecture on prostitution in 1899 led Helene Lange to emphasize female reformers' commitment to integrating women into existing institutions. Helene Lange, "Frauenhochschulen?" Centralblatt des Bundes deutscher Frauenvereine 1, 20 (15 January 1900): 157-158. 6o. On the University of Rochester, see Lynn Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era (New Haven, Conn., 1990), 23-24. On johns Hopkins, see Thomas, 2.0. 6r. One such attempt was made by Luise Lenz, the widow of a factory owner, who in 1883 offered the University of Heidelberg a 1oo,ooo-mark scholarship fund

NOTES TO PAGES I 6-20

234

for female students intending to study medicine, chemistry, or pharmacy. Heidelberg declined but passed the offer on to the University of Freiburg, which also declined. Nauck, I3-I4. Krabusch, I35-I39· 62. The newspaper clipping files maintained by the Prussian Ministry of Education contain about 620 articles from the years I88I to I9I4, with the vast majority between r895 and 1908. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vols. I-!2 and ibid. Adh. II vol. I. 63. Marie-Elisabeth Liiders, Furchte dich nicht: Personliches und Politisches aus mehr als So ]ahren, 1878-1962 (Cologne, I963), 37· CHAPTER I

r. This saying means literally that the student is free, but Bursch has strong masculine overtones that cannot be easily rendered into idiomatic English. 2. Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitaten, 372-373. Heinrich von Treitschke, Politik, ed. Max Cornicelius (Leipzig, I899), I: 251-252. 3· On the increasingly illiberal political climate at German universities, see Ringer, Decline, and Jarausch, Students. Jarausch also has a good discussion of the socially exclusive composition of the student body. On the entry of German Jews into higher education, see Monika Richarz, Der Eintritt der ]uden in die akademischen Berufe (Tiibingen, I974). On anti-Semitism at the university, see Norbert Kampe, Studenten und "]udenfrage" im deutschen Kaiserreich (Gottingen, I988). A good overview of common academic attitudes is given by Helene Tompert in her Lebensformen und Denkweisen der akademischen Welt Heidelbergs im wilhelminischen Zeitalter, Historische Studien, no. 4II (LUbeck, 1969). A more recent study of university professors and their social background is Marita Baumgarten, Professoren und Universitaten im 19. ]ahrhundert (Gottingen, 1997). 4· For studies of other types of masculine identity in Germany at this time, see Isabel V. Hull, The Entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II, r888-I918 (Cambridge, 1982); Ute Frevert, Ehrenmanner: Das Duell in der burgerlichen Gesellschaft (Munich, 1991); and the work of George Mosse, including The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (Oxford, 1996) and Nationalism and Sexuality: MiddleClass Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe (New York, 1985). So far there is no systematic treatment of German academic masculinity to parallel the American study by Kim Townsend, Manhood at Harvard: William james and Others (New York, 1996). 5. On the Bildungsburgertum, see the following two series: Kocka, Burgertum im 19. ]ahrhundert, and Conze and Kocka, Bildungsburgertum im 19. ]ahrhundert. For a historical and historiographical perspective on the term, see Ulrich Engelhardt, "Bildungsburgertum." Begriffs- und Dogmengeschichte eines Etiketts (Stuttgart, 1986). 6. For a personal account of Gymnasiasten-Korps and -Kneipen, see Victor Klemperer, Curriculum vitae (Berlin, 1989), r: 208-259. 7· Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitaten, 211. 8. This legal system was known as akademische Gerichtsbarkeit.

NOTES TO PAGES 2I-25

235

9· This is a translation of a manuscript by Dr. Cornelius, a German, published by William Howitt, The Student-Life of Germany (London, I84I), 7-8. The prorector or rector was a professor elected by the faculty to lead the university. IO. See the discussions of egalitarianism among students in Theobald Ziegler, Der deutsche Student am Ende des 19. ]ahrhunderts (Stuttgart, I895), J4-I6; Paulsen, Die deutschen Universiti:iten, I49-I 53, I 57; and Johann Eduard Erdmann, Vorlesungen iiber akademisches Leben und Studium (Leipzig, I858), 7-8. I 1. On the townsman's Biirgerrecht, see Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, 1648-I871 (Ithaca, N.Y., 197I), I37-142. 12. On the franchise, see Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (Princeton, N.J., 2000). 13. Paulsen, Die deutschen Universiti:iten, 92-96. 14· Walker, 139. I 5. Curiously, the authors examined here rarely refered explicitly to the principle of academic citizenship or to the enrollment ceremony [Immatriculation]. Foreign observers were far more sensitive to these matters. See the detailed description of the matriculation process in James Hart, German Universities (New York, I874), 35-48. I6. Ringer, Education, 32-42. Marianne Horstkemper, "Die Koedukationsde-

batte urn die Jahrhundertwende," in Geschichte der Mi:idchen- und Frauenbildung, eds. Elke Kleinau and Claudia Opitz (Frankfurt am Main, I996), 2: 204-205. I7. Ringer, Education, 32-42. 18. On the Gymnasium, see James Albisetti, Secondary School Reform in Imperial Germany (Princeton, N.J., 1983). I9. McClelland, 306. After annexing Alsace-Lorraine, Germany established a university in Strassburg in I 872. Locally funded at first, the university was supported by the federal government from 187 5 on. John E. Craig, Scholarship and Nation Building (Chicago, 1984), 69-70. 20. Jarausch, Students, 134-150. 2!. Ibid., 7422. Heidi Rosenbaum explains the Gymansium and the ideal of Bildung as status symbols in her Formen der Familie (Frankfurt am Main, 1982), 361-362. 23. See chs. 2 and 3 injarausch, Students, 23-159. 24. McClelland explains that at about this time, a movement began to reform the German university system. Conservatives sought to "pass on a tradition of right belief," while utilitarian reformers pushed for practical training. The neohumanists' educational philosophy was much more general: "to help unfold and realize the full potential of the personality." McClelland, 106-107. 2 5. McClelland writes that the power of neohumanist idealism was overestimated in nineteenth-century writings on the university. He disputes a central contention still made today: that the ideals of Humboldt and others were directly translated into practice in the establishment of the University of Berlin. While McClelland admits that neohumanism colored the ideology of higher education "everywhere," the neohumanists' views continued to coexist with older ones. McClelland, 115, 121, 127.

NOTES TO PAGES 25-28 26. Vierhaus, I: 515-516, I: 528-530. 27. In this book I translate Wissenschaft as scholarship unless it is intended in a

more particular sense. 28. F.W.j. Schelling, Vorlesungen uber die Methode des akademischen Studiums (I8o3; reprint, Hamburg, 1974), 6-7,22,26-28, 35, 37· 29. friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, "Gelegentliche Gedanken iiber Universitaten in deutschem Sinn," in Gelegentliche Gedanken iiber Universitiiten, ed. Ernst Muller (Leipzig, 1990), I92-I94· 30. McClelland, IJ6. 31· Ibid., IJ3-I24, 174-175· 32. Vierhaus, 1: 532. On the changing idea of Bildung in Germany from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, see W.H. Bruford, The German Idea of SelfCultivation (Cambridge, 1975). 33· McClelland, I66. 34· On the university and professional training, see ibid., 8-9. On the state's role in university affairs, see ibid., 288-32I; also Jarausch, "The Teaching of Politics," in Students, I60-233. 3 5. Ziegler, I 77. 36. Ziegler explained that the two reasons for studying, intellectual curiosity and a preference for a certain profession, corresponded to the two kinds of terminal degree, the doctorate and the state certifying exam, respectively. Ibid., 22 7. 37· Ibid., 165-169. 38. "Theobald Ziegler," in Deutsches Biographisches ]ahrbuch, ed. Verband der deutschen Akademien, Oberleitungsband II: I9I7-I920 (Stuttgart, 1928), 2: 346-349· 39· A richness of detail, combined with a well-articulated philosophical core

and an authoritative tone, makes these three works good choices among the many similar writings that exist on the topic. Paulsen acknowledged the work of Erdmann and Ziegler but thought that his own book provided the historical background that they neglected. Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitaten, x. 40. Erdmann, 1-4. 41. Ibid., 12-31, r66. On Erdmann's life, seeM. Heinze, "Johann Eduard Erdmann," in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (1904; reprint, Berlin 1971), 48: 389-39!. 42. Erdmann, 16-p, 166. 4 3. Ziegler, 5-6. 44· "Friedrich Paulsen," in Biographisches ]ahrbuch und deutscher Nekrolog, ed. Anton Bettelheim (Berlin, 1910), 13: 244-265. "Friedrich Paulsen," 13: 244-265.

4 5. All of the authors, particularly Erdmann, often rely on word-plays to make their points and to link one concept to the next. For example, Erdmann observed that a man need no longer learn things but possesses both knowledge and skill to such an extent that they are made his own: "daB bei ihm das Kennen zum Erkennen oder Wissen, das Konnen zur Kunst wurde, an die Stelle des Lemen das Lehren getreten ist." Erdmann, 46-48. Proving philosophical points through the use of lin-

NOTES TO PAGES

2.8-3 I

2.37

guistic derivations is a pervasive feature of nineteenth-century German philosphical wrting. See the discussion of language in Michael Inwood, A Hegel Dictionary (Oxford, I992.), s-8. I have chosen not to examine such statements in detail here because a more philosophical analysis would go beyond the scope of this study. 46. Ziegler, I4-I6; Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitaten, I49-I 53, I 57; and Erdmann, 7-8. 47· "There was universal agreement among German scholars after I890 that the modern German idea of the university and of learning was irrevocably tied to its intellectual origins in German Idealism and neohumanism. The university as conceived by Humboldt, Schleiermacher, and Fichte ... and even the actual organization of Berlin University were thought to define the German ideal of higher education for all future ages," Ringer explains. Ringer, Decline, 83-12.7. McClelland makes a similar point. McClelland, I I 5. 48. Erdmann recommended only these "classic" authors in his lectures on the university: Fichte, Vorlesungen iiber das Wesen des Gelehrten (I 8o6); Schelling, Vorlesungen iiber akademisches Studium (I8o2.); and Schleiermacher, Gelegentliche Gedanken iiber Universitaten im deutschen Sinne des Worts (I8o8). Erdmann, 37-39· 49· Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitaten, 80-81. Jarausch, Students, 75-77. Ziegler, Il.-2.4· "Sometime around 1890, German academics began to express misgivings about the current condition of German learning and of German cultural life more generally," Fritz Ringer writes. He goes on to link this pessimism to a general European fin-de-siecle malaise. See esp. ch. 5, "The Origins of the Cultural Crisis, 189o-I92.0," in Ringer, Decline, 2.53-2.69. On the crisis mentality oflmperial Germany, see Martin Doerry, Obergangsmenschen: Die Mentalitat der Wilhelminer und die Krise des Kaiserreichs (Weinheim, I986). 50. This certificate is also called a Maturitatszeugnis, Matura, or Reifezeugnis. 51. Erdmann, 73-74. John Neubauer has argued in The Fin-de-siecle Culture of Adolescence (New Haven, Conn., 1992.) that adolescence was a new social category at the turn of the century and came to present a much more specific (and problematic) stage of personal development than the heretofore vaguely defined Liimmel;ahre and Back{isch. Neubauer, 5· On these distinctions, see also Ulrich Herrmann, "Der 'Jtingling' und der 'Jugendliche,'" Geschichte und Gesellschaft I 1 ( 198 5): 2.05-2.16. 52.. By the end of the century, this usage would have already been a little quaint. Here I have translated Haus as "home." 53· If one takes into account the student years, miliary service, and an often poorly paid entry-level position as a teacher, lawyer, or civil servant, a family's support of a young man could last eight years or longer. Max Weber, for example, married at twenty-nine and lived at home until then. Rosenbaum writes that the average age of marriage for bourgeois men remained at about thirty from the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth. Rosenbaum, 3 3 1-3 3 2.. 54· Erdmann, 76-83. 55. Erdmann uses the terms "Gesetz der Gattung" and "Gesetz der Sitte." Ibid. 56. Ibid., 42.-45.

NOTES TO PAGES 31-3 6 57· Ibid., 92-93. 58. Friedrich Schulze and Paul Ssymank, Das deutsche Studententum (Leipzig, 1910), 458. The student's sex life was treated in novels such as Hermann Conradi's Phrasen (Leipzig, 1887) and Otto Bierbaum's Studentenbeichten (Berlin, 1897). A

popular contemporary account is Max Bauer, Sittengeschichte des deutschen Studententums (Dresden, n.d.). The most reliable analysis is offered by Konrad Jarausch, "Students, Sex and Politics," journal of Contemporary History 17, 2 (1982): 285-303. For general background on the sexual habits of young middleclass German men, see Rosenbaum, 349· 59· Peter Gay briefly discusses homoeroticism in German fraternities in The Cultivation of Hatred (New York, 1993), 29-30. Scholarly work on German masculine identity in the Kaiserreich is in its infancy, and work on homosexuality even more so. The newest work is by jeffrey Schneider, "Militarism, Masculinity and Modernity in Germany, 189o-1914" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1997). See also john Fout, "Sexual Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: The Male Gender Crisis, Moral Purity, and Homophobia," journal of the History of Sexuality 2, 3 ( 1992): 388-421; james D. Streakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany (New York, 1975); and Edward Stein, ed., Forms of Desire (New York, 1990). A book such as Linda Dowling's Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994) has yet to be written for Germany. 6o. Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitaten, 366. My emphasis. 61. K.H. Scheidler, "Universitaten ... " in Staats-Lexikon, ed. Carl von Rotteck and Carl Welcker (Altona, 1834-1843), 15: 524-526. Scheidler writes of Lehrfreiheit and Studirfreiheit. Ziegler, 3 1-33. On attending lectures, Ziegler differentiates between "belegen" and "besuchen." 62. Here I have translated Sittengesetz as the "law of morality" and Sitte as a "social convention. 63. Philister, or philistine, was the student expression for all nonstudents, especially staid townspeople rarely amused by student antics. 64. Ziegler, 36-40. 65. Erdmann, 186-187; Ziegler 184-200. 66. Erdmann, 64-66. 67. "Filia Hospitalis" (1885) in Allgemeines Deutsches Kommersbuch, ed. Friedrich Silcher and Friedrich Erk (Lahr/Baden, 1922), 280-281. 68. "Studentenleben" in ibid., 285. 69. "0 alte Burschenherrlichkeit" (from before 1843) in ibid., 275-276. 70. Schleiermacher in Muller, 24 5. 71. Ziegler, 61, 67, 78-79, 87-95. Duelling as an academic custom came increasingly under attack near the end of the century but persisted until after World War II in the Federal Republic. 72. Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitaten, 346. 73· Erdmann, 214-216. 74· Ibid., 5 6-62. 75· Frevert, 136-8. On German duels, see also Gay, 9-33, and Kevin McAleer, Dueling: The Cult of Honor in Fin-de-siecle Germany (Princeton, N.j., 1994). For a

NOTES TO PAGES

3 6-4 3

2.39

comparative perspective on masculinity and duelling in France, see Robert Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (New York, 1993). 76. Jarausch, Deutsche Studenten, 59-70. 77· Frevert, 146-151. 78. Erdmann, 48-54. 79· Ibid., 46-48. So. Ibid., 2.54-2.61. 81. Ibid., 2.67. 82.. Ibid., 2.50-2.54. 83. Ibid., 187-190. 84. Ibid., 192.-199. 8 5. Ibid., r 99 -2.o2.. 86. Ibid., 2.o 4-2.o8. 87. Ziegler, 2.06-2.07. 88. Ibid., 2.12.-2.13, 2.17-2.I8. 89. Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitaten, 340-341. 90. Ibid., 392.-396. Much has been made of the differences among Bildung, liberal education, and culture generate, not least by the Germans themselves. Whether these concepts are really so different cannot be established here. More important for this analysis is simply to note that German academics believed Bildung to be deeper and more organic than its English or French equivalents. Paulsen declared that "Deutschland ist im 19. jahrhundert unter den Volkern Europas an die Spitze der Bildungsbewegung getreten." Friedrich Paulsen, Das deutsche Bildungswesen (Leipzig, I 909 ), I I I. 91. Aleida Assmann, Arbeit am nationalen Gedachtnis (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), 43-44· 92. "Die Bildung der Frauen geschieht, man weiss nicht wie, gleichsam durch

die Atmosphare der Vorstellung, mehr durch das Leben als durch das Erwerben von Kenntnissen, wiihrend der Mann seine Stellung nur durch die Errungenschaft des Gedankens und durch viele technische Bemiihungen erlangt." Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, Werke (Frankfurt am Main, I970), Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, 7: 3 I 8-3 20. See also the discussion of Hegel and women in Inwood, 98-101. 93· Ziegler, 177-183.

94· Sybel quoted in Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitaten, 37 4· 95· Ziegler, 42.. 96. Erdmann, 2.43. 97· Ibid., 64-66. 98. Ibid., 6-8. 99· Friedrich Paulsen, System der Ethik (Berlin, I897), 2.: 2.42.-2.45. roo. Erdmann, 93; Ziegler, r 57, 162.. 101. "Das Recht innerhalb der Familie ist der Wille des Hausvaters." Paulsen, Ethik, 2.: 2.37-2.38. 102.. "Die Familie ist die friiheste, wei) durch die Natur selbst veranstaltete, Vereinbarung mehrerer Menschen zu einem gemeinschaftlichen Leben und zu einer wahren Gesamtpersonlichkeit . ... Die Ehegatten bilden ... eine Gesellschaft, d.h. eine Vereinigung mehrerer Personen zu einer Gesammtpersonlichkeit und zu einem Gesammtleben." Carl von Rotteck, "Familie, Familienrecht (natiirliches)" in StaatsLexikon (Altona, 1834-1843), ed. Carl von Rotteck and Carl Welcker, 5: 385-408. Emphasis in the original. 103. Erdmann, 233. Emphasis in the original. 104. Ibid., IOQ-101. 105. Ibid., III-113. I06. Ibid., I55-157· IO?. Ibid., 110-III.

NOTES TO PAGES 43-52 108. James Sheehan, German History 1770-1866 (Oxford, 1989), 405-406; Jarausch, Deutsche Studenten, 3 5-70. 109. Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitaten, 452-453. Ziegler, u8-123. Erdmann, 116-140. uo. Erdmann, 140-1 54· I I I. Ringer, Education, 3 6. 112. Ziegler, 87-95. Erdmann, 2I9-223; Frevert, I59-164. 113. Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitaten, 470-47I; Ziegler, 125-127. II4. Ziegler, I2-I9. I I 5. Lorenz von Stein, Die Verwaltungslehre (Stuttgart, I 869 ), pt. I, Die vollziehende Gewalt, 204-209, 233, 235. Otto Hintze, Der Beamtenstand (Leipzig, I9II), 4-I6. II6. Karl-Heinz Itling, "Sitte. Sittlichkeit, Moral," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 5: 897, 919. II7. Inwood, 91-93. Erdmann, 238-239. u8. Erdmann used the phrase "Freisein im Nichtlassenkonnen." Erdmann, 40-42. II9. Ziegler, 36-40. I20. Hegel, Grundlinien, 307. 121. Cited in Allen W. Wood, Hegel's Ethical Thought (Cambridge, I990), 243· 122. Treitschke, Politik, 2: 251-259. I 2 3. The officers, though, were often loath to acknowledge this, except in the case of Korps members. Military men usually saw the students' faux duels as childish games. Frevert, I59-I64. I24· Erdmann, 2I0-2I3· I:z.5. Ringer, Decline, IOI-102..

CHAPTER 2 1. "Die r8. Generalversammlung des Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins ... " Neue Bahnen 30, 20 (1895): 154. 2. Louise Otto-Peters, Das erste Vierteljahrhundert des Allgemeinen deutschen Frauenvereins (Leipzig, 1890), 7· Gerhard, 80-81. 3· On girls' education in Germany at this time, see Albisetti, Schooling, 23-57. Also of interest are Monika Simmel, Erziehung zum Weihe (Frankfurt am Main, 1980) and Jiirgen Zinnecker, Sozialgeschichte der Madchenbildung (Weinhem, 1973). For a perspective on women's education on the local level in Hannover, see Reagin, 99-I22. 4· Margrit Twellmann, Die deutsche Frauenbewegung (Meisenheim am Glan,

I972), 96.

5· Auguste Schmidt, "Die wissenschaftliche Erziehung der Frau," Neue Bahnen I},

I (1878): 3·

6. The most recent account of the woman surplus is Catherine Dollard, "The Female Surplus: Constructing the Unmarried Woman in Imperial Germany, 187I1914" (Ph. D. diss., University of North Carolina, 2000).

NOTES TO PAGES

52-57

7· Herrad-Ulrike Bussemer, Frauenemanzipation und Bildungsburgertum (Weinheim, r985), 22-23,48-53. 8. The result was, as Joan Scott writes, that "feminist actions often embodied contradiction and the terms of their appeals were paradoxical" due to the "contradictions in the political discourses that created feminism and that it appealed to and challenged at the same time." Joan Scott, "Rewriting the History of Feminism," Western Humanities Review 58, 3 (1994): 238-241. 9· Here I borrow from Scott, Only Paradoxes, r8. ro. Works that use this interpretive model include Richard Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany, 1894-1933 (London, I976); Barbara Greven-Aschoff, Die burgerliche Frauenbewegung in Deutschland 1894-1933 (Gottingen, I98I); and Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland (New York, 1987). Works that offer a more differentiated analysis of the German women's movement include Allen and Reagin. I I. Scott argues that saying "all feminists in the past were either for equality or difference" hides feminism's "intractable contradictions," one of which is the equality versus difference conundrum. Scott, "Rewriting," 238-241. On the close identification members of the bourgeois women's movement had with the liberal parties, see Amy Hackett, "Feminism and Liberalism in Wilhelmine Germany, I89o-I9I8," in Liberating Women's History, ed. Bernice A. Carroll (Urbana, Ill., I976), I27-I36. 12. Karen Offen argues correctly that some in the German women's movement, such as Kathe Schirmacher and Lily Braun, used the term "feminist." But they belonged to a more radical wing of the women's movement. Moderates such as Helene Lange, whom Offen mentions, used the term only infrequently and often derisively, as in "feministische Gedankenanarchie," the title of an article by Lange criticizing the radical wing of the movement. Lange and others usually preferred formulations based on "woman" like "Frauenbewegung." See Karen Offen, "Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach," Signs I4, II (I988): II9I 57· By using "women's movement" I also wish to call attention to the difference between this historical group and those who call themselves feminists today. I3. Gertrud Baumer, "Die Geschichte der Frauenbewegung in Deutschland," in Lange and Baumer, r: 67-75. Helene Lange, Lebenserinnerungen (Berlin, 1928), r I I-I r 2. On Jenny Hirsch as the translator of Mill, see the entry in Lexikon deutscher Frauen der Feder, ed. Sophie Pataky, r: I7-r8, 358 (Berlin, 1898; reprint, Bern, I97I), and Gerhard, 86. 14· See Bussemer's thorough discussion of the ADF's difficulties with funding, recruitment, and the definition of its mission. Bussemer, 129-I4r. 15. Julia MeisBner, Mehr Stolz, Ihr Frauen! (Dusseldorf, I987), 9, q-I8, 27-32, 41. Gerhard, 103-107. On Dohm's life (I83J-1919), see also Bertha Rahm, ed., Hedwig Dohm: Erinnerungen und weitere Schriften von und iiber Hedwig Dohm ... (Zurich, 1980). H. Dohm, Emanzipation (Zurich, I977) (originally published as Die wissenschaftliche Emanzipation der Frau [Berlin, 1874], 2-II, 174I 87 .) On Dohm see also her novel, Schicksale einer Seele (Berlin, r 899 ), which is highly autobiographical. I6. Lange and Baumer, I: 67-75. Lange, Lebenserinnergungen, II2-II3.

NOTES TO PAGES

5 8-64

I7. Louise Otto, Das Recht der Frauen auf Erwerb (Hamburg, I866), 96-97. Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres, ed., Die Anfange der deutschen Frauenbewegung: Louise Otto-Peters (Frankfurt am Main, I983), I75-I78. Gerhard, 39-40, 78-8o, 125. Daniela Weiland, Geschichte der Frauenemanzipation (DUsseldorf, I983), I6, I 50. I8. Gerhard, 78-79, II?, I22. I9. Bussemer, I86-I88, 24I-250. 20. Gerhard, I23-I25. 21. Otto-Peters, Io-II, 22-50. Gerhard, I49-I50. 22. Irene Stoehr, Emanzipation zum Staat? (Pfaffenweiler, 1990), 1-3. Otto-Peters, 60-63. Lange and Baumer, r: 75· Albisetti, Schooling, 240. 23. "Petition des Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins," Neue Bahnen 24, 9 (1889): 65-66. Klara Strich, "Eine Wanderung mit der Petition," ibid. 26, 3 (1891): 17-19. Boedeker, xxvi-xxxix; and Albisetti, Schooling, 159-167. 24. "Eine Studierende der Mathematik und Physik," Neue Bahnen 4, 6 (1869): 126. 25. See "Zurich," Neue Bahnen 7, nos. 4 and 5 (1872): 28-30 and 36-37. At this time, German women also began to earn degrees at Swiss universities, mostly in Zurich. Between 1875 and 1906-1907, twenty-six medical doctorates were obtained. In other subjects, fifty doctorates were earned by German women between I885 and I906-1907. Boedeker, lviii-lix. 26. On the Russian women in Zurich, see Jan Marinus Meijer, Knowledge and Revolution: The Russian Colony in Zurich (r87o-r873) (Assen, I955), here 14o145; Verein Feministische Wissenschaft Schweiz, ed., Ebenso neu als kuhn (Zurich, 1988); Daniela Neumann, Studentinnen aus dem Russischen Reich in der Schweiz (r867-I914) (Zurich, 1987); and Engel. 27. Elizabeth A. Wood, The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia (Bloomington, Ind., I997), 22. 28. Otto-Peters, 28-31. 29. Neue Bahnen Io, 8 (I875): 6o, quoted in Twellmann, 426. 30. "Zurich," Neue Bahnen 12, 2 (I877): I3-14; "Skizzen aus dem Studentenleben," ibid. 13, 16 (1878): I21-122. 31. Marie von Thilo, "Briefe. Zurich," Neue Bahnen 12, I8 (I877): 149-152. 32. "Zum Frauenstudium," Neue Bahnen Io, I? (I875): 129. 33· Twellmann, 425. James Albisetti notes that "it would be difficult to overestimate the effect of the events in Zurich ... on German attitudes toward female students in general." Albisetti, "The Fight for Female Physicians," I02. 34· Neue Bahnen 20, 21 (I88s): 164. 3 5. Franziska Tiburtius, "Vorbildung der Madchen fiir den wissenschaftlichen Beruf," Neue Bahnen 2I, 2 (1886): 9-13. Auguste Schmidt, "Studenten, Professoren und das gemeinsame Studium," ibid. 34, 8 (I899): 87-89. Gerhard, I6o-r6r. 36. Auguste Schmidt, "Die wissenschaftliche Erziehung der Frauen," Neue Bahnen I3, I (1878): 2-4. 37· Lange and Baumer, I: 88. 38. Frauj. [Hedwig] Kettler, Was ist Frauen-Emanzipation? (Weimar, [189I]), 13. 39· W. Grimm, Deutsche Frauen vor dem Parlament (Weimar, 1892), 31-36. Frau J. [Hedwig] Kettler, Was wird aus unsern Tochtern? (Weimar, I889), 5-6,

NOTES TO PAGES

64-72

243

15-16. I translate Kettler's references to the gebildeter Mittelstand here as "educated middle class." 40. Kettler, Was ist Frauen-Emanzipation? 14· 41. Bussemer, 48-53. 42. Kettler, Was wird aus unsern Tochtern? 9· 4 3. Ibid., 26. 44· Kettler, Was ist Frauen-Emanzipation? 8; Dohm, Emanzipation, I 1. 45· Kettler, Was wird aus unsern Tochtern? 2I-22. 46. Ibid., 8. 47· Kettler, Was ist Frauen-Emanzipation? 5· 48. Frauenberuf 1,1 (1887): I; Kettler, Was wird aus unsern Tochtern? 11-13. 49· Frau J. [Hedwig] Kettler, Gleiche Bildung fur Mann und Frau! (Weimar, (1892)), I I-12; Frau J. [Hedwig] Kettler, Das erste deutsche Madchengymnasium, Bibliothek der Frauenfrage, no. I9 (Weimar, n.d. [I893?]), 8. so. Kettler, Gleiche Bildung, I3. 51. Kettler, Was ist Frauen-Emanzipation? 3. 52· Kettler, Gleiche Bildung, IS-I6; Kettler, Was ist Frauen-Emanzipation? 5· 53· Hedwig Reder Kettler (18 5 I-I937) is often mentioned only briefly in histories of the women's movement. Her papers in Hannover came to my attention too late to be considered here. The most detailed published biographical source is Hugo Willich, "Hedwig Kettler," in Niedersachsische Lebensbilder, ed. O.H. May (Hildesheim, I96o), here 4: 155-157, 164-168, 170. The long quotation is also cited in Albisetti, Schooling, 52. 54· Frauenberuf 3 (1889): I; ibid. I, I (I887): 1. 55· Frauenberuf 4 (1890): 3I3-320; ibid. 5 (I89I): 28. 56. Frauenberu{3 (1889): 406-410. 57· Frauenberuf 2 (1888): 57; ibid. 2 (I888): I07-Io8; Willich, 158-159· "Girls' lyceum" was an indeterminate term, usually referring to a girls' school that offered teacher training. Although no definition was given, the context indicated that what was meant was a school that would prepare women for university study. The ambiguity inherent in the term Madchenlyzeum is interesting because it was an attempt by the club to describe an institution that did not yet exist. By the same token, Frauenhochschule is also unclear. It literally meant "women's college or university," yet given the underdeveloped state of female education, this would have been difficult to conceive of. The most general meaning would have been that of a tertiarylevel institution for women, which would have surpassed the training offered by teachers' seminars. 58. Frauenberuf 2 (1888): 2I9-220j Albisetti, Schooling, 161. 59· See, e.g., the text of the petition reprinted in Frauenberuf 3 (1889): 271. 6o. See Grimm, 31-77. Boedeker, xxvi-xxxviii. 61. Grimm, 31-77. Boedeker, xxvi-xxxviii. 62. Frauenberuf 3 (1889): 481-486. 63. Albisetti, Schooling, 209. Willich, 16I-I68. One source says that Karlsruhe took over the school already in 1897. For Kettler's own account of the Karlsruhe school, see Kettler, Das erste deutsche Madchengymnasium. 64. Heymann, 15-17.

244

NOTES TO PAGES

73-80

65. Lange, Lebenserinnerungen, 223-225. 66. Anita Augspurg, Die ethische Seite der Frauenfrage (Minden, I893), 35· 67. Augspurg, Die ethische Seite, 2o-26. 68. Die Frauenbewegung, 2, I (I jan. I896): 9· 69. Die Frauenbewegung 2, 9, (I May I896): 90. The next year the club changed its name to Verein Frauenstudium, Abteilung Berlin, and Schirmacher was elected to the board. Ibid. 3, 2I (1 November I897): 221. The new association does not seem to have been particularly active, with the exception of the incidents noted in Chapter Four. Perhaps this was because Augspurg was a law student in Zurich until I898 and then began her long involvement with women's political rights. In I899, she added the supplement Par/amentarische Ange/egenheiten (Parliamentary Matters) to Minna Cauer's already-established Die Frauenbewegung; in I902, she founded an association for woman suffrage. Dick, 39-40. 70. "Petition des Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereins," Neue Bahnen 24, 9 (I889): 65-66. Lange and Baumer, I: 88-95. Mathilde Weber, Frauenartze fur Frauenkrankheiten (fiibingen, I888), 5th rev. ed. (Berlin, I893). Helene Lange, Frauenbildung (Berlin, 1889). 71. Helene Lange, "Die ethische Bedeutung der Frauenfrage," in Kampfzeiten (Berlin, I928), I: 72-83. 72. Helene Lange, "lntellektuelle Grenzlinien zwischen Mann und Frau," in Kampfzeiten, I: I99-206. 73· Lange, "Die ethische Bedeutung der Frauenfrage," I: 81. 74· Helene Lange, Wissen und sitt/iche Kultur (Berlin, I903), 6-I2. 75· Lange, "Intellektuelle Grenzlinien," I: 207-2II. 76. Lange, Wissen und sittliche Kultur, 6-I2. 77· Lange, "Die ethische Bedeutung der Frauenfrage," I: 72-73.

78. Lange, Lebenserinnerungen, I I-76. 79· Ibid., 9 3-Ioo. So. Ibid., I05-I I 2. 8I. Ibid., 109-II4, I25-I27. 82. Ibid., r36-r38. Albisetti, Schooling, I55-157. 83. Lange, Lebenserinnerungen, 139-I41. 84. Ibid., I33· 85. Lange, Kampfzeiten, I: 9-Io, I2. 86. Ibid., I: I9-2I, 25 87. Ibid., I: 32. 88. Ibid., I: 51· 89. Lange, Lebenserinnerungen, I 52. 90. Boedeker, xxvi-xxxviii. 91. Lange, Lebenserinnerungen, I75-I76, 204. Boedeker, xxviii. Helene Lange, "Unsere ersten Abiturientinnen," in Kamp(zeiten, r: I69-I73· 92. See, e.g., Helene Lange, "Frauenhochschulen?" Centra/blatt des Bundes deutscher Frauenvereine (Berlin) I, 20 (I5 January I9oo): I57-158. In her memoirs, Dr. Hermine Heusler-Edenhuizen vividly recalled her years in Helene Lange's Gymnasialkurse. Hermine Heusler-Edenhuizen, Die erste deutsche Frauenarztin (Opladen, I997), 43-48. 93· Helene Lange, "Rede zur Eroffnung der Realkurse fiir Frauen," in Kampfzeiten, I: 6o-7 1.

NOTES TO PAGES

82-90

245

94· Lange, Lebenserinnerungen, I68. Neue Bahnen 23, 22 (I888). Weber, Arztinnen fUr Frauenkrankheiten, 8, 36-37, 44-45, 48, 50-54. For cultural interpretations of how women's health care has changed, see Barbara Duden, The Woman Beneath the Skin (Cambridge, Mass., I99I) and Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments (Chicago, 1987). 9 5. Allen, 228. 96. Auguste Schmidt, "Die deutschen Universitaten und das Frauenstudium," Neue Bahnen 33, 23 (I898): 25I-253· CHAPTER

3

Otto Gierke quoted in Kirchoff, 27. 2. Oskar Hartmann, Briefe an eine Studentin (Zurich, I876), 4-5. 3· On the relationship between state education ministries and universities in the Kaiserreich, see Bechard vom Brocke, ed., Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Wissenschaftspolitik im Industriezeitalter (Hildesheim, 199I); Jarausch, Students; Andernach; and Arnold Sachse, Friedrich Althoff und sein Werk, (Berlin, 1928). On the broader influence of academics on Imperial German politics, see RUdiger vom Bruch, Wissenschaft, Politik und offentliche Meinung (Husum, 1980). 4· See the summary of the opinions of the four faculties, rector, and senate of each Prussian university in 1902 in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. X, 178-184. The individual replies can be found in the same file: Berlin, 89-97; Bonn, 98-ro6; Breslau, 107-109; Gottingen, rro--126; Halle, 134-143· For a similar survey at Heidelberg, see Krabusch, r 3 5-139. 5· Adele Crepaz, Die Gefahren der Frauen-Emancipation (Leipzig, 1892). Sidonie GrUnwald Zerkowitz, Die Schattenseite des Frauenstudiums (Zurich, 1902). Pataky, I! 137• 6. Hermann Jakoby, Die Grenzen der weiblichen Bi/dung (GUtersloh, 1871), r ff. Philip von Nathusius, Zur "Frauenfrage" (Halle, 1871), quoted in Twellmann, 167-177. 7· Hedwig Dohm, Was die Pastoren von den Frauen denken (Berlin, 1872), quoted in Twellmann, 177-I83. 8. Doctors made similar arguments in other countries at this time. For the United States, see Edward Clarke, Sex in Education (Boston, r873), quoted in Rosenberg, 7· A. Dodel, "Das Hochschulstudium der Frauen," in Aus Leben und Wissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1896), 2: 219. 9· Theodor von Bischoff, Das Studium und die Ausubung der Medicin durch Frauen (Munich, 1872), 2, I4-I9, 48-56. ro. Bischoff, 7-8, 19-22, 36-39. I I. Ibid., 29, 34. 40. 12. Ibid., 41-42, 45-46. I3. A few comments did appear in the press of the women's movement. The ADF's Neue Bahnen argued that contrary to Bischoff's views on feminine delicacy, women had to do many nasty things to be good housewives, such as beheading pigeons and killing crabs and fish: "im Dienst der Kochkunst und eines guten Diners 1.

NOTES TO PAGES

90-94

fur den Hausherrn darf die Frau jede Rohheit und Unbarmherzigkeit begehen-dies ist ihre Pflicht, so bald sie sich aber mit der Wisseneschaft beschiiftigt client sie nicht mehr diesem allein-und darum wird sie dann-'unweiblich"' [emphasis in the original]. "Noch einmal Professor von Bischoff," Neue Bahnen 7, 20 (I872): I54. Jenny Hirsch of the Lette Association gave Dohm's Die wissenschaftliche Emanzipation der Frau (and implicitly Dohm's attack on Bischoff) a warm review in the Frauen-Anwalt 5, 9 (I874-I875): 2I7 f., quoted in Twellmann, 424-425. 14· Dohm, 4o-4I, 98, I36. Last quotation taken from Hedwig Dohm, Die wissenschaftliche Emanzipation der Frau (Berlin, I874), quoted in Die Frauenfrage in Deutschland r86J-I9IJ. Texte und Dokumente, ed. Elke Frederiksen (Stuttgart, I98I), 248. I 6. Ibid., n-84. I 5. Dohm, Emanzipation, I o. I?. Ibid., 34-39. I8. Ibid., 85-94. I9. Ibid., II6-I6r. 20. Ibid., I8o-r88. 21. Victor Bohmert, Das Studieren der Frauen (Leipzig, I 872), 7-I7. Marianne Muller confirms that the number of Studentinnen in all faculties at the university of Zurich was I 14 by the summer of I 873, over one-quarter of the total student body. "Frauen an der Universitiit Zurich von I864 bis I988: Zahlenmiissige Entwicklung," in Verein Feministische Wissenschaft Schweiz, I97· 22. Bohmert, I9-2I. 23. Ibid., 26, 3I-32· 24. Ibid., 38-4I. 25. Wilhelm Alexander Freund, Blicke in's Culturleben (Breslau, 1879). Ludwig Schwerin, Die Zulassung der Frau zur Ausubung des iirztlichen Berufes (Berlin, I 88o), 4· 26. Albisetti, Schooling, 18 5. 27. Lorenz von Stein, Die Frau auf dem Gebiete der Nationa!Okonomie (Stuttgart, I875), quoted in Twellmann, 204-7. Dohm, Emanzipation, 26-27. 28. It appears that no German rector had ever mentioned the Frauenstudium in his inaugural address until 1893, when Leo Pochhammer discussed it at Kiel: Leo Pochhammer, Beitrag zur Frage des Universitiitsstudiums der Frauen (Kiel, 1893 ). The topic did not reach Berlin until 1898, when Anna Pappritz noted in the periodical Die Frauenbewegung that both the incoming rector of the university of Berlin, Wilhelm Waldeyer, and the outgoing rector, Gustav Schmoller, had addressed the subject. "For the first time this topic has been mentioned in the auditorium of our university by two of the most outstanding representatives of scholarship. This signifies a moral victory ... with this the women, until now only tolerated, nearly held their sanctioned entry into the holy rooms of the alma mater," Pappritz gushed. Die Frauenbewegung 4, 2I (I898): 228-229. 29. H. von Scheel, "Frauenfrage und Frauenstudium," ]ahrbucher fur Nationalokonomie und Statistik 22. (I874): 5-7, 9· Bohmert, 5· 30. Scheel, I-5. 3 r. Victor Bohmert, Das Frauenstudium nach den Erfahrungen an der Universitiit Zurich (1874); an article by Bohmert under the same title appeared in the periodical he published along with W. Lette, Der Arbeiterfreund, in I874· Hermann, Das Frauenstudium und die Interessen der Hochschule Zurich (Zurich, I874). Frey

NOTES TO PAGES

95-97

247

and Biermer quoted in Frauen-Anwalt 5, ro (r874-1875): 243 ff. All of these sources quoted in Twellman, 427-430. 32. "Noch einmal Professor von Bischoff," Neue Bahnen 7, 20 (1872): 154. 33· Marie Calm, "Dec arztliche Beruf der Frauen," Neue Bahnen 9, 8 (1874): 57· 34· Scheel's inaugural address was reprinted in the Lette Association's organ the same year: Frauen-Anwalt 4, 11 (1873-1874): 330 ff., quoted in Twellmann, 386-388. 3 5. As Albisetti writes, discussion of the "woman question" in general had abated, and it did not appear that the universities would concede any ground. Albisetti, Schooling, 128. Gertrud Baumer recalled that the women's movement suffered until the end of the x88os under the socialist law and the weakness of the liberals. Lange and Baumer, 1: 75· 36. Rudolf Virchow, Ober die Erziehung des Weibes fur seinen Beruf (Berlin, 1865). 37· The immediate impetus for the women's movement's action was, as Albisetti writes, the realization that Princess Victoria, a patron of girls education, would not long reign as empress due to her husband's illness. Victoria had lent her support to several educational projects for girls and was in the process of planning a center for women's higher education when her husband, the Kaiser, died in 1888. Albisetti sees this as a lost chance for a women's college on the English model. Schooling, 157, 117-118. Helene Lange, whom Victoria sent on a fact-finding trip to England, describes her close cooperation with the princess in her memoirs. Lange, Lebenserinnerungen, 139-169. 38. Bussemer, I70-171. 39· Hundreds of books, pamphlets, and articles on the subject appeared. Some important works by reformers include Gnauck-Kiihne, Das Universitiitsstudium der Frauen; Anna Kuhnow, Gedanken und Erfahrungen iiber Frauenbildung und Frauenberuf (Leipzig, 1896); Dodel, "Das Hochschulstudium der Frauen"; Eliza Ichenhauser, Die Ausnahmestellung Deutschlands in Sachen Frauenstudium (Berlin, 1897); Helene Stocker, Das Miidchengymnasium im preussischen Abgeordnetenhaus (Berlin, 1898); and Elsbeth Krukenberg-Conze, Ober Studium und Universitiitsleben der Frauen (Gebhardshagen, 1903). See also the works in favor of female physicians listed in note 41. 40. Albisetti, Schooling, 191; Elise Oelsner, Die Leistungen der deutschen Frau in den letzten 400 Jahren (Guhrau, 1894); and Hermann Schelenz, Frauen im Reiche Aeskulaps (Leipzig, 1900). 41. See, among others, Dohm, Emanzipation and Lina Morgenstern, Ein offenes Wort uber das medizinische Studium der Frauen an Herrn Prof. Dr. W. Waldeyer (Berlin, 1888). 42. See the review of Agnes Bluhm's speech, "Leben und Streben der Studentinnen in Zurich," Rheinischer Kurier, 63 (4 March 1890). The Illustrirte Zeitung published several portraits of women who had earned degrees: in law, Emilie Kempin, issue no. 2331 (1888): 216; in medicine, Karoline Schultze, issue no. 2377 (1889): 74, and Anna Kuhnow, issue no. 2594 (1893): 295· An article on "Weibliche Advokaten und Juristen" appeared in issue no. 2839 (1897): 733· 43· Lange, Lebenserinnerungen, 152, and Kampfzeiten, r: 1-2.

NOTES TO PAGES

97-99

44· Dodel assured Kettler that her goals had his "complete sympathy" and that he did not "want to rest until a female lecturer stands at the podium at our university." Sometimes the endorsements that Kettler quoted betrayed some misunderstanding of her goals. Professor A. Schneider of Zurich, who had taught the first Swiss woman to get a law degree, Emilie Kempin, informed Kettler, "I am pleased that you used neither the word, nor the concept of, women's emancipation in the brochure; I hate both. What you seek is something quite different that is nonethless often confused with it." Frauenberuf 3 (r889): 489-491. 45· Frauenberuf 4 (1890): 41-48. 46. The Reichstag discussed the petitions of Reform and the ADF in March 1891. See Stenographische Verhandlungen des Reichstages, 86th sess. (11 March 1891): 1995-2009. 47· The ADF originally began to gather signatures in the winter of r89o-189I. A petition with about 53 ,ooo signatures was submitted to the Reichstag in November r89r; however, this session closed before the petition could be discussed. The petition was resubmitted in the fall of 1892, and in February 1893 the petition commission decided to forward it to the chancellor for consideration. A lively debate in the Reichtstag ensued, in which the liberal (Deutsche Freisinnige Partei) delegate Karl Baumbach gave a speech called "Women as Physicians." But when the Reichstag was dissolved because of the Army Bill, the ADF was forced to submit the petition a third time in the fall of 1893. Neue Bahnen 29, ro (15 May 1894): 73-76. Baumbach's speech was later published as Karl Baumbach, Frauen als Aerzte (Berlin, 1893). 48. Andernach, 167-168. See also Richard Wulckow, "Unsere Volksvertreter und das Frauenstudium," Die Gegenwart 57 (1900): 193-196; Martha Voss-Zietz, "Die Stellung der politischen Parteien in Deutschland zur Frauenbewegung," Kul-

tur und Fortschritt, Sozialer Fortschritt, Hefte fiir Volkswirtschaft, Sozialpolitik, Frauenfrage, Rechtspflege und Kulturinteressen, n.s., no. 460 (Gautzsch bei Leipzig, 1913 ). 49· On Adolf von Harnack, see Marga Anders and lise Reicke, eds., Agnes von Zahn-Harnack (Tiibingen, 1964), 192. Professor Joseph Mausbach spoke cautiously in favor of the Frauenstudium at the Katholikenversammlung at Augsburg in 1910: Joseph Mausbach, Frauenbildung und Frauenstudium (Munster, 1910). See also the article by Hedwig Dransfeld, a leader of the Catholic women's movement, "Bedeutung des akademischen Frauenstudiums fiir die Gegenwart," Hochland 9, nos. 4 and 6 (Kempten, Munich, 1910): 435-447 and 713-733· 50. Albisetti, Schooling, 167. 5 I. Hermann Grimm, "Weibliche Zuhorer in den Auditorien der Berliner Universitiit," in Fragmente (Berlin and Stuttgart, 1900), 355-374. This article originally appeared in the National-Zeitung, no. 389 (26 June 1892, morning ed.), in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. r Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. 2, 6-6c. 52. Ibid., 355-356. 53· Ibid., J6o-J6I. 54· National-Zeitung, 22 April 1898, morning ed., rst suppl., in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. r Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. VI, 312.

NOTES TO PAGES

99-107

55· Grimm, "Weibliche Zuhorer," 364-366. Other professors shared Grimm's feelings on academic freedom. Wilhelm Ostwald of the University of Leipzig insisted that professors should not be forced to admit women to their lectures. Kirchoff, 2.71. Indeed, female auditors were always required to seek the instructor's permission to attend specific courses in addition to the permission required for each class from the university and the state minister of education. 56. Grimm, "Weibliche Zuhorer," 366-367. 57· Ibid., 369-371. 58. At Rostock, there were either thirteen or eighteen female auditors in the winter semester of 1895-1896. When women were matriculated in 1909, a year after their admission in Prussia, they were still not allowed in the theological faculty. Three women were enrolled that first year. Mehlan, 33-34. 59· Felix Lindner, Vom Frauenstudium (Rostock, 1897), 3-6, 8-q. 6o. Kirchoff, 2.1-2.7. 61. Ibid., 193· Heinrich Herkner, Das Frauenstudium der Nationalokonomie (Berlin, 1899), 2.8-30. Dodel, 2.18, 2.2.1-2.2.3. 62.. For a contemporary perspective, see Klara Zetkin, Der Student und das Weib (Berlin, 1899). For an overview, seeJarausch, "Students, Sex and Politics," 2.85-303. 63. Eduard von Hartmann, "Die Jungfernfrage," in Tagesfragen (Leipzig, 1896), 99-132., here 104; Dr. Carpio [Karl Pinn], Frauenstudium, Sittlichkeit und Sozialreform (Leipzig, 1 896), 6. 64. Dodel, 218, 2.2.1-2.2.3. 65. Jarausch, Students, 32., 47-48 66. Ibid., 69. 67. Dr. Henius, "Ueber die Zulassung der Frauen zum Studium der Medicin," Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 2.1, 37 (12. September 1895): 613-15; Kirchoff, 2.6-2. 7. 68. Aerzte, Aerztinnen und das sechste Gebot (Berlin, 1894). Carpio, 19. 69. Kirchoff, I93· Herkner, 49-52. 70. Kirchoff, 19, 2.1-27. 71. Albisetti, Schooling, 2.54. Lange, Kampfzeiten, 1: 342.-350. 72.. Morgenstern, 21-2.2.. 73· For an overview, see Albisetti, "Women and the Professions," 94-109. 74· Jarausch, Students, 74· 75· In Prussia, women were admitted in 1908 with the specific caveat that admission to the unversity did not imply a right to a state exam and certification in a profession. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. XII, 24-27. When the Saxon Kultusministerium decided in April 1906 to admit women, it stressed that there was no intention of allowing women to take the state theological or legal exam. LUA, Rep. II Cap. IV No. 67,7-8. 76. Albisetti, "Women and the Professions," 9 5. Die Frauenbewegung 2., 2 (1896): 192. Marie Stritt, later head of the BDF, founded the first Rechtsschutzverein fur Frauen in Dresden in 1894. Gerhard, 176. Huerkamp, 213-2.15. 77· Albisetti, Schooling, 217-22.2., 2.5o-2.55, and "The Fight for Female Physicians," 107.

NOTES TO PAGES

107-108

78. Albisetti writes that the women's movement concentrated on opening up medicine mostly for "tactical considerations," as it was the "area where they found the greatest support from men." In the end, he argues, women were admitted to medicine because the government was convinced by Mathilde Weber's argument about the need for female doctors to treat women; state governments also feared looking as though they were lagging behind other countries. Albisetti, "The Fight for Female Physicians," 104-I05, 107, 119-12.0. 79· Caroline Schultze, Die Aerztin im XIX. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1889). Agnes Bluhm, Die Entwicklung und der gegenwiirtige Stand des medizinischen Frauenstudiums in den europiiischen und aussereuropiiischen Liindern (Berlin, r 89 5). Kuhnow, Gedanken. Hope Bridges Lehmann-Adams, "Frauenstudium und Frauentauglichkeit," Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 22 (1896): 28-29. 8o. Peter Mueller, Ueber die Zulassung der Frauen zum Studium der Medizin (Hamburg, r 894). Ludwig Kleinwiichter, Zur Frage des Studiums der Medizin des Weibes (Berlin, Leipzig, Neuwied, 1896). Max Runge, Das Weib in seiner geschlechtlichen Eigenart, (Berlin, 1904). Leo Pochhammer, Beitrag zur Frage des Universitiitsstudiums der Frauen (Kiel, 1893). Hermann Cohn, "Ueber die Zulassung von Frauen zu den hygienischen Vorlesungen der medizinischen Fakultiit in Breslau," Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 24 (1898): 530-531. Albert Eulenburg, "Das Medizinstudium der Frauen an der deutschen Universitiiten im Sommersemester 1901," Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 27 (1901): 472. For an overview of physicians' opinions, see Hollmann. 81. Mathilde Weber, Arztinnen fur Frauenkrankheiten, 5th rev. ed. (Berlin, 1893). Anna Kraus[s]neck, DieAerztin im r9.]ahrhundert (Berlin, 1891 [r888?]). E. Kattner, Zur Arztinnenfrage. Warum verlangen wir weibliche Fraueniirzte? (Tiibingen,

I

891 ). Sidonie Binder, Weibliche Aerzte (Stuttgart,

I

892.). Marie Bruhl,

Die Natur der Frau und Herr Prof Runge (Leipzig, 1903 ). 82. Controversies similar to Waldeyer's enveloped his colleagues Franz Penzoldt and Eduard Albert, a Viennese professor of medicine. Penzoldt's r 89 8 speech to the 26th German Physician's Congress, published as Das Medizinstudium der Frauen (Jena, 1898), drew several replies. An anonymous female student of medicine in Zurich answered Penzoldt in Das Medizinstudium der Frauen (Zurich, 1898), in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. r Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. VII, 210-217. The student Mathilde Stivarius replied to him in Die Frauenbewegung 4, 15 (1898): 165-166. The medical professor Max Flesch also criticized Penzoldt's remarks in ibid. 4, 20 (1898): 217-219, and 21 (1898): 229-230. Penzoldt defended himself briefly in ibid. 4, 20 (1898): 217-219, and 21 (1898): 221-222. Similarly, when Albert attacked the idea of female students in Die Frauen und das Studium der Medicin (Vienna, 1895), his colleagues did not hesitate to contradict him. See Emanuel Hannak, Prof. E. Alberts Essay: Die Frauen und das Studium der Medicin kritisch beleuchtet (Vienna, 1895), and M. Kronfeld, Die Frauen und die Medicin. Professor Albert zur Antwort (Vienna, 1895). In addition, the Vossische Zeitung, 19 February 1895, morning ed., rst suppl., in GSAPK Rep 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. III, 149, reported how Helene Lange argued against Albert's book. 83. W. Waldeyer, "Das Studium der Medicin und die Frauen," Tageblatt der deutschen Naturforscher und Arzte 61, 2 (r888): 31.

NOTES TO PAGES I08-II2

251

84. Opponents did try to turn the moral/modesty argument around, but this was difficult since it found great public resonance. In a 1895 article, Dr. Henius dismissed the idea that German women were especially prudish. Other traditionalists considered coeducation more immoral than the medical examination of women by men. Contemplating the prospect of a young woman at work in the dissection hall, johannes Orth, a medical professor at Gottingen, exclaimed, "One asks oneself if one would like to see female family members in such a situation! I say no and again no!" Dr. Henius, "Ueber die Zulassung der Frauen zum Studium der Medicin," Deutsche Medicinische Wochenschrift 21,37 (12 September 1895): 613. Orth quoted in Kirchoff, 69. 85. Wilhelm von Waldeyer-Hartz, Lebenserinnerungen (Bonn, 1920), 197-199· There were numerous reactions to Waldeyer. Kettler's Was ist Frauen-Emanzipation? (Weimar, [189I]) contained a response to Waldeyer. Kettler's periodical Frauenberuf reprinted an article criticizing Waldeyer from Volkswohl, published by Bohmert and a Dr. Bode. Frauenberuf 2 (I888): 518-519. Die Frauenbewegung I, I7 (1895): I29-I3I, published a reply to Waldeyer from an anonymous doctor. 86. Waldeyer, "Studium der Medicin," 32-34, 37-39. 87. Ibid., 37-38, 44· 88. Ibid., 42. 89. Ibid., 39-41. A more sophisticated elaboration on Bischoff's ideas appeared in Henius's I 89 5 article in the Deutsche Medicinische Wochenschrift. Henius saw college preparatory schooling as far too strenuous for girls, who would be regularly disadvantaged by menstruation. Furthermore, they could then pass on their poor health to their children, leading to a weaker species. He shared Waldeyer's ideas of the female's innate mental limits and tied women's basic disqualification for medicine to their inability to become flexible thinkers. "The woman is equipped to reproduce but not to produce," that is, come up with original solutions to problems. Lacking creativity, women were better suited to routinized occupations such as nursing and teaching of lower grades or simple subjects. Henius, 613-614. 90. Waldeyer, "Studium der Medicin," 42-43. 91. In r866, Morgenstern set up Berlin's first soup kitchen, and later she founded and led the first housewives' association. Gerhard, 93-94, II9-I20. Waldeyer's speech and Morgenstern's reply orginally appeared in her Deutsche Hausfrauenzeitung. Morgenstern, 22. 92. Morgenstern, 3-6, 12-15. 93· Ibid., 12-15. 94· Ibid., 4-6, 7-8, IO. 95· Ibid., I 5-17. 96. Ibid., 6-7. 97· Ibid., 18-19. 98. Ibid., 21-22. 99· Dr. [Hermann] Ritter, Frauen und Arzte (Berlin, I893), 1-5, I23-136. 100. Wilhelm Waldeyer, Ueber Aufgaben und Stellung unserer Universitiiten (Berlin, 1898), 12-18. Waldeyer, Lebenserinnerungen, 197-199. Two years earlier, in 1896, Waldeyer had given up his opposition to higher education for women, although he remained resolutely against coeducation. The press noted Waldeyer's conversion, which he announced in a speech to the Berlin women's group Frauenwohl. See Vossische Zeitung, 2 February 1896, morning ed., in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. IV, 283.

NOTES TO PAGES

I I 2-I 20

IOI. Albisetti, Schooling, 240. Of course, many feared that once medicine was opened, other professions would follow. See Albisetti, "The Fight for Female Physicians," I 07. I02. Bussemer, I?O-I?I. CHAPTER

4

I. Leo Koenigsberger, Mein Leben (Heidelberg, I9I9), III-II?. 2. Bernhard vom Brocke and Peter Kruger, eds., Hochschulpolitik im Foderalismus (Berlin, I994), 70. 3· Ann Hibner Koblitz, A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia, Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary (Boston, I983), 88-IOI, I22-I23. Krabusch, I35-I39· LUA, Rep. II, Cap. IV Nr. 35, 2-4; p. 4 of this file also contains an I873 letter from the University of Berlin detailing the unoffical female auditors and the I 869 request of a woman to study. 4· "Frauenstudium," Academische Rundschau (Leipzig) 2 (I897-I898): 2. Albisetti, Schooling, 122. This incident is also alluded to in Dohm's I 87 4 book, Die wissenschaftliche Emanzipation der Frau. 5· GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. I, 46. 6. LUA Rep. II Cap. IV Nr. 35, 6-I6, 36. LUA Med. Fak. B VII No. 8, 3· Drucker, 278-290; Albisetti, Schooling, I23. Neue 8ahnen gave a different but not incompatible account of events at Leipzig. It claimed that in the I 87os, a Professor Lechler had brought the question of the Frauenstudium before the Saxon parliament, resulting in women being barred altogether. Neue Bahnen 27,4 (I5 February I892): 28-29. 7· Albisetti, Schooling, I39, 223-237. Neue Bahnen reported in 1892 that twenty-two women, mostly English and Americans, were studying "illegally" at Leipzig. Neue Bahnen 27, 4 (I5 February I892): 28-29. Naturally, no record of these women exists in the Leipzig university archive. Nationai-Zeitung, no. II4 (I9 February I898, 3d suppl.), in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. VI, 271. Sixteen years after the last official auditor, in November 1896, Marie von Niederhoffer from St. Petersburg was the only woman to be granted permission to audit. LUA Rep. II Cap. IV Nr. 35, 36. 8. Drucker, 283; LUA Rep. II Cap. IV Nr. 35, 37· 9· Albisetti, Schooling, 223- 237. Heidelberg was one of a few universities at which mathematics and the natural sciences had broken off from the philosophical faculty. Krabusch, IJ5-I39· Boedeker. Albisetti writes that in May 1895, the Prussian minister of education, Robert Bosse, wanted to matriculate women with the Abitur in medical faculties, but Ernst von Bergmann "the director of the surgical clinic at Berlin ... stormed into Bosse's office, threatening to resign if he was to be forced to accept women in his classes. Bosse backed down, and full matriculation for women at Prussian universities would have to wait another 13 years." Albisetti, Schooling, 229-230. Io. HUA Signatur Ip: Acta des koniglichen Universitiits-Kuratorium zu Berlin betreffend die Zulassung der Frauen zu den Universitiits-Vorlesungen, 24-26.

NOTES TO PAGES

I 20-I

24

I I. Gertrud Baumer, "Geschichte und Stand der Frauenbildung in Deutschland," in Lange and Baumer, 3: 128 ff. Chronik der koniglichen Friedrich- Wilhelms-Universitiit 9 (r895-1896); 21 (1907-I9o8). 12. Albisetti, Schooling, 225-226. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. II, 1I7-u8, 127-I29. I3. On Eastern European jewish students in Imperial Germany, see jack Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers (New York, 1987), 63-71, ro8-115. HochschulNachrichten II, 2, issue I22 (November I900): 36. Vossische Zeitung, 8 November 1898, evening ed., in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. VII, 184. Wilhelm Lexis, Die Ausliinderfrage an den Universitiiten und Technischen Hochschulen (Leipzig and Berlin, 1906), 2.5. Similar percentages of Russian women among the foreign female students can be derived from the work of Anja Burchardt, which focuses on female medical students in Berlin. See Burchardt, l.7I-275· 14· Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers, 6. 15· Ibid., 17-18, 59-60,71-72. 16. Jack Wertheimer, "The 'Auslanderfrage' at Institutions of Higher Learning: A Controversy over Russian-Jewish Students in Imperial Germany," Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute 27 (1982.): 2.05. 17. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 1 Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. VIII, 2.3-27. Yom Brocke and Kruger, 97· Lexis, 2.5. 18. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (New York, 1949), 34· Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers, 63-71, ro8-n5. Linda Harriet Edmondson, Feminism in Russia, I90G-I7 (Stanford, Calif., 1984), 18-19, 9I, I47· M. Bessmertny, "Die Geschichte der Frauenbewegung in Russland," in Lange and Baumer, r: 338-349. I9. LUA, Medizinische Fakultat B VII No. 8, Bl. 6-72.. LUA, Rep. II, Cap. IV Nr. 35, 73-76. Berliner Borsen-Courier, 1 June 1900, evening ed., rst suppl., in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. VIII, 285. See also Neumann, so-p. 20. Richard Wulckow, "Die Erschwerung des Frauenstudiums an der Berliner Universitiit," Berliner Tageblatt 2.5, 2.86 (8 June I896), in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. IV, 433· 21. Bosse actually delegated his power to the Universitiitskuratorien, offices mediating between university and ministry, often composed of the university rector and a government official. Zentralblatt fur die gesammte Unterrichtsverwaltung in Preussen, no. I (20 january I896): 567. Albisetti, Schooling, 22.9-230. 2.2.. Nauck, 48-5 I. 2.3. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. XI, 132-141. 24. Maria Griifin von Linden, Maria Griifin von Linden: Erinnerungen der ersten Tubinger Studentin (Tiibingen, 1991), 118-120. 25. Hamburgische Correspondent, 3 December 1899, morning ed., in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII No. 8 Adh. II vol. I, ro; Hochschul-Nachrichten Io, 3, issue III (December I899): 61. 26. Neue Bahnen 31, 3 (1896): 23. Die Frauenbewegung 5, 24 (1899): 214. Nationai-Zeitung, 15 December 1899, evening ed., in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 1 Tit. VIII No. 8 Adh. II vol. I, 14·

254

NOTES TO PAGES

I 24-I 3 3

27. Die Frauenbewegung 6, 4 (I9oo): 26-27. Chronik der koniglichen FriedrichWi/helms-Universitat I3 (I899-I900). 28. Lange, "Frauenhochschulen?" I 57-158. 29. Hochschui-Nachrichten 14, 2, issue I 58 (November I903): 45· In the fall of I908, Roethe received permission to continue to exclude women from his courses. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 Adh. IV, Bl. I0-12. See Luise Berthold's account of how Roethe's ban affected her studies in her memoir, Erlebtes und Erkampftes (Marburg, I969), I6-I9. 30. Wegscheider, 31-33. 31. "Der Kampf der 'Klinisten' in Halle gegen das medicinische Frauenstudium," Academische Monatshefte r6 (I899-I9oo): I7-I8. See also Nationa/Zeitung, 25 March I899, morning ed., rst suppl.; Reichsbote, 24 March I899, 3d suppl.; Vo/ks-Zeitung, 2I March I899, morning ed.; Vorwarts, 2I March I899; Vossische Zeitzmg, I3 February I899, evening ed., 2.d suppl., all in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. VII, 27I, 263, 268, 269, and 275, respectively. 32. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. VII, 273-284. See also thereport in Die Frauenbewegung 5, 5 (I March I899): 47· 33· "Verzeichnis der Professoren und Dozenten ... ," Berliner Akademische Wochenschrift r, 6 (Winter Semester I906-I907): 45-46. 34· GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. IX, 23-27. 3 5. Ibid., 24o-244. 36. Albisetti, Schooling, 24 5. Bessmertny, 3: 33 I-33 8. 37· Yom Brocke and Kruger, 95-97, 433· Jarausch, Students, 64-68. 38. Drucker, 286-287. 39· LUA, Medizinische Fakultat B VII No. 8, 66-68. 40. Ibid., 69-72. LUA Rep. II, Cap. IV Nr. 3 5, 73-76. See also Drucker, 286-287, and Buchheim, 367. 41. LUA Rep. II, Cap. IV Nr. 6o, vol. 2, I44-I47· 42. Hochschui-Nachrichten I2 (1901-1902), 62. 43· LUA Rep. II, Cap. IV Nr. 6o, vol. 2, 155-I59. 44· Buchheim, 367. It is not clear whether they were able to continue their studies at other German universities. 45· GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. VIII, 173-I74. Petition published in Parlamentarische Angelegenheiten und Gesetzgebung [suppl. to Die Frauenbewegung]2 (IS January I900): 5· 46. The professor's name is unclear; it might be Schiemann. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. VIII, I39-I43· 47· Hochschu/-Nachrichten IO, 5, issue II3 (February I9oo): Io8, 6, issue I14: I26-I27. 48. Berliner Borsen-Courier, I June I9oo, evening ed., Ist suppl., in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. VIII, 28 5. 49· Vossische Zeitung, 25 July I90I, morning ed., in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va, Sekt. I Tit. VIII No. 8 Adh. II vol. I, 66; Chronik der koniglichen Friedrich- WilhelmsUniversitat I3 (I 899-I9oo), 14 ( I90D-I90I), I 5 ( I90I-I902). 50. Parlamentarische Angelegenheiten und Gesetzgebung 5 (I March I900): I8-I9.

NOTES TO PAGES

133-136

51. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. r Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. IX, 19-22. 52. Ibid., 97-98. 53· Ibid., I27-135, 346. 54· Albisetti, Schooling, 246. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. r Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. IX, 127-135, 346. Ibid., vol. X, 89-97. 55· GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. IX, 352-36I, 390-396. s6. "Die Zulassungsbedingungen fiir die Frauen ZU den Vorlesungen an der Berliner Universitat," Allgemeine Deutsche Universitats-Zeitung I6, I9 (I 5 November 1902): I47· 57· Neue Bahnen 37, 3 (I December I9o2): 288. 58. Neue Bahnen 38, I4 (IS July 1903): 178. The comparison in the case of Berlin is perhaps a bit misleading, since Berlin always experienced higher enrollments in the winter semester than in the summer, because students preferred to spend the summer semester in sunnier, more pleasant cities like Munich and Heidelberg. The official figures for Berlin in the winter of I90I-I902 recorded 634 women, and in the following winter semester, there were 560 women. Chronik der koniglichen Friedrich- Wilhelms- Universitat I 5 (I 90 r-I 902). 59· Statistics figured from data in the Chronik der koniglichen Friedrich- Wilhelms-Universitat of each year. 6o. Vossische Zeitung, 25 July 1901, morning ed., in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va, Sekt. r Tit. VIII No.8 Adh. II vol. I, 66. Ibid., vol. VIII, 23-27. 61. Burchart, 271. Another factor complicating any figures is that German women, admitted formally in other states after I90o, probably chose to study elsewhere, so this could also have left Berlin with a disproportionate share of Russian women. This possibility was discussed at the time, as mentioned below. Anja Burchardt writes that many German women avoided the Berlin medical school because of its hostile atmosphere. Ibid., 110-112.. Burchardt writes that the reforms of the winter term I90I-I902, in which a Russian Gymansium for girls certificate was found insufficient to audit, did not affect the number of Russian women at the Berlin university medical faculty and that the faculty, despite outward protest, continued to accept the Russian Gymansium for girls, plus an additional Latin certificate in the cases of all 112 Russian women who wrote medical dissertations there between 1905 and 19I8. Russian women, she argues, were less concerned about formal enrollment, because they needed only the doctorate (which could actually be earned by an auditor) to qualify for the Russian medical state exam. On the other hand, German women were more under pressure to take and pass the Abitur. Ibid., 47-78, 90-91. Burchardt writes that not many German women earned a doctorate at the Berlin medical faculty before I908 because it was an "unfriendly" place for women. In fact, the vast majority of the I 9 I dissertations written between 190 5 and I 9 I 8 were supervised by only 12 of the 200 professors of medicine. Ibid., no-us. 62. LUA Rep. II Cap. IV Nr. 6o vol. I, 133-149· Ibid., vol. 4, 59-59a. Ibid., vol. 5, 63-65. Ibid., vol. 6, 53, 1o6-Io7. 63. Nauck, 48-p, 54, 56-57· 64. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. X, 343-346. 65. Vossische Zeitung, 4 January 1902, morning ed., rst suppl., in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 1 Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. IX, 2.64.

NOTES TO PAGES

I37-I44

66. The state archive holdings for Baden are much thinner than for Prussia on this subject. The Badisches Generallandesarchiv in Karlsruhe had only one file of any interest: 1873-I908 (I). Die Zulassung der Frauen zum Hochschulstudium und beziehungsweise zur Immatrikulation als ordentliche Studierende. I [Normalakten]. GLA 2.35 No. 7440. 67. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. X, 3 5 I-3 52.. Similar petitions for Halle, Breslau, and Konigsberg were submitted. Ibid., 353-357. Hermine Heusler-Edenhuizen complained to the Prussian Kultusministerium about Russinnen in the medical school at Halle in I90I-I902.. While the dean was angry that she had gone over his head, "the next semester all of the insufficiently prepared Russinnen had disappeared." Heusler-Edenhuizen, 62.. 68. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. XI, 163-I65. 69. Ibid., 2.8o-2.81. 70. Ibid., 337-339. 71. Ibid., 2.45-2.46. 72.. Ibid., 2.84. 73· Ibid., I95-I97· 74· Vom Brocke and Kruger, 91. 75· GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. r Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. XI, 8-14. Jarausch, Students, I 50. 76. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. XI, 2.17-2.2.1. When jews had first been admitted to German universities, they, like the Studentinnen later, were not allowed to take state examinations for the civil service either. Richarz, I64-I72.. 77. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. XI, 2.4 7-2.5 5. 78. Ibid., 2.63-2.65. 79· Albisetti, Schooling, 2.46-2.50. So. GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. XII, 9-u. 81. Ibid., 24-27. Zentralblatt {Ur die gesammte Unterrichtsverwaltung in Preussen, no. 8 (18 August 1908): 691-692.. 82.. A. Tilmann, "Statistisches Uber das Frauenstudium," Monatschrift fur hohere Schulen (Berlin) 8 (1909): 309-310. 83. Monatschrift fur hohere Schulen (Berlin) I3 (1914): 70. 84. Chronik der koniglichen Friedrich- Wilhelms- Universitiit 2.2. (I 909 ), 2.6 (I9I2.). Vom Brocke and Kruger, 433· Two factors complicate tracing the effects of the frequent changes in auditing policy. Foreign women with outdated credentials were often allowed to stay on for an extra semester or two, thus distorting the number of auditors after reforms. In addition, many universities experienced seasonal fluctuations in enrollment, with more students in one semester than the other. 85. LUA, Rep. II Cap. IV No. 67, 7-8. 86. Hochschul-Nachrichten 16, 7, issue 187 (April I906): 177. 87. Vom Brocke and Kruger, 172.. 88. LUA Rep. II Cap. IV Nr. 6o vol. I, 133-I49. Ibid., vol. 4, 59-59a. Ibid., vol. 5, 63-65. Ibid., vol. 6, 53, I06-I07, Drucker, 2.90. 89. Buchheim, 369, 373· 90. Krabusch, IJ5-139· Nauck, 2.2.-2.3, 48-p, 54, 56-57· 91. Tompert, ns. Chronik der koniglichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat 13 (1899-1900). Vom Brocke and Kruger, 424. 92.. Huerkamp, Bildungsburgerinnen, I09-II3. 9 3. See Mertens, 6 I -6 2..

NOTES TO PAGES

144-147

2.57

94· See the protocols of the Hochschulkonferenzen edited by vom Brocke and Kruger. One good example of how reports of policy decisions circulated among the states is Wtirttemberg officials' announcement at a 1906 meeting that foreign women could only be admitted as auditors at Ttibingen, no matter what their qualifications. Vom Brocke and Kruger, 143. 9 5. Gerta Stiicklen, Untersuchung uber die soziale und wirtschaftliche Lage der Studentinnen. Ergebnisse eine an der Berliner Universitat im Winter 19I3h4 veranstalteten Enquete (Gottingen, 1916). 96. Stiicklen, [124]. 97· Ibid., 17-19. 99· Mertens, 42-43. 98. Ibid., [124]. 100. Stticklen, 2.3 IOI. Ibid., 19-20. 102. In all of Germany, there were 3,594 enrolled Studentinnen that winter semester of 1913-14· Ibid., p. 103. Sti.icklen received 433 replies, a response rate of 58% counting only the 746 German citizens. Ibid., 21-23. I04. Ibid., 4I-42. 105. Ibid., 4o-41. 106. Huerkamp, Bildungsburgerinnen, 2.4-40. Figures from all Prussian universities in the winter semester of I911-1912. show that about 68% of all female and 67% of all male students were Lutheran, 2.0% of all female and 27% of all male students Catholic, and 1 I% of all female and 6% of all male students Jewish. Hartmut Titze, Das Hoschschu/studium in Preuf5en und Deutschland I820-1944 (Gottingen, 1987), 226. Other information on the social background of women students in Imperial Germany can be found in Huerkamp, "Frauen, Universitiiten und Bildungsbtirgertum" and Mertens, Vernachlaf5igte Tochter. For Huerkamp's more general analysis of the Imperial and Weimar periods, see Bildungsburgerinnen, I 2.8143· On the overrepresentation of Jewish women among university students see the chapter "Jewish Women Confront Academia" in Marion Kaplan, The Making of the jewish Middle Class (New York, 1991), 137-152. 107. Stiicklen, 39· 108. Ibid., 36-37. 109. Ibid., 32.-33. See a similar account in Huerkamp, Bildungsburgerinnen, 75-76, 92.-109, and Mertens, 6I-64. I I I. Ibid., IOQ-IOI. uo. Stticklen, 104-I05. 112. Ibid., 97· I IJ. Ibid., 45· 73· I I4· Ibid., 42. I I 5. Huerkamp, Bildungsburgerinnen, I44-146. Kaplan, Making of the jewish Middle Class, 148-162. u6. See records of Verein studierender Frauen in Heidelberg, 1902, HbgUA A-740 VII, 2., Nr. 380, and Verein Heidelberger Studentinnen, 1904-1918, HbgUA A-741 VII, 2., Nr. 223. Rahel Straus, Wir lebten in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1961), 96. On Jewish female students in Heidelberg, see Kaplan, Making of the jewish Middle Class, 149-I50. II7. See files on "Verein deutscher in Leipzig studierenden Frauen (1905)," LUA Rep. II Cap. XVI Sec. III Litt. S Nr. 28, Bl. 2, and the "Verein immatriculierten Studentinnen 1906-1920," ibid., Nr. 2.5, pp. 1-7, 42. Boedeker, lxiv.

NOTES TO PAGES

I48-I53

118. HUA Signatur 8o6 (Bestand: Rektor und Senat) "betr. den Verein studierenden Frauen 1908," Bl. I-23, 38-41, 54-55. HUA Signatur 8n (Bestand Rektor und Senat) "betr. ·den Deutsch-Akademischen Frauenbund," Bl. I-II, 28. Michael Doerberl, Das akademische Deutschland (Berlin, I930), 2: 591. I 19. See the enrollment figures in vom Brocke and Kruger, 424. I 20. Titze, 42. Titze does not list the number of female foreign students in I9I4. Stiicklen, 34· I2I. LUA, Rep. II Kap. IV No. 6I vol. r, I57-I68. I 22. Otto Schroder, Aufnahme und Studium an den Universitaten Deutsch lands (Halle, I9o8), I 34, I90. 123. Albisetti, Schooling, 252-255. I 24. Drucker, 288. I25. Wertheimer, "The 'Auslanderfrage,"' I87-I89, I93, I98-2o2. I 26. Lexis, 8-9. I27. Cordula Tollmien, "Sofia Kowalewskaja," in Des Kennenlernens werth, ed. Traudel Weber-Reich (Gottingen, 1995), 352-357. CHAPTER

5

1. Vicki Baum, Stud. chem. Helene Willfuer (Berlin, 1928). 2. Ibid., 14· 3· For the United States, see Shirley Marchalonis, College Girls: A Century in Fiction (New Brunswick, N.J., 1995), and Sherrie A. Inness, Intimate Communities: Representation and Social Transformation in Women's College Fiction, L895-19I0 (Bowling Green, Ohio, I995). For Britain, see Susan Leonardi, Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists (New Brunswick, N.J., 1989) and Sally Mitchell, The New Girl: Girls' Culture in England, L880-L9L5 (New York, I995). 4· For another example of this generally sentimental variant of the Bildungsroman, see Paul Grabein, In]ena ein Student (Stuttgart, [I91I]). 5· On the problem of incorporating educated women into "conventional" plotlines, see Susan Leonardi's discussion of the women novellists at Oxford. Leonardi,

I-I2.

6. See the English translation of Gerhart Hauptmann, Einsame Menschen (Berlin, I903): Gerhart Hauptmann, Lonely Lives, trans. Mary Morison, vol. 3 of The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann, ed. Ludwig Lewisohn (New York, I914), 127-3I4. Elements of Einsame Menschen resonate with other works from the period, such as J.E. Poritzky, Die Studentin (Berlin, I90I); Rudolf Stratz, Aft-Heidelberg, Du feine (Stuttgart, 191I); and E.G. Kolbenheyer, Montsalvasch (Darmstadt, 1962). 7· Satires similar to Brinkmann's Das Corps Schlamponia include Hugo Bliimner, "Ziircherische Herzensergiegungen," Zurcher Zeitung I 7 and I 8 December I 89 I, in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. I Tit. VIII Nr. 8 Bd. IV, Bl. 534-535; Eugen Raspi, Emancipiert (Zurich, I895); Oskar Walther [Oskar Fr. Kunel] and Leo Stein [Leo Rosenstein], Fraulein Doktor (Leipzig, [I895?]); [M.] Josef Blum, Die Studentin (Miihlhausen i. Thiir., I897); and Ernst Gohlis, Die Korpsstudentin (Berlin, [I9IO]).

NOTES TO PAGES 153-159

259

8. Else Ury, Studierte Madel. Eine Erziihlung fur junge Miidchen (Stuttgart, [1906]). Other girls' stories were Carola von Eynatten, Student Annchen (Stuttgart, [1903]); Anna Schober, Das "Doktor-Lorchen" (Berlin, [ca. 1905]); Sophie Stein

[Anna Sophie Charlotte Klapp-Osten], Vor Tagesanbruch, Bibliothek des Vereins zur Reform der Litteratur fur die weibliche ]ugend, r, 2 (Berlin, 1896); and Marie von Felseneck [Maria Mancke], Fri. Studentin (Berlin, 1910). 9· Aimee Due [Minna Wettstein-Adelt], Sind es Frauen? (1901; reprint, Berlin, 1976). 10. Roy C. Cowen, Hauptmann-Kommentar zum dramatischen Werk (Munich, 1980), 49-54. See also police censorship files, Landesarchiv Berlin. II. See the German edition of Hauptmann's play cited in n. 6 above. Gary Stark, Entrepeneurs of Ideology (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1981), 246. 12. Cowen, 50. 13. Nancy Jean Pierce, "Woman's Place in German Turn-of-the Century Drama" (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Irvine, 1988), 27. Hauptmann himself spent some time in Zurich, where he associated with an eclectic mix of vegetarians, socialists, and conservative politicians. Ibid., 27. 14· Cowen, 49-54. 15. My emphasis. 16. Hauptmann, Lonely Lives, 161. 17. Ibid., 131. 18. Ibid., 164-65. 19. Ibid., 173. 20. Ibid., 178-79. 2r. Ibid., 189. 23. Ibid., 265-66. 22. Ibid., 225. 24. Ibid., 304. 2 5. Ibid., 30 5. 26. Stratz, Alt-Heidelberg, 46 5-466. The titles of Stratz's other works are Der weisse Tod, Der arme Konrad, and Gib mir die Hand. 27. Ernst Frank, jahre des Clucks, Jahre des Leids (n.p., 1969), 36. 28. Kolbenheyer, 228. 29. Ibid., 255. 30. Events in Zurich inspired a couple of satires published there. In 1891 Hugo Bliimner published a tongue-in-cheek look at the future minutes of the Zurich university senate of 1921 presided over by a female rector. Bliimner, "Ziircherische HerzensergieBungen." Raspi's Emancipiert offers a "progressive" satire in which the joke is on those against women's emancipation. The book was dedicated to an advocate of the woman question, Rosalie Wirz-Baumann, editor of the Schweizer Hauszeitung. JI. Walther and Stein, 7-8, II, 27. 3 2. Ibid., 76. 33· Ibid., 97, 94· 34· See, e.g., "1m to/len jahr": Ersterjahrgang des Kladderadatsch 1848 (1898), Der Kladderadatsch und seine Leute r848-r898 (1898), and Wilhelm Scholz, Bismarck-Album des Kladderadatsch r849-1898 (1898). 36. Ibid., 6. 35· Brinkmann, 2-3. 37· Ibid., 7-9. 38. Ibid., 12-20. 39· Ibid., 21-27 40. Ibid., 43-47. 41. Ibid., 44· 42. Ibid., 46. 43. Ibid., 5o-52. 44 . Ibid., 55 - 5 6.

260

NOTES TO PAGES

159-166

45· Ibid., 57-58, 6o-65. 46. Ibid., 74-79. 47· Ibid., So-83. 48. Gohlis, 25. 49· Ibid., 58-59. 50. Ibid., 64-65. 51. Ury's biographer notes that in a recent survey, 55% of all adult German women ranked Nesthakchen as the best-known girls' book. In addition, the Hoch Verlag republished the series in 1992 especially for the former East Germany. Marianne Brentzel, Nesthakchen kommt ins KZ (The Baby of the Family Goes into the Concentration Camp) (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), 9· 52. Brentzel, Nesthakchen, 84-85, 204. Brentzel notes her own surprise at learning that Ury was Jewish and had died in the Holocaust. Brentzel, Nesthakchen, 19. 53· Studierte Madel. Eine Erzahlung fur junge Madchen was published by Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft at Stuttgart, Berlin, and Leipzig with numerous reprintings: 1st-3d (1906); 4th (1908); 5th (1910); 21st-25th (1922); 26th-29th, revised by Ury under the title Studierte Madel von heute. Eine Erzahlung fur junge Madchen (1929); 3oth-33d (1930). Aiga Klotz, Kinder- und ]ugendliteratur in Deutschland r840-I950, vol. 5 (Stuttgart, 1999). 54· As Sally Mitchell writes of Victorian England, the audience for college novels was limited to middle-class girls. Mitchell, 50. 55· While there are quite a number of these stories (seen. 8 above), no systematic study of them exists. Because they were published for girls, the books can be particularly difficult to track down, as is information about their authors. 56. As Marianne Brentzel writes, Studierte Madel shows Ury's fascination with the Frauenstudium, which could have been an unfulfilled wish of hers. Marianne Brentzel, "Else Ury," in Stadtbild und Frauenleben, ed. Henrike Hiilsbergen (Berlin, 1997), 299· 57· Brentzel, Nesthi:ikchen, 84-85. 58. Ury, 1-3. All citations are of the 1908 printing. 59· Huerkamp, Bildungsburgerinnen, 40-44. 6o. Linden. Alice Salomon, Charaker ist Schicksal (Weinheim, 1983) 62-67. Edith Stein, Aus dem Leben einer judischen Familie (Louvain, 1965). 61. Ury, 11. 62. Ibid., 15. 63. Ibid., 93· 64. Ibid., 190-191. 6 5. Ibid., 193 -19 5. 66. Ibid., 19 6-201. 67. Mitchell, 58. Brentzel, Nesthakchen, 64-65. 69. E.g., ibid., 71. 68. Ury, 4 5. 70. Ibid., 143-146. 71. Ibid., 212-13. 72. Ibid., 22. 73· Ibid., 25. 74· Ibid., 26-27. 75· Ibid., 48-55. 76. Ibid., 2.18-221. 77· Ibid., 225. Quoted in Brentzel, Nesthakchen, 86-87. 78. A novel with a more unusual plot was Carola von Eynatten's Student Annchen, a story with strong similarities to others, involving a naturally talented girl from a loving family-but a twist: Annchen's father has a factory and she helps run it, settles a workers' dispute, and then marries one of her coworkers. Freifrau Marie Carola von Eynattten, a prolific children's writer, was born in 1861 (other sources give her dates as 1857-1917) in Vienna and never attended school. Pataky, 1: 201-202.

NOTES TO PAGES 166-170

261

79· Anna Schober (1847-1929) has a brief entry in Pataky, 2: 262. So. Ibid., 57· 81. Ibid., 64-65. 82. Ibid., 83. 83. Ibid., 239· 84. Ibid., 244-2.45. 85. Anna Sophie Charlotte Klapp-Osten was born in 1840 and wrote under the names Sophie Stein and A. v. d. Osten. Pataky, r: 428-429. A fellow officer of the

Association for the Reform of Children's Literature (Verein zur Reform der Jugendlitteratur), Maria Mancke (18 . p-192.6) was a very prolific children's author who wrote two books on the Frauenstudium: Fraulein Doktor. Ringen und Streben eines deutschen Madchens. Nach Tagebuchblattern bearbeitet und erzah/t (Elberfeld, 1898), and as Marie von Felseneck, Fri. Studentin (Berlin, 1910). Pataky, 2: n-12. 86. Stein, Vor Tagesanbruch, ro-12. 87. Ibid., 24-29. 88. Ibid., 31-33. 89. Ibid., 119 90. Ibid., 143-147· 91. Pataky 2: 429. Wettstein-Adelt's other writings include Macht euch {rei! Ein Wort an die deutschen Frauen (Berlin, 1893); lm dunkelsten Berlin (Berlin, [n.d.]); and Dreineinhalb Monate Fabrikarbeiterin (Berlin, 1894). 92.. See, e.g., Due, 67-68. 93· Ibid., 3· 94· Ernst von Wolzogen, Das dritte Geschlecht (Berlin, 1899). Brigitte Bruns, "Das dritte Geschlecht von Ernst von Wolzogen," in Hof-Atelier Elvira 1887-1928, ed. Rudolf Herz and Brigitte Bruns (Munich, 1985), 171-190, here 175-176. 9 5. Gabriele Reuter, Aus guter Familie (Berlin, r 897 ). Elisabeth Dauthendey, Vom neuen Weibe und seiner Liebe (Berlin, 1900). Maria Janitschek, Die neue Eva, 3d ed. (Leipzig, 1906). Frank Wedekind, Die Buchse der Pandora, vol. 3 of Gesammelte Werke (Munich, I9Il.). James W. Jones, "We of the Third Sex": Literary Representations of Homosexuality in Wilhelmine Germany (New York, 1990), 143,15I-I5l.,155-56,l.44• 96. Johanna Elberskirchen, Die Liebe des dritten Geschlechts. Homosexualitiit, eine bisexuelle Varietat, keine Entartung-keine Schuld (Leipzig, 1904). Jones, 94· Magnus Hirschfeld, Der urnische Mensch (Leipzig, 1903). 97· On the photo studio, see Herz and Bruns, Hof-Atelier Elvira. In her autobi-

ography, Charlotte Wolff discussed quite frankly her lesbian crushes and relationships as a young woman in Imperial and Weimar Germany. Charlotte Wolff, Hindsight (London, 1980). The following works provide a preliminary outline of lesbian identity and history in Imperial Germany. Eldorado. Homosexuelle Frauen und Manner in Berlin r8JO-I9JO (Berlin, 1984). Lillian Faderman and Brigitte Eriksson, eds. and trans., Lesbian-Feminism in Turn-of-the-Century Germany ([Weatherby Lake, Mo.], 1980). Iris Kokula, Weibliche Homosexalitat um 1900 in zeitgenossichen Dokumenten (Munich, 1981). James Steakley, ed., Lesbianism and Feminism in Germany, r895-I9I0 (New York, 1975). Sally Patterson Tubach, "Female Homoeroticism in German Literature and Culture" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1980). 98. The editors undoubtedly took their cue from the novel's title page, where the subtitle reads "a novel about the third sex." Due, 3-4; Jones, 76-77, q6-51, 2.9 s-97. here I sr; Faderman and Eriksson, vi-ix, 1-l.I, here vi. See also Doris

NOTES TO PAGES

170-177

Claus, "Wenn die Freudin ihrer Freundin lila Veilchen schenkt" in Lulu, Lilith, Mona Lisa . ... Frauenbilder der ]ahrhundertwende, ed. Irmgard Roebling (Pfaffenweiler, 1989) 19-31. 19-31. Claus writes that the answer to the question of the novel's title is "Yes, of course!" They are just "women who do not correspond to the ideal of femininity held by men." Claus, 2o-21. But the answer that WettsteinAdelt herself gives in the work is "No"; Claus ignores the legitimacy of these persons' self-definition as a "third sex." 100. Ibid., 6-10. 99· Due, s-6. IOI. Ibid., 22. 102. Ibid., 52· 103. Ibid., 24. 104. Ibid., 38. 105. Ibid., 51· I06. Ibid., 36. 107. Jones writes that the book plays to homosexual audiences wanting "a positive portrayal of homosexual characters" and straight audiences who get "moments of identification via the stylistics which the author employs." Jones, r 50-51. 108. "To become avowedly sexual, the New Woman had to enter the male world, either as a heterosexual on male terms (a flapper) or as-or with-a lesbian in male body drag (a butch)." Esther Newton, "The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman." Signs 9, 4 (1984): 573· 109. "Hauptmann [ ... ] present[s] female figures which are essentially constructed through the projection of male figures. They are represented as the desired object of those male figures. In this they function as an extension of the male figures' perspective, and delimit the male-dominated world." Pierce, 270. I 10. On the contradictions inherent in both feminist and liberal ideologies, see Scott, Only Paradoxes, r8. CHAPTER

6

1. Heusler-Edenhuizen, 43-48, 61. 2. Kathe Frankenthal, Der dreifache Fluch (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), 15-17. 3· Ibid.,27, 34· 4· Stiicklen, 93· 5· Some of the many writings by Studentinnen on behalf of the Frauenstudium follow. Franziska Tiburtius, one of Germany's first female physicians trained in Zurich in 1876, wrote "Das Medizinstudium der Frauen," Leipziger Tageblatt (22 May 1894) and with [Paul] Zacke, Bildung der Aerztinnen in eigenen Anstalten oder auf der Universitiit? (Berlin, 1900). Anna Kuhnow, another Zurich-trained German physician (M.D., r889), wrote Gedanken und Erfahrungen uber Frauenbildung und Frauenberuf. A third Zurich-trained German physician (M.D., 1890), Agnes Bluhm, wrote Die Entwicklung und der gegenwiirtige Stand des medizinischen Frauenstudiums in den europiiischen und aussereuropiiischen Liindern (Berlin, 1895); this also appeared as an article in the Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, no. 39 (1895). 6. Helene Stocker, who had studied in Germany but received her Ph.D. in 1901 in Bern, wrote Das Miidchengymnasium im preu{1ischen Abgeordnetenhaus. Kiithe Windscheid, holder of an 1895 Heidelberg Ph.D., wrote "Frauenstudium," Die christliche Welt 13 (1899): 758-761,776-779,799-801,828-830. Gertrud Baumer,

NOTES TO PAGES

I77-I78

who would earn a doctorate from Berlin in I905, published the overview "Geschichte und Stand der Frauenbildung in Deutschland," in Lange and Baumer, 3: 1-128. 7· Clare Schubert-Feder, Das Leben der Studentinnen in Zurich (Berlin, I893). Kathe Schirmacher, Ziiricher Studentinnen (Leipzig, I896). Boedeker, lv. 8. Margarethe Heine, Studierende Frauen (Leipzig, 1906). Julie Ohr, Die Studentin der Gegenwart (Munich, 1909). Stticklen, Untersuchung iiber die soziale und wirtschaftliche Lage der Studentinnen. Boedeker, lxviii. 9· One reason for this is that in Germany, unlike the United States, there is no tradition of alumni giving personal papers to university archives. Moreover, women's letters are often scattered, usually mixed in with the papers of husbands and male correspondents. Diaries are even more difficult to trace. One exception can be found in Schirmacher's extensive papers, housed at the Rostock university archive and now available in a microfiche edition. IO. Ella Mensch, Auf Vorposten. Roman aus meiner Ziiricher Studentenzeit (Leipzig, n.d. [I903]). I I. lise Frapan was the pseudonym of lise Levien, born in I 8 52 in Hamburg. Her work is demonstrably autobiographical in many of its details, and she audited courses at Zurich in the I89os. lise Frapan [-Akunian], Die Betrogenen (Berlin, 1898) and Wir Frauen haben kein Vaterland (Berlin, I899). Other works by Frapan with academic themes are lise Frapan-Akunian, Arbeit (Berlin, I903) and "Fraulein Doktor" in Schonwettermiirchen (Berlin, I9o8). Biographical infromation on Frapan can be found in Christa Kraft-Schwenk's brief but useful study, Ilse Frapan, eine Schiftstellerin zwischen Anpassung und Emanzipation (Wtirzburg, I98 5). Also see Pataky, I: 497, and Gisela Brinker-Gabler, Karola Ludwig, and Angela Woffen, Lexikon deutschsprachiger Schriftstellerinnen z8oo-I945 (Munich, I986), 96-97. I 2. Ricarda Huch, Erinnerungen von Ludolf Ursleu dem fiingeren (Berlin, I893). 13. Kat he Schirmacher, Die Libertad (Zurich, I 89 I); see also her Halb (Leipzig, I893). On Schirmacher's life, see her autobiography, Flammen (Leipzig, 192r); Hanna Kruger, Die unbequeme Frau (Berlin-Tempelhof, 1936 [I935]); and the entry on her in Brinker-Gabler et al., Lexikon, 27I-272. Another Zurich student, Lou Andreas-Salome, who had audited courses in Zurich in I88o-81, centered one of her best-known stories, "Fenitschka," on a female Russian student in Paris. Lou Andreas-Salome, Fenitschka. Eine Ausschweifung (Frankfurt am Main, 1983). 14. Elsa Asenijeff, Tagebuchbliitter einer Emancipierten (Leipzig, I902). Nestonoff also published Aufruhr der Weiher und das 3· Gesch/echt (Leipzig, I898). See the entry on Asenijeff in Brinker-Gabler et al., Lexikon, 22-2 3. 15. Croner herself studied in Breslau from 1897 to I900 but did not earn a degree. Else Croner, Das Tagebuch eines Friiulein Doktor (Stuttgart, I9o8). See the entry on Croner in Brinker-Gabler et al., Lexikon, 65-66. 16. Johanna Cohn-Philippson, Studentinnen-Uik. Scherz-szene fur einen heiteren Abend, in Fastnachts-Buhne (later Ulk-Biihne), no. 4 7 (Berlin, I 894). I7. Unpublished autobiographies exist for pioneering students such as Marie Munk, who was the first female judge in Germany; Helene Stoecker, who was a leader in sexual ethics with her League for the Protection of Mothers and Sexual Reform; and Gertrud von Ubisch, a University of Heidelberg biologist. Marie

NOTES TO PAGES

178-185

Munk's papers are in the Sophia Smith Collection of Smith College. Helene Stoecker's can be found in the Peace Collection of Swarthmore College. Gertrud von Ubisch's manuscript is in the University of Heidelberg library. 18. James Olney, ed., Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical (Princeton, N.J., 198o), 4· 19. On woman-authored autobiographies, see Katherine Goodman, Dis/Closures: Women's Autobiography in Germany Between 1790 and 1914 (New York, 1986); Katharina Gerstenberger, Truth to Tell: German Women's Autobiographies and Turn-of-the-Century Culture (Ann Arbor, Mich., 2001); Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, eds., De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women's Autobiography (Minneapolis, 1992); and Leigh Gilmore, Autobiographies: A Feminist Theory of Women's Self-Representation (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994). Another perspective on autobiography in Germany is Mary Jo Maynes, Taking the Hard Road: Life Course in French and German Workers' Autobiographies in the Era of Industrialization (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995). 20. Gertrud von LeFort, Halfte des Lebens (Munich, 1965). Another account by an auditor who did not take a degree was Elly Heuss-Knapp, Ausblick vom Munsterturm (Tiibingen, 1952) and Burgerin Zweier Welten (Tiibingen, 1961). 21. Julia Watson and Sidonie Smith write, "As theorists such as bell hooks, Elizabeth V. Spellmann, and Spivak, among others, insist, privileging the oppression of gender over and above other oppressions effectively erases the complex and often contradictory positionings of the subject. The axes of the subject's identifications and experiences are multiple, because locations in gender, class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality complicate one another.... Nor do different vectors of identification and experience overlap neatly or entirely." Julia Watson and Sidonie Smith, "Introduction: De/Colonization and the Politics of Discourse in Women's Autobiographical Practices" in Smith and Watson, xiv. 22. Shirley Marchalonis observed something similar about American collegeeducated women authors: "[W]hile the writers try to be honest and show dark as well as bright, they assert that college is a unique and positive experience and opportunity, and they display love of and gratitude toward the institution itself." Marchalonis, 48. 23. Flitner studied in Berlin, Munich, and Heidelberg until 1918 and obtained her Ph.D. in 1925. Elisabeth Flitner, "Ein Frauenstudium im Ersten Weltkrieg," in Zeitschrift fur Piidagogik 34, 2 (1988): 153-169, here 153. 24. Pataky, 2: 33-34. Linden. Alice Salomon, Charaker, and id., "Jugend- und Arbeitserinnerungen" in Fuhrende Frauen Europas, ed. Elga Kern (Munich, 1933), 3-34. Wegscheider. Boedeker, lxix. 26. Ibid., 23. 25. Linden, 8. 27. Ibid.,J4. 28. Ibid.,27-32, 48-49, 43· 29. Ibid.,42, 49-50. 3o. Ibid.,6J-6s, 95· 32· Ibid.,98-IOO. 31. Ibid.,83-86. 34· Ibid.,IOQ-111. 33· Ibid.,86-89, 147-149. 36. Ibid.,u8-119. 35· Jbid.,IIJ-II5• J8. Ibid.,12J-I25· 37· Ibid.,II9-120. 40. Ibid.,IJ8-I39· 39· Ibid.,I30-I3J.

NOTES TO PAGES

185-192

41. Ibid.,I2o--Il.3. 42. Ibid.,us-u6, IJI-132. 43· lbid.,I36-x38. Rupp, 38. Berliner Neuste Nachrichten, 3 March 1896, morning ed., 1st suppl., in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 1 Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. 4, 470. 44· Linden, 16-18, 8. 45· Ibid.,49. 62, IJ3. 46. On the appropriation of male traits to mark gender dissent, see Newton, s6o--s61. On the "creation" of the "third sex" in Imperial Germany, see Jones, 43-91, and Kokula. For additional sources, see nn. 91-97 in Chapter Five. On the reaction of the women's movement to lesbianism, see Margit Gottert, "Zwischen Betroffenheit, Abscheu und Sympathie," Ariadne 29 (May 1996): 14-21. For an overview of important arguments about the history of lesbians, see Martha Vicinus, "'They Wonder to Which Sex I Belong': The Historical Roots of the Modern Lesbian Identity," Feminist Studies 18, 3 (1992): 467-497. 47· Marianne Weber, "Yom Typenwandel der studierenden Frau," in Frauenfragen und Frauengedanken (Tiibingen, 1919), 18o--181. 48. Pataky, 2: 33-34. The curriculum vitae attached to her dissertation does not state her religion, a~ was then common; this may be an indication that she was Jewish. See Ella Mensch, Die Scheideformen im Neuhochdeutschen (Darmstadt, 1886). As of 1898, Mensch had not married. 49· Among Mensch's writings on modern literature were Richard Wagners Frauengestalten (Stuttgart, 1886); Neuland (Stuttgart, 1892); Der neue Kurs (Stuttgart, 1894); Konversationslexikon der Theater-Litteratur (Stuttgart, 1896); Die Frau in der modernen Litteratur (Berlin, 1898). Mensch wrote numerous articles for the Frauen-Rundschau on women students: "Die russische Studentin." FrauenRundschau 5 (1904): 948-950; "Verandert das Frauenstudium unsere Kultur?" ibid. 7 (1906): 617-618; and "Student und Studentin," ibid. 8 (1907): II6-II7. 5x. Ibid.,s. so. Mensch, Auf Vorposten, 8-9. 53· Ibid.,136. 52· See, e.g., ibid., 28. 54· Ibid.,8 5. 55. Frieda von Billow, Die schonsten Novel/en der Frieda von BUlow iiber Lou Andreas-Salome und andere Frauen, ed. Sabine Streiter (Frankfurt am Main, 1990), 246. 56. Kokula, 40. 57· Ella Mensch, Bilderstiirmer in der Berliner Frauenbewegung (Berlin, [1907]), 71. 58. Ibid.,74-75· 59· Gertrude von LeFort, Hiilfte des Lebens (Munich, 1965), 89-90. 6o. Heusler-Edenhuizen, 59· 61. Cordula Tollmien, "Emmy Noether," in Des Kennenlernens werth, ed. Traudel Weber-Reich (Gottingen, 1995), 228-239. 62. Salomon, Charakter, 8, 12-13, 19-22. 63. Ibid.,xo, 25-26. 64. Emphasis in the original. Ibid.,26-27. 65. Salomon, "Jugend- und Arbeitserinnerungen," 6. 66. Salomon, Charakter, 46-5 I.

266

NOTES TO PAGES

192-201

67. Ibid.,29-30, and "Jugend- und Arbeitserinnerungen," 9· Jill Ker Conway, When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography (New York, 1998), 48. 68. Salomon, Charakter, 30-38. 69. Ibid.,41-47, and "Jugend- und Arbeitserinnerungen," 11. 70. Salomon, Charakter, 8, 52-56. 71. Ibid.,s 8-59. 72. Ibid.,p. 73· Ibid.,53-54· On the importance of women's friendships in the BDF, see Ute Gerhard, Christina Klausman, and Ulla Wischermann, "Frauenfreundschaftenihre Bedeutung fur Politik und Kultur der alten Frauenbewegung," Feministische Studien rr, 1 (1993): 21-37. 74· Salomon, Charakter, 62-63. 75· lbid.,63, and "Jugend- und Arbeitserinnerungen," r6, rS-19. 76. Salomon, "Jugend- und Arbeitserinnerungen," 19. Indeed almost two-thirds of Berlin Studentinnen lived at home. "Respectable" rooms could be hard to find, and many landladies did not rent to women. Stiicklen, 86. 77· Salomon, "Jugend- und Arbeitserinnerungen," 19-20, and Charakter, 64. 78. Salomon, Charaker, 64. 79· Ibid.,64-65. 8o. Ibid.,6 s-66, and "Jugend- und Arbeitserinnerungen, 22-24. 81. Salomon, Charakter, 66-67, and "Jugend- und Arbeitserinnerungen, 24-25. 82. Salomon, Charakter, 67. 83. Ibid.,67. 84. Salomon, "Jugend- und Arbeitserinnerungen," 15; Jutta Dick and Marina Sassenberg, eds., fudische Frauen im 19. und 20. fahrhundert (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1993), 324-326; Gerhard, 299-301. 85. Salomon, Charakter, 8, 324-334. 86. Ibid.,332, 3 3 5-339. There are, then, several different "fingerprints" on the text, including my own English translation here of the German translation. These make it difficult to know Salomon's intentions in telling her life story and harder to interpret her student narrative. 87. Schirmacher, Flammen, 2o-3o. Anke Walzer, Kiithe Schirmacher (Pfaffenweiler, 1991), 68. 88. Gertrud Baumer, Lebensweg durch eine Zeitenwende (Tiibingen, 1933) r68, 171. 89. Ibid.,I57. 90. Ibid.,r6o. 91. Lida Gustava Heymann, Erlebtes-Erschautes, ed. Margrit Twellmann (Meisenheim am Glan, 1972). 9 3. Wegscheider, 7. 92. Heusler-Edenhuizen, 39· 95· Ibid.,r8-2o. 94· Ibid.,IQ-14. 96. Ibid.,2I-22. 97· August Bebel, Woman Under Socialism (1904; reprint, New York, 1970), 6. 98. Wegscheider, 22-23. 99· Salomon, Charakter, 59· Wegscheider, 23-24. roo. Wegscheider, 24-25.

NOTES TO PAGES

202-209

IOI. lbid.,25-29. 102. Ibid.,28-3 I. IOJ. Berliner Tageblatt, 10 August 1895, evening ed., in GSAPK Rep. 76 Va Sekt. r Tit. VIII Nr. 8 vol. 3, 70; Vossische Zeitung, 13 October 1895, morning ed., in ibid., 123. Another article about Wegscheider appeared in the Berliner Zeitung, 10 October 1895, rst suppl., in ibid., 124, and in the Berliner Borsen-Zeitung, 24 October 189 5, morning ed., rst suppl., in ibid., vol. 4, 4 3 I. Wegscheider, 3 I. 104. Albisetti, Schooling, 220-221, 225. 1o 5. Wegscheider, 25, 3 1-32. Schirmacher, Ziiricher Studentinnen, 1o-17. HeuslerEdenhuizen, who arrived in Halle after Wegscheider, also reported a chilly reception. Looking for a room, she was told, "[W]e don't accept studying women," or sometimes simply had the door slammed in her face. Heusler-Edenhuizen, 56. ro6. Wegscheider, 32-33. 107. Ibid.,3 3-34. On women's teaching as Versorgungsprinzip, see Albisetti, Schooling, 58-59, 87 108. On celibacy for female teachers, see Albisetti, Schooling, 58-59, 175-178. 109. Wegscheider, 34-35. no. Ibid.,33-34, 36-39. On the Humboldt Academy, see Eliza Ichenhaueser, Was die Frau von Berlin wissen mufS (Berlin, 1913), 71. III. Wegscheider, 41-42. 1 I 2. Ibid.,6-7. Heinz Niggemann, Emanzipation zwischen Sozialismus und Feminismus (Wuppertal, r98r), 343-344. 113. Marie Baum, Riickblick auf meinem Leben (Heidelberg, 1950), 39-58. I 14· lbid.,42-44. II 5. A third account with many parallels to Linden's is that of Luise Berthold, Erlebtes und Erkampftes (Marburg, 1969). II6. Frankenthal, 45, 30. II 7. Ibid.,3 I. II 8. Stein, A us dem Leben, 11 o-I I 2, I 21. All translations from the German are my own. 120. Ibid., q6-I48. 119. Ibid., 45· I2I. Liiders, 43-46. 122. Ibid., 208-209. 123. Ibid., 49-.50. 124. Ibid., 208-209. Gerhard, 302-303 I2.5. Another memoir with parallels to Wegscheider's is that of Else Ulich-Beil, Ich ging meinen Weg (Berlin, 196I). 126. Straus, 63-66. 127. Ibid., 76-79. I29. Ibid., 94-96. 128. Ibid., So, 90-92. I 30. Heusler-Edenhuizen, 87-92, IOJ-105. 131. Linden, 85-86. Stein, Aus dem Leben, 97· Frankenthal, 8. Wegscheider, 22-23. 132. Tollmien, "Sofja Kowalewskaja," 353· 133. Bernd Faulenbach, "Hedwig Hintze-Guggenheimer (1884-1942)," in Barbara Hahn, ed., Frauen in den Kulturwissenschaften (Munich, 1994), 136-151, here 138. 134. Heusler-Edenhuizen, So. Kuhn et al., roo Jahre Frauenstudium, 116.

NOTES TO PAGES 209-2 I 5

268

135. Straus, 85-88. 136. Ibid., 82-83 137. Ibid., 104-o7, 117. 138. Ibid., ro8. 139. Ibid., 141-144· 140. Ulich-Beil, 35, 99· 141. Gerit von Leitner, Der Fall Clara Immerwahr (Munich, 1993), 76-78, 85. 142. Arthur Mitzman, The Iron Cage: An Historical Interpretation of Max Weber (1970; new ed., New Brunswick, N.J., 198 5), 28 3-284. Max Weber had a

positive attitude toward the Frauenstudium. Marianne Weber, Max Weber (New Brunswick, N.J., 1988), u8, 242. Yet he does not seem to have acted as Doktorvater to any women, because he had a nervous breakdown in 1897 while a professor at Heidelberg and remained associated with the university in name only. Mitzman, 152, 156-157· 143· Mitzman, 283. 144. Ibid., 286. Martin Green, The von Richthofen Sisters (Albuquerque, N.M., 1988), 129. 145. Green, 162-163, 17o-173· Max Weber did not consummate his own mar-

riage, so while Richthofen's affair with Weber was emotionally involved, it may not have been physical. Mitzman, 276. 146. On single women in Germany, see Elizabeth Heineman, What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany (Berkeley, Calif., 1999). 147. Baumer, Lebensweg, 161, 168. 148. Schirmacher, Flammen, 62. Anke Walzer confirms an intimate and erotic correspondence between Schirmacher and Schlecker. Walzer, 9· 149. See Heymann, Erlebtes. r so. Frankenthal, 8-9, 25-29. I 5I. See Stein, A us dem Leben. See also Hanna-Barbara Gerl, "Edith Stein (r891-1942)," in Frauen in den Kulturwissenschaften, ed. Barbara Hahn (Munich, 1994). 235-249· I 52. Stiicklen, rIo- r I 1. 153. " ... bei dem modernen Verkehr aber zwischen Professor und Schiilerin

tritt [die Frauenfrage] in den Vordergrund: dem Lehrer, der die Welt kennt und die moderne Entwicklung iibersieht, ist diese kampfende Frauenindividualitat, dieser neue Typus, der sich erst durchringen will, gerade das Interessante." Schirmacher, Zuricher Studentinnen, 13-14. 154. Salomon, "Jugend- und Arbeitserinnerungen," 9· CONCLUSION I. Berthold, 16-18. Hans Delbriick, "Die Berliner Universitiits-jubiliium," Preussische ]arhrbucher 42 (1910): 193-204. 2. Arnold Ruge, Das Wesen der Universitaten und das Studium der Frauen (Leipzig, 1912), 30, 32-33. Ernst Bumm, Ober das Frauenstudium (Berlin, 1917),

11-20.

3. Yom Brocke and Kruger, 14 7. 4· Margarethe Heine, Studierende Frauen (Leipzig, 1906), 9· Boedeker, lxviii.

NOTES TO PAGES 216-223

5· See the discussion of liberal feminism in Scott, "Rewriting," 238-251, and Only Paradoxes, r6-r8. 6. Bussemer, 61-79, I7o-171. 7· See the idea of woman as a contested category in Denise Riley, "Am I That Name?": Feminism and the Category of "Women" in History (Minneapolis, 1988) and judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, 1990). 8. Martha Ruben and Alfred Kleinicke, Modernes Studententum (Leipzig, I907), 6. 9· Stiicklen, 98. IO. Ibid., II0-111. I 1. Stiicklen, 98. 12. Huerkamp, Bildungburgerinnen, 21-22. I3. Baumer, Lebensweg, 149-156. 14. Wegscheider, 33-39. I 5· Salomon, Charakter, 52-60. I6. Stein, Aus dem Leben, 191. On the political conservatism in German universities, see Jarausch, Students. I7. On Radcliffe, see Carey Goldberg, "Radcliffe Packing Up and Going to Harvard," New York Times, 2I April I999, sec. A, p. I4. On the idea of a German woman's university, see Angelika Wetterer, "Die Frauenuniversitat-Dberlegungen zu einer paradoxen Intervention," in Marlies Arndt et al., eds., Ausgegrenzt und mittendrin-Frauen in der Wissenschaft (Berlin, 1993), I89-228, and Anne Schluter's essay, "Eine Universitat nur fur Frauen-oder: 1st eine Hochschule der Frauen anachronistisch, utopisch oder eine realistische Alternative?" in Schluter, 325-346.

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INDEX OF NAMES OF PERSONS

Althoff, Friedrich, 138, 139 Andreas-Salome, Lou, 263n13 Andrian, Gabriele von, 187, 190 Augspurg, Anita, 67, 72, 73, 124, 131-33,169,170, I99,2I0,244n69 Avenarius, Richard, 202, 2.03 Bar, Ludwig von, I04 Baum, Marie, 205 Baum, Vicki, r p, 175 Baumbach, K., 248n47 Baumer, Gertrud, 56, 57, 64, 199, 206, 2I0,221,247n35 Bebel, August, 194, 2.00, 20I, 2.04, 2.05 Berthold, Louise, 2. I 3 Beseler, Max von, 140 Bethmann-Hollweg, Theobald von, 140 Biermer, Anton, 94 Bischoff, Theodor von, 2, 55, 8I, 89-95, 109, IIJ, IJI, I8J,214,245ni3 Bismarck, Otto von, 28, 96, 2.00 Bloem, Walter, I 53 Bluhm, Agnes, 177 Blum, josef, I57 Bohmert, Victor, 92-9 5 Bosse, Robert, 123, 251n9, 253n2.1 Braun, Lily, 2.41n12 Brentano, Lujo, 102, 104 Brinkmann, Max, 153, I58-6x, 169, 172.-75 Bumm, Ernst, 2I3, 214 Bunsen, Wilhelm, 118 Busch, Frida, 2.09 Cauer, Minna, 51, 192., 2.04 Cohn-Philippson, Johanna, 178, 2.03 Cords, Elisabeth, 190

Crepaz, Adele, 88 Croner, Else, 178 Delbriick, Hans, 213 Diels, Hermann, 12.0 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 22.1 Dodel, Arnold, 89, 103, 2.48n44 Dohm, Ernst, 55 Dohm, Hedwig, 51-57, 63, 65, 69, 70, 73, 82, 83,87-93,95, Il3, 120,163, I72, I95 Dransfeld, Hedwig, 2.30n34 Droysen, Gustav, 125 Du Bois, W.E.B., 8, 2.29n2.4 du Bois-Reymond, Emil, 118, 120 du Bois-Reymond, Paul, uS Due, Aimee, see Wettstein-Adelt, Minna Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von, I6I Eckhardt, Ludwig, so Eimer, Gustav Heinrich Theodor, 126, 185, x86 Erdmann, Johann Eduard, 2.7-35, 37-44, 46,48,2.36n45 Ermann, Adolf, 196 Erxleben, Dorothea, ro, 13, 180, 2.32n47 Eynatten, Carola von, 162, 2.6on77 Felseneck, Marie von, 162. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 4, 2.4 Figner, Vera, 6 r Flitner, Elisabeth, I79 Frankenthal, Kathe, 176, 177, x8o, 2.06, 2.07,2.09,210 Frapan [-Akunian], lise, see Levien, lise Freund, Wilhelm Alexander, 93, 109

INDEX OF NAMES OF PERSONS

Frey, Zurich Professor, 94 Frobel, Friedrich, 58, 78 Gauss, Karl Friedrich, 9I, 93 Gentry, Ruth, I2.o Gierke, Otto, 2., 85, Io2., I04 Gnauck-Kuhne, Elisabeth, Io, I I Gohlis, Ernst, I6o, 161 Goldschmidt, Henriette, 58 Gothein, Eberhard, I44 Goudstikker, Sophie, I70 Grimm, Hermann, I, 98-roo, 102., 2.I6 Haber, Fritz, 2.09 Hamilton, Alice, 8 Hamilton, Edith, 8 Harnack, Adolf von, 2.8, 97, 2.2.I Harnack, Agnes von, 97, 2.07 Hartmann, Eduard von, I03 Hartmann, Oskar, 8 5 Hauptmann, Carl, 154 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 153-57, 173-75, 189,2.07 Hegel, G.F.W., 5, 27, 40, 41, 43, 46, 47, 214 Heiberg, A.C.L., I I I Heim, Doctor, 82 Heine, Margarethe, I77, 2I5 Helmholtz, Hermann, 115, uS Henius, Doctor, 2pn84, 2pn89 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 25 Herkner, Heinrich, Io2-4 Hermann, Doctor, 92, 94 Heusler-Edenhuizen, Hermine, 176, I77,I9o, I99,2o8,2.o9,255n6?, 267n105 Heymann, Lida Gustava, 72, 73, 2IO Hintze, Hedwig, 209 Hintze, Otto, 45, 46, 2.09 Hippe!, Theodor von, 9, 229n3o Hirsch, Jenny, 54-55, 246-47ni3 Hirschfeld, Magnus, 170 Holle, Ludwig, I40, 141 Huch, Ricarda, 72, I78, 205 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 4, 24,25 Husser!, Edmund, 206, 207 Hyde, Ida, 8, 9 Immerwahr, Clara, 209 Jaffe, Edgar, 2IO Jakoby, Hermann, 55,88

Kempin, Emilie, 248n44 Kettler, Hedwig, 52, 54, 59, 63-74, 76, 79, 8o,82-84,97, Io6, 19I, I95,207, 243n53, 248n44 Kirchhoff, Arthur, I I 3 Kirchhoff, Gustav, I I 8 Klapp-Osten, Anna Sophie Charlotte (pseudonym Stein, Sophie), 162, I67, I68, 26In84 Koenigsberger, Leo, ns, 116, 118 Kolbenheyer, E. G., I 56, I 57 Kovalevskaia, Sofia, 6o, 115, 116, 118, I 19, I 51, 173, I 82-84, 209 Kuhnow, Anna, I77 Lange, Helene, 51, 52, 54-56, 58, 62, 63, 67,69,?0,?2-82.,84,97.100, I05, II4, 124, I2.5, I62, 163, 176, I9I, I97, I99,2.0I-4,208,2I0,2I6,219, 2.33n59, 2.4Ini2. LeFort, Gertrud von, 179, I90 Lehmus, Emilie, 59 Lenz, Louise, 233n6r Levien, lise (psudonym Frapan [-Akunian], lise), 178, 2.63n11 Linden, Maria von, 63, 12.4-2.6, 163, I68, I79-88, 190, I95. 198,199,206, 2IQ-12. 0 2.18, 22.1 Lindner, Felix, 98, roo-102., 216 Ltiders, Marie-Elisabeth, 17, 180, 207 Mancke, Maria, 261n84 Mark!, Emma, 2, 3 Marx, Karl, 201, 2.02 Mausbach,Joseph, 248n49 Mensch, Ella, 178, 188, 189 Mill, John Stuart, 54-56, 68, 77, 87, 88, 201 Morgenstern, Lina, 105, no, I I I Nathusius, Philip von, 55, 57, 88 Naumann, Friedrich, 72. Nietzsche, Friedrich, 29, I s6, 202 Noether, Emmy, 190 Oelsner, Elise, 97 Ohr, Julie, 177 Orth, Johannes, 25 In84 Oskar, Walther, I 57 Ostwald, Wilhelm, 249n55 Otto [-Peters], Louise, so, 52., 53-55, 57-59, 61, 63, 70, 74, 82, 83, 163

INDEX OF NAMES OF PERSONS

Pappenheim, Bertha, II Paulsen, Friedrich, II, 19, 20, 27-29, 3 2, 34.35.4Q-44.48 Peyser, Dora, 198 Pinn, Karl, 103, 104 Poritzky,J. E., 156 Posadowsky (Prussian interior minister), 133 Raschke, Marie, ro6 Reclam, Professor, 91 Renan, Ernest, 8 Reuter, Gabriele, 170 Rheinbaben, Georg von, 140 Richthofen, Else von, 210 Ritter, Hermann, III, II2 Roethe, Gustav, 125, 126, 196, 213 Rotteck, Carl von, 3 2 Roux, Professor, 126, 127 Ruben, Martha, 219 Ruge, Arnold, 213 Salomon, Alice, I63, 179, I8o, 19o-99, 207,2IQ-I2,2I8,22I,266n86 Scheel, Hans von, 93, 94 Schelenz, Hermann, 97 Schelling, F.W.j., 25 Schirmacher, Kathe, 67, 72, 73, 177, 178, 199,203,2I0,2II,241nr2 Schlecker, Klara, 210 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 4, 5, 24, 25, 34.37 Sch!Ozer, Dorothea, ro, IJ, 232n47

Stein, Lorenz von, 45, 93 Stein, Sophie, see Klapp-Osten, Anna Sophie Charlotte Stern, Alfred, 202 Stratz, Rudolf, 156 Straus, Rahel (nee Goitein), I47, r8o, 207-9 Stiicklen, Gerta, 144, I45, 148, 177, 2.19, 220 Studt, Konrad von, I26, 133, 139, 140 Sudermann, Hermann, 189 Suttner, Bertha von, 203 Sybel, Heinrich von, 40, 93 Taube, Elise, 13 3 Thilo, Maria von, 61 Thomas, M. Carey, 8 Tiburtius, Franziska, 59, 62, 63, 77-79, 82, I77. I79 Tiburtius, Henriette, 77, 78 Tilman, Albert, I4I Treitschke, Heinrich von, I, I9, 48, I22, I26, 203 Tyndall, john, 1 I 5 Ullich-Beil, Else, 209 Ury, Else, I 53, r6I-68, I73, I75, 26onsr Victoria, Crown Princess (later Empress Friedrich), 78 Virchow, Rudolf, 96, u8 Vogt, Karl, I09

Schmidt, Auguste, 51, 58, 62, 63, 84,

201 Schmidt, Eric, 138 Schmoller, Gustav, ro, II, 138, 144, 195, 196 Schober, Anna, I62, 166-68 Schrader, H., 78, 193 Schrader, K., 78 Schubert-Feder, Clare, 177 Schwerin, jeannette, 192-94 Schwerin, Ludwig, 93 Sering, Max, 163, I94, 212 Seydewitz, von (Saxon education minister), I I9 Simmel, Georg, 72 Si:immering, 9 I Stein, Edith, I63, I8o, 206, 207, 209, 210,222 Stein, Leo, I 57

Wagner, Adolph, 120, I44• I95, I96 Waldeyer, Wilhelm von, Io6, I08-I3, I26, 251nroo Wartensleben-Andrian, Countess, see Andrian, Gabriele von Weber, Alfred, I44, I95, 196, 210, 212 Weber, Marianne, I87, 190, 208 Weber, Mathilde, 74, 8o-82, ro8, I83-85, I87, 250n78 Weber, Max, I87, I94, uo, 268ni42 Wedekind, Frank, I7o, 189 Wegscheider, Hildegard (nee Ziegler), I25, I79, I8o, 198-209,211,212, 218,221 Weierstrass, Karl, I r 5, I I 6 Weizmann, Chaim, I2I Welcker, Carl, 3 2 Wendt, F. M., 59

INDEX OF NAMES OF PERSONS

Werder, Karl, I I 8 Wettstein-Adelt, Minna (pseudonym Due, Aimee), 153, 169-74 Wilamowitz-Mollendorf, Ulrich von, 138 Windscheid, Kiithe, 147 Wolff, Charlotte, 261n96 Wolff, Emmy, 198

Wolzogen, Ernst von, 169, 170 Zedlitz-Triitzschler, Robert von, I 20 Zerkowitz, Sidonie Grunwald, 88 Ziegler, Klara, I 89 Ziegler, Theobald, 26-29, 32-35,39-47, 236n36

SUBJECT INDEX

Abitur (university qualifying exam), 5, 23,29,30,47>7I,80, I05,II6, II?, I29, I3I, I33· I37. I38, I48, I49. 151,214,217,255n61 Academic citizenship (akademisches Burgerrecht): and academic freedom, 32-35; and Bildung, 4o-41; coeducation as threat to, 99; and debate over women's admission, 102-6; gender roles and, 46-49; and idea of maturity, 29-3 2; institutional background to, 22-29; medieval origins of, 20; versus political citizenship, 21; and sense of honor, 3 5-3 7; special status of, in society, 4I-46; threat to, 86; traditional ideal of, 3; vision of masculinity inherent in, 19-49; and Wissenschaft, 37-40 Academic freedom, 29, 32, 47, 48, 234n1, 249n5 5 ADF, see General German Women's Association Admission, debate for women's: and academic citizenship, 102-6; and agitation by reformers, 96-97; background to, 85-87; and compromise between woman question and academic citizenship, 113-14; creation of niche for, 106-13; and progressive response of Hermann Grimm, 98-1oo; andresponse of professoriate, 8?-9 s; and traditionalist response of Felix Linder, IOQ-102 Admission, regulation of women's: and conditions for formal matriculation, I 37-44; and emerging sociological profile of female student body, I44-48; and female auditing, n8-24; and modifications to auditing policy, 128-37;

and reaction to female auditing, 12428; resultant restrictions of, 148-5I; and traditional requirements, I I 5-I8 Alsace-Lorraine, IO Alt-Heidelberg, Du feine (Stratz), I 56 American higher education, I 4- I 5; and admission of American women to German lectures, 8; and admission of women to American universities, I5-16; German influence on, 8-9 Anti-semitism, 36, 43, II?, n8, I29, I48 Arztinnen fur Frauenkrankheiten (Weber), 8o Association for Women's University Study (Verein fur Frauen-Studium), 73, 124, 13I, I33 Association of Enrolled Women Students in Leipzig (Verein immatrikulierten Studentinnen in Leipzig), 147 Association of German Women's Organizations (Bund deutscher Frauenvereine; BDF), 53, 193, 194, I97, 199, 207, 212. Association of German Women Students (Verein deutscher studierenden Frauen), 147 Association of Women Students in Heidelberg (Verein studierender Frauen in Heidelberg), I47 Association of Women Students (Verein studierender Frauen; Berlin), 147, 148 Auditing, female, 3, 10, 116, u8, II9, 124, r28,I37,233n59,249nss. 256n84 Au(Vorposten (Mensch), I78, I88 Austria, 14 Baden, ro, 136,137,143 Bavaria, 10, 137 293

294

SUBJECT INDEX

BDF, see Association of German Women's Organizations Behrend affair, I24, I25 Bildung (intellectual cultivation), 5, 3 8, 212., 2.16, 2.38n9o; as form of power, 26; and gender, 40; as goal of university study, 29, 48, 105; as greatest reward of academic citizenzenship, 40; and individuality, 41; Lange's emphasis on, 74, 75; and neohumanists, 25, 28 Bildungsburgertum, see Middle class, educated Brain weight, 2., 89, 109 Britain: British higher education, 6, 14-15; -,and challenges from modern research-centered institutions, 8; England, 14, 2.47n37 Brotstudent, see Careerism Careerism, 2. 3, 2.6, I oo, 102 Carlsbad Decrees, 4 3 Catholics, 2.6, 36, 44, 97, ro5, I48, 2oo, 257nio6 Catholic Women's League (Katholischer Frauenbund), ro-n, 2.30n34 Central Academic Association (Wissenschaftlicher Zentralverein), So Civil service, 4, 45, 256n76; government jobs, 6; and officials' estate, 4 5 Civil society, 4 2-4 5 Class: allegiance, 5, 6, 42; definition of, 5; difference between sexes as, difference, 65; sublimation of issue of, 42-43 Coeducation, 66, 99, 251n84 College for Social Work and Instruction (Fachhochschule fur Sozialarbeit und Sozialpiidagogik), I 97 Columbia University, I4 Committee for Complete Girls' Gymnasien, 72 Corporatism, 7, 84, 87, I 50, 222 Corps Schlamponia, Das (Brinkmann), I, I53, 158-60 Denmark, I4 Deutscher Frauenverein Reform (German Women's Reform Association), see Reform (association) Deutsches Tageblatt, 2 Deutsche Student amEnde des 19. jahrhunderts, Der: Ziegler), 27

Deutsche Universitiiten und das Universitiitsstudium, Die (Paulsen), 27 Difference: equality versus, 52, 53, 241n11; female, 56, 102, 103, 2I6 "Doktor-Lorchen," Das (Schober), I62, I66, 167 Dritte Geschlecht, Das (Wolzogen), I69-70 Dueling, 2.4, 35, 36, 44, roo, I05, 238n71, 2.40ni23; and Comment, 36; ritual combat, 8 Einsame Menschen (Hauptmann), 153, I54-s6, I73 Employment, 2, 5 I; for middle-class women, 5 I, 52; for upper-middle-class women, I2-IJ. See also Careerism

Family, 12, 4I, 42, 47, 68; changes in structure of, 51; relationship of student to, 30, 31, 237n53 Femininity, 76, 96, I69, 170, I74; and feminine sensibility, 2, 2.5 In84, 89; Lange's reconfiguration of, 76; loss of, 6:z., 88; as rationale for admission, 83 Feminism, Anglo-American model of, 53 Foreigner question (Auslanderfrage), 24, 128, I50 Fourth way, I so France: French higher education, 37; -, and modern research-centered institutions, 8 Frankfurt, 72 Fraternities (Corps), J2, 34-36, 42-46, I 50; nationalist, reform-oriented (Burchenschaften), 43 Frauenarzte fur Frauenkrankheiten (Lange), 74 Frauenbildung (Lange), 70, 74 Frauenstudium-Frauenbildung association,2o8 Frauenstudium (university education of women): and class, I 6; context for, I I; and corporatism, 7; idea of, r; link of, to middle-class women's movement, IO, I2; as oxymoron, 52; versus women's studies, 227n4 Fraulein Doktor (Walther and Stein), I 57 Free Union of Women Students at Berlin (Freie Vereinigung studierender Frauen zu Berlin), 147 Fri. Studentin (Felseneck), 162

SUBJECT INDEX

General German Women's Association (AIIgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein; ADF), IO, so, 51, 53· s8-6o, 62, 63, 69, 74, 97, I85, 2oi, 2II, 248n47

German Academic Women's League, 148 German Federation of Female Student Associations (Verband der Studentinnenvereine Deutschlands), I46 German Federation of Studying Women ( Verband der studierenden Frauen Deutschlands), I46 German Federation of the Associations of Studying Women (Verband der Vereine studierender Frauen Deutschlands), IS German Free Student League (Deutsche Freie Studentenschaft), 138, 208 German League of Academic Women's Associations (Deutsch-Akademischer Frauenbund), I47• 148 German Protestant Women's League (Deutsch-Evangelischer Frauenbund),

295

jewish Women's League Uudischer Frauenbund), I I johns Hopkins University, 9; medical school, 15 Karlsruhe, 72, So, 143, 243n63 Korpsstudentin, Die (Gohlis), r6o-6I Law, study of, 2.3, 104, 106, 107 League of Catholic German Female Student Clubs (Verband der katholischen deutschen Studentinnenvereine), 147 Leipzig, so, 59 Lesbianism, 73, 17o-72, I74, I89, 210 Lette Association, 95, 245-46ni3 Liberalism, r66, 174, 193,215, 216; and Bismarck's break with liberals, 96; contradictions inherent in, 7, 53, 24In8; cultural, 78; German, 13; Hedwig Dohm and, 56-57; women's movement as outgrowth of, 52, 9 5

IQ-II

Girls' and Women's Groups for Social Aid Work, 192-94 Gleiche Bildung fur Mann und Frau! (Kettler), 69 Greek study, 23 Gymnasialkurse (Lange), 79, 8o Habilitation, 26, 37, 140; and Habilitationsschrift, 22 3 Hannover, 72 Harvard University, 8

Marriage, 3I, 38, 94, 209, 237n53; bargain, 66; student, 32. Masculine identity, 19, :z.o, 29, 40 Masculine virtue, 46 Mathematics, study of, 2.3, :z.s:z.n9 Mecklenburg, 10, I37, 2I3, :Z.I4 Medicine: and the field of gynecology, 5, 8r, I09; medical certification, 112; Study of, 5, 13-15, 23, 54, 56, 74, I06-9, III, 1I2, I29, 130, 2I6, 241n25, 250n75

Hegelianism, 5, 40, 41, 43, 47, 2.14

Menstruation, 89, 90, 25 1n89

Hessen, Io "Higher Girls' School and Its Mission, The" (Lange), 78 Homosexuality, 169-72, 238n59,

Middle class: bourgeoisie, German, 4, 6, I7, 53, 86; educated (Bildungsburgertum), 4, 6, 64-66, I48, 220, 232n46, 242-43n39; -,versus moneyed middle class (Besitzburgertum), 20 Midwives, 109 Military service, 44-45 Montsalvasch (Kolbenheyer), I s6-57 Morality, 2, I02, 103, 238n62

262n1o6

Honor, 29, 35, 45, 48, 105 "Intellectual Boundaries between Man and Woman" (Lange), 75 International Association of Schools of Social Work, I98 International Committee on Women, 198 Jesuitismus im Hausstande, Der (Dohm), 55 jewish students, 4, 24, 26, 36, 6I, 105, I32, I47, 148,232n46,256n84, 257n1o6; and fraternities, 36

Neo-humanism, 24, 25, 28, 37, 235n24, 235n25 Neue Bahnen (New Paths), so, 58, 6o-62,81,95, I35,252n6 Nihilism, 6 r Nursing, field of, 107, 2pn89

Oberlin College (United States), 14

SUBJECT INDEX

Oldenburg, 77 On the Subjection of Women (Mill), 54-55,88 Oxford University, I4 Petitions: and ADF, 59-60, 74, 79, 248n47; and auditing courses, r6; and German Abiturientinnen, I 37; and political parties, 6; and public discussion, IO, 96, 97; and Reform, 64, 70, ?I, 79 Philister, 238n63 Philosophy, study of, IS, 23, 106, 107, 252n9 Phrenology, 9 I Physicians: female, 53, ss, 57, 59, 74, 87, 94,95, I04,I08,III-I3 Political citizenship, 21, 43 Political parties: membership in, 2; and support for women's higher education, 6 Political radicalism, 6I, 64, 72, 73, 117, 118, I29 Prague, 59 Pregnancy, 89, 90 Premarital sex, 24; and student marriage, 32 Professions, women's, s, 74, 82, 88, ro6; and professional competition, 87, 93-95,I02, I03 Professoriate: division of, into traditional and reformist camps, 88; response of, 86; and Swiss professors, 95, I03 Prostitution, 24, 35, 233n59 Protestants, 26, 97, 232n46, 257nio6 Protestant Social Women's Group (Evangelisch-Soziale Frauengruppe), Io-II Prussia, Io, 24, 27, 59, 72, 122, I23, 137-4I,249n7s,257nio6 Psychology, study of, 4, 87 Radcliffe College, 223 Realkurse (Lange), So Reform (association), 59, 64, 67-73 Reformers, 3, 6, 7, I4, 52, 86; and establishing legitimacy of Frauenfrage discourse, 96; and Hedwig Dohm, 54-57; and Hedwig Kettler, 63-73; and Helene Lange, 73-82; and Louise Otto, 57-63 Religious women's movements, Io-II Research university, modern, 4, 8, 25, 87 Russia, 1873 decree of the Tsar, 6o, 9 5 Russian Gymnasium, n8, I3o-33, 255n6r

Russinnen. See under Students, female, foreign Saxon~IO,I37,138, I42,249n75 Scholarship, see Wissenschaft Schools, 27, 29; and Frauenhochschulen (female colleges), sB-59, 70, 79, 243n57; and girls' Gymnasium, 6r, 62, 64, 66, 7o-72, So, 148; and Gymnasium (classical secondary), 22, 23, 62, 71; and hohere Tochterschule (higher girls' school), 22, sr, 62, II?; and Miidchenlyzeum (girls' lyceum), 243n57; Realgymnasien, 23; and Realschule, 22; and Reformgymnasium, 7 2; and technische Hochschulen (technical colleges), 23; and Volksschule (elementary school), 22, sr; and Vorschule (preparatory school), :2.2-23 Sind es Frauen? (Due), I 53, I69, I?O, 172-74, r88, 189 Sittlichkeit (ethical life), 46, 49, 67 Social Democratic Party (SDP), 59, 203, 205 Socialism, 6, sB, 6I, 96, 129, 200, 2oi, 247n3S Sonderweg theory, r 3 State: in Hegelian view of society, 43; notions of, s, 45; relationship of, to theology and law, ro6; relationship of women to, 6 State professional examinations, 6, 249n75,256n76 Student: as colorful and celebrated figure, 29; and concept of student honor, 48; morality of, 102, 103; special status of, 4I Student Annchen (Eynatten), 162, 26onn Studentin, Die (Blum), 157 Studentin, Die (Poritzky ), I 56 Studentinnen, see Students, female Studentinnen-Ulk (Cohn-Philippson), 203 Students, female, autobiographical accounts of: and Alice Salomon, I9o-99; and effect on private lives, 208-ro; and Hildegard Wegscheider, 199-206; and Maria von Linden, r8o-9o; and problem of identity, 176-So; and second generation of female students, 206-8 Students, female, foreign, 4, 7-8, I3, I4, 17-I8,24,6o-62, II?, 129,256n84;

SUBJECT INDEX

and Russian Jewish women, s; and Russinnen, 14, II9, u.o, 11.3, 11.8-36, 141., 143, 25 sn61; treatment of, versus treatment of foreign men, 7-8 Students, female, literary images of first: and Else Ury, 161-68; and Gerhart Hauptmann, 154-57; and Max Brinkmann, 157-61; and Minna Wettstein-Adelt, 168-75 Students, foreign, n6, 128, 129, 150 Studierte Madel (Ury), ISJ, I6I-66 Studium und die Ausubung der Medicin durch Frauen, Das (Bischoff), 89 "Sunday's Child's Experiences and Aspirations" (Linden), 18o-88 Sweden, 14 Switzerland, 6r; Swiss universities, 10, J4, 59> 94 Syphilis, 3 2 Tagebuchblatter einer Emancipierten (Asenijeff), I78 Tagebuch eines Fraulein Doktor (Croner), I78 Theology, study of, IS, 23, 106, 107 Third sex, 153, 169-73, I89 Thuringia, Io

University of Basel, 14 University of Berlin, 1, 19, 23, 127, 129, 131-33,137· 141,143-45,213, 25 sn6r; and female auditing, rr8, 119; founding of, 4; and nee-humanism, 24-25, 235n25 University of Bern, 6I, 94 University of Freiburg, 143 University of Gottingen, 13, 23, u8, 124 University of Halle, I, 27, 62, I25, 127 University of Heidelberg, 9, 23, 6o, u8, 137,I43,252n9 University of Leipzig, IIB, 119, 124, I29, IJO, IJ7, 142,143,252n6 University of Paris, 14, Io8 University of Rochester, I 5 University of Rostock, 100, 249n58

297

University of Tiibingen, 13, 124, 125 University of Vienna, 14 University of Virginia, I4 University of Zurich, 2, 3, 14, 54, 6o, 8I, 87, 91, ro8, u8, 241n25, 246n11, 159n29 Venereal disease, see Syphilis Verein Frauenbildungs-Reform (Association for the Reform of Women's Education), see Reform (association) Vor Tagesanbruch (Stein), 161, 167, r68 War Ministry, 3 Was die Pastoren von den Frauen denken (Dohm), 55,88 Weimar, 69, 77 Wissenschaftliche Emanzipation der Frau, Die (Dohm), 55, 90 Wissenschaft (scholarship), 15, 29, 99, 108, 236n27; ethos of, 26; and gender, 37; and marital metaphor, 3 8; student's relationship to, 105 Woman question (Frauenfrage), 3, 11, I], 51-53, 6I, 87, 247n35; compromise between, and academic citizenship, 114; legitimacy of, 96 Woman surplus, II, I2, 52, 94, no Women's movement, 3, 58, 84; divisions in, 5, 6; versus feminist movement, 53, 241n12; and Hedwig Dohm, 54-57; and Hedwig Kettler, 63-73; and Helene Lange, 73-82; and Louise Otto, 57-63; middle class women's movement, xo, r66; and woman question, 50-54 Women's School for Social Work (Sozia/e Frauenschu/e), 197 Women's suffrage, 55-57, 84, 144n69; and women's vote, 1 Women's Welfare (Frauenwohl), 104 Wiirttemberg, 10, I 37 Yale University, 8, 148 "Yellow Brochure" (Lange), 78, 97 Zurich, 6r, 8r