The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 2/5. The Convention of German Women in Frauenstadt
THE CONVENTION OF GERMAN WOMEN IN FRAUENSTADT.
(Editorial Correspondence.)
Why so careworn, my friend, and why do you look out of the car window with downcast eyes? You are thinking of the past.
"You have guessed right. I am a great friend of traveling by rail, for it allows one's person to catch up with one's thoughts as quickly as possible, but here in America my thoughts generally go backward, while the locomotive drags my person forward. If I undertake even the smallest journey here I am in memory continually traveling in Europe, and I then feel more than ever what we are missing here. A country in which travel affords no pleasure, life, too, can have no true pleasures to offer. When I am traveling I feel more than ever that I am an exile, and it is more than ever made clear to me that life here is a torture when' I am intent on recreation."
In some respects I must agree with you in your condemnation of American life, but you are wrong, and it is your own loss if you find nothing to compensate you for its deprivations. To me liberty alone is a sufficient compensation for everything that Europe could offer me.
"That may do for a man; I find no compensation except in memory."
I must put that down as a weakness. Whoever has sufficient resources within himself is able to make himself independent of his surroundings. And so long as one can still find like-minded people one can be recompensed in a quiet way for everything that one misses in the doings of the world at large.
"I admit that to some degree, but where does one meet here the like-minded people? Those who seek happiness in amassing wealth, or in dissipation, or in a narrow club life, find plenty of like-minded companions; but how many people have you met so far who make higher demands on life and whose intellectual and emotional gifts are of an order to make mutual enjoyment possible? I have known people who in Europe were most excellent companions, and most desirable for social intercourse; here find them after a few years so changed, so strange, so empty, so blunted, so devoid of aspirations, so common-place that I am glad to have them keep away from me. But the few whom I could recognize as like-minded live isolated and scattered throughout this large expanse of country, harboring the same lonely thoughts that I and others do, but suffer likewise from the same fate that prevents us from meeting and associating with each other. When I consider that in this vast country there are perhaps half a dozen people to whom I could feel drawn with my whole soul, and that even these few I shall perhaps never have the opportunity of meeting, or of associating with, then I feel quite hopeless. Men and women, only men and women with lofty minds and noble hearts, and a pleasant, cozy corner in which to enjoy their companionship — more I do not want."
With all my heart I agree with you, but I am more modest than you. I do not need half a dozen in order to be a man among men. But it is perhaps just as hard to find three as six. I, too, have found it easier to find men in Europe without the lantern of Diogenes. There there was more mutual understanding, a greater need of companionship, of common aspirations, a circumstance that can be readily explained by the common past, in part also by the greater want of liberty, while here each one of us is seeking for a new path, and the greater freedom of life directs the attention more to the external. But in Europe I have noticed a greater disposition among women to seek and cherish the society of free people than here. — It is remarkable that among the five million Germans in this country one meets with so few women who by their intellect, their character, and their aspirations rise above the level of philistinism. But in spite of this I cannot yet bring myself to despair of German women as I do of the majority of German men.
"If we women are nothing and accomplish nothing it is certainly the men who are to blame for it, for it is a pity how thoroughly dependent on them we still are. And therefore you will yet make the experience that it is a vain undertaking to attempt to influence the German women and through them the German men. Because most German men are philistines, saloon-loungers, money-makers and born subjects, therefore most German women are mere nothings, neglected, prosaic, apathetic beings, without intellectual vitality and higher interests; and since this is the prevailing condition, the few exceptions are discouraged from coming to the front. I as a woman am looking for superior men and find none; you as a man are looking for superior women and find none. So we can mutually console each other, but we shall both have to come to the conclusion that it is principally this country and the life here that is to blame. Please to bear in mind, moreover, this one circumstance, which seems to me to be of especial importance. In Europe nature and culture unite in making travel a joy and a need. Traveling in beautiful surroundings and in the atmosphere of civilization stimulates sociability, opens the hearts, and affords opportunity for making acquaintances by bringing like-minded people together in the proper mood. But what has this country to offer? Suppose you and I and half a dozen other friends were to undertake a pleasure trip here, for the sake of flapping our wings with greater liberty for a while — whither should we turn? Where is the Italy in whose beauty we could revel; where is the Geneva Lake upon which we could float; where is the Rigi upon which we could rest; where the Rhine upon whose shores our fancy could disport itself; where the Heidelberger Schloss in whose surroundings we could dream; where, at last, is even the inn where we could comfortably and joyously sit behind the sparkling goblet, while our madcap spirits went chasing each other? Nature as well as society here offers us nothing but comfortless, repelling vulgarity; there is nothing engagingly human in men, and nothing classic in Nature and its embellishments. Perhaps in a hundred years travel can also be made enjoyable in America; now one can only be transported like an article of freight. When will our exile be at an end?"
To this question you will least of all get an answer here where you ought to expect it most. I do not know a dozen of those boastful apostles of liberty of 48 who are still seriously interested in the revolution, and who would make a sacrifice for the sake of shortening their exile. A proof how superficial their zeal for liberty was on the other side of the water. But even if we can do nothing for European liberty here, there is still enough to be done for American liberty, and this will indirectly benefit the other. What especially fills me with hope of progress in this country is the interest which is taken in the question of women's rights, and I am curious to see how our German women will now stand the test. Do you believe that the convention of the German women in Frauenstadt will be well attended?
"You must have noticed already that I entertain but small hopes. I am going because I do not want to be charged with having neglected a duty. I admire the courage and energy of your friend, Julie vom Berg, who has called the convention, but Ifear that it will be a failure, which is worse than if the attempt had not been made."
There is nothing worse than discouragement at the start. But the whistle of the locomotive warns me that we must separate. I have, therefore, a favor to ask of you. Will you undertake to report the convention to "Der Pionier?"
"What? Are you not going to attend the convention — you?"
I am sorry to say that my duty calls for the difficult sacrifice of staying away. It calls me to another convention — to the great convention of editors at Cincinnati.
"That, of course, is a sufficient, but also your only excuse. Well, I will comply with your request and report faithfully to ‘Der Pionier.' Good-by, Herr Laengst.";