Part 5

The girls’ schools established by the Government provide well for the study of the modern languages, and it is the exception to find women in the upper classes who do not speak French and English. Literature, religion, gymnastics, and needlework are also well taught. The course of study in the high school includes a little mathematics, offered under the name of reckoning, and sufficient to enable a woman to keep the accounts of a household, and also a little science of the kind that can be learned without a knowledge of mathematics. Let me quote a paragraph from the report of the Minister of Public Instruction for the year 1898 in regard to the aim of the mathematical course in the girls’ high schools: “Accuracy in reckoning with numbers and the ability to use numbers in the common relations of life, especially in housekeeping. Great weight is laid upon quick mental computations, but in all grades the choice of problems should be such as especially apply to the keeping of a house.” This is the opportunity which is offered to girls by the Government in the department of mathematics! In addition to the two grades of schools mentioned there are seminaries in many of the large cities for the purpose of educating women teachers. The instructors in these seminaries are well prepared for their positions, are mostly men, and the instruction given is very superior to that given in the girls’ high schools. Latin and Greek are, however, not studied in these seminaries, and mathematics and science are expurgated, we might say, of points that might prove difficult for the feminine intellect.

The ability to learn Latin and Greek seems in the German mind to especially mark the dividing line between the masculine and feminine brain. The writer was at one time studying a subject in Greek philosophy, in the City Library of Munich, requiring the use of a number of Greek and Latin books, and it was amusing to notice the astonishment of the men present that a woman should know the classic languages!

The women who hold certificates from the seminaries are allowed, according to a new law passed in 1894, to continue their studies and to take the higher teachers’ examinations. This is considered a great step in advance, for a woman who has successfully passed this latter examination can hold any position in the girls’ schools, and can even be director of such a school.

That German women have long been discontented with the education provided for them by the Government is proved by the fact that the number of higher institutions offering private opportunities to girls is constantly increasing. As far back as 1868 the Victoria Lyceum was founded by a Scotch woman--Miss Georgina Archer--at her own expense and on her own responsibility, and this institution was well sustained from the beginning. It is now under the patronage of the Empress Frederick, and offers courses to women that run parallel to a certain extent with those given on the same subjects in the university. Professors from the university lecture in the Victoria Lyceum, but a young woman who had listened to the same professor in both places informed me that he (perhaps unconsciously) simplified his lectures very much for the Victoria Lyceum. Fraulein Anna von Cotta is the director of the institution. Among the women who teach there we note the name of the well-known Fraulein Lange, who lectures on psychology and German literature.

There are several girls’ gymnasia in Germany which testify to the demand for higher education. These institutions are all but one private, and three of them--one in Leipsic, one in Berlin, and a third, opened in October, 1898, in Königsberg--are called “gymnasial courses,” and are for girls who have finished the girls’ high school, and who must pass entrance examinations in order to be received into them.

There has been for some time a girls’ gymnasium which corresponds exactly to those for boys in Carlsruhe, under the auspices of the “Society for Reform in the Education of Women,” which receives girls of twelve who must have finished the six lower classes of a girls’ school. This society, to which the girls of Germany owe much, is planning to open another gymnasium in Hannover, to which girls will be received from the junior class of the girls’ high school; the course of study will occupy five years, and will fit girls for the same official examinations as the boys’ gymnasia. The language courses in the highest class will be elective, providing either for Greek or the modern languages, but Latin is obligatory in all the classes. The girls from all these gymnasia are debarred from taking any of the official examinations for which their studies have prepared them.

The next step in the matter of gymnasial education for girls was what might have been expected. The people of the wide-awake city of Breslau voted, by an overwhelming majority, to establish a girls’ gymnasium under the same laws and furnishing the same advantages as the boys’ gymnasia. The completed plan was sent to the Minister of Public Instruction in Berlin in January, 1898, for approval, with the intention of opening the gymnasium at Easter, for which twenty-six girls were already enrolled. Herr Dr. Bosse, however, foreseeing the results such an undertaking would involve, consulted the other departments of the ministry, and two months later a decided refusal came like a thunderbolt upon the people of Breslau. On the 30th of April, 1898, Herr Dr. Bosse was called to account in the Reichstag for his action in the matter, which he justified on the ground that Government approval of girls’ gymnasia would mean the acceptance of the diploma for matriculation in the universities and the opening to women of all Government professional examinations, and that to have granted it would have been to take a step in the direction of the modern movement for women which could never have been recalled, and would open the lecture rooms of Germany in general to women. He contended, further, that the founding of official gymnasia for girls would delegate the existing girls’ high school to a secondary place, an institution which had been planned thoughtfully by the Government for the purpose of educating women in the best manner, not to become rivals of men, but help-meets and able housekeepers.

The demand of the people of Breslau, Dr. Bosse said, was an unnatural one, and his refusal was founded on the fear that such a movement would increase and threaten the social foundations of all Germany, as the idea that women can compete with men in all careers is a false one.

The petition of the magistrate of Breslau was supported in the discussion by some of the national-liberal, free-conservative, and Polish representatives. These took the broad ground that girls have a right to equal education with boys, and that the educational institutions of Germany which have so long stood at the head of those of the world should not, in the matter of education of women, leave the question to be decided according to the whims of private individuals.

Some of the arguments of those who spoke in favor of the enterprise were amusing. One said that the girls of Germany would be grateful if the Minister of Public Instruction would furnish them with husbands, but, as there were not enough to go around, the others should have some career provided for them. Another, that about forty per cent of the girls of the higher classes no longer marry, and they should not be allowed to suffer the consequences of the fact that young men of the present day do not care to marry, but they have a right that the way be shown them to such careers as are suited to their feminine nature.

An objector said that he could not understand how any man of pedagogical culture could approve of a girls’ gymnasium, for it is evident that any such progress for women as that would imply must be at the expense of the men, who would gain less on account of the increased number of candidates for work of all kinds and would more seldom be able to offer the best of all existences to a woman--that of wifehood. The city of Breslau was obliged, therefore, to give up the undertaking for the present, but the agitation of the question has probably prepared the way for more extended plans in the future in the same direction in Prussia.

A similar undertaking in Carlsruhe, in Baden, has met with better success, and resulted in the opening of the first official gymnasium for girls in Germany, in September, 1898. This gymnasium was planned about the same time as that of Breslau, and as the permission of the Minister of Public Instruction in Baden was obtained without difficulty, the institution came into existence according to the will of the people of Carlsruhe. Seventy-nine of the members of the Bürgerauschuss voted in favor of the undertaking in the meeting in which the final action was taken early in the summer of 1898. The Christian-conservative party only decidedly opposed it. The leader of this party was very much excited over the matter, and called out, when the action was taken, “I ask you, gentlemen, on your honor, if any of you would marry a girl from a gymnasium?”

The opening of the Government gymnasium will remove the necessity for continuing the private one in Carlsruhe, under the society in charge of it, and leave that society free to direct its efforts elsewhere.

There had already been several references to the general subject of the education of women in the Reichstag before the question of the gymnasium in Breslau came up. In January, 1898, Prince Carolath spoke in favor of founding several girls’ gymnasia, and admitting women legally to the universities and to pedagogical and to medical state professional examinations, remarking that in all other civilized lands the universities are more open to women than in Germany.

Coming now to the present attitude of the universities to the higher education of women, we find that a great change has taken place during the last few years. While it is still the fact that no German woman can matriculate in any university in Germany, yet the problem of the stand which the universities should take is working out its own solution in the right direction.

The University of Berlin, the largest and in many respects the leading one, has made progress in the matter, although women still work there under great limitations. The cause was injured at the outset in Berlin by the fact that women, often foreigners, who had not the required preparation, rushed into lecture rooms which were open to them from motives of curiosity. This caused such strong feeling among the professors that in one instance a professor, on entering his classroom, saw a lady sitting in the rear, walked up to her, offered her his arm, and led her out of the room.

The first step in the right direction has been to demand either a diploma from some well-known institution, or, as that could not be complied with by German women, the certificate of the teachers’ examinations. The possessors of such credentials may attend lectures in any course, where the professor is willing, as _Hospitants_. The conditions under which women may attend the University of Berlin are the following:

1. A written permission must be obtained from the curator of the university on presentation of a satisfactory diploma, a passport, and, by Russian applicants, a written permission from the police authorities to study in Germany.

2. Written permission from the rector.

3. Written permission from the professors or docents whose lectures the applicant wishes to attend.

4. The permission from the rector must be obtained each semester, but from the curator only when a new subject is chosen.

5. The same fee is demanded from women as from men, and women are requested to always carry with them, in attending lectures, the written permission from the rector.

At the public installation of Rector Waldeyer, in October, 1898, both in his address and in that of the resigning rector, Geheimrath Professor Schmoller, the subject of education of women received attention.

Geheimrath Schmoller said that the first condition of further concessions in the matter must be better preparation on the part of the women, and when this deficiency should be provided for the faculty of the university could make the conditions of their attending lectures lighter, perhaps even the same as those for men. Geheimrath Waldeyer made the subject one of three to which he gave equal space, and which he said called for immediate attention in the educational affairs of Germany. The other two subjects were the relation of technical schools to the universities, and university extension. Geheimrath Waldeyer said that he had formerly been opposed to the higher education of women, but had been led to change his mind from seeing that the movement is not an artificial one, but rather the natural result of the present social condition of society, and on the simple ground of right should be forwarded in a legitimate manner. He spoke strongly, however, in favor of the establishment of separate universities for men and women, on account of the natural differences in the working of their minds and the necessity of adapting methods in both instances to their needs.

The number of women in the University of Berlin has increased very rapidly, being in the autumn of 1896 thirty-nine, in the winter of the same year ninety-five. The next year the largest number was nearly two hundred, and in 1897-’98 three hundred and fifty-two were in all inscribed. Nearly half of these were German women. Most of the women in the University of Berlin are in the department of philosophy, but several are pursuing courses in theology and law. These women are of all ages. One from Charlottenburg was sixty-two years old, and, besides this honored lady, there were five others whose white hair testified to an age of from fifty to fifty-five, while the youngest of all was a Bulgarian girl of seventeen.

The first woman to take her degree in the University of Berlin was Dr. Else Neumann, in December, 1898, in physics and mathematics, who succeeded, notwithstanding the difficulties to be contended with in the absence of preparatory study and the necessity for private preparation.

It is not, however, only in Berlin that the desire for university study has taken a strong hold on the German women, but it is shown in other places, not simply by the fact that many of them attend the universities of Switzerland, which are everywhere open to them, but by their also obtaining the advantages in their own land which have so long been denied them.

Heidelberg was the first university in Germany to grant the doctor examination to women, and this was done several years before lectures were open to them. The writer called upon Prof. Kuno Fischer one day in the summer of 1890 to ask permission to attend a lecture which he was to give that afternoon on Helmholtz. He said that he was very sorry indeed, but he was obliged to refuse women the privilege of listening to him, as they were not admitted to the university. I asked when they would probably be admitted, and he replied, speaking in French, “_Jamais, mademoiselle, jamais!_” Four years later, however, a friend of mine took her degree there in the department of philosophy, thus proving that the wisest of men sometimes make mistakes.

Women have for years studied as _Hospitants_ in the Universities of Leipsic and Göttingen, but since November, 1897, the conditions of their admission in Göttingen have been made more difficult.

In Kiel the professors who are not willing to allow women to attend their lectures put a star opposite their names in the university programme of the lecture courses, and this star is unfortunately seen opposite the names of all the professors of theology and many of those of medicine. Women began to attend the University of Tübingen in the autumn of 1898, Dr. Maria Gräfin von Linden being the first, who was soon followed by many others.

The degree of Doctor of Philosophy _honoris causa_ has been conferred on two women by the University of Munich--in December, 1897, on the Princess Theresa, and in October, 1898, on Lady Blennerhassett, an author, for her researches in modern languages. The Dean of the Philosophical Faculty, accompanied by three professors, visited her in her home in Munich to communicate to her the honor which she had received.

The University of Breslau offers better conditions to women than are provided elsewhere, as might naturally be expected, especially in the department of medicine.

Germany was represented in the International Council of Women, held in London in June of this present year, by Frau Anna Simson, Frau Bieber Boehm, and Fran Marie Stritt, of Dresden.

It was also decided at this congress that the next Quinquennial International Council of Women should be held in Berlin, and it will without doubt be an occasion that will mark an era in the history of the progress of liberty for the women of Germany.

SCENES ON THE PLANETS.

BY GARRETT P. SERVISS.

Although amateurs have played a conspicuous part in telescopic discovery among the heavenly bodies, yet every owner of a small telescope should not expect to attach his name to a star. But he certainly can do something perhaps more useful to himself and his friends. He can follow the discoveries that others, with better appliances and opportunities, have made, and can thus impart to those discoveries that sense of reality which only comes from seeing things with one’s own eyes. There are hundreds of things continually referred to in books and writings on astronomy which have but a misty and uncertain significance for the mere reader, but which he can easily verify for himself with the aid of a telescope of four or five inches’ aperture, and which, when actually confronted by the senses, assume a meaning, a beauty, and an importance that would otherwise entirely have escaped him. Henceforth every allusion to the objects he has seen is eloquent with intelligence and suggestion.

Take, for instance, the planets that have been the subject of so many observations and speculations of late years--Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus. For the ordinary reader much that is said about them makes very little impression upon his mind, and is almost unintelligible. He reads of the “snow patches” on Mars, but unless he has actually seen the whitened poles of that planet he can form no clear image in his mind of what is meant. So the “belts of Jupiter” is a confusing and misleading phrase for almost everybody except the astronomer, and the rings of Saturn are beyond comprehension unless they have actually been seen.

It is true that pictures and photographs partially supply the place of observation, but by no means so successfully as many imagine. The most realistic drawings and the sharpest photographs in astronomy are those of the moon, yet I think nobody would maintain that any picture in existence is capable of imparting a really satisfactory visual impression of the appearance of the lunar globe. Nobody who has not seen the moon with a telescope--it need not be a large one--can form a correct and definite idea of what the moon is like.

The satisfaction of viewing with one’s own eyes some of the things the astronomers write and talk about is very great, and the illumination that comes from such viewing is equally great. Just as in foreign travel the actual seeing of a famous city, a great gallery filled with masterpieces, or a battlefield where decisive issues have been fought out illuminates, for the traveler’s mind, the events of history, the criticisms of artists, and the occurrences of contemporary life in foreign lands, so an acquaintance with the sights of the heavens gives a grasp on astronomical problems that can not be acquired in any other way. The person who has been in Rome, though he may be no archæologist, gets a far more vivid conception of a new discovery in the Forum than does the reader who has never seen the city of the Seven Hills; and the amateur who has looked at Jupiter with a telescope, though he may be no astronomer, finds that the announcement of some change among the wonderful belts of that cloudy planet has for him a meaning and an interest in which the ordinary reader can not share.

Jupiter is perhaps the easiest of all the planets for the amateur observer. A three-inch telescope gives beautiful views of the great planet, although a four-inch or a five-inch is of course better. But there is no necessity for going beyond six inches’ aperture in any case. For myself, I think I should care for nothing better than my five-inch of fifty-two inches’ focal distance. With such a glass more details are visible in the dark belts and along the bright equatorial girdle than can be correctly represented in a sketch before the rotation of the planet has altered their aspect, while the shadows of the satellites thrown upon the broad disk, and the satellites themselves when in transit, can be seen sometimes with exquisite clearness. The contrasting colors of various parts of the disk are also easily studied with a glass of four or five inches’ aperture.

There is a charm about the great planet when he rides high in a clear evening sky, lording it over the fixed stars with his serene, unflickering luminousness, which no possessor of a telescope can resist. You turn the glass upon him and he floats into the field of view, with his _cortége_ of satellites, like a yellow-and-red moon, attended by four miniatures of itself. You instantly comprehend Jupiter’s mastery over his satellites--their allegiance is evident. No one would for an instant mistake them for stars accidentally seen in the same field of view. Although it requires a very large telescope to magnify their disks to measurable dimensions, yet the smallest glass differentiates them at once from the fixed stars. There is something almost startling in their appearance of companionship with the huge planet--this sudden verification to your eyes of the laws of gravitation and of central forces. It is easy, while looking at Jupiter amid his family, to understand the consternation of the churchmen when Galileo’s telescope revealed that miniature of the solar system, and it is gratifying to gaze upon one of the first battle grounds whereon science gained a decisive victory for truth.

The swift changing of place among the satellites, as well as the rapidity of Jupiter’s axial rotation, give the attraction of visible movement to the Jovian spectacle. The planet rotates in four or five minutes less than ten hours--in other words, it makes two turns and four tenths of a third turn while the earth is turning once upon its axis. A point on Jupiter’s equator moves about twenty-seven thousand miles, or considerably more than the entire circumference of the earth, in a single hour. The effect of this motion is clearly perceptible to the observer with a telescope on account of the diversified markings and colors of the moving disk, and to watch it is one of the greatest pleasures that the telescope affords.