Produced by Rénald Lévesque WOMAN VOLUME VIII WOMEN OF THE TEUTONIC NATIONS HERMANN SCHOENFELD, PH.D., LL. D. PROFESSOR OF GERMANIC LITERATURE IN THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY [Illustration 1: EMMA CARRYING HER LOVER After the painting by G. L. P. Saint-Ange Charlemagne had so great an affection for his children, legitimate and natural, that he prevented his daughters, of whom Emma was one, from marrying, in order not to lose their company. They were reputed to be very beautiful. Being debarred from marriage, they sought unlawful love adventures, and gave birth to illegitimate children. The romantic story of Emma's nightly meetings with Eginhard, and of her carrying her learned lover through the freshly fallen snow to conceal his footprints, is an unauthenticated legend.] _Woman_ In all ages and in all countries VOLUME VIII WOMEN OF THE TEUTONIC NATIONS BY HERMANN SCHOENFELD, PH.D., LL.D. Professor of Germanic Literature in the George Washington University ILLUSTRATED PHILADELPHIA GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PUBLISHERS THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY Dedicated to MADAME CHRISTIAN HEURICH NEE KEYSER PREFACE Adequately to write the history of the woman of any race would mean the writing of the history of the nation itself. There is no phase of the cultural life of any people that is not founded upon the physical and moral nature of its women. On the other hand, mental and moral heredity, both through paternity and maternity, determines the character and innermost being of woman. If we knew all the preponderating influences of heredity for ages, we could with almost mathematical accuracy compute the traits of human biology in every case. The forces of environment, tremendous though they are, modify, but do not alter in any way the original nature of man, which is established and standardized "by eternal and immutable laws." Anthropology is continuously progressing toward a firm scientific foundation, and is beginning to organize even the vast domain of psychology into a well-defined system. The interdependence between physical, mental, and moral traits is well recognized, but its exact determination is impossible, owing to the infinite complexity of the endless ancestral potencies. So much is established, however: Teutonic woman, as she appears in history, is the product of two groups of influences, the one group, inherited nature; the other, environment; she is the exact sum of these antecedent causes. And only so far as these causes differ does the Teutonic woman differ from her sister of any other race of other times and climes.