The author has strenuously endeavored to avail himself for every period of all the source material and the secondary works accessible to him in the Library of Congress and in the other libraries of the national capital. The chapters on the Reformation Period, the Era of Desolation, and on Woman Held in Tightening Bonds, a long period of dreariness so distressing and humiliating to German pride, were prepared with skill and scholarship by Miss Sarah H. Porter, A. M., at the time a graduate student in the author's department. Credit for the chapter on Russian Woman belongs to Mr. Alexis V. Babine, of the Library of Congress. The author also expresses sincere gratitude to the publishers, and especially to Mr. J. A. Burgan, the publishers' editor, for his careful revision of the English text and for the generous, vigilant aid extended to the author throughout the entire work. HERMANN SCHOENFELD. The George Washington University. CHAPTER I THE WOMEN OF THE PAGAN TEUTONS Women were valued by the primeval Teutonic race, as by all other races of the human family, as mere chattels means whereby the profit or the pleasure of man might be maintained or increased. The custom of burning the wife or wives with the dead master and husband was, from the prehistoric times until far into the light of historic days, prevalent in the tribes of the Teutonic family. Sacrifices of widows were especially prescribed in eastern Germanic law, and the low status of woman among the Teutons of the early times is sufficiently indicated by the established and quasi-legalized right and prerogative of the husband, as the owner of the female chattel, to bequeath, give, sell, or hire her person or services to strangers, guests, or friends; or even to kill her if she committed adultery, or if want and distress made such a course expedient. We must admit the harshness and cruelty to which woman, according to the most ancient conscience of the Teutonic race, could lawfully be subjected. Evidences that her status was outside of the pale of right and law is manifest in all historical proofs. Traces of the old status still abound. One lies in the present refinement of woman's actual position a refinement which cannot obscure its real origin from the student of culture and civilization. It is certain that the prehistoric Germanic community began with the communal use of women for pleasure or profit. This common use could be broken and suppressed only by marriage by capture. If the man wished to have exclusive possession of a wife, he had to procure her from outside his own community. Besides this exogamic marriage, an endogamic marriage was later recognized as conferring title, on the condition that the man reconciled the woman's blood relatives by the payment of a definite compensation. This system of marriage by capture survived the Migration period, and was found in Sweden even in the early Middle Ages.