The professionals apprentice themselves for three years, and from the first receive a small weekly wage. The length of their apprenticeship is determined by the length of time prescribed for men, and not by what is necessary for their training. I asked if they easily found regular work later, and was told that at present the demand for expert women bookbinders exceeded the supply. The _Lette-Haus_ trains women to be photographers, printers, and clerks. In fact, with German thoroughness and foresight it does all one big inst.i.tution can to save the women of the nation from the curse of incompetence. It turns them out efficient housewives or efficient craftswomen, according to their needs.
The German woman of to-day has travelled far from the ideal set up by Herr Riehl, and still upheld by his disciples. Women have found that the realities of life clash with that particular ideal, and rudely upset it. Just like any man, a woman wants bread when she is hungry, and when there is no man to give it to her she must raven for it herself. She has been driven from a family hearth that has no fire on it, and from a family roof that cannot afford her shelter. On the whole, if I may judge from personal observation, it has done her good.
The traditional old maid is dying out in Germany as a.s.suredly as she is dying out in England, and who shall regret her? Her outlook was narrow, her temper often soured. She had neither self-reliance nor charm. She was that sad, silly spectacle, a clinging plant without support. Now that she is learning to grow on her own account, she finds that there is a good deal in life a sensible plant can enjoy without clinging. The German "old maid" of the twentieth century has, like her English sister, transformed herself into a "bachelor," a person who for this reason or that has not married, and who nevertheless has a cheerful time. She has her own work, she often has her own flat, and if she lives in one of the big cities she has her own club.
There are at present three Ladies" Clubs in Berlin all flourishing.
The subscription to the _Berliner Frauenklub_ is only six marks a year, yet it provides the members with comfortably furnished rooms and well cooked meals at low prices. A member of this club can dine for ninepence, and have a hot dish from fourpence to sevenpence. She has access to a library of 1300 volumes, to the leading papers and reviews, and to magazines in four languages. She can entertain women at the club, but not men; though she can meet men there at certain hours of the day. Social gatherings of various kinds are arranged to meet the various needs and ages of the members; and one night a week four or five card-tables are set out, so that the older members can have a quiet game of skat or whist. We wonder what Herr Riehl would say if he could see them.
Another German Ladies" Club in Berlin is the _Deutscher Frauenklub_, and it is nicknamed the Millionaire"s Club because the subscription is twenty-five shillings. It is a rather smarter club than the other, and has a charming set of rooms. There are about 450 members. The Third Club is a branch of the London Lyceum, and it has aroused great interest and attention in Berlin, not only because it is on a more magnificent scale than the other clubs, but because of the brave effort it makes to unite the women of all nations and help them. Most of the women distinguished in art and literature have joined it.
I began this chapter by saying something of the _Stift_, the refuge for unmarried women that Germany established in the Middle Ages and still preserves. I end it with the Lyceum Club, that latest manifestation of a modern woman"s desire to help her own s.e.x. The character of these inst.i.tutions and their history are both significant. In other days men helped women; in these days women try to help themselves. The _Stift_ gives a woman bread and shelter in idleness; the aim of the Lyceum Club is not to give, but to bring women together and to encourage good work. The _Stifte_ are still crowded and the Lyceum flourishes, for in our time the old woman jostles the new. But the new woman has arrived, and is making herself felt; with amazing force and swiftness, you must admit when you reflect on the position of women in Germany thirty or forty years ago.
CHAPTER IX
GIRLHOOD
In the _Memoiren einer Idealistin_, those genuine and interesting Memoirs that have been so widely read in Germany of late, Malvida von Meysenbug, the daughter of a highly placed official at a small German Court, describes her confirmation day and the long period of preparation and the spiritual struggle that preceded it.
"During a whole year my sister and I went twice a week to the pastor"s house to be instructed in the dogma of the Protestant Church," she says.... "The ceremony was to be on Sunday. The Friday before we had our last lesson. Our teacher was deeply moved; with tears in his eyes he spoke to us of the holiness and importance of the act we were about to perform.... According to the German custom amongst girls of the better cla.s.ses, we put on black silk dresses for the first time for our confirmation, and this ceremonial attire calmed me and did me good. Our maid took special pains with our toilet, as if we were going to a worldly entertainment, and chattered more than usual. It jarred on me, but it helped to distract my thoughts. When it was time to start I said Good-bye to my mother with deep emotion, and asked her to forgive me my faults. My sister and I were to go to the pastor"s house on our way to church. There we found everything strewn with flowers.
Our teacher received us in his priestly robes, and spoke to all of us so lovingly and earnestly that the most indifferent were moved. When the church bells began to peal our procession set out, the pastor at its head, and we following two by two. The way from the rectory to the church was strewn with flowers, and the church was decked with them.
The Choral Society of the town, to which some of our best friends belonged, received us with a beautiful hymn. I felt on wings, I prayed to G.o.d that this hour might be blessed to me throughout my life. The sermon preached by the voice that had so often affected me made me calm. When the preacher required us to make our confession of faith, I uttered my "Yes" with firm a.s.surance. Then I knelt before him with the rest to receive his blessing. He put his hands on our heads, accepted us as members of the Protestant Church, and blessed each one separately, and with a special verse from the Bible. To me he said, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."
My heart echoed the solemn vow: Faithful unto death. The choir greeted the young Christians with a song of victory. We did not return to the seats reserved for candidates, but sat with our parents and relatives waiting with them until everyone had left the church, except those who wished to partake of the Holy Communion."
Malvida von Meysenbug is too much absorbed in her intense spiritual experiences to describe the lighter side of confirmation in Germany, which celebrates it with presents and a gathering of friends. A girl gets her first black silk gown for the occasion, and both boys and girls get as many presents as they do at Christmas or on a birthday.
These are all set out for the inspection of the friends who a.s.semble at the house after the religious ceremony, to congratulate the parents and the youngest member of their church. There is an entertainment of coffee, chocolate, and cakes; and a few days later both boys and girls return these visits of congratulation in the company of their parents. Some years ago, when a girl had been confirmed, she was considered officially grown up and marriageable, and entered straight away into the gaieties that are supposed to lead to marriage. But the modern tendency in Germany is to prolong girlhood, and the wife of sixteen is as rare there amongst the educated cla.s.ses as it is here.
Amongst the Jews in Germany marriages are still arranged for the young people by their elders; often, as in France, through the intervention of friends, but also by the business-like office of the marriage broker. It need hardly be said, perhaps, that the refined and enlightened Jews refuse to marry in this way. They insist on choosing their own mate, and even on overlooking some disparity of fortune.
Unorthodox Jews marry Christian women, and the Jewish heiress constantly allies herself and her money with a t.i.tle or a uniform. In the latter case, however, the nuptials are just as business-like as if the _Schadchan_ had arranged them and received his commission. The Graf or the Major gets the gold he lacks, and the rich Jewess gets social prestige or the nearest approach to it possible in a Jew-baiting land. An ardent anti-Semite told me that these mixed marriages were not fertile, and that if only everyone of Jewish blood would marry a Christian, the country would in course of time be cleared of a race that, she solemnly a.s.sured me, is as great a curse to it, and as inferior as the negro in America. But as she was an anti-Semite with a sense of humour she admitted that the remedy was a slow one and difficult to enforce. As a matter of fact, the Jews marry mostly amongst themselves in Germany, and men are still living in Frankfurt and other large cities who have made comfortable fortunes by the brokerage they charged on their matchmaking. Formerly a prosperous unmarried Jew used to be besieged by offers from these agents; and so were men who could give their daughters a good dowry.
The better-cla.s.s Jews do not employ them nowadays, but their marriages are suggested and arranged much as marriages are in France. A young merchant of Berlin thinks it is time to settle down, or perhaps wants a little capital to enlarge his business. He consults an uncle in Frankfurt. The uncle tells his old friend, the father of several daughters, that the most handsome, industrious, and accomplished man the world has ever seen, his own nephew, in fact, thinks of marriage, and that his conditions are this and that; he tells his nephew that the most beautiful and amiable creature in Germany, a brilliant musician, a fluent linguist, a devoted daughter, and a person of simple housewifely tastes, lives next door to him, the uncle. Except for the housewifely tastes, it sounds, and in fact is, rather like a courtship in the _Arabian Nights_ so far. The prince hears of the princess, and without having seen her sets out to seek her hand. The young merchant pays a flying visit to Frankfurt, is presented to the most beautiful creature in Germany, finds her pa.s.sable, has a talk to her father as business-like as a talk between two solicitors, proposes, is accepted, and at once becomes the most ardent lover the world has ever seen.
Amongst Christians marriages are certainly not arranged for girls in this matter-of-course way, and so "old maids" abound. Girls without money have far less chance of marriage in Germany than in England, where young people mate as they please and where a man expects to support his wife entirely; while the spectacle, quite common here, of girls with a good deal of money remaining single from various reasons, sometimes actually from want of opportunity to marry, this every-day occurrence amongst the English better cla.s.ses is unknown on the continent. In her powerful novel _Aus guter Familie_, Gabrielle Reuter describes the life of a German girl whose parents cannot give her a dowry, and who is doomed in consequence to old maidhood and to all the disappointments, restrictions, and humiliations of unsought women.
While women look to marriage and nothing else for happiness, there must be such lives in every monogamous country, where they outnumber the men; but in England a woman"s marriage is much more a matter of chance and charm than of money. If she is poor and misses her chance she is worse off than the German, for she has no _Stift_ provided for her; but if she is attractive she is just as likely to marry without a fortune as with one. Those German women who consider their ideas "progressive" have taken up a new cry of late, a cry about every woman"s "right" to motherhood; but they do not seem to have found a satisfactory way of securing this right to the 400,000 women who outnumber the men. One learned professor wrote a pamphlet advocating polygamy, but his proposal did not have the success he no doubt felt it deserved. The women who discuss these questions, in magazines they edit and mostly write themselves, said that his arguments were all conducted from the man"s point of view, and were most reprehensible.
Their own chief aim at present is to protect the mothers of illegitimate children, and this seems a natural and proper thing for the women of any community to do. Otherwise they are not a united body. There are moderates and immoderates amongst them, and as I am a moderate myself in such matters, I think those who go all lengths are lunatics. It makes one open one"s eyes to go to Germany to-day with one"s old-fashioned ideas of the German Frau, and hear what she is doing in her desire to reform society and inaugurate a new code of morals. She does not even wait till she is married to speak with authority. On the contrary, she says that marriage is degrading, and that temporary unions are more to the honour and profit of women.
"Dear Aunt S.," I heard of one girl writing to a venerable relative, "I want you to congratulate me on my happiness. I am about to be united with the man I love, and we shall live together (_in freier Ehe_) till one of us is tired of it." A German lady of wide views and worldly knowledge told me a girl had lately sent her a little volume of original poems that she could only describe as unfit for publication; yet she knew the girl and thought her a harmless creature. She was presumably a goose who wanted to cackle in chorus.
This same lady met another girl in the gallery of an artist who belonged to what Mr. Gilbert calls the "fleshly school." "Ah!" said the girl to my friend, "this is where I feel at home." One of these immoderates, on the authority of Plato, recommended at a public meeting that girls should do gymnastics unclothed. Some of them are men-haters, some in the interests of their s.e.x are all for free love.
None of them accept the domination of men in theory, so I think that the facts of life in their own country must often be unpleasantly forced on them. I discussed the movement, which is a marked one in Germany at present, with two women whose experience and good sense made their opinion valuable. But they did not agree. One said that the excesses of these people were the outcome of long repression, and would wear out in time. The other thought the movement would go on and grow; which was as much as to say that she thought the old morals were dead. Undoubtedly they are dead in some sets in Germany to-day. You hear of girls of good family who have a.s.serted their "right to motherhood" without marriage; and you hear of other girls who refuse to marry because they will not make vows or accept conditions they consider humiliating. These views do not attract large numbers; probably never will. But they are sufficiently widespread to express themselves in many modern essays, novels, and pamphlets, and even to support several magazines. The women holding them are of various types and quality, and are by no manner of means agreed with each other; while those women who are working steadily and discreetly for the progress of their s.e.x condemn the extreme party, and consider them a check on all real advancement.
The German girl, then, is not always the simple creature tradition paints her. At any rate she reads novels and sees plays that would have been forbidden to her mother. Nevertheless she is as a rule just as happy as a girl should be when the man of her dreams asks her to marry him. In other days a proposal of marriage was a ceremonial in Germany. A man had to put on evening dress for the occasion, and carry a bouquet with him. "Oh yes," said a German friend of mine, "this is still done sometimes. A little while ago a cousin of mine in Mainz was seen coming home in evening dress by broad daylight carrying his bouquet. The poor fellow had been refused." But in these laxer times a man is spared such an ordeal. It is more usual in Germany than in England to speak to a girl"s father before proposing to her, but even this is not invariable nowadays. Young people make their own opportunities. "Last year my brother proposed to his present wife in the woods near Baden while they gathered Waldmeister," said a young German to a girl he ardently admired. "It will be in flower next week, and your parents have just arranged that I may meet them at the _Alte Schloss_ in time for dinner. After dinner we will walk in the woods--_nicht wahr_?" But the girl, as it happened, did not wish to receive a proposal of marriage from this young man, so she took care not to walk in the woods and gather Waldmeister with him. It is often said that the s.e.xes herd separately in Germany, and do not meet each other much. But this always seems to me one of the things said by people who have looked at Germans and not lived amongst them. A nation that has such an intimate home life, and is on the whole poor, receives its friends in an intimate informal way. Young men have different occupations and interests from girls, but when they are admitted to a family they are often admitted on terms of easy friendship. In London you may ask a young man with others to dinner at intervals, and never get to know him; in Berlin you ask him without others to supper, and soon get to know him very well. Besides, a German cannot endure life long without an _Ausflug_ or a _Landpartie_, and when the family plans one it includes one or two of its friends.
When two Germans do get engaged they let their world know of it. A betrothal there is not the informal flimsy contract it often is with us. They begin by publishing the event in their newspapers, and sending round printed forms announcing it to their friends. In the newspaper the announcement is rather bare compared with the advertis.e.m.e.nt of other family events. "Engaged. Frl. Martha Raekelwitz mit Hrn. Ingenieur Julius Prinz Dresden-Hamburg" is considered sufficient. But the printed intimations sent round on gilt-edged paper or cardboard to the friends of the contracting parties are more communicative. On one side the parents have the honour to announce the engagement of their daughter Anna to Mr. So-and-So, and on the other side Mr. So-and-So announces his engagement to Miss Anna. Here is a reproduction of such a form, with nothing altered except the actual names and addresses. On the left-hand side of the double sheet of cartridge paper the parents of the _Braut_ have their say--
"Die Verlobung ihrer Tochter Pauline mit Herrn Referendar Dr.
jur. Heinrich Schmidt in Berlin beehren sich ergebenst anzuzeigen.
Geh. Regierungsrat Dr. EUGEN BRAND Konigl. Gymnasialdirektor und FRAU HELENE, geb. ENGEL
STUTTGART, _im Juni 1906_ Tiergarten 7"
Then on the opposite page the future bridegroom speaks for himself--
"Meine Verlobung mit Fraulein Pauline Brand, Tochter des Konigl. Gymnasialdirektors Herrn Geh. Regierungsrat Dr. Eugen Brand und seiner Frau Gemahlin Helene, geb. Engel, in Stuttgart, beehre ich mich ergebenst anzuzeigen.
Dr. jur. HEINRICH SCHMIDT Referendar
BERLIN, _im Juni 1906_ Kurfurstendamm 2000"
Directly these forms have been circulated, all the friends who have received one and live near enough pay a visit of congratulation to the bride"s parents, and soon after the betrothed couple return these visits with some ceremony. It is quite impossible, by the way, to talk of Germans who are officially engaged without calling them the bride and bridegroom. They plight their troth with the plain gold rings that will be their wedding rings, and this stage of their union is celebrated with as much ceremony and merrymaking as the actual wedding. The Germans are giving up so many of their quaint poetical customs that the girl of to-day probably wears a fine diamond engagement ring instead of the old-fashioned gold one. But the ring with which her mother and grandmother plighted their troth was the ring with which they were wedded, and when Chamisso wrote _Du Ring an meinem Finger_ he was not writing of diamonds. All the tenderness and poetry of Germany go out to lovers, and the thought of a German bride and bridegroom flashes through the mind with thoughts of flowers and moonlight and nightingales. At least, it does if you can a.s.sociate them with the poems of Heine and Chamisso, with the songs of Schumann, and with the caressing intimate talk of the German tongue unloosed by love. But your experience is just as likely to play you the unkindest trick, and remind you of German lovers whose uncouth public endearments made everyone not to the manner born uncomfortable.
When the bride and bridegroom live in the same town, and know a large number of people, they are overdone with festivities from the moment of betrothal to the day of marriage. The round of entertainments begins with a gala dinner given by the bride"s father, and this is followed by invitations from all the relatives and friends on either side. When you receive a German _Brautpaar_ they should be the guests of honour, and if you can hang garlands near them so much the better.
You must certainly present the _Braut_ with a bouquet at some stage of the proceedings, and you will give pleasure if you can manufacture one or two mottoes in green stuff and put them in conspicuous places. For instance, I knew of a girl who got engaged away from home. Do you suppose that she was allowed to return to a bare and speechless front door as her English cousin would? Nothing of the kind. The whole family had set to work to twine laurel wreaths and garlands in her honour, and she was received with _Wilkommen du gluckseliges Kind_ done in ivy leaves by her grandmother. It was considered very _ruhrend_ and _innig_. At some time during the engagement the betrothed couple are sure to get photographed together, and anyone who possesses a German family alb.u.m will bear me out that the lady is nearly always standing, while her bearded lover is sitting down. When they are both standing they are arm in arm or hand in hand. I remember a collection possessing two photographs of a married daughter with her husband. One had been taken just before the wedding in the orthodox pose; he in an easy chair and she standing meekly by his side: the other represented them a year after marriage, when Heaven had sent them twins. They were both standing then, and they each had a baby in a _Steckkissen_ in their arms.
If the bridegroom is not living in the same town with his bride her life is supposed to run rather quietly in his absence. She is not expected to dance with other men, for instance; but rather to spend her time in embroidering his monogram on every conceivable object he might use: on tobacco pouches, or slippers, on letter cases, on braces, on photograph frames, on luggage straps, on fine pocket handkerchiefs. If she is expert and possesses the true sentiment she will embroider things for him with her hair. In these degenerate days she does not make her own outfit. Formerly, when a German girl left school she began to make stores of body and house linen for future years. But in modern cities the _Braut_ gets everything at one of the big "white" shops, from her own laces and muslins to the saucepan holders for the kitchen, and the bread bags her cook will hang outside the flat for the baker"s boy. In Germany it is the bride, or rather her parents, who furnish the house and provide the household linen; and the linen is all embroidered with her initials. This custom extends to all cla.s.ses, so that you constantly hear of a servant who is saving up for her _Aussteuer_, that is, the furniture and linen of a house as well as her own clothes. If you ask whether she is engaged you are told that the outfit is the thing. When the money for that is there it is easy to provide the bridegroom. In higher spheres much more is spent on a bride"s trousseau than in England, taking cla.s.s for cla.s.s. Some years ago I had occasion to help in the choice of a trousseau bought in Hamburg, and to be often in and out of a great "white ware" business there. I cannot remember how many outfits were on view during those weeks, but they were all much alike. What some people call "undies" had been ordered in immense quant.i.ties, sometimes heavily trimmed with Madeira work, sometimes with a plain scollop of double linen warranted to wash and wear for ever. The material was also invariably of a kind to wear, a fine linen or a closely woven English longcloth. How any one woman could want some six dozen "nighties" (the silly slang sounds especially silly when I think of those solid highly respectable German garments) was a question no one seemed to ask. The bride"s father could afford six dozen; it was the custom to have six dozen if you could pay for them, and there they were. The thin cambric garments French women were beginning to wear then were shown to you and tossed contemptuously aside as only fit for actresses. But this has all been changed. If you ask for "undies" in Berlin to-day, a supercilious shoplady brings you the last folly in gossamer, decolletee, and with elbow sleeves; and you wonder as you stare at it what a sane portly German housewife makes of such a garment. In this, as in other things, instead of abiding by his own sensible fashions, the German is imitating the French and the Americans; for it is the French and the Americans who have taught the women of other nations to buy clothes so fragile and so costly that they are only fit for the purse of a Chicago packer.
When the outfit is ready and the wedding day near, the bride returns all the entertainments given in her honour by inviting her girl friends to a Bride-chocolate or a Bean-coffee. This festivity is like a _Kaffee-Klatsch_, or what we should call an afternoon tea. In Germany, until quite lately, chocolate and coffee were preferred to tea, and the guests sat round a dining-table well spread with cakes.
At a Bean-coffee the cake of honour had a bean in it, and the girl who got the bean in her slice would be _Braut_ before the year was out.
Another entertainment that takes place immediately before the marriage is given by the bride"s best friend, who invites several other girls to help her weave the bridal wreath of myrtle. The bride does not help with it. She appears with the bridegroom later in the afternoon when the wreath is ready. It is presented to her with great ceremony on a cushion, and as they bring it the girls sing the well-known song from the _Freischutz_--
"Wir winden dir den Jungfernkranz Mit veilchenblauer Seide; Wir fuhren dich zu Spiel und Tanz Zu Gluck und Liebesfreude!
Lavendel, Myrt" und Thymian Das wachst in meinen Garten; Wie lang bleibt doch der Freiersmann?
Ich kann es kaum erwarten.
Sie hat gesponnen sieben Jahr Den goldnen Flachs am Rocken; Die Schleier sind wie Spinnweb klar, Und grun der Kranz der Locken.
Und als der schmucke Freier kam, War"n sieben Jahr verronnen: Und weil sie der Herzliebste nahm Hat sie den Kranz gewonnen."
The bridegroom receives a b.u.t.tonhole, but no one sings him a song. In the opera he is not on the stage during the bridesmaids" chorus. I have not been able to find out whether the quaint pretty verses are by Friedrich Kind, who founded the libretto of the opera on a story by August Apel, or whether he borrowed them from an older source. German brides wore myrtle and their friends wove a wedding wreath for them long before 1820, when _Der Freischutz_ appeared.
CHAPTER X
MARRIAGES
"He was a pompous, stiff-jointed man," said my friends, "an official in a small town, who would go to the stake rather than break the letter of the law. But when he came to Berlin to attend a niece"s marriage he thought he would have some fun. He arrived late on _Polterabend_, and he brought with him an enormous earthenware crock.
Instead of ringing he hurled the crock against the outside door of the flat, so that it smashed to atoms with a noise like thunder. The inhabitants of that flat came forth like a swarm of bees, but they were not laughing at the fun, because it was not their _Polterabend_."
He had broken crockery on the wrong floor.
In cities this ancient German custom of breaking crockery at the bride"s door on _Polterabend_ (the night before the wedding) has died out, but it has not long been dead. I have talked with people who remembered it in full force when they were young. I believe that the idea was to appease the _Poltergeist_, who would otherwise vex and disturb the young couple. My dictionary, the one that has 2412 pages, says that a _Poltergeist_ is a "racketing spectre," probably what we who are not dictionary makers would call a hobgoblin. In Brands"
_Antiquities_ I find reference to this old custom at the marriage of a Duke of York in Germany, when great quant.i.ties of gla.s.s and china were smashed at the palace doors the night before the wedding.
Polterabend is still celebrated by Germans, although they no longer consider it polite to smash crockery. There is always a large entertainment, sometimes at the bride"s house, sometimes at the house of a near relative; there are theatricals with personal allusions, or recitations of home-made topical poetry, some good music, and the inevitable evergreens woven into sentiments of encouragement and congratulation. The bride"s presents are set out much as they are in England, and perhaps cla.s.s for cla.s.s more valuable presents are given in Germany than in England. Electro-plate, for instance, was considered impossible a few years ago. A wedding present, if it was silver at all, must be real silver. But it is not so much the custom as with us to give presents of money.
The civil marriage takes place either the day before or early on the same day as the religious ceremony. The bride used to wear black silk, and still wears a dark plain costume for this official function. Her parents go with her and the necessary witnesses. The religious ceremony often used to take place in the house, but that is no longer customary. The anonymous author of _German Home Life_, a book published and a good deal read in 1879, says that marriage is a troublesome and expensive ceremony in Germany, and that this accounts for the large number of illegitimate children. Mr. O. Eltzbacher, the author of _Modern Germany_ published in 1905, confirms what was said in 1877 as to the number of illegitimate children born in Germany and Austria, for he says that in Germany itself they are 9 per cent., while in those districts of Austria where the Germans form about nine-tenths of the population, from 20 per cent, to 40 per cent, of the children are born out of wedlock. In France statistics give 9 per cent., in Scotland 7.4 per cent., and in England and Wales 4.2 per cent. Nevertheless in modern Germany children are not illegitimate because their parents are too poor to pay their marriage fees. The civil marriage is obligatory everywhere, and costs nothing. The religious ceremony need cost nothing at all. In the porch of every church in Prussia there is a notice stating on which days _Freie Trauungen_ are conducted. Several couples are married at the same time, but they have the full liturgy and the marriage sermon. A small charge is made for the organist and for the decoration of the church.