Family Life
"The family became a sphere of private, domestic compensation for the hard-working and 'public' male, while his wife was expected to devote herself to the cultivation of domesticity and the transmission of proper cultural values and norms to the next generation." (Blackbourn 212)
The ideal German family functioned similarly to the ideal Victorian family: “The man, as the sole breadwinner, worked outside the family, whereas his wife was responsible for rearing children, for domestic work, and for the recreation of the family members” (Strohmeier). Although the mother and father each filled different roles (mothers were supposed to be “accessible and nurturing,” while fathers were “distant and stern”), both parents expected to be obeyed at all times (Greenwood 25). The German philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau said:
What the child should know is that it is weak and that you, adult, are strong; and from this difference it follows that it is under your authority. That is what the child should know, that is what it ought to learn, that is what it must feel. (Kincaid 64)
However, this focus on patriarchy and control was not so great in terms of family dynamics; in many families, children felt apathy or even hatred towards their parents. One German teacher remarked, “Never has the distance between the generations been wider, but never has the force of the old authoritarians been greater.” (Taylor 67).
Parents and children often became alienated from one another due to a lack of communication and the strict rules that parents were required to enforce upon their children to help them have a better chance for success in the future. On this, Jared says:
Yes, the parents are harsh and neglectful towards their own children in moments during the musical, but they're also wanting their children to have a successful future, which is most likely why the parents don't question the harshness of the teachers because they are aware of how tight the job market was at that time.
Regardless of whether parents were too strict (Moritz’s and Wendla’s parents) or too lax (Frau Gabor), parents were not inclined to tell their children about the facts of life.
Breakdown of Familial Roles
"Within the emotional economy of the bourgeois family, men and women were held to possess distinctive, complementary qualities: strength/sensibility, cold reason/warm heart, ambition/humility" (Blackbourn 213).
Fathers
Sources:
Albisetti, James C. Schooling German Girls and Women. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Print.
Blackbourn, David. The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780 - 1918. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Print.
Boa, Elizabeth. The Sexual Circus: Wedekind's Theatre of Subversion. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987. Print.
Fishman, Sterling. "Suicide, Sex, and the Discovery of the German Adolescent." History of Education Quarterly 10.2 (1970): 170-88. Web. 18 Aug. 2014.
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life. 2004. Print.
Strohmeier, Klaus Peter Huinick, Johannes. "Germany." International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family. Ed. James J. Ponzetti Jr. Farmington: Gale, 2003. Credo Reference. Web. 7 August 2014.
Taylor, Tom. "Images of Youth and Family in Wilhelmine Germany: Toward a Reconsideration of the German Sonderweg." German Studies Review 15 (1992): 55-73. Web. 17 Aug. 2014.
What the child should know is that it is weak and that you, adult, are strong; and from this difference it follows that it is under your authority. That is what the child should know, that is what it ought to learn, that is what it must feel. (Kincaid 64)
However, this focus on patriarchy and control was not so great in terms of family dynamics; in many families, children felt apathy or even hatred towards their parents. One German teacher remarked, “Never has the distance between the generations been wider, but never has the force of the old authoritarians been greater.” (Taylor 67).
Parents and children often became alienated from one another due to a lack of communication and the strict rules that parents were required to enforce upon their children to help them have a better chance for success in the future. On this, Jared says:
Yes, the parents are harsh and neglectful towards their own children in moments during the musical, but they're also wanting their children to have a successful future, which is most likely why the parents don't question the harshness of the teachers because they are aware of how tight the job market was at that time.
Regardless of whether parents were too strict (Moritz’s and Wendla’s parents) or too lax (Frau Gabor), parents were not inclined to tell their children about the facts of life.
Breakdown of Familial Roles
"Within the emotional economy of the bourgeois family, men and women were held to possess distinctive, complementary qualities: strength/sensibility, cold reason/warm heart, ambition/humility" (Blackbourn 213).
Fathers
- Total control over all legal and monetary matters
- Many fathers were “frustrated by changes in schooling and work practices and state functions which robbed him of certain patriarchal functions, the middle-class father ‘out of habit held onto his role, however, and thus pressed down on the nuclear family as a superfather, especially on the growing children, who from nursery onwards were subject to every impulse of their parental master.’ The result of such treatment could be seen in the dispirited, alienated, and ultimately suicidal lives of the characters in plays and novels” (Taylor 57-58).
- In charge of the day to day running of the household
- “Preserved the higher moral values, guarded her husband’s conscience, guided her children’s training” (Greenwood 64)
- Mothers were to provide “the first and most important education, which no after tutors, schools, or paternal praise and blame can ever replace” (Albisetti 6).
- Should be obedient, innocent, and pure.
- "Little people are always fit subjects to moralizing, even by the most licentious adults" (History 270).
- "In adult eyes, the children are either angelic - Wendla in her princess dress or Melchior described by his mother as 'this morning sky' - or limbs of Satan - Melchior later, a Lucifer fallen from his morning sky into the hell of a penitentiary, or Martha whose father makes her wear a sackcloth" (Boa 40).
- “Boys, who needed extended schooling to reproduce their parents’ style of life, were under their father’s authority until they had enough training and experience to make their own way in the world. Girls were not expected to make their own way – with a very few exceptions, they stayed at home unless or until they married” (Greenwood 67)
- “Obedience must very early become second nature for girls, whose entire life should be one of obedience not only to the laws of the just and the true, but also to those of the beautiful and proper” (Albisetti 17).
- “Girls should never hear, much less see, what is rude, immoral, or violent” (Albisetti 20).
Sources:
Albisetti, James C. Schooling German Girls and Women. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Print.
Blackbourn, David. The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780 - 1918. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Print.
Boa, Elizabeth. The Sexual Circus: Wedekind's Theatre of Subversion. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987. Print.
Fishman, Sterling. "Suicide, Sex, and the Discovery of the German Adolescent." History of Education Quarterly 10.2 (1970): 170-88. Web. 18 Aug. 2014.
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life. 2004. Print.
Strohmeier, Klaus Peter Huinick, Johannes. "Germany." International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family. Ed. James J. Ponzetti Jr. Farmington: Gale, 2003. Credo Reference. Web. 7 August 2014.
Taylor, Tom. "Images of Youth and Family in Wilhelmine Germany: Toward a Reconsideration of the German Sonderweg." German Studies Review 15 (1992): 55-73. Web. 17 Aug. 2014.