Character Is Destiny: The Autobiography of Alice Salomon (Social History, Popular Culture & Politics in Germany) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0472113674 ISBN 13: 9780472113675

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2004

Synopsis

In her autobiography, the remarkable feminist and social worker Alice Salomon recounts her transition in the 1890s from privileged idleness to energetic engagement in solving social problems. Salomon took the lead in establishing the profession of social work, and built a career as a social reformer, activist, and educator. A prolific author, Salomon also played a key role in the transatlantic dialogue between German and American feminists in the early twentieth century. Her narrative concludes with the account of her expulsion from Germany by the Nazis in 1937. Salomon's formative influence on the field of social work makes her story crucial for the history of the discipline. This work will also appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of the feminist and socialist movements or the political and social history of twentieth-century Germany. The volume also includes several of Salomon's essays on social work and women's issues, along with photographs of Salomon, her students, and her colleagues. Andrew Lees is Professor and Chair of the History Department at Rutgers University, Camden.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Lees is Professor and Chair of the History Department at Rutgers University, Camden.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Character Is Destiny

The Autobiography of Alice Salomon

The University of Michigan Press

Copyright © 2004the University of Michigan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-11367-5

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments............................................................................................ixIntroduction...........................................................................................................11. A Child with a Garden, 1872-1889....................................................................................112. Apprenticeship, 1893-1899...........................................................................................243. Widening Horizon....................................................................................................374. London-Berlin.......................................................................................................485. The Aberdeens, Scotland, Ireland, 1904-1908.........................................................................616. Two Jobs for Life, I: The School for Social Work, 1907-1913.........................................................687. Two Jobs for Life, II: Officer of the International Council; Canada and First Glimpse of U.S.A......................818. Brief Harvest before the Storm......................................................................................899. "The Evidence of Things Not Seen," 1914.............................................................................10110. Patriotism Is Not Enough, 1914-1916................................................................................10511. In the War Office, 1917-1919.......................................................................................11212. Fourteen Years of Democracy, I: Years of Chaos, 1919-1924..........................................................12113. Fourteen Years of Democracy, II: My Foreign Affairs, 1920-1933.....................................................13314. Fourteen Years of Democracy, III: Social Reconstruction, 1924-1929.................................................15015. Fourteen Years of Democracy, IV: Then Came the Collapse............................................................15916. The Golden Ring of Friendship......................................................................................16517. The Stream of Lava.................................................................................................17318. The Mystery of Individual Adjustments..............................................................................18119. A Spy Stands behind You............................................................................................18820. Exit Modern Woman..................................................................................................19121. The Strong and the Weak............................................................................................20122. God and Caesar.....................................................................................................20923. The Pastors ... Martin Niemller...................................................................................21424. New Lease on Life..................................................................................................220Appendix A. The Significance of the Women's Movement for Social Life...................................................231Appendix B. The Revolution of the Mother...............................................................................239Appendix C. Preface to an Early Version of Salomon's Autobiography.....................................................247Notes..................................................................................................................249

Chapter One

A Child with a Garden: 1872-1889

My childhood ended at the close of a chapter in German history. I was sixteen when a whole nation grieved over the death of a beloved sovereign and the fatal illness of his successor. Nobody who lived in Berlin in March 1888 could forget the tragic solemnity of the crowds arrayed to see the procession that carried Wilhelm I, aged ninety-one, to his grave. It was a bitter-cold morning; huge masses of snow had fallen during a month which generally brings spring to Germany. Since before dawn, the population had waited, a living wall against the walls of piled-up snow, to bid farewell to the emperor. For Wilhelm I had been very popular-a good Christian and a God-fearing man, according to his lights, and peace loving, even though his interests were limited to his army. It was known that he had been loath to allow his Iron Chancellor, Bismarck, to push Prussia into three wars of aggression: against Denmark, Austria, and France.

In the case of France, Bismarck had even resorted to the gross deception of publishing a doctored version of one of the emperor's telegrams in order to force a war. During my years at the University of Berlin, the professors of history frankly admitted this and considered it a particularly clever move. The masses of people heard only what they were meant to know: that these had been victorious wars fulfilling the German dream, the resurrection of a united German nation. "Through blood and iron" was the slogan, and I doubt whether many people had qualms about it. We swallowed it as people in other countries had swallowed what their governments had thought fit to let them know about imperialistic moves. "The end justifies the means" was a principle not new in politics, and the new German Empire pleased the people.

Under the influence of Bismarck, Wilhelm had given the nation a liberal constitution including general, equal, and secret suffrage for men; he had contributed an original program of social security to the world's theories on social progress. He remained simple and unostentatious even after the new German unity and grandeur had been achieved, becoming in his old age almost a legend. Liberal groups had looked forward to the reign of Friedrich, his son. In him lay their hope for a reign of peace, of democratic reforms and a stable economic and cultural policy. Now these hopes were blighted. When the old emperor was buried, everyone knew that the days of the new one were numbered. He succumbed after a reign of one hundred days, leaving the throne to rash, vainglorious young Wilhelm II.

At this time I was just beginning to reach out with vague aspirations toward a profession in which I could follow my long-growing desire to help people. It became for me more than a profession. It was a challenge, a vocation, and a calling.

Even as a small child, I had hoped for a career. At five, before I went to school, I wanted to become a teacher, and I began to want to help others when I was twelve. Besides, all my life, as long as I can remember, I wanted to travel and see the world.... All those these dreams have come true in strange and unexpected ways.

One of my earliest recollections is the birth of a baby sister when I was three. My older sister and constant playmate had been sent to visit our grandmother in Breslau-not to avoid embarrassing explanations but merely to relieve the household. Nobody dreamed of sex education at that period, nor did any of us doubt the story of the stork. On our vacations in the country we used to gaze for hours at a stork's nest up on the church spire, hoping to witness a delivery. My parents had been married in 1858, and for the next twenty years there was seldom a time when my mother did not have either a child on the way or in the cradle. A son was born in 1860 and another in 1861, who died of diphtheria when he was eight. My mother never stopped mourning the loss of this son, although an infant had died before him and there had been two miscarriages. Then four daughters arrived in the course of only six years. My father was scarcely pleased at the birth of one girl after another, but discomfited mainly, I suspect, at the enforced seclusion of his wife, a damper to his impetuous spirit and love of adventure.

I was the second of the girls. My mother had chosen for me the name of one of Queen Victoria's children, Alice, the Grand Duchess of Hessia, because-my mother told me frequently-the duchess was an exceptionally devoted and loving daughter, a shining example to follow. The two youngest girls had the flowery names of Edith Elfriede and Olga Agnes Lucie.

My parents differed in temperament as well as background. My father and his brothers were products of a family in the early stage of broader education and material comforts. They were rather undisciplined, interested in some form of art or public service, reaching beyond the sphere into which they were born. In my father's case it was a yearning to see the world, a trait I inherited, when from the very beginning I wanted the whole world to be my country. Like all his brothers, my father was in the leather business, handed down for three generations. He seems to have thought that this succession would go on forever. In his will, which I found long after he had gone and when my connection with the leather trade had become exceedingly remote, he expressed the wish that his daughters should marry "businessmen; if possible, men in the leather trade."

His family had lived in a small town in the north of Germany since the beginning of the eighteenth century. His great-grandfather had received concessions for his business and for the acquisition of a house in 1744 and 1764 and a safe conduct from Frederick the Great in 1765. Only in my grandfather's time did the family become established in Berlin.

My mother's people had been bankers since a time before the powerful stock companies had deprived the private and family banking houses of their prominence. She was born in Breslau, the capital of Silesia, and lived there until her marriage. And though it later developed into not too happy a marriage, complicated by clashing temperaments, it was a love match, formed without family interference.

There was neither Jewish tradition nor religion in my parents' home. My father probably did not think at all about religion; he was simply not concerned. This was an "enlightened," liberal period, and many people believed they had grown beyond the riddles of life. My mother was so restrained in her emotions that religious impulses seldom found expression and withered from lack of nurture.

Although Berliners looked down on people from the provinces, the banking family from Silesia considered itself superior to the leather family. In my opinion, the leather family was infinitely more interesting. However, my mother must have had more energy, intelligence, and ambition than the rest of her family. She had worked for a teacher's or governess' examination as a very young girl, a most unusual undertaking for a well-to-do banker's daughter in the fifties. She was to me the most beautiful of women, my yardstick of goodness and virtue, but she must have been exhausted by frequent pregnancies and childbirth, and though she lived to be very old, never very strong or healthy. Nevertheless, she had an active mind until her old age and read a great deal. Her hands were never idle. She knitted stockings for all of us and crocheted miles and miles of lace for curtains, bedspreads, and ultimately for every shelf in the kitchen.

Edith, the sister after me, contracted pneumonia in infancy. She suffered terribly from emphysema of the lungs until she approached adolescence. Sometimes, for months at a time, my mother had to keep her alive during attacks of asthma. If my mother ever had had a capacity for enjoying life, she must have lost it then.

My brother and my older sister were both very good-looking. I was such a thin and weak infant that my mother used to cry when she saw a fat, rosy baby. I seem to have recuperated, judging by my early photographs of a blond curly-haired little girl with bright eyes and as pretty as most healthy and well cared for children. At some unrecorded age, however, my nose became prominent and I became the ugly duckling of the family-tall and lanky. My father considered me the most intelligent of his children, though I cannot imagine what made him think so. I was no child prodigy and I showed no particular gifts; to the contrary, I was slow in learning to speak, until at a belated stage I burst out into whole sentences. Later, when my work often required my speaking in public, the family teased me about hoarding my gifts for a sudden, dramatic display.

During the seventies and eighties, the city in which we were born and grew up was very provincial. Paris, London, Vienna were world capitals. They had picturesque and beautiful quarters, famous palaces and parks, architectural style, great monuments of the past, fine hotels and shops, and artistic entertainment attracting people of every country. Berlin was a capital in name only, no more imposing than the capitals of the many small German principalities. When it was suddenly raised to the dignity of an imperial residence, it developed modern quarters, comforts, and conveniences with American strides, but it could not acquire the dignity and beauty of ancient culture. Its chief distinctions were cleanliness, the integrity of its administration, and the orderly conduct of its citizens.

Everybody lived economically and frugally-four or five families in the flats of a two- or three-story house. I do not remember ever having visited people during my childhood who had a house to themselves. No technical progress had invaded the home. The old emperor had a bathtub brought from the "Hotel de Rome" whenever he wanted a bath. It was generally conceded that the crown princess, "Frederick," Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, had married into a country still in a primitive stage of civilization.

There were, of course, no public means of transportation within the city. When I was four or five years old, the track for the first tram cars was laid along the original fortifications, the city walls, leading from one city gate to another. The cars were drawn by horses, and there was only one track with a switch for the cars when they met. No child of today can enjoy the movies more than we enjoyed watching the waiting cars and the switching of the rails. Limited and dull as life must have been, to us Berlin was the center of the world and the house we lived in a marvel of beauty. It stood in a street whose name was changed regularly according to military events and foreign policy. While we lived there, it was Kniggrtzerstrasse, in memory of the Prussian victory over Austria. Later, when the Austrians became German allies, it was changed to Budapesterstrasse, and under the Weimar Republic it was divided into Friedrich-Ebert and Stresemannstrasse. What the Nazis did, I have forgotten.

My father owned the house we lived in, and we were spread out over a very spacious first floor, which in those days was called the "bel tage." From time to time, as the family grew, a room was added without much architectural planning. Thus it became a maze of dark rooms which could be reached only through my parents' bedroom, through the bathroom or kitchen, or through an open gallery. All rooms had to be lighted with oil lamps or candles. My father had a passion for auctions, where he bought what he considered "art treasures": pictures and bronze statuettes, ivory figures and knickknacks-objects of pride for us-filled the whole house. We children realized in later years that there were quite a few horrors among them. But my mother cherished things for the sake of tradition or because she had grown attached to them. She was distressed and indignant when the younger generation suggested banning doubtful ornaments.

But even for her, days of auction sales were critical. My father had more imagination than restraint. Once an enormous ship made of bamboo arrived without warning, bought from a bankrupt playhouse. It was set in the garden, spurring us to dangerous acrobatic feats.

The garden was our childhood paradise. It bordered on a courtyard where other children were supposed to play, and it was shaded by a beautiful old walnut tree. The garden was reserved for us. No one seemed to be aware of the injustice of this arrangement, but we wanted playmates and as soon as any children moved into the house, we invited them. The garden was unusually large, even for a period when real estate speculation had not yet changed the rural character of the city. It had a tiny hill, a pond, and a fountain; there were all sorts of birds and animals, including a chicken yard, and for a while we even owned two does. There were old-fashioned lilac bushes, fruit trees, and a pergola with grapevines-grapes that never get very sweet because of the pale northern sun. I have never liked any other grapes but these. And no apple-neither an American nor a Meran Caville-compares with the translucent wax apples, as juicy as peaches, from one of our trees. There were enough flowers for the children to cut as many as we wanted. For that matter, there was no one to prevent it, since we had little supervision. The garden implanted in all of us a deep love for growing things, for life as it comes out of the soil, and particularly for flowers, a love we were to keep throughout our years. For me the garden probably did more. This unrestrained existence, this sphere in which no authority prevailed, in which we were our own masters, released my natural bent and my longing for an active, free, and independent way of living.

But there was nothing in this secluded family circle to account for my precocious ambition to become a teacher. Who ever conceived of a girl in our group following a profession? Perhaps my desire was prompted by the teacher of one of my sisters, a lovely young woman who sometimes turned up for a visit. I may have thought that all teachers were as lovable as she was, an idea which I later recognized as an illusion.

A psychologist might suggest another explanation: that my place as second daughter, with the disadvantages involved, may have produced the desire for a position of authority, for a situation in which I would be able to lead. My ambition was inextricably interwoven with the wish to help people, and my adolescent schoolmates and friends knew this when they confided their personal problems to me. I must have inherited this quality from my father, who-though by no means a humanitarian- rushed to the aid of anyone in distress and went so far as to bring home from a business trip to Turkey two little boys whom he had found in a Jewish orphanage in Constantinople and adopted on the spot. According to the professional standards of social workers, which I helped bring into existence, my father's charity without forethought or skill was all wrong. But there was at least a warm impulse behind it, which, alas, is not always evident in those whom we have trained to apply scientific methods.

Looking back, it is difficult to say whether I was a happy child, but I was certainly not unhappy. I was easily frightened. Today we would call it "nervous and excitable." For a while I had crying fits at night and could not be quieted unless my mother took me into her bed. The cause of this I have always attributed to the famous Arabian Nights. Possibly I was too young to distinguish between fact and fiction. In one of the stories a huge picture on the wall opened mysteriously like a door and admitted an evil ghost-woman, its living model. I do not remember anything else about it, only that fear gripped me as soon as I saw the picture on the cover. I begged to have it taken away, but my sister and the servants thought it was fun to frighten me. When my mother finally found out about it, the book disappeared. I have never read it since.

I could barely wait for the day when I would be allowed to go to school. I was not quite six years old when that happy first day dawned. People did not fuss over the education of their children. There were no progressive schools, no child-study groups, no psychoanalysts, no rational deliberations about a child's character traits and the best method to develop them in the right direction. I do not believe that this handicapped or damaged us as much as it should have according to the theories of modern educators. Our mothers had a natural relationship with their children and not the cramped attitude of so many modern mothers who have been overfed with psychology. They trusted the influence of love and their instincts for guidance and good example.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Character Is Destiny Copyright © 2004 by the University of Michigan . Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472113674
• ISBN 13: 9780472113675
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 280
• Editor: Lees Dr Andrew