Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1896-11-24
WIVES OF GERMANS.
AN AMERICAN GIRLS POSITION WHEN
SHE MARRtES A BARON. =


How She Has to Economic In the Use of
Her Own NIoney-An> Authority on the
Subject Writes For the Benefit of Young
Women In This Country.
Few qdlltions have been put to me as
test to my foreign experience oftener
than the familiar: Ought American
girls to marry German men? Are such
unions happy? Do they turn out we'll?
What class of men is it that step out
side the beaten track of home matri-
mony to seek American wives and
transplant them into the life of the IA
therlaEd?" writes Baroness Won Wedel
in Cosmopolitan.
In respect to the marriages Of Ameri-
can girls with German men, they may
be approved Of safely in the cases of
practical, worldly minded women and
OF very young or of very gentle temper
ed girls. Wives who possess little senti-
ment or only soft sentiments yield read
lily to their environment, the latter Civ
ing way unconsciously, and hence with
out pain, the former with foresight and
with a purpose selfish enough, as we
may assume, to reconpense them for
their renunciations.
AS for the class of willful, silly, pre-
tentious women, they are happy no.
where. German society should not be
called too harshly to account, therefore,
If they are wretched in marrying into
it. We must concede, if we are fair
minded, that they would have been just
as discontinued in any other geograph-
ical position as ia the fatherland.
The inquiry begins with our average
girls. They represent American wives
whose happiness is Influenced by the
specifically foreign traits in their hus-
bands and their husbands society and
surroundings. However they may vary
III character, they are alike in their
Americanis1n, and it is republican prin-
,iples which are opposed in them to the
aristocratic education of the men OF
their choice
1t is false prejudice to suppose that
these or the titled gentlemen who take
American wives are mere fortune hunt
ers and degenerated specimens of robil-
| lty. They are often men, it is true, who
could not marry women without dow
1ies, for gentlemen on the continent, as
| it must be kept continually in mind,
are excluded from the chances of max
ing money.
Where cases Of dissipation of the
great fortunes of American wives occur
and are duly reported, two or three
things are sometimes overlooked. The
first is that, if the cases were not rare,
they would hardly be considered worth
offering to the public as shocking facts.
The second is that the fortune evidently
was limited. The next may surprise US,
for it is truth that has not not been
realized by our home staying country
men-I mean the fact that foreigners
lay the blame on the American V ife.
Why, the relatives ask, did she not bring
more money into the connection?
What they mean, and what they feel
justified by the usages of their class in
meaning, is that young noblcmen dc
nothing unusual in being extravagant.
II the consort Of such a man brings
wealth enough for her to be luxurious,
too, no objection to that is valid. But
the head of tire house is the member
who is the representative of his rank, to-
gether with the munifcence that is suit
able to it, and where the mutual fortune
is circumscribed it becomes the duty of
the wife to retrench her OUTLAWS in order
to allow him to continue representing
their station without too much danger
of bankrupting the family means. Ger
man wives economize the more in PRO.
portion as their husbands spend.
| American born wives, on the contrary,
have drawn the reputation upon them.
selves Of being incapable of this sort of
sacrifice.
/ have learned to look for the real
! tragedies among foreign marriages in
the silent cases. These women of char
acter and ambition, united in fervid
temperament, keeping their post like
soldiers, are admirable wives often of
admirable men, yet they endure the con-
slant realization of the chosen places Of
their thoughts being foreign to the ways
and thoughts Of their husband and the
world about them. There are modern
women of strong and distinct lives
whose inner principles are supreme pro-
tests against the system of living which
their marriages unknowingly drew them
into-exiles from the soil, and, above
all, the soil of republicanism.
Bo>h law and custom grant men au-
thority over women. The bride passes
from the parental control into the con.
troll OF her husband, and, if she live to
be widow, into that of her son.
Our girls know theoretically before
marriage that they must be subservient
to their husbands as German wives and
that the obstacles to happiness lie in
the path Of wifely independence. The
gentle footpath Of submission is free
| l.: