New Britain herald., 1930-07-18
Women In Germany Are Gaining Independence As
 They Lose Avondupois

New ork, July lS.-GerHldHJ now is witnessing what might be called the twilight of the haus- frau"
 That is the summary given oi German women today by one whc knows them well-Margaret Gold smith, Chicago young woman who spent part of her childhood in Ger many. took a degree in Berlin, whc for the past few years has been foreign correspondent for a metro politan newspaper, after serving as United States assistant commercial attache at Berlin. She now is visit ing America.
 Three things, she declares, are re- sponsible for the changing character Of German women.
 Must Earn Living
 Tn the first place, the majority of German women have to get out Of the home, faced by the neces- sity of earning living" she said. Second. there is a wave Of inter- est in outdoor sports everybody s doing somcthins-rowing, hiking mountain climbing, swimming.
 Third, the slenderizing fad has swept Germany, and this, in com bination with the other two, in- evitably is changing the comfort able, buxom, home body that the hausfrau has been for generations.
 "The most outstanding move ment in Germany today in this boyish-form craze" Miss Goldsmith continued. They call it 'vermaenn- Nchung the frau Newspapers and magazines openly argue the pros and cons of whether or not the thin, boyish woman will make as fine a mother as did the traditional stout hausfrau.
 A Scale of Slenderness
 But German women, undismayed, go on reducing. The test of whether or not woman is thin enough is that she should not meas ure more through the body than the number of inches there are from the tip Of her nose to the back Of her head. In other words, a won1- ans figure is just right when she can slide through any aperture as wide as this prescribed distance
 With all these changes, however, Miss Goldsmith remarks that mo- where in Germany is there the feminist conscious feeling that America shows on every hand. She explains it in the following manner.
 The Imitation washed out the great middle class. Women went to work and worked hard In order to live, but not to advance the cause of their sex. Germany was spared having leisure-class women who made a crusade out of getting the vote, and then kept on crusading ever afterwards.
 Only One Industralist
 Before the war German Wo. men didn't dream Of the vote. Ar ter it, they got it automatically with the new constitution. There was no c1nOuOhdl stI dIIl dOoot l1' Aio oNi-N of feminine victory for this Or that
 But. though German women are working In all lines of endeavor, there is only one woman, Bertha krupp, called Big Bertha for the famous gun her father named after her. who runs business Of any i'm portance in Germany today, Miss Goldsmith said.
 "The greatest phenomenon in the modern world, in German eyes, is the successful American business woman" she added German men never have considered women as money-making persons in the busi- ness world. Thousands of finely trained German women have sub ordinate positions in business. None head it, or are to be counted ot prime importance.
 For instance, one woman 1n- herited a big bank. She specialized in college economics and finance to equip her for her responsibilities Then she married her professor and ever since has stayd home while he resigned his position to run her bank,
 Precisely that same thing hap pened to a woman who inherited a biz publishing house. German wo- men are not yet trusted to run busi- nesses
 However. there are hundreds in the professions Doctors, psychia- trists, lawyers. architects, women judges, playwrights abound. But when women go into business in Germany. they still are subordinatcd to men"
 MA Goldsmith has written seV- eral books on German subjects "karins Mother,' novel of Ger man home-life before and after the war, biography of Frederick the Great" and has. in collaboration with her husband, Frederick Voight just had published a biography of Hindenburg. She soon will return to Germany to begin her next biog- raphy, Zeppelin"