Housekeeping in Germany is reduced to a science; an accurate knowledge of principles, gained by experiment, experience and reflection. Personal and domestic expenditures are regulated in strict accordance with the best theories in consumption of capital and consumption of labor. This is especially true in the large cities where the houses are built to accommodate eight or ten families in addition, various people below in the basements, such as shoemakers, seamstresses, and washerwomen, who are ready to give service to the herrschaften above. These houses are generally built of brick, stuccoed, and oftentimes in the early years of their existence present a very handsome front, deceiving a stranger’s eye with the impression that they are stone. The massive front door opening to the corridor which leads to the porte-cochÈre, is in modern houses, most ornamental. Wrought iron, in arabesque patterns, with the monogram of the owner, serves to protect the plate-glass behind. The panels of wood below are elaborately carved. This door opens to the touch of a bell attached to a rubber tube and bell which remains in the basement where the portier lives. Invariably on the inside of the door one sees in large German letters, “Bitte die ThÜr leise zu zumachen.” Every person entering or going out reads this request, and, while occupied with reading, naturally lets the door slam the louder. Only sly young men returning from the kneipe in the darkness feel obliged to bear it in mind. The slamming of the great corridor door, however, makes no impression upon the numerous families above, and if it chanced to be a friend of Frau SchÜltze who just entered the house, there is yet time for the gracious lady (gnÄdige frau), who probably lives up the second flight of stairs, to take off her morning cap (which a German woman is apt to wear until she hears some one coming) before her friend has time to ring the bell to her own apartment.

On each floor in the largest houses are two apartments, usually of seven or eight rooms—large enough, the Germans think, to accommodate a family of eight or nine. And if you are a foreigner, examining these houses with a view to renting, the portier frau will accompany you around, exclaiming how comfortable it all is! There is a salon in the front, a large, finely-proportioned drawing-room, with bay-window and frescoed ceiling, and inlaid floor. Then the smaller room to the right, or left, as it may chance to be, looking also on the street with two windows, and generally a balcony, is intended for the library or sitting-room. Then throwing the folding-doors wide open, between the salon and dining-room, she explains how handsome the two rooms look during a dinner party. The dining-room has an alcove with a large window looking down into the court. Then you follow her through a narrow hall, passing perhaps the bath-room, with the servants’ room above—only five feet high—coming next to the kitchen. “But the bed-rooms, where are they?” you ask, not being able longer to suppress your anxiety on this point. “Ach, hier sind die!” exclaims the astonished frau, and opens the door to two small rooms, about 10x12. You look at your companion, the significant glance is returned and you start for the next house, or up a second flight of the same, to see if the division of rooms be there as ridiculous. After visiting about twenty-five houses, however, and finding them all alike, you conclude a bed-room with a German is a secondary consideration, and as to “guest chambers,” they have never dreamed of them! Goethe was a true German in this respect, and no wiser than the rest of his countrymen. Lewis, in his biography of Goethe, never fails to express astonishment at the small, dark room, in which the great man slept and finally died. In the handsome old house at Weimar the spacious reception rooms and commodious dining-room contrast strangely with the dark little closet which is called the bed-room. I heard a German gentleman, who came to America at the time Mr. Schurz did, but who was not so successful, and who returned to Germany, and was consequently embittered with everything, say, “The Berlin houses remind me, with their swell fronts and elegant drawing-rooms, of the fashion of wearing embroidered chemisettes when the rest of the toilet is mean and contemptible.” “The Germans,” said he, “put all the elegance on the front of their houses, while the sleeping-rooms are miserably ventilated little holes.” This does not apply to the houses built recently. There is no longer such discrepancy between bed-room and salon—economy, convenience and rich designing characterize many German houses now, which would have astonished the German mind a half-century ago.

The system by which these houses are rented or occupied is worth our attention, since it has come to be a matter of great expense for one family to rent or own a single house in our large cities. Let us suppose the man who owns an apartment house in a large German city to have a capital of $60,000 invested. He lives himself with his family in the parterre wohnung, or what we would call the first floor. The bel Étage, or second floor, is the choice apartment, and rents, if the house be in a desirable part of the city, for 3,000 marks (a mark equals 25 or 24 cents). If the house be a double one, and this is generally the case, the first Étage would bring 6,000 marks, the second Étage 4,800 marks, and the third Étage 3,600. He has also his own apartment, and below, the shoemaker, furnishes shoes for the family; the seamstress does the sewing and the washerwoman is the family laundress. From his capital he realizes a large percentage. The taxes are heavy, but the outlays are not great, being in most cases incidental, for the water, gas, and garbage, etc., are met by the different tenants.

As to the housekeeping in one of these apartments or wohnungs—the windows are casement style, with double glass, easy for washing but difficult for drapery. The floors are inlaid with different colored woods, and waxed. The walls are papered with rich and dark colors, and the ceilings finished in stucco. A characteristic German house will be furnished about as follows: Grand piano in the drawing-room or upright if preferred; in front of the sofa, a good imitation of Smyrna rug, (made in Silesia generally). A table stands on the rug removed from the sofa only far enough to allow a stout matron to squeeze in for a seat in one corner, which is her prerogative. Around the sofa are arranged a half dozen chairs, all belonging in color and form to the sofa. It would be unjust here not to say that the modern craze for bric-a-brac, for elegant hangings and unique furniture has penetrated the German mind as it has the English and American, and the revival of house decoration is appreciated in Germany by those who have the means to investigate the subject, but the house we describe is “pre-Æsthetical” and stands for characteristic German taste, and it will be found compares most favorably with an American house before the “highly Æsthetical” fever developed. The dress circle of Smyrna rug, sofa, table and chairs, is the center of attraction, but the opposite walls and the corners of the room are not neglected. The piano occupies a conspicuous position, and one or two pedestals, with choice copies from the antique, are hid in the corners. A lady’s writing desk, with delicate note paper ready for her use, a beautiful chair for her service, and a rich robe for her feet, completes a German lady’s drawing room. If she can not afford good pictures, she will have none. Steel engravings from the old masters are frequently found, but seldom oil paintings unless the parties be very wealthy or where artistic home talent prevails. How shocking many houses in America are made, by horrid crude pictures—in color, houses which maintain some beauty in wood work, carpets, walls, and furniture. The portfolio of etchings which are now sent to the farthest west and all over the United States for inspection, are creating a higher taste, and it is a laudable scheme, although accompanied with exorbitant prices.

The arrangement of our Teutonic lady’s drawing-room is so national that the palace and the poor man’s house has the same link of resemblance; for if a man owns but one table and one sofa, the table will stand in front of the sofa, and the chairs around it. This impresses a foreigner as being stupid and dull, and the American or French or English woman living in Germany conscientiously avoids all proximity of sofas and tables. There is some excuse for this stupid regularity in the circles which still have the kaffee klatsch; an old and artless entertainment which traveled women eschew, and women of high rank long ago ignored, but which remains a blessing to women of moderate means and unpretentious life. The hour for the kaffee klatsch is always 4 o’clock, and each guest is requested to bring her knitting or fancy work, to take her seat at a table spread with a white cloth, upon which the kaffee stands, covered up with a quilted hood to keep it warm, and flanked on either side by large baskets of cakes. Here these innocent women sit for hours sipping coffee and knitting and gossiping to their hearts’ content. It is the hour sans-souci for the genuine “hausfrau.” In such society one can recognize the simplicity and ingenuousness of the German woman, and contrast the startling differences of education and habit with her American sisters.

Returning to the furniture of the house, we find the library, or sitting-room (wohnstube), for private libraries are rare, and only found in the house of the gelehrte. It is true that every house has Goethe, Schiller, Wyland, Heine, Schlegel’s translation of Shakspere, Humbolt’s travels, and, it may chance to be, Kant, Hegel, and Strauss, if the paternal mind cares no longer for Martin Luther. In the neighborhood of the old wartburg the memory of Luther is too sacred to allow David Strauss to lie on the same shelf with the Reformer. If the family taste runs to Æsthetics more than ethics, a cabinet of rare porcelain will take the place of a book-case in the sitting-room. But in either case the inevitable sewing table stands by the window with an easy chair by its side. If the gentleman of the house has writing at home, or any business engagements, then the sewing table finds its way to the big window in the alcove of the dining-room. This room is more comfortable than an American dining-room, inasmuch as it has, in addition to the set of dining-room chairs, a sofa and some easy seats, two closed cabinets for the damask, on either side of the buffet, which glistens with glass and china. Sofa pillows and footstools are abundant, which one can not say are easily discovered in the American home. But first of all a German house is comfortable, then ornamental. “Wine, wife and song,” is the motto, as it was in the days of Martin Luther, and gemÜthlich, which may mean friendly, well-disposed, good-natured, kind-hearted; snug, comfortable, lack-a-daisical, is the word which expresses the tone of home life. The bed-rooms are unattractive, as we have said. Two mahogany bedsteads, side by side, “too short than that a man can stretch himself on them, and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.” These German beds are fearfully and wonderfully made, feathers below and above, pillows hid during the day under the covers, and finally, a white spread thrown over the entire mountain, in such a manner that it is impossible to distinguish head from foot.

Of late the sense of the beautiful has brought to light in the shop windows blue silk quilted spreads and lace coverings for these monstrosities, and corresponding materials for the toilet table. But the genuine hausfrau considers them a “snare and delusion.” A German lady who had just returned from a visit to America, said to me, “How do the American women make up their beds? I must come and learn. But,” added she, in the same breath, “I should think you would die under such thin covers!” The floors of the bed rooms are painted with yellow ochre and varnished. Small rugs lie in front of each bed, and before each piece of furniture. A candle, matches, and water carafe stand on the table by the bed. During the Philadelphia Exposition, a German, writing from an American hotel, observed: “How exasperating it is to go to bed in a room with no candle, only gas in the centre of the room, and innumerable chairs between one and the gas at midnight; and how dreadful to awaken and find white walls staring at one and reflecting the morning sun into one’s eyes.” Just criticism! The Germans are too highly cultivated in art to tolerate white walls, and the Americans are rapidly becoming so.

The kitchen is the German woman’s pride, and no wonder, with its shining rows of brass and copper kettles and cooking utensils, hanging so orderly against the gray wall, and the white porcelain oven, brass-doored and brass-knobbed. Does it surprise you that she likes to take a seat there every morning and talk over the menu for the day with Frederika, then unlock the pantry door and survey the clean shelves, all dressed up in perforated paper, or red leather and brass tacks, and loaded with groceries and confectioneries. What woman’s heart would not swell at the sight of such a pantry and kitchen, and such a capable, white-capped, white-aproned girl as Frederika? It is an ideal picture, but one often and often seen in Germany.

We shall make the acquaintance of German servants presently, but first some reference to the German ovens will be necessary, for it is with these that the servant’s time is first engaged in the morning and last at night. Next to the Dutch stove, the German oven is probably the most economical, and as far as mere temperature is concerned, the most effective of all warming arrangements. They are built of brick covered with porcelain and are part of the house, being built in with the walls. The cost is about seventy-five dollars for those finished with plain white tiles; but frequently the tiles are colored like majolica, and are highly decorated. In the Gewerbe Museum, of Berlin, there is a collection of tiles used in NÜrnberg on the old ovens—some are most curious and beautiful. Since the spirit of decorative art is reviving in Germany, as elsewhere, the artists of highest rank do not consider it beneath their dignity to paint tiles or panels, or anything that can ornament the “house beautiful.” These ovens are generally built in the corner of a room, and are oftentimes eleven feet high. The fire is burned in a furnace near the bottom, and the heated smoke is made repeatedly to traverse the structure from side to side along the winding passage before it reaches the top, where a pipe conveys it, when comparatively cold, into a flue in the wall. The heated mass of brick continues to warm the room long after the fuel is burned. The same quantity of fuel which heats a German oven for a day is consumed in an open grate in three hours. In Northern Germany the poorer classes burn turf and charcoal, the better classes use the turf to mix with the stone-coal. Wagons of turf are brought to the front of the house early in the morning, the horses unhitched and taken away. The fuel is then carried basket by basket full, on the backs of old women, to the attic or fifth story of the house, which is divided into store rooms for the different herrschaften. On this floor is stored the wood, the coal, the turf. Early in the morning the back stairs are crowded with the various servants, from the different apartments, going up and down with their baskets of fuel. The fire must be lighted one hour before the rooms become comfortable. While the fires are beginning to burn the waxed floors are being polished, which is the time in our American or English economy for cooking the breakfast. If our German friends however prefer polished floors to gladden their sight on rising, to heavy beefsteaks to warm their stomachs, what reason have we to criticise? Frederika is lighting not the kitchen fire, but a little spirit lamp underneath the “coffee machine,” or boiler, and carrying in the fresh (but cold) rolls which she has just received from the baker’s wife at the back door, and in ten minutes she will formally announce to the gnÄdigen herrn and the gnÄdiger frau (gracious lord and gracious lady) that “frÜhstÜck ist fertig” (breakfast is ready). The gnÄdiger herr will appear wrapped up in a heavy morning wrapper (made of gray cloth, trimmed in mazarine blue) with newspaper in hand, and the gnÄdige frau will take her seat at the table where the coffee is sending up its smoke. She looks, in her morning cap and white apron, surely as healthy as her English sisters, and much more so than the beautiful but frail American woman, who sits eating her mutton chops and warm muffins. Who shall settle the question if doctors disagree? Continental Europe has existed on coffee and cold bread and eggs and never had dyspepsia, while England and America have grown fat or nervous on the beefsteak and muffins.

The German washing is so well-known, and has afforded so much amusement, that I would not overthrow the traditions; yet after a long residence in Germany, and an experience of years in keeping house in a German apartment, I learned to regard the “grosse wÄsche” as a necessary development of the apartment system of keeping house. For instance, there is one common wash-room, and one drying-room; the family in the parterre wohnung engage it the first two days in the week, then it belongs to the family on the opposite side of the house, and successively to the other inmates of the house, so that weekly occupancy is out of the question. But a foreigner can escape this egregious imposition by sending the washing out of the house every week and waiting patiently for it to return in ten days.

I was asked repeatedly by my German lady friends, “Where is your wedding chest of linen?” meaning a carved cedar chest containing a wedding dowry of linen, enough to last through four generations, which is quite the thing to be inspected by one’s intimate friends, more than the trousseau. How should an American woman answer such a question, or place herself in the favorable estimation of her good German friends again after shocking their education and hereditary taste by confessing that her house linen was only sufficient for present use. There is a sense of pride in the monthly washing in Germany little dreamed of by the general observer.

A cook, a house-girl, or kindermÄdchen, and a man-servant (diener) are the usual number of domestics employed by a well-to-do German family where there are children. If there are no children, a cook and diener are sufficient help, even in a large city. In the country one girl is enough. She is “Jack-of-all-trades,” and gets poor pay and less praise for her proficiency. Her brawny arms and rosy cheeks are only found admirable by some wandering artist, who makes a hasty sketch of her carrying water from the village fountain. Among people who keep up any social style a diener in livery is indispensable. He opens the door, serves at table, sets the table, polishes the floors, does the errands, carries the invitation, walks behind the ladies when they go out, or sits on the box with the coachman when they are driving. Above all, he keeps Frederika in a good humor by polishing the doors of her oven, and sipping coffee with her while the herrschaften are sipping theirs. She learns to call him her “lieber Schatz,” and by and by, Frederika’s head becomes turned, and the cooking is not so perfect. The wages of this diener are not large according to American ideas; he receives, according to his ability, per month, twenty thalers, ten thalers, five, or even two and a half, if he is young, and has never served outside a restaurant. In addition to his wages, he gets good food, or the equivalent in money, which he generally prefers, for he can then go to the bier garten and get his meals, or eat with the family of the porter below. A servant must understand his or her work distinctly before entering into an engagement. Each must have a book in which the employer can read the date of birth, place of birth, the occupation of parents, the character of the employe, the recommendation or condemnation of the last employer. This book is kept by the lady of the house as long as the servant remains in her service, and when leaving, if the person has been faithful, she is expected to write a good recommendation in the book. There are two classes of cooks in Germany—the finished cook (die fertige kÖchin), and the cook who is willing to do any kind of work. Die fertige kÖchin is an educated queen in her department, and like every autocrat, her power renders her unaccountable for her actions. She prefers to do the marketing, and is in league with all the grocers and butchers. This coalition of butchers, bakers, grocers, and cooks in Germany is a confederacy which threatens the hausfrau, the baroness and royal household alike. Socialism is a ubiquitous monster, and who feels it more than the helpless woman with her account books before her, knowing there is no remedy if the cook says “Meat has risen, and the butcher would not take less.” An unending task in a European kitchen is dish washing, for six dozen plates in serving the dinner there go no farther than one dozen in the ordinary American way. The diener is expected to help the cook in this work, and once a week a schauer frau (scouring woman, or woman inspector), comes to help. It is a distracting day in the wirthschaft, and serves as a weekly reminder of what is to come before Christmas and Easter. This schauer frau comes early in the morning, tears down all the kitchen utensils, takes off the brass oven doors, sets all the copper kettles and tin ware in a row, and goes to work scouring them as bright as we would think necessary for a spring cleaning. Then she washes the windows, scrubs the floors, and returns with her fifteen silver groschen in the evening as contented as a woman in America would be with a dollar. Christmas and Easter are the seasons above all other times of the year for thorough cleaning. Then the floors are so highly polished, and the brass knobs and doors of the porcelain ovens made so brilliant that the servants go around in felt slippers and old gloves, for fear of dimming the luster before the dawn of the sacred days. Christmas is an expensive season for the herrschaften—so many presents expected: the cook, the diener, the porter and the portier frau, the lamp lighter, the gas man, the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker, and above all, the letter carrier. Eight and five dollars are small amounts for the cook and diener. But we must remember the cook’s small wages during the year (from five to twelve dollars is the usual monthly wages), before pronouncing the Christmas gift too much.

Feiertage, or holidays for servants in Germany, are a great annoyance to the order of domestic life. They are so importunant in their demands, and so obstinately disagreeable if not gratified, that it is better for the family to go to the restaurant for dinner and “eat bitter herbs where there is peace,” than to remain at home for “a stalled ox,” with angry servants to serve it. While they demand so much for themselves, they are equally disappointed if the herrschaften do not celebrate every birthday of their own. The extra work is no consideration, and by touching little ways they show their pleasure when extra company is expected. Bouquets are placed on the coffee table by the plate of the member of the family whose birthday has arrived; a cake, with the number of candles to indicate the age of the person is found burning, and Frederika and August have broad smiles on their faces as they come in and rattle off some poetry which they have committed to memory for the occasion, wishing the person whose birthday they are celebrating glÜck and heil.

Dinner parties are the most frequent and most formal entertainments in Germany. They are stereotyped, but the type belongs purely to Germany. When the ladies enter the room, after the introductions they are invited to be seated on the sofa and chairs of the “dress-circle” which we have described. The gentlemen stand around the fair ones, bending or breaking their backs in the effort to talk, or the more unconcerned stand off in groups, learning from the hostess at the earliest moment which ladies they are to escort to the table. The seat on the sofa is the seat of honor, and if a lady of inferior rank has arrived first and occupied that place, she rises immediately and resigns it on seeing her superior enter the room; so that a captain’s wife will offer the seat to a major’s wife, and a major’s wife to a general’s wife, and so on. The white-gloved diener throws open the doors of the dining-room ten minutes after the arrival of the guests, and the guests have the privilege of speaking to each other at the table if an introduction has failed in any case in the salon. The dinner is served entirely from the buffet; the snowy damask, flowers and glass are only presented upon the table for the guests to feast their eyes upon. The meats are all carved in the kitchen, and handed around by the servants. A good menu resembles the French taste and order somewhat, although a discerning eye will detect the German element in the following:

There is much leisure, much conversation, and much “toasting,” at a German dinner. Instead of the ladies retiring when the cigars and coffee are served, as they do in England, the gentlemen and ladies leave the table at the same time, and upon entering the salon each guest goes to the host and hostess and offers his or her hand, saying in the most gracious manner, “gesegnete malzeit.” The guests all shake hands with each other and repeat the same, and then the gentlemen go into the library to smoke, and coffee is taken to them, as it is also brought to the ladies in the salon. The German hostess does not dress for her dinner parties as much as the English women. She is never dÉcolletÉ—generally appears in light or black silk, square neck and half sleeves, with long white gloves. When the hour for departure comes, the diener goes down to the street corner, orders a droschke (cab) for those who have not private carriages, for one mark (twenty-five cents), the old kutcher will drive away the happy or weary guest, and the diener returns with a bright countenance and full pocket, having received from each guest in the corridor below enough “five silver groschens” to take Frederika to twenty concerts, and buy as many glasses of beer as they want. And so goes life in the “Vaterland!”