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Title: Women of the Teutonic Nations
Woman: In all ages and in all countries Vol. 8 (of 10)

Author: Hermann Schoenfeld

Release Date: June 14, 2010 [EBook #32776]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN OF THE TEUTONIC NATIONS ***

Produced by Renald Levesque

WOMAN

VOLUME VIII

WOMEN OF THE TEUTONIC NATIONS

HERMANN SCHOENFELD, PH.D., LL. D.
PROFESSOR OF GERMANIC LITERATURE IN THE GEORGE
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

[Illustration 1:
EMMA CARRYING HER LOVER
After the painting by G. L. P. Saint-Ange
Charlemagne had so great an affection for his children, legitimate and
natural, that he prevented his daughters, of whom Emma was one, from
marrying, in order not to lose their company. They were reputed to be
very beautiful. Being debarred from marriage, they sought unlawful love
adventures, and gave birth to illegitimate children. The romantic story
of Emma's nightly meetings with Eginhard, and of her carrying her
learned lover through the freshly fallen snow to conceal his footprints,
is an unauthenticated legend.]

_Woman_

In all ages and in all countries

VOLUME VIII

WOMEN OF THE TEUTONIC
NATIONS

BY

HERMANN SCHOENFELD, PH.D., LL.D.
Professor of Germanic Literature in the
George Washington University

ILLUSTRATED

PHILADELPHIA
GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PUBLISHERS

THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY
Dedicated to
MADAME CHRISTIAN HEURICH NEE KEYSER

PREFACE

Adequately to write the history of the woman of any race would mean the
writing of the history of the nation itself. There is no phase of the
cultural life of any people that is not founded upon the physical and
moral nature of its women. On the other hand, mental and moral heredity,
both through paternity and maternity, determines the character and
innermost being of woman. If we knew all the preponderating influences
of heredity for ages, we could with almost mathematical accuracy compute
the traits of human biology in every case. The forces of environment,
tremendous though they are, modify, but do not alter in an