How did women live in 19th century Germany?

Question

How did women live in 19th century Germany?

Answer 1

How are we meant to no?!

geez...i dont exactly have a 19th century census of all female germans.

i would guess a lot because it a whole century...

Answer 2

I would imagine that in Germany, as elsewhere, how women lived would to a certain extent depend on their class.  There would be many women who had to work for a living, especially poor women.  In Germany, as elsewhere, large numbers of women worked in domestic service.  Married women if they were middle or upper class would mostly not work, but woul dmanage their households and raise the children.  Anyone who could afford it would employ servants.

There was an active women's movement in Germany, I believe German women got the vote after WW1, just as they did in Britain and America.  Auguste Schmidt(1833-1902), who was head of the women's teacher training college in Leipzig, was head of the General German Women's Association, and was very active in encouraging women's involvement in charity work and in improving the status of women in the law and in civil affairs, and in increasing employment opportunities for women.

I know that bicycling was popular with German women just as it was with British and American women in the late 19th century, because Jerome K. Jerome writes about German women cyclists in his book 'Three Men on the Bummel' about a cycling holiday he took with two friends in the late 1890s.  He also writes about buying things in shops from female shop assistants, so it was evidently common for German women to work in shops.

There were women working in nursing and in obstetrics, when Princess Victoria (later Queen Victoria) was born in 1819, she was delivered by a German female obstetrician.  As in Britain and America, a lot of 19th century German women would be employed as teachers, I know that German governesses were popular in Britain in the 19th century, so many German girls must have gone abroad to work.

Answer 3

Breath in...Breath out...Repeat.