He, She, It

Every student of German, particularly if either a man or a woman, will want to ponder the latest refinement in the language the Ministry of the Interior of the Federal government at Bonn has issued a regulation that unmarried women who reach the age of thirty shall henceforth be addressed as “Frau.”

Every student of German knows that there has been some dalliance with this word, which is usually translated as “Mrs.,” for unmarried German women who reach whatever age they themselves deem the proper moment for despair may, if they choose, cease to be Frduleins and become Fraus. The option is now removed.

Every student of German frequently wonders how come the lovelier sex ever got bogged down with a word like Frau anyway, and must occasionally wonder why a bachelor girl who can go on and on with a fairly fitting word like Fraulein would want to make the shift. “Call me Frau” is not so pretty. But every student of German knows that the female in that language gets a rough deal from birth and that the handling of gender makes doubts not only about syntax but about the whole national outlook.

The word for little girl in German is Mädchen. A little girl ought to be called a she, but it is das Mädchen — neuter. Later, when the word Fräulein applies — it corresponds to Miss — the sensitivities of any other language would rally and respond and the young lady would receive polite, and perhaps amorous, reference in the feminine. But no — Fraulein also is das, neuter. A language which calls its girls “it,” every student will agree, can be expected to waver on the nuances ol Miss and Mrs. It certainly does.

German has a most interesting word for a teen-age girl. It is Backfisch. Remember how when you went to the brook and caught a trout that was too small to keep you threw him/her back? Well, a German girl who gangles betwixt Mädchen and Fräulein is called a Backfisch. The word is used in good humor and is not derogatory. But it is construed in the masculine — a Backfisch is a he. In short, not until she becomes a Frau does a German woman attain full feminine gender — which must be the only way to explain why an unmarried woman finally despairing of a husband decides to quit being an it and call herself Frau, anyway.

Socially, this creates occasional confusion. You meet a good-looking woman called, say, Frau Denkenmeister, and to make small talk you inquire for her husband. She says she has no husband. This leaves you an awkward alternative — is she divorced or widowed? Divorce is gayer than bereavement, so you chance it, and you say, “Divorced?” She says no. So you say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know; my condolences.” And she says, “But you don’t understand; I never married.”

Anybody who is not too much of a student of German naturally says, or thinks, the next logical remark: “Then how come Frau?” We don’t have this problem in English; neither do the French. Demoiselle, even when it means “a hot water bottle,” is forever feminine. And if a ninety-eight-year-old old maid answers the door and a salesman says, “Good morning,

Madam,” the generalization quickly dissolves and she becomes specifically “Miss.” Marriage, and marriage alone, is our factor.

The edict by the Department of the Interior assaults the traditional leeway allowed a woman in respect to age. There is now no wavering limbo in which she can play around. It is twenty-nine plus and thirty-one minus — as definite as the Rubicon, or 32°F. How a woman in any other language would accept this governmental definition teases the imagination, but in Germany it certainly gives the man every right to ask any woman how old she is. If she’s unmarried, and over thirty, he must address her as Frau, and how else would he know?

And every student of German will observe that “old maid” cannot now be translated into that tongue. This spares the student forever the perennial, nagging doubts about whether an old maid is a him or an it. Up to thirty we still have to think, but after that every German lady is now officially a she. Is not this a good thing to know?