Shortage Of Housemaids In West Germany

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29746, 13 February 1962, Page 2

Shortage Of Housemaids In West Germany

HAMBURG. “A fine large room with television set, a fully automatic kitchen, a washing machine, life in the family and a charwoman , . Advertisements of this kind appear in the West German daily papers every day, and often enough their almost desperate tone and the exceedingly good conditions offered show that German housewives attempt to do everything to lure a maid into their households.

Only 50 years ago maids were happy to stay in small attic rooms. Today, the vocation of houaemaid appears to be dying out altogether, although the demand is greater than ever. In Hamburg, for example, only 5 per cent, of all families have a maid. It is not a problem of money. Maids today can work in conditions of which their grandmothers and. perhaps, even their mothers would hardly have dreamt Humble Socially The labour shortage everywhere in West Germany is not the only explanation for the disappearance of maids from modern life. Another reason is that ever since the middle erf the last century the job of housemaids has been considered very humble socially. Peasants who could not maintain their large families sent their young daughters into the cities as maids, and shortly after World War II housemaids could be recruited from refugees.

But today, no-one wants to be socially “degraded" by this vocation. The social prestige of a factory worker who works only eight hours a day is higher than that of a housemaid whose work, at any rate, is more varied and mostly more responsible Often a maid must be a cook, cleaner, nurse and teacher of children. According to a social poll taken recently in Germany, the job of housemaids takes the last position in the order of rank and prestige of vocation. In the meantime no effort has been spared to raise the social prestige erf housemaids. Instead of being called housemaids, they are

styled “room cultivators.” But all in vain. The basic reason for the shortage of maids may, perhaps, be that the close relationship between master or mistress and the maid serving them personally does no longer fit the social pattern. This does not only apply to house personnel. Workers today prefer the anonymity of the large enterprise to the small workshop of handicraft operations. Two other recent polls made by two West German institutes were unanimous in their results, according to which even tenants prefer a large housing corporation or insurance company to a private landlord.

Germany appears to be a little better off than other countries, because every year in West Germany many housemaids and servants are being honoured. They have served the same families for 25. 30 or even 40 years.— (German Information Service).