Many chores, few kisses

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33962, 1 October 1975, Page 6

Many chores, few kisses

(By

LESLIE COLITT)

BERLIN. East Germany’s selfassured and largely emancipated women are having a love affair with a classic male chauvinist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the famous German writer who died in 1832. Goethe’s works are swept from bookstore shelves in East Germany as fast as new printings come out and women are the principal buyers. What appeals to

them is Goethe's courtly but firm way with women.

This female attention would have pleased Goethe, who was inspired to many a lyrical phrase by both the noble and humble women of Germany.

In East Germany, where women now initiate most divorce proceedings, Goethe’s male dominance seems an anachronism, yet East German women read his “Roman Elegies” as if it fills a vacuum in their lives. The slender volume was inspired by the sensual Christiane Vulpius, a Weimar girl with whom Goethe lived in free love and who bore him five children.

Not many years ago, women in East Germany were still locked- into much the same totally dependent relationship with their husbands that was traditional in Germany.

An extreme labour shortage and laws guaranteeing equal pay for women has now led to 84 per cent of women being employed. The Pill, taken by one in three women between the age of 16 and 50, and an abortion-on-demand law, have turned the once obedient East German woman into a person acutely aware of her worth. EASY DIVORCE Elderly, long-married women are suddenly entering the statistics that reveal East Germany to have one of the world’s highest divorce rates. Infidelity or mental cruelty need not be proven for a divorce which is granted if the court merely establishes the marriage has broken down. All this, plus public nurseries for the children of working mothers and job advancement schemes for women, would seem reason enough for East Germah women to be satisfied.

Most of them, in fact, say they enjoy working and could not imagine living the life of a housewife. Yet they complain about the matter-of-fact manner in which

they are treated by their husbands, boy friends and male colleagues at work. “We don’t ask our husbands to do battle for us but they could easily open a door without going through first or take us out dancing once in a while,” one middle-aged East Berlin woman told a television interviewer. Another said flatly that “our men are dull and a bit spoiled.” ROMANTIC VIEW It is this absence of even the relics of chivalry that bothers the women. East German men not only charge through doors first but when seated would rarely think of standing up when a woman approaches. The seriousness with which East German men regard their work leaves little time and energy for wooing the opposite sex. Goethe’s romantic view of women as “silver dishes into which one puts golden apples" sounds somewhat far fetched but is none the less appealing to the overworked and underpampered East German woman.

Not surprising in a form e r 1 y male-dominated society, women in East Germany find that they have gained legal emancipation but not genuine equality with men.

Working wives often tell of husbands who refuse to “lower themselves” by washing dishes or carrying out the garbage. If breakfast in bed is just a vision for East German women, so is a man who will lend a helping hand around the house. Women can be seen directing traffic, driving buses and trams and manipulating cranes. Men, however, are seldom seen in the long queues at shop counters that drain the remaining energy out of their women after factories and offices close. East German consumer goods manufacturers take the same approach towards

women that all the republic’s industry does toward production, that is, the producer knows what is best. POOR QUALITY

Recently, an outspoken East German woman wrote in the Communist youth organisation weekly, “Forum” that “men remain one of the main difficulties of women even under socialism.” She cited a few of the items East German men have "planned to make life easier for working women.” The plastic switches of East German washing machines refuse to turn over a certain temperature, she notes, and pliers are the only recourse. (Her complaint, typically, is not about the lack of washers with automatic programmes, for these have only just been introduced at the equivalent of SWO). She mentions a new lavatory cleaner callee ‘RAB 64” whose directions say a “few grams must be sprinkled on a damp cloth and the object to be cleaned must be scrubbed thoroughly.” This, she comments, is hardly an advance over cleaning toilets with the household cleanser her grandmother used. Then, she says, there is the tendency of East German synthetic textiles to shed their colours at the first wash, and the thick layer of glue that must be penetrated before toilet rolls can be used.

Why, she wonders, must prices be so high for tights that women must spend valuable time having them mended. In fact, they sell for $5 a pair in East Germany while the same brand, exported to West Germany, costs 70c.

“If only a few of these obvious aggravations no longer existed,” the writer concludes, “we would be energetic, well-groomed, eager to get ahead, good humoured and, even in advanced age, the lovers .of our men.” — O.F.N.S. copyright.