MARRIAGE IN GERMANY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2763, 29 March 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

MARRIAGE IN GERMANY.

The Berlin Registrar's Office gives some very interesting details on marriage. During the last , year 15,922 couples were joined together in the bonds of holy matrimony; 13,786 were bachelors, 1,582 widowers, 424 had been divorced from their wives, 14,360 were spinsters, 1,055 widows, and 377 had been previously divorced from their husbands. It is noteworthy that three-fourths of the total of husbands had passed the age of twenty-four. Of youthful marriages there were only two in which the husbands had only reached the age of nineteen, whilst not more than 3,580 took the fatal leap between the ages of twenty and twenty-four. The oldest Benedict to approach the altar of Hymen was eighty-two, and there was one case of a bachelor who resisted the allurements of female charms till the age of seventy-five; but as the former espoused a maid approaching fifty it can ouly be supposed that each held it to be the duty of every man towards the other sex to rescue at least one maid from the bonds of perpetual virginity, or that they submitted to a marriage dc conmtance from egotistic reasons. The youngest Gretchen was fifteen years of age, whilst only thirty were of the age I of sixteen. After this the ages vary in a long series up to sixty-nine. In 11,065 cases the husband was the eldest, twenty-nine being over thirty years older, than their wives. Of the remaining 4,730 marriages iu which the husbands was younger, there were 301 in which the wife was from ten to thirty years older, and thirteen cases in which men between twenty and thirtyfive, married women between fifty aud fifty-five years of age. Six hundred and thirty-five bachelors married widows, some of whom had married twice and three times already; and 1,132 spiusters confided their happiness to widowers, who had already disposed of from one to three wives. It is also .remarkable that 247 bachelors married divorcees, and that 321 maidens were not •frightened to try their chances with husbands who had been through the Berlin Court of Arches. In several of these cases the husbands and wives had been divorced twice and three times already; but it must be noted that divorce is much easier in that country, aud is granted on much more trivial grounds than with us. Four oouples who had been divorced were re-married : one after the lapse of two years, one after three years, one after fourteen years, and the last after twenty-three years of separation. Among the widowers who re-married 596 did so during the first year after the deaths of their wives; 357 had waited nearly two years; whilst two had remained alone for tweuty, one for twenty-seven, and another for thirty years before submitting again to the yoke. On the other side of the picture it appears that seventy-two widows sought consolation during the first year of widowhood, seventy-four had waited from ten to tweuty years, and four between twenty one and twenty-four years. As regards consanguinity there were 108 marriages contracted between first cousins, and in six cases an uncle married his niece. This is permitted in Germany.