Frauenpower

While taking a short mental break from research in the British Library, I ran across a couple of interesting articles at the New York Times.

One is on changes in family life and motherhood in Germany as more women enter the labour market.

This is hardly a new topic, of course, but there are elements in the article that touch upon what I've found to be a distinctive mixture of modernity and traditionalism in my adopted homeland.

Much of it focuses on Bavaria, where these tendencies are, in my experience, more marked than usual.

As is kind of summed up in this passage:

Even five years ago, all-day schooling in Neuötting seemed unthinkable, Mayor Peter Haugeneder said. There is a crucifix in his office, in every classroom of the Max Fellermeier school and even in the Spanish-themed restaurant run by the gay butcher.

Also related in some way is an article on the increasing tendency for men to marry women who earn more and are better educated than they are.

There are, apparently, men who have a problem with this, causing some frustration in the world of dating.

Ms. Zielinski, the fashion stylist, said her best friend, a man, told her once: “ ‘You are confident, have good credit, own your own business, travel around the world and are self-sufficient. What man is going to want you?’ He laughed, but I found that pretty depressing.”

If true, it is.

Bogotá am Rhein

One of the many things I learned while reading Marek Kohn's much-recommended book Dope Girls was that there was a time when the leading cocaine production powerhouse in the world was...Germany.

I did not know that.

Kohn notes:

Agreement was reached in principle, at the Hague in 1912, to limit the use of opium, morphine and cocaine to 'legitimate medical purposes', but in practice it was stymied by the commercial interests of Germany, the world's leading cocaine manufacturer, and Britain, which dominated the world's morphine industry. (42, emphasis added)

Indeed, the process of isolating the active ingredients from coca leaves was pioneered by a Göttingen grad student, Alfred Niemann. Niemann not only named the alkaloid that he isolated 'cocaine', he also wrote his dissertation on the topic, which was published in 1860. (Niemann, sadly, died the following year.)

As H. Richard Friman observes in a 1999 essay, by the 1880s, the German pharmaceutical company Merck was the 'prime source for cocaine'.*

One of Merck's later rivals, I was interested to see, was C.H. Böhringer, which is located, not far from here, in Ingelheim am Rhein.

After the First World War, due to a variety of issues, Germany followed trends elsewhere and moved toward regulation of the drug. However, it appears to have remained a key producer of the (increasingly criminalised) drug at least through the 1920s.

Which brings me to another of the articles I ran across recently.

Cocaine in His Socks.

Arrest of London Man Who Made Frequent Visits to Germany.

Paris, Monday.

With cocaine in his socks, a Londoner living in a small Paris hotel was arrested by the Paris police in a Montmartre night restaurant.

The man, has been a frequent visitor to Berlin, coming back always with a load of flash jewellery,which he sold in Paris cafés and night restaurants.

The cocaine smugglers are busier than ever trying to bring secret stocks into France from Germany. Much of the narcotics which are thus fraudulently introduced across the French frontier eventually reach England.

Two days ago the French frontier police at Forbach found in the Wiesbaden—Paris express a huge store of contraband, of which cocaine done up in tiny glass tubes formed a large part. Eight men have been arrested, and the French police have obtained warrants against a number of German exporters.

(The Daily Mirror, 2 May 1922, 4)

Ah, night cafés in Montmartre and international express trains. That's the drug underground as it should be. Better that than Scarface.

These days, of course, this part of the Rhineland is far more famous for a different drug.


*'Germany and the Transformations of Cocaine, 1860-1920', in Cocaine: Global Histories, ed. Paul Gootenberg (Routledge, 1999), 83-104, p. 84.

Sunday morning, praise the dawning

And yes, an insightful Sunday morning it has been, with plenty of things dawning on me during my perusal of various British newspapers. Oh, the seductions of the internet ....

First (thanks to The Times): Miss Cauliflower is truly the silly prude that I have always suspected her to be:

I clean myself, which surprises people. I shower every day. I shave all the parts you’re meant to shave as a woman nowadays. Obviously, nobody is like Helen [the "protagonist" of Wetlands]. But the fun in writing the book was getting all the secret stuff out — all the things women are ashamed about. For instance, with my husband, I don’t leave dirty knickers lying around. I hide them, take them myself to the washing machine. Why am I so embarrassed, even in my own flat?

Haven't I said it all along: Miss Roche is a frigging nut case. I mean: how dirty do the knickers of a well-showered woman get in 24 hours?

Would someone please find her a sensible psychologist specialising in behaviour therapy to sort out her various spleens? How this person managed to conceive a child, let alone go through pregnancy, give birth and then mop up kid poo and puke is beyond me.

And would someone please find me a sensible psychologist specialising in behaviour therapy to sort out my obsession with Charlotte Roche?

Secondly, over at the Guardian, Ruth Sunderland finally heralds this paper's long overdue entry into the 1970s. In her Comment is Free post on the Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum she writes:

The big theme at this year's World Economic Forum (WEF) was "Shaping the Post-Crisis World". The idea that that can be achieved while excluding half the population is breathtaking in its arrogance and shows that the male Davos elite remains mired in its own preening self-regard and complacency. They have wrecked the world economy, but seem oblivious to the idea they may not be the best people to rebuild it. Ignoring the contribution women can make is ridiculous at any time, but how much more so when there is a clear need to reflect on the macho, tooth- and-claw brand of capitalism that caused the crunch in the first place.

Macho capitalism ... Ruthy, sister -- your brave attempt to keep the purple flag flying is very sweet indeed, but I really think that in perpetuating the myth -- comforting though it may be -- that women are better people than men you are oversimplifying matters.

Let me draw your attention to a case that is currently occupying the public debate in German (which you probably haven't heard about, the only German topic Britons have been willing to engage with for months being bloody Wetlands).

This case involves a representative of what you, Ruthy, would probably consider "the better sex": Maria-Elizabeth Schaeffler, a Franconian entrepreneur who last year took over the German tire manufacturer Continental with the aim of putting her family business on the global economic map helping the ailing firm -- on tick, of course.

Realising that she has overextended herself financially with this deal, Mrs Schaeffler has been doing a fair bit of canvassing for state funding amongst her cronies in the CSU, much to the dismay of the rest of the government. Both Peer Steinbrück and Angela Merkel have refused point blank to come to her aid.

Of course Schaeffler's recent mink-clad appearance at some Audi-sponsored VIP-event in the socialite hot spot of Kitzbühel didn't help. Somehow she doesn't quite manage to pull off the image of the caring businesswoman slogging her guts out for the German job market that she likes to flaunt.

UPDATE: The German press is all aflutter, because -- ooh, aah -- Charlie Roach is getting plenty of media attention in Britain right now. Here's the link for the more than meta-information.