113. Marriage Education

Comedy by Otto Erich Hartleben

In a well-known "fundamental" work on pedagogy, the following sentence can be found: "The ways of education and its means must be based on the goal that the educator is to achieve, on the ideal of man that is set before him. Alongside this goal, alongside this ideal, the educator can take into account the individual character of the pupil. With one person the ideal will be achieved in this way, with another in that." Otto Erich Hartleben structured his main pedagogical work "Marriage Education" according to this educational postulate. The ideal in question is a person who fits into a proper. Philistine marriage. The paths that education must take in order to achieve this goal, which seems necessary to every Philistine heart, are different. They must depend on education, class, wealth, sex and other given conditions. Hartleben picks out two cases from the wide variety: Hermann Günther, the son of a rich middle-class family, and Meta Hübcke, a poor bookkeeper. Hermann is brought up by his mother. And when she can no longer cope on her own, she calls Hermann's uncle for help. The son of a landlady's landlady, a bourgeois commis, takes over Meta's marriage preparation. Hermann is not only destined for a "good middle-class" marriage in the book of fate; the actual companion of his later days, Bella König, also appears on the scene from time to time. She is already impeccably educated for marriage. Her natural dispositions have made this easy. She only seems to be there to serve the psychologists as an example of stupidity. Hermann always runs away when this Bella arrives. He must therefore be brought up to marry her. According to correct pedagogical principles, he must first get to know life, which in this case means womanhood, before he gets on board the little ship that Bella is steering. That's what mother Günther thinks. To this end, she gives the young man one hundred and fifty marks a month in pocket money. But the boy is up to mischief. He has too much of the morality in him that the Philistines call philistine. He flirts with Meta Hübcke. And he has feelings for her. Günther's mother finds out that he doesn't even pay the rent for his mistress. That's bad, says the mother's heart. The boy has to be taken out of the habit. He must be given an extra fifty marks a month so that he no longer falls in love with such girls but pays their rent. But a "good middle-class" mother can't teach her son everything that goes with that. And the father is dead. So she calls the father's brother. He has the right educational maxims. He is a man and can speak German with Hermann. He does that too. And he makes things really educational. He teaches by example. That's easy for him. Hermann has also had a fling with the parlor maid. That doesn't suit Günther's mother either. The house must be kept clean. The mother sends the girl away. Hermann decides to have an affair with her outside the house. This makes sense to his uncle, and he goes along to the rendezvous. There will be company. The uncle doesn't just want to watch. This is the way Hermann is brought up to marry. Meta, however, seeks to educate the Commis. The relationship with Hermann does not suit him any more than it suits Günther's mother. Commis and the noble lady basically mean the same thing. Meta must have a lover who gives her money. Mother Günther, of course, with the proviso that it's not too much. The Commis thinks differently. Because he wants to marry Meta himself one day. To do so, she first has to get a lot of money from a lover. Hermann is therefore not suitable. Someone else must come along. The bourgeois Kommis forges letters to lure Hermann away from Meta. Then he brings her a solvent man. In this way he wants to educate her to marry himself. Will he succeed? That is not stated in Hartleben's comedy.

You can see that Otto Erich Hartleben understands the Philistines; and he has the humor to portray them. I did not specify the content of the comedy. I wanted to characterize the impulse from which it seems to me to have emerged.