Finally, Zakrzewska would also claim for herself, as a woman, traits such as rationality and assertiveness, thus subverting the traditional gendering of mental and moral attributes and challenging those around her to rethink the categories that functioned to exclude women from public spaces. In all, Zakrzewska both drew on and rebelled against the environment in which she had been raised, and it is to her family background that we now turn.
. . .
Zakrzewska’s family history on her father’s side is wrapped up as much in legend as in reality for the period prior to the early nineteenth century. The legend, first told in a memoir published one year after Zakrzewska’s death, is attributed to one of her brothers—most likely Herman—who apparently traced the name Zakrzewski back to 911 to an aristocratic Polish family, which was counted among the ‘‘republican families of agitators.’’ The family’s fortunes, however, like those of all Polish nobility, changed in the late eighteenth century.
In the aftermath of the territorial battles between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, which led to Poland’s eventual disappearance from the European map, the Zakrzewskis lost their property to the Russians. Zakrzewska’s great-grandfather fell on the battlefield defending his land, while her great-grandmother and several other family members died in the castle fire. Her grandparents, however, escaped to Prussia, where her grandfather, reputedly a liberal thinker, converted to Protestantism, leaving her grandmother alone in the family to defend the Catholic faith.π
One of the di≈culties in verifying this story is the lack of documents from the Middle Ages that would allow one to trace the family name back to 911.∫ But
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whether the details of this story are accurate or not, what Herman Zakrzewski did was to link his family to two themes that assumed great importance in his sister’s life: political radicalism and anti-Catholicism. By claiming that the Zakrzewskis were ‘‘republican . . . agitators,’’ the brother was both positioning the family among the Polish nobility and highlighting the peculiar role the nobility played in Polish history—since at least the sixteenth century, it had ruled jointly with the monarch, promoting ideas of individual freedom, civil liberty, and, among a radical fringe, political anarchism. Thus in contrast to the absolutist systems that had started taking shape in Russia, Prussia, and France in the late seventeenth century, and even in comparison with England’s constitutional monarchy, Poland enjoyed what one historian has termed a ‘‘monarchical republic.’’Ω Emphasizing these Polish roots permitted Herman, moreover, to drive a wedge between his family and the imperialism and militarism that were flourishing in Germany at the time of his sister’s death in 1902.
The story does not, however, simply foreground the Zakrzewskis’ credentials as political radicals; it also links this radicalism to the grandfather’s conversion to Protestantism, thus feeding upon anti-Catholic sentiments—powerful throughout the long nineteenth century—that cast members of this faith as backward, uneducated, superstitious, and intolerant while positioning Protestants as cultured, educated, and open-minded.∞≠ Zakrzewska, her brother knew, had early in life taken this one more step and turned her back on all religion, but she had always reserved her most caustic remarks for the practices of the Roman Catholic Church, which she had repeatedly cast as the absolute antithesis of all that was good and humane.
We may not be able to fully separate fact from embellishment in this legend, but since Marie was raised in the Protestant faith, there is a good chance that her grandfather did convert, joining many at the time who were inspired less by a sudden religious awakening than by a desire to embrace a growing secular culture more closely associated with Protestantism than with Catholicism. This would also fit with her grandfather’s decision to become an elementary school teacher in 1807, immediately following a lengthy service in the Prussian army. ∞∞
Although elementary schools remained denominational and teaching cannot, therefore, be seen as antireligious in any way, in the early nineteenth century the schools did come more squarely under the jurisdiction of the state, which supported a secularizing trend. ∞≤
Zakrzewska’s grandfather began his teaching career just as the government was implementing massive reforms designed to transform Prussian society fol-
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lowing the army’s humiliating defeat in 1806. Inspired largely by the Prussian minister of education and culture, Wilhelm von Humboldt, these reforms had as their goal the creation of a unified system of education that would awaken in each child an independent and creative spirit. Such changes necessitated more qualified teachers, and Zakrzewska’s grandfather benefited as the government raised educational standards and transformed the position of schoolmaster into a public o≈ce, financed by the state. ∞≥
Enjoying greater economic security and social standing than their predecessors, the new schoolteachers were benefiting from their loose association with the newly emerging Bildungsbürgertum. O≈cial acknowledgment of this social group’s power can be linked to the creation of a new legal estate in the Prussian General Legal Code of 1794, which identified wealthy merchants, civil servants, academics, and industrialists as a new elite whose status derived from their advanced degrees. Entitled to such privileges as a reduction in or ‘‘exemption’’
from military duty, the so-called exempt persons ( Eximierte) signaled the state’s formal recognition that an individual who possessed an advanced education, or Bildung, deserved certain privileges and powers previously reserved for individuals of noble birth. ∞∂ Elementary school teachers may not yet have belonged to this new elite—they neither possessed university degrees nor were counted among the Eximierte—but they had become civil servants with a public role that involved educating the nation’s youth. If they were not yet considered members of the burgeoning Bildungsbürgertum, this did not mean that they could not aspire to belong one day or to pass on these aspirations to their children and grandchildren.
This is what Zakrzewska’s grandfather seems to have done with his eldest son, who was born on St. Martin’s Day, 11 November 1802. As a young man, Martin Ludwig set his sights on a civil service position, craving the security and opportunity for social mobility that such a position o√ered. Given Zakrzewska’s later characterization of her father as a political liberal, he may also have been inspired by the rhetoric of the Prussian reformers, who had started out with a vision of a state government more responsive to the needs of the people. They may not have favored participatory politics, but many still encouraged legislation that promoted economic and social emancipation, religious toleration, and freedom of thought.∞∑
The path to the civil service through the university being closed to him for economic reasons—schoolteachers may have been better o√ than their predecessors, but their salaries were still low∞∏—Martin Ludwig pursued an alter-
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native strategy for securing a government position: at the age of sixteen he began an unpaid four-year internship in the regional and municipal court system in the town of Mewe, with the intent, upon completion of his training, of entering the military and, ultimately, the civil service. That he could a√ord such an internship suggests that his parents, although perhaps too poor to send him to a good school, still had su≈cient means to support a grown son for an extended period of time. It also suggests that the education he received was not of such a poor quality—indeed, he managed to learn some Latin—since the court system considered it su≈cient to qualify him to study the legal and administrative aspects of running a government.∞π With the skills he thus acquired, he entered military service in October 1822 as a hussar in the army’s Second Cavalry Regiment, expecting after nine years of obligatory service to lay claim to a position in the civilian government.
Zakrzewski seems to have done well in the army, having advanced by 1830 to quartermaster with a yearly salary of
360 taler. At this point, he began inquiring about positions in the civilian sector, for his obligatory service was to end the following year. His requests, however, were initially turned down, presumably because no position was available.∞∫ In her autobiographical sketch, Marie would later claim that her father had been dismissed ‘‘from his position as military o≈cer’’ because of his political views, but there is no evidence to sup-
port this claim.∞Ω On the contrary, her father was even promoted to second lieutenant in 1836. He did, however, begin to suspect that it ‘‘takes, above all, e√ective protection’’ to secure a position in the civilian government.≤≠ Rhetoric
to the contrary, Zakrzewski was beginning to realize that connections, rather than talent, determined who would end up in the service of the state.
By the mid-1830s, Zakrzewski had several pressing reasons for wishing to improve his situation. His health had begun to fail; indeed, he would be plagued by health problems throughout his career.≤∞ But the most important reason was that he had married in 1828, and he and his wife, Caroline Fredericke, were finding it increasingly di≈cult to support their ever growing family. Marie had been born in 1829, and in the ensuing five years, Caroline Fredericke had had four more pregnancies. One had ended in a stillbirth, but the other three, Sophie, Anna, and Herman, had all survived. ≤≤ Three hundred and sixty taler a year was not an insignificant salary—it would have been the rare artisan who would have made this much in a year—but in addition to having a large family, the Zakrzewskis had certain expectations about the quality of life they wished to maintain, and this included above all ensuring that their children would attend
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good schools.≤≥ It was during Martin Ludwig’s struggles to secure a position in the civilian government that Caroline Fredericke first entered the workforce.
Although she would not pursue her training in midwifery until 1839, she was, if one accepts family lore, carrying on a family tradition when she finally chose that path.
As in Zakrzewska’s paternal line, all we know about her mother’s side of the family stems from the story Herman Zakrzewski told one year following his sister’s death. However, where political radicalism had shaped his account of his father’s family, medicine was now the central theme; and where he had used his father’s Polish roots to erase any connection to Germany, he now focused on his mother’s Gypsy heritage. Accordingly, his great-great grandfather, a member of the Gypsy tribe of the Lombardi family, had joined Frederick the Great’s army as a surgeon during the Seven Years’ War. From this moment on through to Marie’s decision to become a physician, someone in each generation had practiced a healing art. Her great-grandmother and namesake, Marie Elizabeth Sauer, ‘‘a Gypsy Queen of the Lombardi family,’’ had learned surgery from her father and worked as his assistant during the war. She was said to have saved the life of another member of their Gypsy tribe, a Captain Urban, by removing a bullet that had lodged in his chest. They eventually fell in love and married, bringing nine children into the world, all of whom were ‘‘of unusual size, the daughters almost six feet tall, with hair flowing down to their feet, the sons seven feet tall, of perfect stature.’’≤∂ The middle child, Zakrzewska’s grandmother, became a veterinary surgeon and married another Urban, most likely a distant relative. They had three daughters, one of whom was Caroline Fredericke.
Even more than the story about the Zakrzewskis, this one seems apocryphal, especially with its six- and seven-foot Gypsy ancestors. Gypsies, who had first migrated from northwest India at the beginning of the previous millennium, were so feared and despised in eighteenth-century Germany that it is doubtful Zakrzewska’s ancestors, even if they had stemmed from Gypsies, would have been allowed to join the Prussian army had their membership in this group been self-evident.≤∑ In Herman’s story, however, the emphasis on a people known for their nomadic culture, alternative lifestyle, and persecuted status functioned not only to erase his family’s Germanness (as had his focus on his paternal Polish roots) but also to provide a context for understanding his sister’s unusual life choices, the most important of which was her refusal to embrace a traditional family structure. According to this story, moreover, Zakrzewska stood at the head of a long line of women who lived their lives challenging
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gender norms, whether through their physical stature, their activities as surgeons, or their preference for travel and adventure over the home. Finally, both Zakrzewska’s and her mother’s decisions to practice a healing art seem almost predetermined, driven by a family history of women (and some men) entering the world of medicine.
Unfortunately, we know next to nothing about Caroline Fredericke’s childhood other than the likelihood that she grew up in Prenzlau, about a hundred miles north of Berlin, where her father worked as a superintendent of an almshouse.≤∏ It is certainly possible that this setting stimulated her interest in midwifery, but whether she felt drawn to this line of work or not, it is highly unlikely that she relished the idea of pursuing this career in the mid-1830s. With four small children at home the thought of becoming a midwife must have felt overwhelming. Not only did the training course require time and money, but the work was also arduous. Added to this, as we have already mentioned, midwives were usually of lower-class origin. Their work, moreover, necessarily took them out into the streets, often at night and frequently unchaperoned. This must have produced anxieties, particularly as the ideology of separate spheres gained force and women who went out in public alone risked being viewed as prostitutes.≤π
Thus Caroline Fredericke’s first attempt at earning money led her to try her hand at trading porcelain, hoping, most likely, to sidestep some of these problems by working out of her home. But the business did not pan out, and the Zakrzewskis ended up in debt. Only at this point did Caroline Fredericke apply to the school of midwifery at the Berlin Charité hospital, but as Martin Ludwig later commented, ‘‘here, too, we were not blessed with luck.’’≤∫ Four years in a row she applied, and four times she was turned down. In the midst of all this, she also gave birth to their fifth child, a daughter they named Wilhelmine (Minna), and the Zakrzewskis’ financial situation worsened.≤Ω Perhaps they should not have been surprised by the sti√ competition for the midwifery school: it accepted only two pupils each year from the city of Berlin (another twenty-eight came from the larger regional district of Potsdam). But what troubled the Zakrzewskis most was that here, once again, connections seemed to be necessary.
Indeed, when Martin Ludwig finally succeeded in securing a civilian position in 1837, it was because of the interventions of Adalbert von Ladenberg, an adviser in the Ministry of Culture and soon to become director of educational a√airs.
This connection may very well have been responsible for Caroline Fredericke’s acceptance to the school of midwifery two years later.≥≠ Obviously, the Zakrzewskis were not above using protection when they could.
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The Zakrzewskis thus went into debt to hire a servant to help out at home, and in the fall of 1839 Caroline Fredericke began her training. Most of the women in her class signed up for a sixteen-week course, lasting from mid-October until mid-March, at which time they took their licensing examinations.
The two women from Berlin, however, had a more rigorous course to follow.
Believing that city midwives required more extensive training than those who practiced in rural areas, government o≈cials had stipulated that the Berlin pupils had to attend the midwifery course two years in a row, acting as assistants to the instructor during the second year. They were also required to spend the intervening summer in the hospital, helping out in the obstetrics wards. Thus, from October 1839 until March 1841, Caroline Fredericke spent her days—and some nights—at the Charité, acquiring the skills that would allow her to become a licensed midwife.≥∞
In the spring of 1841, Caroline Fredericke passed her examinations and was licensed by the state to practice midwifery.≥≤ She had pursued this path to help with the family’s finances, especially the expense of the children’s education, but in the first few years following her graduation the Zakrzewskis’ situation did not improve.≥≥ Caroline Fredericke and her husband had gone further into debt to pay for her books, instruments, examinations, and license as well as for the servant to watch their children. To make matters worse, the government had assigned her to the ‘‘bleakest and poorest’’ section of the city, where most individuals had di≈culty paying a midwife for her services. Midwives, like physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, had little choice in these matters. Government o≈cials had long ago exerted control over the distribution of health care practitioners, trying to prevent their concentration in the wealthier sections of the city. As it turned out, the Zakrzewskis were surprised by Caroline Fredericke’s assignment. They had already moved to a better part of town in anticipation of an assignment to that district and had even signed a new lease (on Stralauer Street). Why they would have expected this is unclear, but when Caroline Fredericke was told that she would be practicing instead near the Hamburg gate, the family had to move again, and the Zakrzewskis were caught paying rent on two apartments. It seemed that no matter how hard they tried to improve their financial standing, things just kept spiraling out of control.≥∂
Caroline Fredericke was not, however, someone who accepted her situation without a fight. She may not have been able to alter her assignment, but when she realized that some of her financial woes stemmed from the fact that swaddling women ( Wickelfrauen) were taking away business by illegally attending
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women in labor, she became involved in a turf battle that pitted the city’s midwives against practicing obstetricians, medical students, and even the professor of obstetrics at the University of Berlin. The problem was that swaddling women, who trained as physicians’ assistants in the university’s obstetrics clinic, were neither permitted nor licensed by the state to handle deliveries themselves. Indeed, state law stipulated that obstetricians, when called to a laboring woman, had to perform the delivery themselves or entrust it to a licensed midwife. What annoyed Caroline Fredericke and other midwives was that physicians frequently ignored this ruling and left the delivery to a swaddling woman while they visited other patients. Even worse, medical students, who themselves were not yet qualified to perform deliveries, frequently engaged swaddling women when, as part of their university training, they went to the homes of the poor to o√er medical assistance and practice their skills. Most aggrieved by this practice, Caroline Fredericke and her cohorts directed their complaints at the practices of Dietrich Wilhelm Heinrich Busch, professor of obstetrics at the University of Berlin. They insisted that medical students be required to follow the law and take along either an obstetrician or a licensed midwife when they attended women in childbirth. Their demands did not go unheeded. The police passed on a warning to Professor Busch that he cease such practices immediately. Although it took years before this problem was fully resolved, Caroline Fredericke did pick up some cases as a result.≥∑
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