The Prussian Girls

The year was 1729. The winter on the plain north of Rathenow already promised particular severity, even in October. It was sixteen years since Friedrich Wilhelm I, the “Royal Drill Sergeant” as he was called in the courtyards and corridors of European Ministries, had become the first Hohenzollern ruler of Brandenburg and established such rigorous discipline as the keynote of his State that it was now widely known as “the land of the Corporal's stick.” As for the Army, he had initiated a severity unknown since Roman times; one of his first ordinances was to decree that any soldier resisting discipline should run the gauntlet thirty times.

But this atmosphere of drill and discipline, in which the individual existed only for the State, by now permeated every institution, including the family. Of his son, this new and self-styled King of Prussia had fulminated-“That snot-nose, he shall have the whip before he has a wife.” And he would have him tried as a common deserter, for leaving his country. It was, in fact, in the year in which our story opens that the young Prince Friedrich's supposed love-affair with Dorothea Elizabeth Ritter, the demure daughter of a Potsdam Rector, had been discovered. The result? The following official decree:

“His Majesty orders Klinte, Councillor of the Court, to have the daughter of the teacher who is here under arrest whipped tomorrow… She will be whipped first before the Town Hall, then before her father's house, then in all corners of the town.”

She was at that time sixteen and a half.

Thus the Hohenzollern territories were united in little less than a mystique of the rod. Schloss Rutenberg, of which this story tells its tale, was but one of several such ladies' seminaries, where daughters of the highest families in the land were sent for training as mothers-to-be of the new State which was determined to take the smile off the face of a Europe that despised it, largely for being no more than thirteenth in size of population. Procreation was encouraged. Almost the only offense unpunished in the Army was that of drunkenness. The maxim that no one asked of an inferior anything he would not face himself meant not only the celebrated tours de baton in the Royal household itself, but that upper-class seminarists such as those of Schloss Rutenberg were treated, for this brief training period of their lives, virtually pitilessly. No less than total stoicism was demanded of them and, firm in the conviction of their country's eventual glory and their King's, they asked no quarter. Indeed, their parents were grateful for this rigor for which they themselves might have lacked both time and taste.

The school itself was set on flat land, whipped by easterly winds, though its walls were thick enough to stand a series of sieges. This outer wall was topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass and spiked gaffs, a prison-like rampart that formed the limit of the girls' domain for three terms a year, one they left only for brief walks in military formation under the attendance of a mistress and two Prefects, or Praelictors. Entry was by a ponderous gate, studded with iron bolts and again surmounted with jagged iron spikes. The whole place, from its bell-turret trellised in iron to its bare, barred cellars and even the gigantic, gnarled trees of its grounds, was calculated to inspire awe and stamp into its denizens that rigid regulation of the passions which had become the new Draconian Law of the land. This solid structure, with its massy, creaking doors, monotonous corridors, and the barren arrangement of its schoolrooms, was calculated to break and bend, an academy founded on control-and it is to one of these last that our historian's eye conducts us.

It was a long, high room with pointed windows, barred on the inside and a vaulted oaken ceiling. Ranged in seemingly endless regularity across this space were a number of desks, at which worked girls of various ages between, approximately, fourteen to seventeen. At the far end, under a large oil lamp, stood a mistress, behind a pulpit desk of impressive proportions. Over her head-or rather behind it-reigned a colossal clock, and by her side was a bucket, in which steeped long birch-rods.

In actual fact, there were no more than some thirty-four pupils under her care tonight, this being the Evening Preparation period for the Junior, or Vorschule, class in the school. This term the Schloss Rutenberg had swollen, under parental pressure for admittance, to as many as seventy-one girls, who were divided into three classes-Senior, Junior, and Schaum (or scum) as the new girls, in their first year, were known. This term there were exactly a dozen Schaum; there were fifteen Senior girls, and ten Praelictors. There were eleven mistresses, excluding the school Matron and Head, or Direktrice. Excluding these two, they were all single, young, active and vigorous. Fraulein Katte, the evening Monitor, or Mahner, of Junior Prep was quite typical of these. Twenty-eight years old, dark and broad-browed, she had been at the college-if such it could be called-some seven years already, having graduated from its ranks. She wore her on-duty uniform of soft black leather becomingly. This was no longer than a three-quarter man's Court coat. It fitted her closely to the bosom, was drawn in by a wide leather belt from which hung, at one side, a bunch of keys, and at the other a ritualistic black leather switch, and its skirt swung its hem higher than her knees. But the mistresses at Schloss Rutenberg did not suffer from cold. They wore thigh-high boots, with steeple heels and so highly polished and tightly laced they shone like black glass.

The girls seated before her, hunched over their bethumbed books, wore a uniform peculiar to the school. Except for that of the Praelictors, it consisted in something similar to a Greek tunic or abbreviated dancing costume. For the Junior class (and of course for the Schaum) this was extremely short, hanging just beneath the bottom, and caught in at the waist by a fairly slender chain. For Seniors it was gold in hue, for Juniors green, and for the scum it was a positive and symbolic brown. Thus were the Hohenzollern colors incorporated, at any rate.

Schaum wore black stockings, impeccably upheld by biting garters, Juniors were permitted a moderately lighter shade, and Seniors lighter still. All heels were veritable stilettos. As little was worn under these brief woolen tunics it might be thought that these children of the aristocracy would get cold. The pages that follow will hopefully testify that they were kept tolerably warm. But let us focus to one bent back in a center row, and one pair of pale blue eyes gazing sightlessly at her be-seamed and time-worn text, over which her short fair crop would occasionally stir, as she tried in vain to memorize her lines of Caesar for the morrow.

A careful observer, one looking over her shoulder, might have noticed the stain of a tear on that monotonous Latin. For Monika Vorst was going to get a whipping. It was not the first she had had, nor the last, but a saying among the sufferers in this school was that a whipping brought on whipping, and she simply couldn't concentrate on her recitation. It was no good. She only hoped and prayed she would not be called on by the mistress the morrow. Her mind kept straying, like her eyes, to the clock. It ticked stertorously.

The time was half past eight, and at nine the Duty Mistress held her notorious session with those unfortunates who had been put up on the Duty List. This was one of the most dreaded moments of the day, for all concerned. But the woman would have to get Monika's individual report over soon. The girl sighed. She shifted her thighs. Under the tight green knickers her bottoms felt shivery and wobbly, and twice as big as usual. She wondered if it showed, behind. A book dropped and she jumped.

It was the girl in the desk to her right. As the book had fallen open near Monika's feet she reached to help pick it up. A note was stuffed hurriedly in her hand. Two bright eyes caught hers.

Slowly, under carefully cupped fingers, Monika read the single word scribbled in pencil-“Gluck!” Good luck. She ventured a quick glance across the aisle, and caught her friend Barbara Mack's eyes in a sympathetic squeeze of commiseration. Then she swallowed the morsel of paper, barely moving her gullet as she did so. That had been decent of Barbara. If they'd been caught, Fraulein Katte would have given Barbara ten with the birch. At least.

The door swung open and Monika's world crashed about her. For a second she couldn't catch her breath. A tall Praelictor called Else Gundling strode in, wearing her uniform of office-in her case, of the same soft black leather as the mistresses', but the skirt in very short pleats falling over smoky stockings, tautly hauled, and knee-length leather boots. These clicked with precision as the eighteen-year-old girl went up to the Monitor's desk in silence, curtseyed, and whispered something. Then she was coming along the aisle to Monika, whose heart began to hammer like a… like a…

“Duty Mistress requires to see you. Follow me.”

Sickly closing her Caesar, Monika stood up and — with nobody looking at her but everyone looking at her-followed the Praelictor out of the room. Once outside Gundling led off smartly down long stone corridors, lit by flares. She marched in martial tread-left, right, left, right-and Monika had to keep step with her, just behind. The girls were not allowed to talk. The shadows fled over the strong broad shoulders of the figure leading her, yes, to hell. Round Gundling's thick neck was the gold chain from which hung a P, symbol of her office-not for Prafekt, but for Pflicht, since she was Duty Prefect for the day. The shoulders tapered to a surprisingly narrow waist, caught in by a broad leather belt, and beneath that the hips thumped out lustily to either side, making the brief skirt swing, as the heels struck down sharply at the flagstones. Monika was feeling sicker and sicker-it was all happening so fast, so irrevocably-she tried to breathe in deeply, half-tripped round a corridor, heard an irritated “Come on!” and was soon aware, at the end of their flickering vision, of the long, long corridor leading to the West Wing and the little area, or parade-ground, in front of the Duty Room. Before she knew it, the Praelictor had reached this, turned completely round, standing to attention with her back to the wall one side of the door, and staring expressionless over Monika's shoulder.

“Hurry up. Knock,” she hissed in a whisper.

Monika stepped up shivering to that plain deal door whose vision had filled so many Prussian girls with trepidation. She raised her hand. She had to knock. But her fingers refused to function. She bit her lip. She was going to cry. Perhaps to pee. After all, it had been such a very little fault. Hadn't it? Speaking to a mistress without being spoken to. An accident, as a matter of fact, a slip, but as in the Army every accident at Rutenberg was treated as a crime. How many then? Talking out of turn was surely only six. It couldn't be more than six, could it… Wedell wouldn't give her more than…

“Oh come on,” said a voice and the Praelictor beat her own knuckles on the door. A low “Herein!” resounded in a woman's tone and Monika constrained her fingers to open the door, enter the room, close the door behind her, march to the center and curtsey to the two women standing there, one slightly behind the other.

It was a large rectangular place with a wooden floor of ebon black and a general impression, at first always, of being furniture-less. Like some gymnasium, or stripped prison antechamber. An air of stern gloom hung over all.