The girls’ elementary studies in the Catholic schools were not pushed that far. In the middle classes, it is a rare occurrence for a beauty to be ‘experienced in the quill,’ that is to say, able to write and fluently read a bit more than just her name. The ‘mistresses,’ thus the honorable name of the female teachers, attached more importance to practical education towards domesticity. Something cultivated in particular is the art of knitting. [ . . . ] The girls usually received domestic work, a ‘Feier,’ i.e. the task of knitting a specified number of ‘little seams,’ with the strict mother paying close attention that these ‘Feier’ were done carefully. A few of the so-called French schools provided for the girls’ higher education. [ . . . ]
Children’s games.
[ . . . ]
At all seasons after school, on afternoons off from school, on the Sundays and holidays, of which there was no lack at all then, even though the French had already eliminated many, on all squares and little places there was the noisiest children’s laughter and merriment, the most boisterous, playful children’s happiness, and in the narrow streets themselves the most cheerful children’s life with its rich poetry. What a treasure of children’s songs! At any rate, the folk song continued to be cultivated most vividly in Cologne back then, as it had been in all German cities in the past. The pleasure and distress of public life found expression in song, and the jester practicing coarsest bourgeois humor castigated sharply conspicuous absurdities and weaknesses. [ . . . ]
A common form of entertainment is storytelling by the children to each another, with the animal fable, the little stories of the Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood [‘Füssjen’ in Rhineland dialect means actually ‘red haired child’], the tale of Tom Thumb, of Schmittchen of Bielefeld, of Johannes Unverzag, “Seven with one blow” [i.e. the Valiant Tailor], and all the rest of the collected fairytales providing the material. The manservants and maids are held in high esteem by the children, as they offer such a wealth of little tales, where ghostly happenings and witches’ tales were so many and so horrific that the little ones would not get away without goose bumps and bad dreams, though fear was instilled in us as well. Among mixed children’s circles, one also encounters ’Plumpsack,’ a type of tag game. When bad weather forces the children to stay at home or visit each other, the most common game is ’Piepiep!,’ as hide-and-seek is called in Cologne vernacular. In the houses of the wealthier people, sometimes an optical apparatus or a magic lantern delights the little ones with its wonders [ . . . ].
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