ins of great
literary and philosophical thinkers; preeminent among whom were Lessing,
the greatest critical genius of the German nation, and Kant, Germany's
greatest philosopher. Enlightenment mental liberation from the shackles
of tradition and orthodoxy became the watch-word of the time. Through
the dominating personality of Frederick the Great (1740-1786), even
despotism was made to feel this influence, the scope of which was still
further extended, though less successfully, by the reforms of Joseph II.
(1765-1790), Maria Theresa's son. The message sounded from beyond the
seas in the American Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution
spread through the hearts of the nations of Europe, proclaiming the
gospel of human rights and equality before God and the law. The French
Revolution was its most direct fruit. In Germany, the liberation of
thought, of science and art, the emancipation of man and woman alike,
had to precede political freedom which, in its full development, could
be evolved only by blood and iron.

It is true, however, that, though the idea of humanism then became the
ideal of the present, there remained enough of the social and political
vices and errors of the past to make this epoch perhaps the most complex
and complicated in German history. Divine thought and
mystic-sentimental-pseudo-science, the grossest lust and the highest
idealism, the most abject servility and the most liberal political
views, cynical scepticism and childlike faith, true patriotism and
nationalism on the one hand, national treason and anti-national
cosmopolitanism on the other, meet and conflict at every step.

But whatever were the conditions of the time, woman was the _causa
movens_, the underlying force of the cultural life of the nation and of
all its leaders. Women contributed to the progress of the storm and
stress evolution toward classicism and emancipation; women inspired the
bloom of literature; women gave Germany a stage and adorned it with
their genius as actresses; women fostered the arts; women on the throne
ruled Germany; a German woman, withal the greatest and vilest, Katharine
the Great, raised Russia to the rank of a world power; women dominated
the nobility and the courts; women elevated the bourgeoisie to higher
standards of living and thinking; women strove to emancipate themselves
and their peasant husbands from servitude.

The movements of the women of the burgher classes were much more
restrict