te under the heel of Napoleon, the
standard of national honor was upheld by princely women, like the never
forgotten Louisa of Prussia, and the other Louisa of Saxe-Weimar,
Goethe's friend, who changed Napoleon's plan of crushing out the
existence of her duchy, and concerning whom Napoleon himself confessed
to his suite: "This is a woman whom our two hundred cannons could not
frighten!" The years of trial, distress, and again the rising of the
nation, the struggle for liberation, saw genuine heroism, superhuman
sacrifices by German women of all estates and of all classes. Nothing
but the enthusiasm and the patriotism of the women at that epoch could
have inspired the men to their heroism, self-abnegation, and suffering.
Niebuhr, the great historian, calls the conduct of the German women
admirable. All pleasures were given up, tender and distinguished women
exposed their lives to the lazaretto, washed, cooked, mended, laid down
their money, their jewels, nay, even their beautiful hair on the altar
of the fatherland. Mothers sent their sons, sisters their brothers,
brides their bridegrooms, to the holy war. Many, forgetting their sex,
seized rifle and sword, and fought against the oppressor. Scherr gives
many names: Johanna Stegen, Johanna Luring, Lotte Krueger, Dorothea
Sawosch, Karoline Petersen, and the heroine Prohaska, who, in male
attire, bravely fought in Lutzow's famous corps of volunteers. Lutzow
and the heroic Prohaska were severely wounded in the victorious battle
of the Gorde (September 16, 1813). When she was to be bandaged on the
battlefield, she for the first time revealed her sex so that her modesty
might be spared. She died three days later, and was buried amid a
concourse of citizens and maidens in the town of Danneberg, where a
monument was erected at the church in her honor.

That deeds of heroism were done by German women outside of the
battlefield, appears from many sources and particularly from Goethe's
song of praise for the glory of Johanna Sebus, a maiden of seventeen
years, who, during the flooding of the Rhine, January 13, 1809, saved
first her mother, then returned to save a neighbor and her children, and
then was herself swept away by the flood.

In the face of such proofs of heroism, we count but lightly against
German womanhood a number of degraded women of noble, even princely
birth, who helped to make such courts as that of Jerome of Westphalia
abodes of licentiousness. In German cities,