If this was true in general of the instruction Schmidt provided his midwifery pupils, then the education Zakrzewska received as one of the Berlin students may even have surpassed in some ways that of the university students. Not only did she sit through the course twice, but she also spent several months living in the Charité when the midwifery institute was not in session, taking respon-
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sibility for the deliveries for which a medical student was not available. As a result, during her midwifery studies, Zakrzewska delivered about thirty babies a year, not to mention the large number of deliveries in which she assisted or that she simply observed. In addition, she functioned both as a tutor and as a ‘‘house mother’’ to the midwifery pupils during her second year of instruction, helping them to master the information required of them while she kept ‘‘peace and order’’ among them as well.≥Ω Small wonder Zakrzewska would later claim that the education she received at the Charité was every bit as good as that of any medical student. She may not have learned as much ‘‘big science,’’ but she certainly made up for that in the practical experience she acquired and the responsibilities she assumed vis-à-vis the other pupils.
. . .
Schmidt may have granted Zakrzewska more responsibilities than was usual for a second-year pupil because he was preparing her to become the next head midwife, a position he once referred to as the ‘‘right hand not only of the leading physician but of the midwifery instructor as well.’’∂≠ This was a state-level position, usually reserved for an experienced midwife who lived in the Charité and helped to take care of the women in the obstetrics wards. In her autobiographical account, Zakrzewska stated that Schmidt had even higher goals, wishing ‘‘to reform the school of midwives by giving to it a professor of its own sex.’’ She even claimed that he wished ‘‘to surrender into my hands his position as professor in the School for Midwives, so that I might have the entire charge of the midwives’ education.’’∂∞ But this could not have been true. Anyone familiar with the German system of higher education would know that someone with Zakrzewska’s educational background—she had not attended the Gymnasium let alone the university—could never assume a professorship. Indeed, one could hardly imagine that Schmidt, who had a deep commitment to raising the standards of midwifery, would have fought to bestow a professorship upon anyone who lacked a formal education. Nevertheless, he did show a commitment to redefining the status, responsibilities, and even power of the head midwife. As early as the spring of 1850, when this position became vacant, Schmidt decided he had an opportunity to articulate and push through his reforms, and he chose Zakrzewska to help him execute his plans.
Schmidt disliked the arrangement he had inherited from his predecessors by which the midwifery pupils were trained and supervised. To begin, his assistants were young physicians who were themselves in training, rotating every month or two through the hospital’s various wards. As a result, the midwifery pupils had
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several di√erent instructors during their five-month course. He was also critical of what he believed to be a ‘‘peculiarity’’ of the Charité, whereby the pupils were under the supervision not only of a ‘‘house mother ’’ but also of a ‘‘house ‘ father.’ ’’
As he wrote to the hospital’s directors in the spring of 1850: ‘‘In all the other lying-in institutes of the world the head midwife, when she is capable, is the virtual female soul of the institute.’’∂≤ Schmidt, who disliked the decentralized nature of this arrangement, recommended that the instructional and super-visory responsibilities of the assistant physicians and the house father be transferred to the head midwife. In fighting for these reforms, he clearly sought to empower the position of head midwife, yet in shifting responsibilities in this way he was also enhancing his own control of the institute. The head midwife would be answerable only to him, whereas the assistant physicians and house father enjoyed a certain level of independence. Schmidt, who had no interest in a ‘‘co-director,’’ set out in the spring of 1850 to make the appropriate changes. ∂≥
Schmidt realized that his success depended upon finding not an ‘‘ordinary midwife’’ but a ‘‘master midwife’’ to fill the vacant position. For him, this meant a person with endurance, humanity, good clinical skills, and ‘‘a brilliant understanding.’’ He had received a list of midwives to consider for the position but had rejected each and every one in turn. One he found incapable of helping with either the theoretical lessons or the practical instruction; another he rejected because her fingers were ‘‘drawn together and crooked’’; a third he turned down because she had a husband and children ‘‘and because of the former has prospects of increasing the latter.’’ A fourth candidate he considered seriously because she had the right kind of experience, having trained in the obstetrics clinic at the University of Bonn and in the lying-in institute in Pe-tersburg. Yet he showed some concern because she was Catholic while most of the women in the obstetrics ward were Protestant. ∂∂
Having thus cleared the slate, Schmidt moved on to recommend Zakrzewska, who had not appeared on the government’s recommended list. In a previous communication with the hospital directors he had already made clear his conviction that the surest way of getting a master midwife was ‘‘to train a young talented single woman or widow with long fingers and of evident morality from the very beginning.’’∂∑ Now, two weeks later, he asked them to consider the unmarried woman, Marie Elisabeth Zakrzewska, who is listed by the local magistrate as a midwife of the city of Berlin and who already made it to a short list in the previous year because she was without
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question the most qualified of thirteen applicants sent to me. Of course, she has not applied, and could not, because she has not yet completed her studies. But that does not seem important to me when one is searching for people to fill positions. She has an unusual ability to comprehend things, and a hand which one could not find more fitting for a midwife.
. . . Notwithstanding her one failing, which grows smaller every day, and that is her youth, . . . she would be a much more successful choice than the first four women.∂∏
Since Zakrzewska had, at the time, completed only the first year of her two-year course, Schmidt knew she could not yet assume the position of head midwife, but he wished to avoid the appointment of an accomplished midwife who would preclude his hiring Zakrzewska the following year. He recommended, therefore, that a midwife by the name of Franz be hired temporarily. Widowed and poor, Franz would, Schmidt believed, be helped by the temporary arrangement, but she would also be in no position to expect to remain longer.
The directors of the Charité were less than enamored of this plan, but they did eventually agree to hire Franz. However, what must have been a direct blow to Schmidt was the directors’ dismissal of Zakrzewska—they refused to consider his recommendation until she completed her studies—at the same time that they informed him of their decision to hire a deaconess by the name of Catherine Stahl as an assistant to the head midwife. Stahl, a graduate of Theodor Fliedner’s deaconess institute in Kaiserswerth, had acquired experience as a nurse during a serious typhus epidemic in Silesia, but she had no particular skills in midwifery. In fact, she, like Zakrzewska, had only just begun her studies. The directors’ plan was to hire Stahl as a nurse and to promote her to the position of second house midwife when she completed her training.∂π
This was not the first time Zakrzewska and Stahl had come into competition with each other. According to Zakrzewska, her application to the school of midwifery had been rejected the previous fall because of the preference for a deaconess among a religious faction in the government.∂∫ The snub Schmidt received in March 1850 may very well have stemmed from a similar source. But paralleling these religious concerns were more than likely political ones, for it was exactly at this time that the government began its invest
igations into the political activities of Zakrzewska’s father, suspicious that he had long been supporting the democratic party. Although Martin Zakrzewski was, as we have seen, eventually exonerated, the head physician at the Charité, Ernst Horn, was
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a well-known reactionary, and he may have wished to have nothing to do with the daughter of a Prussian civil servant who had generated cause for concern.
Nothing, however, prevented Schmidt from singling out his favorite pupil in order to groom her for the position of head midwife, which is exactly what he did. For example, as his health began to fail (Schmidt was su√ering from tuber-
culosis),∂Ω he let Zakrzewska take over much of the instruction of the pupils, an experience that surely proved valuable when she began teaching in the United States six years later. It may also have contributed to her superb performance at her final examination. As Zakrzewska described that event, Schmidt had ‘‘invited some of the most prominent medical men’’ to come and observe his star pupil, for he wished to prove to them that she could ‘‘ ‘do better than half of the young men at their examination.’ ’’ She continued:
The excitement of this day I can hardly describe. I had not only to appear before a body of strangers, of whose manner of questioning I had no idea, but also before half a dozen authorities in the profession, assembled especially for criticism. Picture to yourself my position: standing before the table at which were seated the three physicians composing the examining committee, questioning me all the while in the most perplexing manner, with four more of the highest standing on each side,—making eleven in all; Dr.
Schmidt a little way o√, anxious that I should prove true all that he had said in praise of me. . . . It was terrible.∑≠
Zakrzewska passed with flying colors, having answered every single question asked of her as well as demonstrating to everyone’s satisfaction her practical skills on a manikin. She was awarded a diploma ‘‘of the first degree.’’∑∞
Schmidt must now have felt ready to proceed with his plans, for he took the first opportunity to mention Zakrzewska again to the hospital directors. The immediate occasion was the latter’s decision to promote Stahl, who had received her midwifery license in December of the previous year, to the position of second house midwife. Schmidt did not voice any objection to this move, but he followed up one month later with his own request that Zakrzewska be promised the position of head midwife when Franz left in May.∑≤
While Schmidt waited for the directors’ response, Zakrzewska was informed that she needed to report to the district medical o≈cer in order to be assigned to the section of the city she would service. Anxious not to lose Zakrzewska, Schmidt pressured the Charité directors to make a decision. In response, Horn sent him a list of concerns about Zakrzewska, beginning with his belief that the
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Charité needed someone with more practical experience. He also felt that because of her youth, she had not yet had the chance to provide a ‘‘guarantee of the strength and seriousness of her moral deportment,’’ without which, he feared, she might ‘‘succumb to the many temptations’’ that would arise through the contact the head midwife had with the young medical students. Finally, and one cannot help but wonder whether this was also more to the point, he complained that ‘‘during her stay in the Charité as a midwifery pupil, Zakrzewska had at times shown a hint of a snappish nature, impudence, and a lack of control.’’∑≥
Horn may have intended this exchange to be in friendship and confidence, but Schmidt, angered by the insults both to his own judgment and to his protégée and perhaps convinced that he had little to lose, told Zakrzewska what Horn had said. Zakrzewska’s response was immediate: she withdrew her application and wrote a long, indignant letter addressed to Schmidt but with the expectation that it would be forwarded to the hospital directors (which it was).
Zakrzewska remarked pointedly that although she coveted the position and also believed she deserved it, she did not need the job. She also insisted that it had been Schmidt’s idea, not hers, to apply for the position of head midwife. Clearly, though, what angered her most was Horn’s insinuation that she had acted improperly when she had been a pupil in the Charité. Zakrzewska believed she knew the incident to which Horn was referring, and it was one, she claimed, in which she had done no more than stand up for what she believed to be her right.
Apparently, as she wrote to Schmidt, several weeks after she had assumed her role as supervisor of the other midwifery pupils, she was told that she could no longer leave the house, for any reason, without first requesting a signed pass from the director. Not only had Zakrzewska found this demeaning, but she had believed that the privilege of leaving the hospital at will was crucial in order to strengthen her position in regard to the other midwifery pupils, who needed to view her with respect. The bottom line though, as she explained, was that after voicing her objections she had accepted the ruling and requested the passes as required. That she would nevertheless be considered disrespectful disturbed her not because she might have jeopardized her chances of attaining the position of head midwife but rather because one ‘‘would have found any reason at all for reproach.’’∑∂
Zakrzewska demonstrated in this letter none of the feminine traits so revered in her day. On the contrary, she wrote with anger and indignation, denying
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Horn’s charge of wrongdoing and accusing him instead of improper actions.
She was, in other words, taking the high moral ground, much as her mother had done in the battle over swaddling women, and she was doing so by displaying self-confidence and forthrightness rather than uncertainty and passivity. Already at twenty-two years of age, Zakrzewska was developing a public persona that flouted gender norms and claimed attributes most commonly associated with men.
That this performance did not end Zakrzewska’s tenure at the Charité right then and there had to do with the intervention of the undersecretary of state, Hermann Lehnert. Having learned from Schmidt’s wife that her husband’s health had been so a√ected by this turn of events that she now feared for his life, Lehnert had pressured the hospital directors to reverse their decision. Nevertheless, he also cared little for Zakrzewska’s style and assured the hospital directors that should she get uppity they ‘‘had su≈cient means for disabusing Zakrzewska of the loathsome qualities which have become noticeable in her, and to breed into her the qualities of subordination and modesty.’’∑∑ She could,
in other words, be forced into a di√erent gender performance, one more compatible with the expectations of her sex. Events would not, however, take that turn. Indeed, when relations between Zakrzewska and her superiors turned sour less than six months later, rather than submit to their will, she quit.
That conflict had not yet surfaced when, on 10 May 1852, Horn and Esse granted Schmidt permission to hire Zakrzewska with the understanding that Schmidt would ‘‘be at Zakrzewska’s side.’’∑∏ Five days later, however, Schmidt succumbed to his illness. Zakrzewska did not hear of his death until the following day when she arrived at the Charité to begin her new job. The shock of the news left her shaken and trembling, but her grief was also mixed with fear as she realized that she was now ‘‘without friendly encouragement and support.’’ For the next few days, until Schmidt’s funeral, she ‘‘moved about mechanically as an automaton,’’ confused and yet acutely aware of the extreme vulnerability of her position. Having been appointed not because she ‘‘was wanted by the directors of the hospital, but because they had been commanded by the government,’’ she recognized that she had to build new alliances quickly. Acting shrewdly, she decided to try to placate Stahl, who had resented being placed in a position subordinate to someone with so little experience and who was eight years her junior. Zakrzewska hoped thereby also to please the directors, who seemed all along to favor Stahl. Her proposal was to
eliminate any di√erence of
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power between the two positions by dividing the responsibilities of the head midwife equally between them. For the time being, she at least hoped, peace would thus be made.∑π
Zakrzewska felt now that she could focus on carrying out the responsibilities associated with her position as head midwife. This basically entailed performing whatever duties the director of the midwifery institute delegated to her. In Zakrzewska’s case, these seem to have been quite extensive, perhaps a reflection of the uncertainty that reigned while the government sought a replacement for Schmidt. Zakrzewska claims to have provided both the theoretical and the practical instruction to the midwifery pupils; to have o√ered practical instruction to the medical students as well; to have supervised the care of the newborns with medical problems; and to have basically taken on the general management of the maternity ward. ∑∫ It has not been possible to find independent corroboration of these claims, although guidelines spelling out the various expectations of the head midwife do mention that the practical instruction of both the medical and midwifery pupils may fall under her purview, depending upon the wishes of the institute’s director.∑Ω (No mention is made of theoretical instruction.) Thus, it is reasonable to assume that Zakrzewska did not exaggerate the extent of her responsibilities.
Zakrzewska did not, however, remain long at the Charité. Whatever peace she may have believed she had secured did not last. The incident that brought everything to a head stemmed from the government’s decision in 1852 to enlist fifty swaddling women in a two-month course at the Charité in order to increase the number of assistants available to the city’s obstetricians. Although this instruction was assigned formally to two physicians at the Charité, they both immediately turned around and handed it over to Zakrzewska. Stahl, who resented this obvious favoritism, turned on Zakrzewska and complained to the directors that she had behaved inappropriately, accepting presents from her pupils, despite this being forbidden. Zakrzewska was summoned before Horn, who most likely welcomed this opportunity to take the young midwife down a peg. Unfortunately, the only account we have of their meeting is the one Zakrzewska provided in her autobiographical sketch. According to her, she admitted that she had kept the presents but had done so because to have returned them would have hurt her pupils’ feelings. She had, though, put them away, realizing that any other action would have been improper. Zakrzewska claims that Horn showed some embarrassment at the assumptions he had made about her motives but that he refused to back down. This made her so angry, she added, that
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