The International Congress of Women which met in Berlin in 1904 was a revelation to the citizens of Berlin of the skill and dignity with which women could organize a congress and conduct business meetings.
It was notable, moreover, in that, though under the auspices of an International Council, it showed the large number of German women who are already entitled to take a leading part in the movements for women's welfare.
Both directly and indirectly, indeed, such a movement cannot be otherwise than specially beneficial in Germany.
The Teutonic reverence for woman, the assertion of the "aliquid divinum," has sometimes been accompanied by the openly expressed conviction that she is a fool.
Outside Germany it would not be easy to find the representative philosophers of a nation putting forward so contemptuous a view of women as is set forth by Schopenhauer or by Nietzsche, while even within recent years a German physician of some ability, the late Dr. Möbius, published a book on the "physiological weak-mindedness of women."
The new feminine movement in Germany has received highly important support from the recent development of German science.
The German intellect, exceedingly comprehensive in its outlook, ploddingly thorough, and imperturbably serious, has always taken the leading and pioneering part in the investigation of sexual problems, whether from the standpoint of history, biology, or pathology.
Early in the nineteenth century, when even more courage and resolution were needed to face the scientific study of such questions than is now the case, German physicians, unsupported by any co-operation in other countries, were the pioneers in exploring the paths of sexual pathology.