girls & boys

today, i had two surprises. i'll tell you about them in a minute.

before the holiday, by chance a book fell into my hands that i had been given by my mother when i was, oh, something in my teens. 15 or 16, most likely, a certain age when a mother might wish to share things with her daughter that are part of grown-up life but when she cannot not know how far she can go. 

my mother gave me this book and just told me to enjoy it, and i did, thoroughly. i loved the book, it hit me in just the right spot and has defined my approach toward, well, these things of grown-up life a daughter might not wish to share with her mother. 

when i held this book in my hands now, at the age of 31, i just needed to read it again to see if it's still great. and it is.

the book is the hotel passion flower by rosalind erskine, from 1962. in an english boarding school a group of five young girls, among them our first person narrator sarah callender, decide to counter their physical and psychological needs and those of the boys in the neighbouring boarding school with an almost professionally run strip club slash bordello. the difficulties and obstacles for this organization - the syndicate - are obvious, and then there's also the usual embarrassement and insecurity that dominates adolescent sexuality...

what fascinates me was, and is, of course, the modernity and recklessness of such a book - teenage girls prostituting themselves eagerly in a upper class educational institution! - at such a time as this book originates from. the early 60s were surely closer to the 50s than to the so called "sexual revolution" of the following decade. so i knew even when i read it the first time that this book was audacious, no matter that in my teenage world pop culture magazines offered public councelling for sex-newbies and the rocky horror picture show was already for those born-yesterdays that liked hair, too (it was the 90s, c'mon!). 

i don't have to tell you about the comfort also offered by the fact that even in 1962, girls were troubled by the same reluctant longing, the terrified curiousity that prevailed in my mind... and last but not least, this book is well written. it's witty, sharp and true, while it subtly unfolds the internal life of a slighty arrogant, even presumptious 15 year old girl, who is daring and self-confident in thoughts and decisions, but shies away from personal execution, even cheats her friends when it comes to the very real act the whole "syndicate" is about. still, she will make her way in the world with her intellect and efficience, that much is for sure after the story ends.

these are in short the laurels i can pile on this book, and when i read it some weeks ago, i planned to recommend it to anyone with a ribald sense of humour and a good memory of his/her teenage years... so today i searched on the internet for the passion flower hotel and the author, rosalind erskine. and here are the two surprises i had because of that: 

1) it seems to have gone out of print and is very hard to get, and i have found only one english copy, an old printing for $99.77 - another german copy, obviously also "antique", is available for $9.46 (which is no a high price for a book, but there are no current printings, it seems). it was like discovering that the dress you wore belonging to your mother's is a real designer model (which happened to me, too...).

2) the author rosalind erskine who so exquisitley illuminated the workings of a girl's mind is - a man. his real name is roger longrigg and he died in 2000 only, after writing 55 books under several pseudonyms. talk about trans-gender literature.

according to his writing in the passion flower hotel i must consider him a genius. really, it's not only the whole mindset and psychological situation of sarah callender he manages to draw already in the first short and quick lines, it's also the envy, jealousy, hubris and self-deception that this very loveable narrator reveals "unknowingly" to the reader. i admire her for her noncomfortism and love her for her moral weakness.

a very recommendable book that i needlessly recommend, as anyone will have trouble reading it who cannot find it in his mother's (or father's) basement library...

another favourable review and the same discoveries you can read here, an obituary on the author here.

happy birthday, social equality

it is 50 years ago today that the law for social equality for men and women in germany came into force. 

after WW II in 1949, germany had received a modern charter that stated, among other things, that "man and woman are equal" in article 3. in this spirit, federal law had to be reviewed and changed - the right to resolve marriage, changeing of names in marriage, sharing of properties, the "educational" right - to decide over education, residence and so forth of the children in marriage - all these things and many more were in favour of the husband. a widow even lost her educational right over her children when she married another man; the new husband became the lawful father of her children automatically.

the conservative government of the 1950 with conrad adenauer as chancellor had many ways of postponing and interfering with the law in its genesis. both catholic and protestant church had  warned the government about changing "the natural order of things" within marriage. the government was supposed to adapt "simple law" (federal law) to article 3 of the charter and had submitted proposals still containing parts that contradicted the charter. because until 31st of march 1953 this law was not passed and the term for adaption of federal law had run out, from 1st april 1953 marriages in germany were without regulation by law. which turned out to be a good thing, because federal constitutional court ruled that since the running out of the term, within marriage husband and wife were equal according to article 3 of the german charter. in case of a litigation, all the little details that were now not fixed by the missing federal law would have to be decided by courts according to the specific case.

so, in december 1953 the same dubitable law proposal that still contained many un-constitutional paragraphs was handed in and came into force 4 1/2 years later - after heavy discussions and arguments in parliament - on 1st june 1953.

but don't you think that that was it. thank god no. since then they have been working on it - hopefully for the better, i'm not familiar with all the details - and the last change has been submitted in 2006 and came into force on 25th april 2006. 

to give you something in perspective: the rape of a woman by her husband is only rape by law since 1998.