If You Want the Daughter - Look at the Mother

A Correspondence about the Right Mate Selection

Source: SS Leitheft, Year 7, Issue 7b

A young SS-soldier wrote to an older comrade:

Dear Günther! From the northern front I send greetings to you down on the south of our endless battle line. Everything is fine with us, even though the dirt flies around our ears just like it certainly does by you. But we manage, and when we get home leave we will certainly have a lot to tell and to compare. But today I must again ask for your advice about a matter that already stirred me since the last weeks before this action. I wish to get your opinion as an older man; I am already somewhat confused in this matter. As so often, my heart stands against my head, feeling against reason.

You probably already suspect it is about a woman. Yes, it is about a woman, my betrothed. I got engaged to Berta before we left the garrison, but precisely since the day of the engagement I cannot escape my thoughts and reservations, whether I acted right. It is not that my inclination, my love is wavering. Berta, too, holds me in her heart, I know that. She is a splendid girl, 19 years old, happy, fresh as a fish and slender as a fir-tree, the ideal woman for me. I was - and am - completely happy.

Only one think worries me - that is the engagement. Less the thing itself, rather the ceremony, when I was in the home of Berta’s parents for the first time. They were very nice to me and seemed happy with whole heart that their only child can marry an SS-man. But some things happened that will not let me rest. First, the father drank a lot, and I heard that he often does that. And in the conversations he revealed a pronounced greed for money. He also does not seem particularly well-liked among his work colleagues; he continually curses the “envious ducks” and “snoopers”. Even the mother does not seem to think much of him. She sends him off to bed, when it gets too much for her. Berta laughed about it - and drank a lot herself. That made me a little startled. - But I was even more amazed at the mother. She is barely twenty years older than Berta, but looks fifty, completely used up, swollen and, despite all pronounced friendliness, quite embittered and scolding. During the day there was continuous gossiping and shrieking. When I think of my parent’s home, where both parents are older and have gone through a lot of difficulties - Günther, then I feel strange. One thing is sure, I will not get good in-laws, and not good grandparents for our children. But, after all, I want the daughter, and she is in all ways the direct opposite of her parents. - When I come home, we will marry, move far away and live for ourselves.

I send you here a picture of Berta, write me your opinion.

Karl-Ulrich

The older comrade answers:

Dear Karl-Ullrich! I am very happy to know you are at the front, and also at the front - toward marriage! Yes, love! It magically turns the girl into an ideal figure, the woman into the goddess of happiness. Rightly so - genuine love must believe and trust without reservation. But you say yourself - that is lacking by you. And indeed after the visit to the parents.

Yes, comrade, listen to an older man, whose wife is also already older, more than 19... I tell you clear and hard: What you have seen in the parents, that is your girl after a few years! A similar exterior, similar habits, similar life view and similar behaviour - that is what you will probably see in her in ten, twenty and more years; the older, the more so! And no love from you, no moving away, no dear home, no advancement, and certainly no words, admonishment or scolding will change it much. For your girl also stands under the law of heredity! She is a human being like any other, even if still young and fresh, full of life and (through love) believing and optimistic for the future. Do not let yourself be deceived by that, friend! - Our ancestors, based on the experience of a thousand years, created the admonishment:

If you want the daughter - look at the mother!

As the mother is, so will your wife be after years and aging. To be fresh and pretty at 19, is no great trick. But how a woman works on herself, how she preserves her bearing, how she also disciplines herself spiritually and does not let worries get her down, that is hereditary, that is shown by the generations before her, shown by mother and father. Take at least this advice from me: Think about it again, fresh!

Then have that family’s genealogy sent to you. Look at the clan’s origin. Then ask how old the individual ancestors got, and which occupations they had. I presume Berta is an only child. Why didn’t the family have more children? Is that because of the mother or the father? And then consider whether your betrothed’s little weakness for alcohol is not already the inclination toward the father’s drinking problem? And whether the mother’s disorderliness, the parent’s quarrelling is not also slightly evident in Berta. Perhaps you must decide to take the difficult measure and observe your betrothed a little more soberly, to test her, to put her in circumstances where she must show what is inside of her. I know that a person who loves calls that mean. But the future mother of your children must be in order, and marriage is longer than the marriage night and honeymoon.

And if you must then say no - many good girls grow up in the German homeland - good in body and soul - and in genepool. When you soon look around in the parental home, then you see better than in coffee house or dance hall, what your girl is made of and what will last a life-time. It is alright to call me a fear-maker and tormenting spirit. I know, what I know, and remain your friend.

Günther