With her husband, the legal counselor to the president of the province of Westphalia in Germany
In a previous issue we promised our readers that we would bring them a special interview with Dr. Margaret von Müller, director of the International Cultural Center in Düsseldorf, West Germany, and wife of the legal counselor to the president of the province of Westphalia. This lady returned to her country on April 28 last, after completing her program of work and spending six weeks touring and studying in the countries of the Arab East — Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Jerusalem, and Lebanon. Here she gives her personal impressions, both of what she can tell of her own country and of what she saw and experienced here...
The German woman's role in building her country:
The first question I put to the gracious visitor was this: What is the German woman's role in the rebuilding of her country after all the smashing and ruin that befell it in the Second World War?!
And the zealous, hardworking woman launched into describing and defining woman's constructive role. Women outnumber men, as a result of the great loss of life that Germany suffered during the
last war; the German woman therefore appreciates the heavy responsibilities laid upon her shoulders, and joins hands with her brother man in every field of work, as a citizen equal to him in rights, having what he has and owing what he owes — 'In Germany we have women deputies, women judges, and women managers of businesses'...
— And the German man is, as a rule, deeply respectful of his wife: not only does he tell her of everything that happens to him, in his work and outside it, but he sounds out her opinion — and very often it is her opinion he follows...
The Western and Eastern zones:
I then asked Dr. von Müller about the difference between the two ways of life in the two zones of Germany, the Western and the Eastern, of which we have heard so much. She answered simply: — I can sum up the difference between them in a simple phrase. A person in the Eastern zone is compelled to work, and is not permitted to spend his own money on buying what he wants; whereas the man of the West is not compelled to work, and is entirely free to spend his money as he wishes and pleases...
600 refugees a day:
And we may judge the harshness of life in the Eastern zone from
this vast army of refugees who have never
Dr. von Müller on one of the mountains of Germany