A/N: This was written as a birthday ficlet for Pale Moonlite, with whom I was joking the other day about the potential of a crossover between Heidi and RHF (Real Historical Feminist) fic, given that quite a few important players of European women's movements went to Zurich to study in the late 19th century. One thing came to another, and this is the result. My great thanks to Lash LaRue for the super-fast, super-spontaneous beta!

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Commencement

by Tetley

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Laughter was coming from the main gate of Zurich University.

Clear as bells and free like the song of so many birds out of their cages did they sound, the voices of the four women who came skipping down the old and venerable stairs that for centuries had borne nothing but the grave steps of even graver men. They weren't young any more, the women, but from the sight of them one might have thought they were eight-year-olds on summer holidays who had just spotted a school of tadpoles in a pond. Only that the reason for the excitement, in this case, was a roll of cream-coloured paper that one of them was waving like a trophy.

Mrs Sesemann smiled. She'd seen the likes of them in Marburg, picketing in front of the university whose venerable men would not admit them save as grudgingly tolerated guests by the grace of professors who happened not to mind skirts in their lecture halls. Her granddaughter Klara had been one of them, furious at having been rejected by the law professor who probably felt threatened by a limping, well-read woman with intelligent eyes and a too-loose bun, for one never knew with those and their penchants for trying to revolutionise political systems. When she'd heard that Klara wanted to take part in the demonstration, Mrs Sesemann had firmly instructed her to breathe no word to her father, packed a lunch, and gone with her, walking stick, dignity, respectable old-lady bonnet and all, to watch the group from afar, ready to step in resolutely, should the Obrigkeitdecide to forget its manners and arrest the young ladies.

The demonstration had come to nothing, of course, and Klara had cried bitter tears by her grandmother's side, tears of rage and anger and frustration.

That was when the idea had been born. The girl would come here, where her presence was a legal right, not a second-class privilege bestowed at a professor's discretion, and where she would benefit from the acquaintance of well-read Russians and Poles (well, it didn't have to be the Marxist with the limp – though come to think of it, it would make for interesting conversations at Councillor Sesemann's dinner table ...), of confident Frenchwomen and Italians, and of fiery bluestockings such as the group that had gathered at the bottom of the stairs: the tall, handsome one with the Dutch accent, for example, or the slender blonde of the Hanseatic posture, or the short, squat one with the intriguing profile and the cultivated contralto voice with which she was just giving a little speech that much amused her friends. Oh, Mrs Sesemann had heard of that one. Former actress, then photographic artist. Confident, controversial, highly dangerous, or so the journalists seemed to think who kept reporting of her alleged public appearances in riding breeches, crop and all. A woman who read and who cared for the world around her. In short, a woman exactly to Mrs Sesemann's liking. Except that she, sadly, seemed to have thrown the Good Lord overboard along with all of manhood. But then, He moved in mysterious ways, didn't He, so Mrs Sesemann supposed that it probably all had a purpose. And if not, well, it was for Him to forgive.

Yes, Mrs Sesemann was very glad that she had sent Klara down here, along with the old bat Rottenmeier as a chaperone. She had long wanted to sell those old-fashioned diamonds anyway, and they would last for a few semesters, at least until her son would be fully convinced that it had been the right decision to send his daughter here.

And thus she now stood there in front of the gate, waiting. It was an unannounced visit, the way she liked it best. Sebastian had gone ahead to the Hotel Nationalwith her luggage, but she had decided to come here right away and wait for Klara to come out of her tutorial. Never mind that she was still in her black travelling dress, not exactly what one wanted to be seen in right in the middle of Zurich on a summer afternoon.

She had been so absorbed in trying to catch bits of the short woman's little speech – it really was quite funny, if a little improper – that she had to look up twice to recognise the familiar shape that was coming round the corner. Tall, ramrod-backed, not a hair out of its austere bun, not a frill blurring the crisp silhouette of the plain, blue dress. A pale face with a pince-nez that half-hid the pair of eyes that Mrs Sesemann remembered so well. Small, watery eyes, shifty whenever they felt unobserved, hard whenever they did not.

"Good afternoon, dear Rottenmeier," Mrs Sesemann greeted her. She knew it wasn't nice of her, but she found a diabolic enjoyment in the little discomfort that this form of address caused in her sparring partner of decades. It was bad manners to strip a governess of her title, Fräulein, that hated and jealously-guarded mark of failure and respectability alike. But it was amusing. And, she staunchly maintained, good for the old girl.

As expected, the woman flinched. She hadn't paid attention to the elderly lady standing there by the entrance; too absorbed had she been by the sight of the women who were still laughing and had now begun to pass around a silver box out of which each of them, save the blonde, drew a long, slender cigarillo.

"Good afternoon, gracious Madam," she said, recomposed within an instant. Mrs Sesemann smiled. Good old Rottenmeier. Stuck in her antiquated ways like she was in the corset that held her upright, as if a loosening of etiquette or laces would make her go up in a cloud of smoke, vanish in the disorientedness of modern times.

Well, perhaps it even would, in a manner of speaking.

Mrs Sesemann gently shook her head. It was true that Miss Rottenmeier's adherence to protocol had provided her with a few excellent laughs in the past. She fondly remembered the little incident some fifteen years ago, when the young shop assistant with whom Klara and Miss Rottenmeier now shared their two-bedroom flat had been a scared little girl, brought to the dusty, narrow streets of Frankfurt from the freedom of the Graubünden pastures. Mrs Sesemann could just picture the effort it must have cost Miss Rottenmeier to try to hammer the correct way of addressing an elderly Frankfurt lady into the girl's curly head. But logic had prevailed. "Madam", Heidi had known, always went before the name, which in the absence of all other information had to be the other word. Honestly, "Madam Gracious" hadn't had so good a laugh in months.

Still. It was 1897 now, a mere three years until the new century. Mrs Sesemann had a feeling that they hadn't even begun to foresee the speed at which the world would be changing in the coming days and years, leaving its Miss Rottenmeiers behind at an ever more merciless pace.

"My dear, incorrigible Rottenmeier," she said. "I would have thought that being here among the radicals would have taught you at last no longer to treat me as your mistress, which after all I never was, and address me by my name instead."

"Quite on the contrary," Miss Rottenmeier replied, adjusting her pince-nez and straightening her spine. The woman had to have a back of steel. "Manners and morals being disregarded all around us is all the more reason not to lower ourselves to the same level." There was a stern glance, reprimanding, as if it were the gravest of disappointments that Mrs Sesemann failed to remember her duty of keeping the old order alive and Miss Rottenmeier in her place.

Mrs Sesemann extended a hand and patted Miss Rottenmeier's back. There was an almost imperceptible tensing of the shoulders, an intake of breath that was just a little sharper than usual.

Poor, old Rottenmeier.

Poor, old insect in its exoskeleton of whalebone and manners. Caterpillar that, just as it had been about to turn into a butterfly, had its wings strapped tight until lack of use left them shrivelled and drab, their owner bitter and mean, jealous of the other butterflies and yet defiantly set in her own, moth-like ways. Oh, Mrs Sesemann had resented her fiercely for knowing nothing else to teach a young girl than the belief, the knowledge, that a woman's best chance in life was to align her own will with that of whomever could give her a place at his table. Oh, had her Klara not been the sunshine she was, had she not taken more lessons from the little Swiss hoyden than the bitter governess, who knows if Mrs Sesemann might have forgiven the woman so easily? Was it a coincidence that Klara had learned to walk not in the elegant Frankfurt salon, but on those very Graubünden pastures, taught, if one could call it that, by a goatherd who couldn't even read?

And yet, Rottenmeier hadn't been the worst candidate for the job back then. She had her soft spots, and she loved the young girl with a passion that was little short of a mother's, if at all short it was. After all, it hadn't been Klara's mother, God bless her memory, who had stayed awake with the girl during nights of colic and teething, and who had massaged those legs, for hours on end, hoping that there was something that could bring out some strength in them, until at one point she'd decided that the girl was too big for being fondled, and stopped, fearing that her touches that had never helped would begin to do damage.

And now she stood there, pale-faced, composed save for the slightly hunched shoulders and the trembling nostrils above a mouth that could be beautiful, and who knew, perhaps even charming to someone who knew to break up the hardness around its corners, loosen the lips that were always pressed together too tightly, as if a vital part of hers would escape through them if she didn't keep it sealed in.

Another sideways, shifty look at the women. What sounded like bells in Mrs Sesemann's ears seemed to Miss Rottenmeier to resemble the cries of harpies or the cackling of the hyaenas as which the Frankfurt press denounced the likes of them. There was disapproval in those eyes, but also the same confusion, the same fear that Mrs Sesemann had seen in them whenever Heidi, so unlike the boarding school pupil Miss Rottenmeier had expected, showed her wild, her untamed, her frighteningly natural side.

Mrs Sesemann sighed. Cats, hoydens, young German Fräulein Doktors with short hair. The daemons of Mathilde Rottenmeier.

And then, how should she not be afraid of them, the Fräulein Doktors? How should she like them, with their confidence and their certificates, their short hair and their bosoms that breathed so freely that their laughter could be heard all down the Rämistrasse? So proud to be everything that she was not?

Mathilde's father had been a clerk, a hard, unapproachable man with three daughters, two of whom had been pretty enough to marry reasonably well. All the assets Mathilde had had were her discipline, her faith, and her complete understanding that in order to make a living, she would have to give up the idea of a life. And thus, she had found herself a place, and developed a way of surviving in it. She had given herself a shell and hardened it, against the world and against herself. Did she even know that there still was a Mathilde, alive and breathing, beneath the shell that was Miss Rottenmeier? That it was Mathilde, the scary memory of shell-less Mathilde, who made Miss Rottenmeier flex her shoulders, flare her nostrils, flash her eyes at a friendly touch or the sight of a cat, a hoyden, a Fräulein Doktor? That it wasn't neurasthenia, hysteria, spinal irritation or whatever the doctors preferred to call it, but Mathildewho struck her down on occasions, trying and failing to push through the shell that kept her confined, and avenging herself with attacks on Miss Rottenmeier's nerves, chest, and temples?

"I am glad to see you, my dear," Mrs Sesemann said warmly. "You will have to show me the parks and the cafés of this city while Klara is in her lessons. Sebastian won't nearly do for a companion. Bless him, but for one, all he ever does is agree with me ..."

Miss Rottenmeier took a small bow. "I should be ..."

She got no further.

For at that point, the squat, short-haired woman had made a remark to the blonde, broken away from the group, and was now approaching them, her cigarillo still between the fingers of the hand that carried the certificate.

"My apologies for addressing you out of the blue," she said to both of them, "but my friends and I saw you standing here and inferred that there is a reasonable probability that you might be friends of female education."

"Indeed we are," said Mrs Sesemann. "Aren't we, Miss Rottenmeier?"

Miss Rottenmeier stiffened slightly. "Yes," she said.

"My granddaughter studies here," Mrs Sesemann added.

"Why, what a charming coincidence. Oh, I'm sorry. Where are my manners?" The woman disposed of her cigarillo in a nearby gutter and introduced herself.

Mrs Sesemann reciprocated for herself and Miss Rottenmeier, and smiled. "It seems to us that congratulations are in order? Fräulein Doktor, I presume?"

"Your obedient servant," the woman nodded, her face radiating with joy and pride. "Here I am, thirty-nine years old, and I finally made it. I hope that your granddaughter won't need nearly as long."

"I trust she won't," said Mrs Sesemann. "Thanks, not least, to pioneers such as you and your friends."

The woman smiled. "It's not just women like me and my friends. In fact, this is why I took the liberty of addressing you." She looked from Mrs Sesemann to Miss Rottenmeier and back, and it seemed to Mrs Sesemann that Miss Rottenmeier's shoulders had loosened a bit. Why, she actually looked more flattered to be talked to than scared for a change.

"I'll come straight to the point, with your permission. My friends and I organised a little soirée for this evening. A reception at the Hotel National, with a talk on women's professional education in Germany. It's not just academics like your granddaughter and myself that we need; it's women from all classes with access to an income, a good one, that they can live on. Middle-class women especially. We feel that the work they do, the charity work and the nursing and the social work, finally must be honoured. Financially. We have wonderful examples from England and America, where this work has been professionalised, where social service is no longer a charity that unpaid wives administer to the poor, but where it is considered work that men and women provide for the community, and the community is willing to pay for it."

Mrs Sesemann was intrigued. It had taken her a while to attune her ears to the warm contralto voice, so deep and clear and smooth in the ear that for the first few sentences, Mrs Sesemann hadn't even paid any attention to what the woman was saying. But little by little, she had become enraptured. Academic education, yes, that was one thing that was all nice and well. It took more than that, however. It took formation, professional training, and the acquisition of the means to move in the world, to leave one's mark, perhaps, for as many as possible if they wanted to have a prayer in slowly trying to steer the man-o'-war that was Germany into a direction that wasn't determined solely by a few high-collared men with muttonchops.

Mrs Sesemann had just formed a reply in her head, when an unexpected sound made her hold back.

"Interesting," Miss Rottenmeier had said. Mrs Sesemann gave her a surprised look. She opened her mouth, then smiled, and said nothing.

"I am delighted to hear it," the woman said with a little bow. "And if you happen to have no other engagements, I would be even more delighted if you gave us the honour of your presence, this afternoon at five. Bring your granddaughter, bring lady friends if you wish. But above all, bring yourselves."

"Why, we would not miss it, would we, Miss Rottenmeier?"

"Certainly not," Miss Rottenmeier said after a heartbeat or two, her voice hardly trembling as she returned the bow.

"Splendid," said the woman and extended her hand. "My friends and I will be glad to make your acquaintance." She waved at the group by the stairs, and the tall blonde inclined her head and smiled. "Now I beg you to excuse me; we have some last-minute preparations to make." She bowed again, and left.

Mrs Sesemann gave Miss Rottenmeier an astonished look. "Why, Rottenmeier, I never knew you were into the women's movement."

"Neither did I," Miss Rottenmeier replied crisply. She squared her shoulders and looked at Mrs Sesemann over the rim of her pince-nez. There was a moment's hesitation before she continued, and then a slightly raised eyebrow. "But if this is my one chance in life to get you to address me properly in public, I should be foolish not to take it."

Mrs Sesemann's lips twitched. Could it be that the air in Bluestocking Heaven was doing the old maid some good?

"Come," she said and turned towards the entrance. "Klara's lecture must be over now."

And as she laid a hand on Miss Rottenmeier's back, it seemed to her as if the blue-clad arm had moved just slightly, raised itself a few inches, as if rehearsing for some unknown future when it might, perhaps, learn to return the gesture.

"After you, Mrs Sesemann."

Well, well, Mrs Sesemann thought.

Perhaps it wasn't yet too late for the formation of Mathilde Rottenmeier.

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Notes: The Fräulein Doktor is German feminist Anita Augspurg (1857-1943), who was promoted in Zurich in the summer of 1897 – incidentally, in the same year as a young Polish-born political theorist named Rosa Luxemburg. I do not know if Augspurg's ex-partner Sophia Goudstikker (the tall Dutchwoman) was actually there to celebrate with her, but I thought that she might like a bit of Alpine air. I also do not know if blonde and hanseatic Lida Gustava Heymann (1868-1943), whom Augspurg had met the year before our story takes place, was there in person, but if she wasn't, consider her a manifestation of her spirit, in which I would guess she was there. By 1900, Augspurg and Heymann had become life partners and remained that until both of them died in Swiss exile in 1943. There are no recordings of Augspurg's voice that I know of, but I take Lida Gustava Heymann's written word for its alluring qualities. Heymann's memoir of Augspurg's and her life is one of the very few surviving private document of theirs, given that their entire Munich household had been raided by the Nazis soon after their ascent to power in 1933. Heymann and Augspurg had been on holiday in Switzerland at the time, from which they were never to return home.

Great Britain and the US were indeed countries to which Augspurg and other German feminists looked for inspiration to achieving a greater professionalisation of women. Augspurg was a great admirer of Josephine Butler and Jane Addams.

Oh, and did you know that the University of Frankfurt was only founded in 1912? Good thing there's Wikipedia.