Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 26. For this take on the nineteenth-century interior see Kira Jürjens, “Ein weiteres Kleid: Zur Wissensgeschichte häuslich-textiler Umgebungen im 19. Jahrhundert,” NTM: Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin, 29, no. 1 (March 2021): 11.
Stefano Boni, “Technologically-Propelled Comfort: Some Theoretical Implications of the Contemporary Overcoming of Fatigue,” Antropologia 3, no. 1 (2016): 133–51. Cf. Stefano Boni, Homo confort: Le prix à payer d’une vie sans efforts ni contraintes, 2nd ed. (Paris: L’Échappée, 2022). Earlier and more nuanced versions of such an alienation theory can be found in Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” in Selected Writings: IV 1938–40, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 313–55; or Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History (Oxford University Press, 1948).
Laura J. Martin et al., “Evolution of the Indoor Biome,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 30, no. 4 (2015): 223–32; “Molding the Planet: Human Niche Construction at Work,” ed. Maurits W. Ertsen et al., special issue, RCC Perspectives, no. 5 (2016).
For the sake of brevity, I make two major simplifications here: 1) I refer to “housewives” not so much as a real entity out there but rather as a social type or role, as proposed by Nancy Reagin. Also, I omit the division of labor within the household, among housewives and servants, as well as children. 2) I speak of the nineteenth century, yet most of my empirical material stems from the period from around 1850 when the social type of the bourgeois housewife first developed, and up to the First World War. Cf. Nancy Ruth Reagin, Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany, 1870–1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 16–48.
Richard White, “‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’: Work and Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: Norton, 1995), 171–85.
Cf. Horst Mühlmann, Luxus und Komfort: Wortgeschichte und Wortvergleich (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 1975).
Cf. John E. Crowley, The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities & Design in Early Modern Britain & Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), ix. See also Jon Stobart, Comfort in the Eighteenth-Century Country House (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2022).
Cf. Marie Odile-Bernez, “Comfort, the Acceptable Face of Luxury: An Eighteenth-Century Cultural Etymology,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 14, no. 2 (2014): 3–21.
To give just one graphic example, a young German woman who emigrated to Brazil towards the end of the century, noted in her diary shortly after her arrival: “São Paulo is one of the most beautiful cities in Brazil, but I, for my part, can discover nothing of this beauty. The streets are mostly narrow and dirty and most of the houses, like ours, are only on the ground floor, small, unsightly and dirty inside and out. At Consul Trost’s, where I was invited to dinner on the first Sunday, it was comfortable and clean, you could recognize the German. When I arrived, our service staff consisted entirely of black people. The chambermaid Elisa is very greasy, as is Sebastian the servant, cook and coachman look a little cleaner.” (Tagebuch 1889–1899, Deutsches Tagebucharchiv 862-1, 143f.). On this context more broadly, cf. Reagin, Sweeping the German Nation.
Alexander von Ungern-Sternberg, “Die Poesie unserer vier Wände: Der kleine oder häusliche, der gelehrte, der gemüthliche und der elegante Comfort,” Die Gartenlaube. Illustrirtes Familienblatt, no. 38 (1864): 600. All translations from the German sources by the author.
Cf. Luise Oesterwitz, Was muß jedes junge Mädchen, insbesondere jede junge Frau von der Haushaltungskunde wissen? Eine leichtfaßliche Darstellung alles Wissenswerten über praktische Wirtschaftsführung, über die Ernährung des Menschen, die Zubereitung der Speisen und das Kochen (Munich: Piloty & Loehle, 1912), 21. I would like to thank Kirstin Csutor and Carola Kohler at Museum Europäischer Kulturen, Berlin, for providing me with access to most of the manuals analyzed here.
Henriette Davidis, Die Hausfrau: Praktische Anleitung zur selbstständigen und sparsamen Führung von Stadt- und Landhaushaltungen, 5th ed. (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1870), 53.
Cf. Elfi Bendikat, “Umweltverschmutzung durch Verkehrsemissionen am Beispiel von Berlin und Paris 1900–1930,” in Environmental Problems in European Cities in the 19th and 20th Century / Umweltprobleme in europäischen Städten des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Christoph Bernhardt, 2nd. ed. (Munster: Waxmann, 2004); and Frank Uekötter, Von der Rauchplage zur ökologischen Revolution: Eine Geschichte der Luftverschmutzung in Deutschland und den USA 1880–1970 (Essen: Klartext, 2003). On the differences between wood-based and coal-based cleaning systems see Ruth Goodman, The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Our Homes Changed Everything (London: Michael O’Mara, 2020), 216-63.
Max Rubner, Lehrbuch der Hygiene: Systematische Darstellung der Hygiene und ihrer wichtigsten Untersuchungs-Methoden (Leipzig: Franz Deuticke, 1890), 42. Emphasis in the original.
Cf. Th. Oehmcke, Über Luft und Lüftung der Wohnung und verwandte Fragen (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1904); and Jens Soentgen, “Die Kulturgeschichte des Staubes,” in Staub: Spiegel der Umwelt, ed. Jens Soentgen (Munich: Oekom, 2006).
Joel A. Tarr and Mark Tebeau, “Housewives as Home Safety Managers: The Changing Perception of the Home as a Place of Hazard and Risk, 1870–1914,” in Accidents in History: Injuries, Fatalities and Social Relations, ed. Roger Cooter and Bill Luckin (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), 196–233. See also Ruth Sandwell, “Women, Fear, and Fossil Fuels,” in In a New Light: Histories of Women and Energy, ed. Abigail Harrison Moore and Ruth W. Sandwell (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021), 67–89; and Ute Frevert, “‘Fürsorgliche Belagerung’: Hygienebewegung und Arbeiterfrauen im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 11, no. 4 (1985): 420–46.
Cf. Susanne Breuss, “Die Stadt, der Staub und die Hausfrau: Zum Verhältnis von schmutziger Stadt und sauberem Heim,” in Urbane Welten: Referate der Österreichischen Volkskundetagung 1998 in Linz, ed. Olaf Bockhorn et al.,(Vienna: Verein für Volkskunde, 1999), 360–61.
Marie Clima, Haushaltungskunde: Ein Lehr- und Lesebuch für Lehrerinnen-Bildungsanstalten und höhere Töchterschulen, 3rd ed. (Vienna: A. Pichlers Witwe & Sohn, 1874), 3.
The quote is from the modernist manual Erna Meyer, Der neue Haushalt: Ein Wegweiser zu wirtschaftlicher Hausführung, 31st. ed. (Stuttgart: Franckh’sche Verlagshandlung, 1926), 76. But earlier publications likewise portray the home as a living organism with its own agency, cf. the elaborate table of contents structured according to materials used in the household in Friedrich Martin Duttenhofer, Die Lehre von der Hauswirthschaft mit besonderer Rücksicht auf technische und chemische Grundsätze (Stuttgart: Verlags-Bureau, 1846); the hygienic reasoning in Carl von Rechenberg, Hausherr und Hausfrau: Wissenschaft und Praxis des häuslichen Lebens (Kassel: Theodor Fischer, 1889); or the detailed instructions in Magdalene Ernst, Handbuch der Hausfrau, 4th ed. (Leipzig: F. W. v. Biedermann, 1893).
On the genre see Reagin, Sweeping the German Nation, 23–28; and Inga Wiedemann, Herrin im Hause: Durch Koch- und Haushaltsbücher zur bürgerlichen Hausfrau (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1993).
Oesterwitz, Haushaltungskunde, 17.
Steimann, Antonie. Die tüchtige Hausfrau: Ein praktisches Nachschlagebuch der gesamten Hauswirtschaft, Kochkunst, Putzmacherei, Hausschneiderei, Wäschenäherei, Kunststopferei, sämtlicher Handarbeiten nebst nahezu 1000 erprobten Ratschlägen und einem neuen großen Kochlexikon für die sparsame Hausfrau (Stuttgart: Süddeutsches Verlags-Institut; Vienna: Österreichisches Verlags-Institut, 1913), 15, 16.
Cf. Reagin, Sweeping the German Nation, 26–27. In some German regions, carpets replaced sand as a floor covering. Sand was used for scrubbing but likewise as a floor adornment, especially in the parlor (Stube), cf. August Gandert, Tragkörbe in Hessen: Kulturelle und wirtschaftliche Bedeutung des Korbes (Kassel: Erich Röth, 1963). According to Cornelius Gurlitt, this shift also had hygienic reasons, as “Doctors have turned against the dust it creates,” cf. Cornelius Gurlitt, Im Bürgerhause: Plaudereien über Kunst, Kunstgewerbe und Wohnungsausstattung (Dresden: Gilbers, 1888), 155.
von Rechenberg, Hausherr und Hausfrau, 693.
Ernst, Handbuch der Hausfrau, 235.
Davidis, Die Hausfrau, 136.
von Rechenberg, Hausherr und Hausfrau, 614; Ernst, Handbuch der Hausfrau, 234.
von Rechenberg also recommends cleaning paper hangings with old rye bread (cf. von Rechenberg, Hausherr und Hausfrau, 618). It speaks to the intimate relation between the human body and its abode, which not only nineteenth-century architects and hygienists were aware of, but which reached deep into the everyday lives of people.[footnote Cf. Didem Ekici, “Skin, Clothing, and Dwelling: Max von Pettenkofer, the Science of Hygiene, and Breathing Walls,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 75, no. 3 (2016): 281–98.
Ernst, Handbuch der Hausfrau, 234.
Josephine Huber, Universal-Haushaltungsbuch: Goldene Ratschläge für das eigene Heim (Straubing: Attenkofer, 1908), 11. Von Ungern-Sternberg likewise mused, that women who avidly cleaned the study of a scholar “do not know that to lift the scholar out of the dust is to remove him from his comfort.” (Von Ungern-Sternberg, “Die Poesie unserer vier Wände,” 601.) See also the remarks on cleaning the husband’s study in Davidis, Die Hausfrau, 105–7; as well as the warning of excessive cleaning in Clima, Haushaltungskunde, 11.
White, “‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’,” 184.
