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14 September 2005
Nun that I can see
This will clearly be of burning interest to the idly curious Tom Doyle, if to nobody else. In a comment at Crooked Timber, Tom asks about nuns in foreign (for Tom at any rate) parts, particularly Ireland and the UK. Now it is well known that, in Ireland, nuns cause elderly dipsomaniacal priests to spring through the window. But Tom might be intrigued to learn that in Germany, where I live, there are so far as I can tell no nuns at all.
Oh, very occasionally you'll see a nun; but she is a tourist, no doubt. As a general rule, though, you just don't run across them. This raises an interesting and somewhat Berkeleyan question.
Could it be that there are in fact nuns galore, but all of them are tucked away in heavily-gated and -guarded cloisters, far from the prying eyes of the world? Maybe; but one can't imagine this sort of thing being an easy sell for the recruiters these days.
Or maybe there are nuns a-plenty, who simply no longer wear the distinctive nun-suit. If this is true, then Germany could be positively seething with nuns, to judge by the number of stodgily-dressed, rather frumpy women in sensible shoes. Why, one of them might even become chancellor soon.
Yes; now that I think of it, this is almost certainly the case. Hordes of nuns in mufti are taking over the place; we stand before the establishment of a nunocracy. Father Jack would be horrified.
BTW, you do see uniformed nuns in Germany often enough. But these are protestant nuns! Given that I've never seen one younger than 145 or so, though, I don't imagine we'll be seeing them very much longer.
Posted by Mrs Tilton at 12:40 PM | Permalink
Comments
My often-faulty memory informs me that while I was in Germany (Bavaria, near Erding, in 1991 or so), there were nuns. I assumed they were Catholic because most people were in the area. I don't believe they wore uniforms outside of the headdress but that was enough to make them readily distinguishable.
Posted by: Jeremy Osner at 14 Sep 2005 21:06:21
Yes well, Jeremy, Bavaria is different. And, at least in its altbairische bits, it's a good bet that the natives are catholic (some of Bavaria's Swabian and Franconian districts are heavily protestant, though.)
I will confess, however, that I was not writing in an entirely serious vein, nor can I back up my claims with any hard data. I am certain there are still a few RC nuns to be found in Germany. Indeed, I even know one. My in-laws are Roman Catholic, and one of their distant cousins is a nun. She lives in a cloister, but of the sort one can readily leave to visit people in the wider world. She is quite elderly; she joined the cloister very young, after a disappointment in love. Disappointed young women were forever joining cloisters in those days, apparently.
That said, the tiny nubbin of reality underlying the post is this: Tom Doyle's question at CT made me reflect that I simply don't see many nuns at all. Hardly ever, in fact, whether wearing only a headdress or full-dress penguin kit. I saw far more nuns when I lived in New York than I do now (and I saw precious few in NY). Nor, despite the eternal counterexample of Bavaria, do I think denominational geography has much to do with this. Hesse-Nassau, the historical region within which Frankfurt is found, was traditionally majority protestant, it's true. But Frankfurt was a free city, very liberal and tolerant by pre-enlightenment standards, and would have had plenty of catholics. (At a guess, half the old churches in town are RC; this includes the biggest of the lot, the Kaiserdom where centuries of Holy Roman Emperors were crowned.) And of course, the great increase in mobility post-WWII means that few urban areas in Germany are as lopsidedly the one or the other thing as they once were. So the lack of nuns can't be down to shortage of raw material.
That remark about protestant nuns wasn't a joke, BTW. (Technically, they're known as 'deaconesses', but like nuns they are celibate, live in community and wear distinctive garb. They also tend to do charitable work with the poor and ill, as do many but not all RC nuns.) It might seem odd to some that a Lutheran church would have nuns, but it does. (It shouldn't seem odd, though. From an RC perspective, Luther was a radical revolutionary. From the broader reformed perspective, though, Luther was only just barely not RC; had he lived in the days of John XXIII he'd doubtless have been made a cardinal.) And though this is not merely anecdotal but purely subjective as well, I do see Lutheran nuns, not exactly often, but far more often than I see the RC variety; this is true not only of where I live now, but also of Würzburg, which is historically speaking about as RC as it gets. In case you're wondering, BTW, you can easily tell Lutheran from RC nuns because the costume is a bit different. Both wear a drab version of typical women's dress from earlier centuries, but the century in question appears to have been slightly more recent in the case of the Lutheran nuns, who as you can see look almost Amish.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton at 15 Sep 2005 12:37:54
I saw nuns in Cologne when I lived there. Here in Fürth they seem to be mainly Turkish women.
Posted by: MM at 19 Sep 2005 11:09:08
