Flame Pillar of Rizal

Rizal's observation of German women that young Filipinas should Seek

"It is a pity that there in our country, the principal adornment of all women almost always consists of clothes and finery rather than of knowledge." - Rizal to his sister Trinidad (March 11, 1886)

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The student traveller Rizal left Paris for Germany due to its high cost of living, which he could not cope with. He arrived at Heidelberg, the university town of Germany, on February 3, 1886 after passing by Strasbourg and other border towns of Germany. There he was privileged to work at the eye hospital of the university, under the instruction of Dr. Otto Becker.

On his free time, because Rizal was an active observant at Heidelberg, he wrote to his sisters, Maria and Trinidad to share some noble experience. He, then, described Germany as country of order and obedience, and a high sense for womanhood. From the same correspondence to Maria in February, Rizal described the German student as affectionate, respectful, modest, and not boastful. Women, however in physical appearance, were described as tall, stout, and blonde.

Read the foregoing letter to his sister Trinidad, dated March 11, 1886, about Rizal well-known observation to German women which he encouraged to seek virtues like that of German women:

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At your age, German women seem to be 20 or 24 years, as much for their faces as for their ways. The German women are serious, studious, and diligent, and as their clothes do not have plenty of color, and generally they have only three or four, they do not pay much attention to their clothes nor to jewels. They dress their hair simply, which is thin, but beautiful in their childhood. They go everywhere walking so nimbly or faster than men, carrying their books, their baskets, without minding anyone and only their own business. As I said to Pangoy, they are home-loving and they study cooking with much diligence as they do music and drawing.

If our sister Maria, had been educated in Germany, he would have been notable, because Germany women are active and somewhat masculine. They are not afraid of men. They are more concerned with substance than with appearances. Until now I have not heard women quarreling, which in Madrid is the daily bread.

It is a pity that there in our country, the principal adornment of all women almost always consists of clothes and finery rather than of knowledge. In our provinces, women still preserve a virtue that compensates for their little instructions - the virtue of industry and tenderness. No women in Europe have I found the latter virtue in such a high degree as among the women there. If these qualities that nature gives to the women there were exalted by intellectual qualities, as it happens in Europe, the Fiipino family would have nothing to envy the European. For this reason, now that you are still young and you have time to learn, it is necessary that you study by reading and reading attentively. It is a pity that you allow yourself to be dominated by laziness when it takes so little effort to shake it off. It is not enough to form only the habit of study and later everything goes by itself.

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Therefore, Rizal admired much more the German country especially the likes of women there. And the Philippines could be likeable now if our young in tender hopes would  accumulate noble virtues from the family to good books and education.