Katja Mutschelknaus

This should have been interesting, but...

In the first place, the author didn't stay on topic. I got very tired of reading about where the men drank their coffee, but women (decent women, anyway) couldn't go in. Or what happened at the salons that made those different from a kaffeeklatsch, or the whole history of porcellan in Europe. It felt like she didn't have enough material, and so desperately tried to fill up at least a small book. All of these could, even should have been mentioned, but they should have played minor roles. There should have been a lot more detail about the kaffeeklatsches themselves.

And the author totally lost me when she finally got around to discussing what was talked about at a kaffeeklatsch. After long discussion and quotes about how men thought that whatever women talked about was unimportant, she finally said that the women talked about news of their families and mutual aquaintances, household worries, needlework and recipes, and how to raise children. She seems to agree that these are fairly unimportant topics, useful mostly to act as group therapy, and to prove that they were proper respectable housewives. Which proves to me that the author doesn't run a household, have children, or do any sort of handwork. If you aren't part of a vocational or hobby group, the discussions of computer programming or legal cases, of football or hard rock music are quickly boring. But if they are the topics you are involved in, they are what you are most interested in discussing.… (more)