In German, Fräulein (literally, "little woman") was used as a title for young girls and unmarried women as opposed to Frau for married women. It could be used with the first name or last name (Fräulein Anna or Fräulein Schmidt). Fräulein was also used to address waitresses, independent of age or marital status.
The expression has gone out of fashion and is now widely considered derogatory. However, it is still used by elderly or strongly conservative speakers, and some elderly unmarried women would even consider it inappropriate to be addressed as "Frau". Otherwise, it is nowadays considered polite to address all women as Frau (plus last name).
There is no equivalent male form (*Herrlein/Männlein Schmidt), although a good substitute would be junger Mann. Fräulein can be translated as Miss in English, Signorina in Italian, Mademoiselle in French or Señorita in Spanish .
Literature and film have preserved the old usage very well, in some cases already in the title. Examples are E.T.A. Hoffmann's tale Das Fräulein von Scuderi (1819), Elizabeth von Arnim's epistolary novel Fräulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther (1907), and the comedy film Fräulein vom Amt (1954), whose title was a common phrase denoting a female operator at a telephone exchange (Amt "office" because in the old days the telephone service was run by the post office). In an earlier comedy film, Unser Fräulein Doktor (1940), Jenny Jugo plays Dr. Elisabeth Hansen, a young attractive teacher at a gymnasium who has to fight to be taken seriously as an intellectual.
"Fräulein" is also the title of a 1960s song sung in German by Chris Howland [1].
See also
Last updated: 05-24-2005 22:10:46
