Prussia was the largest country in what is now Germany, occupying the north of that territory with its capital in Berlin. I will spare you the history, but by reputation Prussian society was austere, militaristic and disciplinarian in outlook.
This attitude extended to the raising of women, particularly in the Junker (gentry) class who were expected to live by high standards and toe the line until they could be found an equally severe husband.
In truth the Prussian attitude could be found further East into Russia and most of the Czech countries where wife-spanking was practically a daily art form.
There is also little evidence that Prussian society was any less disciplinarian than their German cousins in Bavaria or other German states, but it is Prussia that gave its name to an attitude to discipline that prevailed in Europe from before the 17th century and right into the 20th.
The PN Dedeaux novel The Prussian Girls (as illustrated below by Hans Braun) cemented this reputation among spankos of course and for any that have read it you will know that this sexualised exploration often wanders into the extreme.
The Prussian Girls is about a girl’s school of the type featured in such German films as the 1931 Madchen in Uniform and other less well known films from that era.
Of course the true Junker maiden would not have gone to school and would have been under the iron hand of a governess or tutor.
No doubt situations varied from household to household but interesting accounts exist.
In 1836 one Prussian household, having exhausted a host of fashionable French governesses for being too soft, employed a Scottish one. The main argument for a British governess was to teach the ever more important English to girls of good breeding, but also it seems many English and especially Scottish educationalists were not so corporal punishment adverse.
So it was Elisabeth Campbell arrived at a large estate just outside Konigsberg to take up her post as tutor-governess and was surprised that the youngest of her charges was almost 17 and her sisters 19 and 20; conventionally too old for a governess in Britain.
By her account she was not above applying ‘a stout slipper to a girl’s naked behind’ and ‘should it be needful, denuding a girl entirely for a prolonged application of the (birch) rod.’ Nor was she opposed to giving a ‘fine old spanking’ to a girl of 20 or more, “Great giddy girls being more commonly apt to indulge in mischief and defiance,” as she explained.
What did surprise her was that a whole room was set aside for these corrections and in it she found ‘all manner of sticks, whips and straps for both the restraint and application to bare posteriors.’
Furthermore she was surprised by the strictness of the rules. At first she confesses, ‘one might think some restrictions petty in the extreme and certainly worthy of a sanction no more serious than a good scolding.’ But soon she seems to ‘go native’ and warm to her tasks.
Exact details are scant, but spanking seems to have been routine and a trip to ‘that room’ not at all uncommon.
Native Prussian governesses of the period seem to have even less scruple in ‘flogging a young woman senseless’ or ‘striping their tails until they could scarce sit for their meal times.’
To give one a true flavour one said, “A whipping that draws tears is essential, one that draws blood is sometimes necessary.”
These governesses would have come from good families themselves and would have suffered the same treatment so long as they lived at home.
A 1920s Berlin libertine said as a young girl her father would lay lines of welts across her bare bottom until she ‘sang.’ “No doubt he would do it now if he could see me,” she added with a wink.