The short answer
Anyone getting to know Schlaraffia for the first time sooner or later comes to an obvious question: can women take part? The honest answer is: to this day, in its inner game and in its membership, Schlaraffia is a men’s fellowship. Women are not admitted as Schlaraffen.
But that doesn’t really answer the question. Because what matters is not only that it is so, but why Schlaraffia is built this way — and what role women actually play in the Schlaraffic setting.
Where this form comes from
Schlaraffia arose in 1859. So it is a child of the 19th century — a time with different social assumptions, different images of roles, and different forms of sociability, club life and bourgeois culture. Men’s leagues, gentlemen’s circles and purely male-organized associations were nothing unusual then, but corresponded to the social worldview and customs of their time.
This historical form has persisted in Schlaraffia to this day. That doesn’t mean every notion of that era is defended unchanged or glorified. But it does mean that Schlaraffia has not retroactively rebuilt its grown form as if it were an arbitrarily modernizable leisure format. In much it is deliberately bound to tradition — in language, ritual, symbolism, and indeed in its form as a men’s fellowship.
The game itself lives on historical persiflage
Added to this: Schlaraffia is not a neutral club with a few old terms, but a deliberately staged game. This game parodies courtly forms, knighthood, ceremony, official language, hierarchies and the solemn pomp of bygone times. Schlaraffia lives on taking all of this up with wit, irony and exaggeration.
Anyone who experiences a Schlaraffic evening quickly notices: here it’s not modern club language being played, but an artful world that draws on historical images — on castles, knights, court offices, coats of arms, owls, tournaments, ceremonies and a deliberately elevated style of speech.
Part of the explanation lies in this too. In the historical models that Schlaraffia takes up in parody, women generally did not play an equal role in the actual “throne room” or in the courtly space of power and ceremony. Schlaraffia does not adopt this worldview one-to-one as a social program, but it moves in a world of play that draws on such historical forms and parodies them. That’s another reason the form of the men’s fellowship has manifested itself so durably in it.
Women are still not “left out”
Anyone who concludes from this that women are unimportant to Schlaraffia or merely marginal figures understands the whole thing too crudely. Women play an important role in the setting of many Schlaraffen — as partners, conversation partners, co-bearers of the personal and cultural environment, and as part of the reality in which Schlaraffia is lived in the first place.
In Schlaraffic usage there is often talk of Burgfrauen (“ladies of the castle”). Traditionally, this means the partners of the Schlaraffen. They are not Schlaraffen in the actual sense and not part of the inner game, but in the life of many Reyche and their members they are by no means insignificant. Schlaraffia doesn’t take place in a vacuum, but in the everyday life of people with families, relationships, circles of friends and a social environment.
In addition: there are events at which women are expressly included. Such Burgfrauen evenings or similar open formats create room for encounter, insight and shared cultural moments beyond the actual Schlaraffic game. The concrete form can differ from Reych to Reych, but the basic idea is clear: Schlaraffia knows not only the closed play situation, but also occasions in which the wider setting is deliberately taken into account.
Club life and lived nuances
One must also distinguish between Schlaraffia as a community of play and values and the local association that, in some places, forms the organizational body. In some associations in the Schlaraffic setting, women can indeed be association members. They are then not Schlaraffen in the actual sense of the game, but can very well play a role in club life, in organization, at events or in cultural accents, and bring in nuances of their own.
This matters because it shows: the statement “Schlaraffia is a men’s fellowship” describes the core of the inner game — but not necessarily every social and organizational reality around it with the same sharpness.
Why this question nonetheless remains sensitive today
Of course the question remains legitimate from today’s perspective. A men’s fellowship calls for explanation in 2026. Anyone looking at Schlaraffia from the outside doesn’t have to automatically approve of this form persisting to this day. And Schlaraffia shouldn’t pretend it’s completely inconsequential either.
That’s exactly why openness is more important than evasion. The community becomes more understandable when it explains its form clearly instead of hiding it behind platitudes. Schlaraffia has grown historically, it deliberately works with a handed-down world of play, and it has kept its form as a men’s fellowship. That is the one side.
The other side is: women are for that reason neither disparaged nor insignificant. For many Schlaraffen they belong quite naturally to the personal and cultural setting, they are included at certain events, and in individual association structures they can also take part organizationally or culturally. Anyone who reduces Schlaraffia only to the question “may women become members?” therefore falls short — even though that question may of course be asked.
Understanding Schlaraffia means seeing the whole
In the end, only a look at the whole helps. Schlaraffia is not simply a men’s club with strange terms, but a very distinctive mix of friendship, humor, art, ritual and playful exaggeration. The form of the men’s fellowship belongs to it. It is historically explicable and traditionally entrenched. But it does not alone explain what Schlaraffia is.
Anyone who wants to understand how Schlaraffia is lived today should therefore not stop at a single point. It makes more sense to read on, ask questions, and look at how a Schlaraffic evening unfolds, what actually happens there, and which values this community carries for its members.