Marriage strategy among the German nobility, 1400-1699

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 169-195

  Hurwich, Judith J ^a  

^a Department of History   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33748360298     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/002219598551661     Document Type: Review

References (67)

1. Jonathan Dewald, The European Nobility, 1400-1800 (Cambridge, 1996), 169;
2. Lawrence Stone and Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone, An Open Elite? England 1540-1880 (Oxford, 1984), 26.
3. John Freed, Noble Bondsmen: Ministerial Marriages in the Archdiocese of Salzburg, 1100-1343 (Ithaca, 1996);
4. Karl-Heinz Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft im deutschen Hochadel des Spätmittelalters: 13. bis Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1993).
5. References to the Zimmerische Chronik are to the most recent edition: Hansmartin Decker-Hauff (ed.), Die Chronik der Grafen von Zimmern (Sigmaringen, 1964-1972), 3 v.
6. (hereafter cited as ZC). The best guide to the chronicle is Beat Jenny, Graf Froben Christoph von Zimmern - Geschichtsschreiber - Erzähler - Landesherr (Lindau, 1959),
7. which contains an extensive bibliography. The families included are the Grafen von Eberstein, Schenken (later Grafen) von Erbach, Grafen (later Fürsten) von Fürstenberg, Herren von Geroldseck, Herren von Gundelfingen, Grafen von Kirchberg, Grafen von Königsegg, Schenken (later Grafen) von Limpurg, Grafen (later Fürsten) von Oettingen, Herren (later Grafen) von Zimmern and Grafen (later Fürsten) von [Hohen]zollern. Genealogical data are taken from Wilhelm Karl Isenburg, Europäische Stammtafeln: Stammtafeln zur Geschichte der Europäischen Staaten (Marburg, 1975; 2nd rev.ed.), 5 v.
8. For discussion of the inheritance and career strategies followed by these families, see Hurwich, "Inheritance Practices in Early Modern Germany," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXIII (1993), 699-718.
9. For Spiess, see note 2; Ernst Böhme, Das fränkische Reichsgrafkollegium im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1989);
10. Georg Schmidt, Der Wetterauer Grafenverein: Organisation und Politik einer Reichskorporation zwischen Reformation und Westfälischem Frieden (Marburg, 1989). Of the families that survived through the male line into the late sixteenth century, Eberstein, Erbach, Limpurg, and the main branch of the Oettingen became Protestant; Fürstenburg, Königsegg, Zimmern, [Hohen]zollern, and three collateral branches of the Oettingen remained Catholic.
11. For a brief overview of the development of the nobility in western Germany from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, see Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 1-4.
12. ZC, III, 30-31. On the ambiguous status of the von der Laiter family of Bavaria, descendants of an illegitimate branch of the della Scala of Verona, see Friedrich W. Euler, "Wandlung des Konnubiums im Adel des 15. und 16. Jahrhundert," in Hellmuth Rössler (ed.), Deutscher Adel 1430-1535 (Darmstadt, 1965), 60-61.
13. The families that obtained the title of prince were Fürstenberg, Oettingen, and [Hohen]zollern.
14. Anthony Molho, Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), 290-291.
15. Two recent major studies of intermarriage in the English and French landed elites give statistics only for the marriages of men: Stone and Stone, Open Elite, 224-225;
16. James B. Wood, The Nobility of the Election of Bayeux, 1463-1666: Continuity through Change (Princeton, 1988), 106.
17. Evidence about the percentages of sons and daughters marrying in several Western European elites is collected in John P. Cooper, "Patterns of Inheritance and Settlement by Great Landowners from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries," in Jack Goody Joan Thirsk, and Edward P. Thompson (eds.), Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe 1200-1800 (Cambridge, 1976), 192-327.
18. The statistics for princes are given in Spiess, "Social Rank in the German Higher Nobility of the Later Middle Ages," unpub. paper delivered at the meeting of the American Historical Association, New York City, January 5, 1997. Those for counts and barons are given in idem, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 279, 367, tables 19 and 33.
19. Michael Mitterauer, "Zur Frage des Heiratsverhaltens im österreichischen Adel," in Heinrich Fichtenau and Erich Zöllner (eds.), Beiträge zur neureren Geschichte Oesterreichs (Vienna, 1974), 187;
20. Gregory Pedlow, The Survival of the Hessian Nobility 1770-1870 (Princeton, 1988), 37;
21. Heinz Reif, Westfälischer Adel 1770-1860. Vom Herrschaftsstand zur regionalen Elite (Göttingen, 1979), 242.
22. On the value of nun's portions, see Freed, Noble Bondsmen, 178;
23. Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 373.
24. Schmidt, Wetterauer Grafenverein, 482.
25. On "inequality of birth" (Unebenbürtigkeit) and its legal consequences, see Adalbert Erler and Ekkehard Kaufmann (eds.), Handbuch zur deutschen Rechtesgeschichte (Berlin, 1963-), s.v. "Ebenbürtigkeit," "Mißheirat." For the story of Christoph Friedrich von Zollern and Anna Rhelinger, see ZC, II, 208.
26. Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 9, 49-61;
27. Schmidt, Wetterauer Grafenverein, 478.
28. ZC, I, 358-360.
29. ZC, II, 104, 189-192; II, 316-317, 321.
30. ZC, I, 364-365; II, 21-24. Lazarus von Schwendi is quoted in Jenny, Graf Froben Christoph von Zimmern, 199.
31. Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 398;
32. Schmidt, Wetterauer Grafenverein, 481, Table 5;
33. Molho, Marriage Alliance, 294, 332.
34. Schmidt, Wetterauer Grafenverein, 481-482,
35. Böhme, Das Fränkische Reichsgrafkollegium, 12-14.
36. Freed, Noble Bondsmen, 99-100, 139-140.
37. Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 364-365; marriages into princely families are illustrated on 399, Figure 36. On the marriage strategy of the Erbach family, see
38. Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, ibid., 402;
39. Böhme, Das Fränkische Reichsgrafkollegium, 60-64.
40. Kurt Andermann, Studien zur Geschichte des pfälzischen Niederadels im späten Mittelalter (Speyer, 1982), 217-218;
41. Peter Müller, Die Herren von Fleckenstein im späten Mittelalter: Untersuchungen zur Geschichtes eines Adelsgeschlechts im pfälzish-elsässischen Grenzgebiet (Stuttgart, 1990), 320.
42. Böhme, Das Fränkische Reichsgrafkollegium, 13;
43. Schmidt, Wetterauer Grafenverein, 484.
44. Freed, Noble Bondsmen, 101.
45. Freed, Noble Bondsmen, Ibid., 179.
46. Studies of dowry levels in Rouen, England, and Barcelona are cited in Molho, Marriage Alliance, 325. Spiess finds no observable increase in dowries given and received among counts and barons in the Mainz region from the thirteenth through the fifteenth century
47. (Familie und Verwandtschaft, 364).
48. Reif, Westfälischer Adel, 254-256, finds an increase in dowry levels in Münster during the late sixteenth century. However, this increase has not been documented for western and southwestern Germany. Examples of exceptionally high dowries were not unknown among German nobles:
49. Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 347, 352-354, 359;
50. Euler, "Wandlung des Konnubiums," 67.
51. On dowry levels in general, see Richard Schröder, Geschichte des ehelichen Güterrechts in Deutschland (Stettin, 1868), II, 82-83, 237-238. On dowry levels in the nobility, see also
52. Freed, Noble Bondsmen, 173-180;
53. Müller, Die Herren von Fleckenstein, 319;
54. Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 344-345;
55. Reif, Westfälischer Adel, 254-256. Spiess states that the mean value of dowries given by his fifteen families of counts and barons ranged from 1,000 to 9,400 gulden (363); their estate incomes ranged from 2,000 to 20,000 gulden a year (537). This ratio of dowry to estate income appears comparable to that in England during the early sixteenth century. See
56. Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy in England 1558-1641 (Oxford, 1965), 291;
57. Eileen Spring, Law, Land and Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800 (Chapel Hill, 1993), 86.
58. The ratio of Widerlegung and Morgengabe to dowry varied according to region and time period. See Schröder, Geschichte des ehelichen Güterrechts, II, 82, 238;
59. Freed, Noble Bondsmen, 171-176;
60. Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 139-145. A one-to-one ratio of Widerlegung to dowry was standard among nobles in west and southwest Germany during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. 27 On maximum dowry levels in "house regulations," see
61. Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, ibid., 366.
62. The sample includes 186 first marriages and 44 remarriages of men, and 224 first marriages and 28 remarriages of women. Although Spiess refers to "the confirmed tendency of widows to marry a lower-ranking partner in a second marriage" (Familie und Verwandtschaft, 405), no such trend was evident in this sample either for widows or for widowers. Marriages for which the status of the spouse could not be ascertained chiefly involved marriages to widows and marriages to spouses from non-German nobilities.
63. Three of the four cases involving women were those of the daughters of Johann Werner I von Zimmern. One of the three cases involving men was the morganatic second marriage of Degenhart von Gundelfingen to a woman of burgher status, probably his concubine.
64. Paula Sutter Fichtner, Protestantism and Primogeniture in Early Modern Germany (New Haven, 1989), 46-48.
65. Cooper, "Patterns of Inheritance," 287 (Florence and Milan), 289 (Toulouse, French dukes and peers), 290 (British peers), 304 (Geneva). On the British landed elite, see also Thomas H. Hollingsworth, The Demography of the British Peerage, supplement to Population Studies, XVIII (1964), 25;
66. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (New York, 1977), 44, 47.
67. The cases cited by Cooper, "Patterns of Inheritance," in which a greater proportion of sons than of daughters remained unmarried, include the Florentine patriciate, 1500-1799 (287), British peers' children born within the period 1575-1625 (290), and Castilian noble families in the sixteenth century (291). Cases in which a greater proportion of daughters than of sons remained unmarried include the nobility of Toulouse born within the period 1700-1760 (289), British peers' children born within the period 1625-1825 (290), and the Genevan elite born within the period 1650-1749 (304).