Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxix:2 (Autumn, 1998), 169–195.

Judith J. Hurwich MARRIAGE STRATEGY AMONG THE JUDITHGERMAN J. HURWICHNOBILITY Marriage Strategy among the German , 1400–1699 Studies of family strategy among the early modern Western European elites generally assert that upward social mo- bility took place primarily through the marriage of daughters of “new men” to husbands of higher rank, and that women attracted much stronger social disapproval for marrying beneath their rank than men did. According to Dewald, “A long succession of alliances joined aristocratic young men with wealthy women from lower ranks, the daughters of ofªcials, bankers, and merchants; marriage of impoverished but noble women with wealthier men happened much less often but was certainly not unheard of.” Stone, too, states that in the view of the English gentry, “it was permissible to marry your son to the heiress of a tradesman, but not to marry your daughter to a tradesman or even to his son.”1 In , however, studies analyzing the “connubium,” or marriage connections, of individual noble families or regional groups of nobles from the Middle Ages through the early modern period have not found this pattern of marrying daughters up and sons down. Rather, they suggest that within the German nobility, sons tended to marry spouses of higher status than their own, and daughters to marry spouses of lower status. Two historians of the medieval German noble family recently argued that the unique characteristics of the German nobility are responsible for the development of this marriage strategy. Freed traces its origins to the legal disabilities attached to “unequal” marriages between members of the freeborn high nobility ( and ) and those of the unfree lower nobility. Spiess points out that the strategy would have been encouraged by the dowry system of the

Judith J. Hurwich is a member of the faculty, Department of History, Hackley School, Tarrytown, N.Y. She is the author of “Lineage and Kin in the Sixteenth-Century : Some Comparative Evidence on England and Germany,” in A. L. Beier, David Cannadine, and James M. Rosenheim (eds.), The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone (Cambridge, 1989), 33–64; “Inheritance Practices in Early Modern Ger- many,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXIII (1993), 699–718. © 1998 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History.

1 Jonathan Dewald, The European Nobility, 1400–1800 (Cambridge, 1996), 169; Lawrence Stone and Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone, An Open Elite? England 1540–1880 (Oxford, 1984), 26.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 170 | JUDITH J. HURWICH medieval German nobility. Since dowries were ªxed by rank, the son’s wife would bring in a larger dowry than the family would have to pay out to the daughter’s husband.2 This article analyzes the marriage strategy of German nobles during the late Middle Ages and early modern period to determine whether sons did in fact marry up and daughters down and, if so, to determine whether such a strategy was unique to Germany. It compares evidence from regional studies on two marriage char- acteristics among the German nobility—the proportions of sons and of daughters marrying, and the extent of intermarriage be- tween different social groups—with ªndings concerning a group of southwestern German counts and barons associated with the Zimmerische Chronik. The study also examines whether the Ref- ormation brought about signiªcant changes in the marriage strate- gies of German nobles, and it compares the strategies of Catholic and Protestant nobles in southwestern Germany to those of other Catholic and Protestant elites in early modern Europe. The Zimmerische Chronik, or Chronicle of the Counts of Zim- mern, was written in the 1560s by the Swabian Froben Christoph Zimmern (1519–1566/67). I have compiled a database of demographic information about the Zimmern and ten other families with whom they intermarried during the ªfteenth and sixteenth centuries and for whom published genealogies are available—384 men and 369 women who were born, married, or died between 1400 and 1699 and who survived to the age of ªfteen.3

2 John Freed, Noble Bondsmen: Ministerial Marriages in the Archdiocese of Salzburg, 1100–1343 (Ithaca, 1996); Karl-Heinz Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft im deutschen Hochadel des Spätmit- telalters: 13. bis Anfang des 16.Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1993). 3 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. (hereafter cited as ZC). The best guide to the chronicle is Beat Jenny, Froben Christoph von Zimmern—Geschichtsschreiber—Erzähler—Landesherr (Lindau, 1959), 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 Gundelªngen, 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. 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.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 MARRIAGE STRATEGY AMONG THE GERMAN NOBILITY | 171 It is impossible to tell to what extent these eleven families are representative of the southwestern German nobility as a whole. However, the Zimmern were nearly average in wealth (judging by the dowries that they gave and received) for counts and barons in this region, and the families into which they married repre- sented the entire range of the nonprincely high nobility. Although most of their marriages involved other Swabian families, a mar- riage alliance with the Oettingen in 1474 gave the Zimmern connections to Franconian families as well. Some of the families with whom the Zimmern intermarried are also included in Spiess’ study of the counts and barons of the Mainz region from 1200 to 1550, Böhme’s study of the Franconian counts from 1475 to 1525, and Schmidt’s study of the counts of Wetterau from 1450 to 1648. Since my sample includes families that became Protestant and families that remained Catholic, it allows me to compare the marriage strategies of noble families who shared similar social characteristics but belonged to different confessions. Doing so has not been possible in previous local studies, which dealt either with the period before the Reformation or with a region in which a single confession dominated.4

structure of the german nobility In the late Middle Ages and early modern period, the nobles of southwestern Germany were divided into three constitutional orders (Stände): the (Reichsfürsten), consisting of (Herzogen), (Mark- grafen), and (Landgrafen); the higher nobility (Hochadel), consisting of counts (Grafen) and barons (freie Herren); and the lower nobility (Niederadel), consisting of “mere” noblemen (Edel) and knights (). The lower nobility were descended from the unfree ministeriales, or “serf-knights,” a class unique to Germany.5 Membership in the Hochadel, the order to which the families in this sample belonged, was based on free birth, landed posses-

4 For Spiess, see note 2; Ernst Böhme, Das fränkische Reichsgrafkollegium im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1989); 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 re- mained Catholic. 5 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.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 172 | JUDITH J. HURWICH sions, and rights of government over estates (Herrschaftsrechte). Nobles holding titles of ofªce from the emperor (Grafen, or counts) outranked nobles without such titles (freie Herren, or bar- ons). By the end of the fourteenth century, ministerials were legally free, and and emperors began to grant the titles of and count to members of some ministerial families in exchange for services and payment. A few families of ministerial origin gained social acceptance as “equal to barons” and member- ship in the Hochadel, even without being granted new titles. They continued to bear titles reºecting their original ofªces at court, such as Schenk (cupbearer) or Truchsess (steward). In the early sixteenth century, Hans Truchsess von Waldburg liked to boast that “he and his ancestors had mixed themselves in with the counts and barons like mouse-droppings in the pepper.” In the same period, Wilhelm Schenk von Limpurg complained that the high nobility was being diluted by intermarriage with families whose claims to be “equal to barons” were more recent than that of the Limpurgs. Wilhelm taunted his mother-in-law—a countess of Leiningen whose husband came from the somewhat dubious von der Laiter family—by talking in her presence about lesser nobles marrying into families of counts and barons. “But with each odious example he would say, ‘But my lady, I don’t mean you.’”6 The rise of the territorial princes at the end of the ªfteenth century established new political and social barriers between the lower and the higher nobility. The former became subject to the authority of the princes, whereas the latter were subject only to the authority of the emperor. The higher nobility further dis- tanced themselves from the lower nobility by obtaining new titles from the emperor, either by service or by purchase. By the end of the sixteenth century, the title of count (Graf ) had been granted to most of the surviving families of the old freeborn nobility, as well as to certain families of ministerial origin. In the seventeenth century, the elite counts, who had long considered themselves “equal to princes,” obtained the title of (Fürst) and joined

6 ZC, III, 30–31. On the ambiguous status of the von der Laiter family of , 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 1430–1555 (Darmstadt, 1965), 60–61.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 MARRIAGE STRATEGY AMONG THE GERMAN NOBILITY | 173 the constitutional order of the princes along with landgraves, margraves, and dukes. This general inºation of titles during the period from 1400 to 1699 must be kept in mind when analyzing the status of marriage partners. In the ªfteenth century, marriages into princely families were highly unusual for the eleven families of counts and barons in this sample. However, by the end of the seventeenth century, three of the families had obtained the rank of prince; for them, marriages into princely families were now marriages to social equals rather than to social superiors.7

proportion of sons and of daughters marrying Since studies of family strategy and intermarriage in other European elites have focused primarily on the marriages of men, it is difªcult to ªnd out whether the hypothesis that women were less likely than men to marry spouses below their own status is supported by statistical evidence. In one of the few studies giving a detailed analysis of women’s marriages, Molho ªnds a pattern among the ruling classes of Florence during the ªfteenth century similar to that which has been suggested for German nobles: “[W]omen [were] in a somewhat less favored position in comparison to their brothers and other male kin in their search for socially acceptable spouses.” Molho believed that this pattern of women marrying spouses of lower rank was due to the higher rate of male celibacy in the Florentine ruling class: “[I]f a larger number of marriageable men than women ended up not marrying, men would be in a better position to marry well.” If Molho’s theory is correct, sta- tistics about the proportion of sons and of daughters who even- tually married (which are more readily available than statistics about the actual rank of spouses) can be used to predict whether daughters are more likely or less likely than sons to marry spouses below their own rank.8 Almost all studies of marriage strategy among medieval and early modern German nobles show that a higher percentage of

7 The families that obtained the title of prince were Fürstenberg, Oettingen, and [Ho- hen]zollern. 8 Anthony Molho, Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), 290–291. 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; James B. Wood, The Nobility of the Election of Bayeux, 1463–1666: Continuity through Change (Princeton, 1988), 106. Evidence about the percentages of sons and daughters marrying in several Western

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 174 | JUDITH J. HURWICH men than of women remained unmarried. Some of the observed variation in marriage rates for the two sexes might stem from the underreporting of unmarried women in genealogies and from differences between men and women in age at ªrst marriage, although these factors cannot account for all the variation. In my southwest German sample, the proportion of men and of women remaining unmarried is more similar in the ªfteenth century than in later periods, despite the fact that in the ªfteenth century, the genealogies were less complete and the age gap between husbands and wives was larger. Spiess calculated marriage rates for the period from 1200 to 1550 both for the entire body of imperial princes (Reichsfürsten) and for ªfteen families of the nonprincely high nobility in the Mainz region. In both cases, the proportion of daughters marrying exceeded that of sons marrying: In princely families, 82 percent of the daughters and 77 percent of the sons married, whereas in the families of counts and barons, 65 percent of the daughters and 55 percent of the sons married. In the families of counts and barons, marriage rates for daughters were consistently higher than those for sons in all cohorts born between 1200 and 1445; the rates for both sexes were approximately equal in the cohorts born between 1445 and 1550.9 Studies of marriage in the German nobility between 1500 and 1800 also tend to ªnd a higher proportion of men than of women remaining unmarried. Mitterauer’s study of the reports a higher mean number of sisters than of brothers marrying per sibling group from the sixteenth through the eighteenth cen- turies. Pedlow ªnds that in Hessian knightly families in the sev- enteenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 70 percent of the women and about two-thirds of the men eventually married. The only German study to report a higher proportion of women than of men remaining unmarried is Reif’s study of the Münster

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. 9 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.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 MARRIAGE STRATEGY AMONG THE GERMAN NOBILITY | 175 Stiftsfähige Adel (“nobles eligible for cathedral canonries”) during the eighteenth century. Only one-third of the daughters, as op- posed to half of the sons, married in the period from 1720 to 1769, although about half of each sex married in the later eight- eenth century. Reif’s ªgures might reºect a regional difference in marriage strategy; the Münster Stiftsfähige Adel also had much lower proportions of both men and women who eventually married than other German nobles did.10 In my sample of eleven families from the Zimmerische Chronik, 60 percent of the men and 73 percent of the women born between 1400 and 1699 and surviving to the age of ªfteen eventually married (see Table 1 and Figure 1). In the ªfteenth century, only about half of all sons and all daughters married; this proportion is similar to Spiess’ ªndings for the same social group during the same period. Only in the late ªfteenth century did more daughters than sons remain unmarried. In this period of economic depres- sion, counts and barons normally allowed only one son per gen- eration to marry. Apparently, they also tried to save money on dowries by placing an unusually high proportion of their daughters in convents. The portion given to a daughter who became a nun was only about one-tenth the value of the dowry given to a daughter who married.11 The proportion of sons marrying increased as the economic situation improved after 1500. About two-thirds of all sons mar- ried in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when more frequent divisions of estates allowed more sons per generation to marry, but the proportion of sons marrying declined slightly in the economic depression of the late seventeenth century. A substantial gender gap developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Three-quarters to four-ªfths of all daugh- ters married, compared with about two-thirds of all sons. Molho’s hypothesis is that the higher celibacy rates among men would force the women to marry spouses whose economic and social status was lower than their own. However, the hostile attitudes

10 Michael Mitterauer, “Zur Frage des Heiratsverhaltens im österreichischen Adel,” in Heinrich Fichtenau and Erich Zöllner (eds.), Beiträge zur neureren Geschichte Oesterreichs (Vi- enna, 1974), 187; Gregory Pedlow, The Survival of the Hessian Nobility 1770–1870 (Princeton, 1988), 37; Heinz Reif, Westfälischer Adel 1770–1860. Vom Herrschaftsstand zur regionalen Elite (Göttingen, 1979), 242. 11 On the value of nun’s portions, see Freed, Noble Bondsmen, 178; Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 373.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 Table 1 Proportion of Sons and of Daughters Marrying, Birth Cohorts 1400–1699 sons daughters birth cohort total marrying total m arrying nn%nn% 1400–1449 51 24 47 39 23 59 1450–1499 54 30 56 39 20 51 1500–1549 49 33 67 67 51 76 Catholic 41 25 61 49 34 69 Protestant 8 8 100 18 17 94 1550–1599 65 45 69 71 54 76 Catholic 37 26 70 42 30 71 Protestant 28 19 68 29 24 83 1600–1649 62 37 60 63 53 84 Catholic 38 20 53 42 36 86 Protestant 24 17 71 21 17 81 1650–1699 57 33 58 71 56 79 Catholic 45 25 56 45 32 71 Protestant 12 8 67 26 24 92 Total 1400–1699 338 202 60 350 257 73 Totals by Confession 1500–1699 All 233 148 64 272 214 79 Catholic 161 96 60 178 132 74 Protestant 72 52 72 94 82 87

Fig. 1 Proportion of Sons and of Daughters Marrying

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 MARRIAGE STRATEGY AMONG THE GERMAN NOBILITY | 177 of the German nobility toward intermarriage meant that few marriages actually crossed the boundaries between the different orders of nobility, much less the chasm between nobles and non-nobles.

attitudes toward intermarriage Although some marriages between the old freeborn nobility and families of ministerial origin occurred in the late Middle Ages, social disapproval of such marriages increased as the legal boundaries between the lower and higher nobility became more rigid in the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries. According to Schmidt, the offspring of the marriage between a husband from the high nobility and a wife from the lower nobility were accepted as social equals of the father in the ªfteenth century, but not in the sixteenth century.12 Marriage to non-nobles, even to the wealthiest of the urban patriciate, was almost out of the question for the German nobility. Such unions continued to carry the legal disability of “inequality of birth” (Unebenbürtigkeit), which meant that children of the marriage could not inherit the title or estate of the higher-ranking parent. The nobility also protected its exclusivity by requiring members of elite cathedral chapters and tournament societies to prove four generations of purely noble ancestry. Hence, a noble- man’s marriage to a non-noble wife would affect the prospects of his descendants for more than a century. The handful of such marriages noted in the Zimmerische Chronik were remarriages of nobles who already had heirs from a marriage to a social equal. The scandal of a nobleman’s marriage to a non-noble could be used as evidence of his unªtness to manage his own affairs and to be head of the family. For example, the allegation that the proºi- gate Count Christoph Friedrich von Zollern had secretly married his mistress Anna Rhelinger, a member of the Augsburg patriciate, gave his guardians the necessary grounds to force him to give up his estates to an uncle.13 The goal of a German noble family was to “maintain and elevate the lineage (Stamm und Namen),” that is, to continue the family in the male line and to enhance its territorial base and its

12 Schmidt, Wetterauer Grafenverein, 482. 13 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.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 178 | JUDITH J. HURWICH prestige through marriage alliances with other families of at least equal rank. Spiess portrayed medieval counts and barons as ambi- tious social climbers in vigorous pursuit of heiresses and wealthy widows, preferably of a higher rank. Schmidt, however, main- tained that sixteenth-century counts and barons were primarily defensive in their outlook on marriage, more concerned with maintaining their status than with advancing it.14 Both the obsession with maintaining existing status and the aggressive pursuit of wives of superior status are evident in the Zimmerische Chronik’s account of Johann Werner I von Zimmern’s children. His banishment in 1488 led to the sequestration of the Zimmern estates for sixteen years and left the family heavily burdened with debt. In 1507, Christoph of Baden tried to alleviate the ªnancial difªculties of Johann Werner II, the oldest son, by arranging a match for him with Sophia Böcklin, the widow of a count of Tübingen. Many of the kinsmen of Johann Werner II viewed a match with Sophia as acceptable, even though she came from the urban patriciate. Since the German nobility practiced partible inheritance, the future of the Zimmern lineage did not rest entirely on Johann Werner II and his direct descen- dants. Almost all of his friends and relatives urged him to accept the match on the grounds that the widow’s fortune would enable Johann Werner II’s two brothers to marry according to their rank. Their children could participate in tournaments even if his own could not. Johann Werner II rejected the match on the advice of Arch- bishop Jakob von Trier that “he should remember his ancestry. His ancestors had made honorable marriages looking only for friendship and honor [alliance with families of high rank], and therefore married into the most eminent families and did not bargain for money or goods.” Froben Christoph von Zimmern praised his father for rejecting the match, even though he thereby lost the favor of his patron. Although Johann Werner II hurt the Zimmern family ªnancially in the short run, he maintained the prestige of the lineage in the long run.15 Both of Johann Werner II’s younger brothers eventually made upwardly mobile marriages through their own efforts. With the

14 Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 9, 49–61; Schmidt, Wetterauer Grafenverein, 478. 15 ZC, I, 358–360.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 MARRIAGE STRATEGY AMONG THE GERMAN NOBILITY | 179 aid of his patron Ulrich von Württemberg, Gottfried Werner succeeded in marrying Apollonia von Henneberg, despite the opposition of her father. Although the Zimmerische Chronik depicts the marriage as a love match, Gottfried Werner boasted of his coup in marrying a “countess of princely rank” (gefürstete Gräªn) and argued that the higher status of his wife entitled him, rather than his elder brother, to receive the main Zimmern estate at Messkirch. Wilhelm Werner, who was granted the title of count as a reward for his service as an imperial judge, married as his second wife the widowed Amalia von Leuchtenberg. Since the Landgraves of Leuchtenberg were considered “equal to princes,” Wilhelm Werner celebrated his climb up the social ladder with an ostentatious homecoming feast to which he invited “most of the nobility from the circles of the Black Forest and the Neckar.”16 Statements in the Zimmerische Chronik about the goals of marriage always refer to the marriages of males, and it is not clear whether German nobles consciously attached less importance to the status of spouses in the marriages of females. However, a woman’s marriage would not directly affect the status of future members of the lineage, since the lineage was traced only through the male line of descent. Three of the sisters of Johann Werner II von Zimmern made downwardly mobile marriages. Margarethe and Barbara both en- tered into secret engagements and married men of the lower nobility, evidently fearing that their elder brother would leave them unmarried to avoid paying their dowries. The chronicler expresses sympathy for both women, and blames Johann Werner II for failing in his duty to arrange matches for his sisters with their social equals. In a more shocking violation of social norms, Katharina von Zimmern, the last abbess of a convent in Zurich, married a Zwinglian burgher after the city authorities closed the convent. These mésalliances of the Zimmern sisters did not prevent their brothers from marrying women of equal or higher rank than themselves; nor did they damage the marriage prospects of their brothers’ descendants. Lazarus von Schwendi, the imperial general who married the seventh daughter of Froben Christoph von Zimmern in 1573, wrote that his wife “had six sisters married to

16 ZC, II, 104, 189–192; II, 316–317, 321.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 180 | JUDITH J. HURWICH the leading counts and barons of Germany, and had established wide connections with the most noble families.”17

rank of spouses in regional studies Regional studies dem- onstrate that German nobles were even more highly endogamous than other early modern European elites (see Table 2). Both Spiess and Schmidt found that more than 80 percent of all marriages in families of counts and barons were to other families of the non- princely high nobility. Molho refers to a “high rate of endogamy” in high-status lineages of Florence during the ªfteenth century when only 55 percent of the marriages took place within the social group.18 My study of eleven southwestern German families, 1400 to 1699, supports Schmidt’s view that the lower nobility and bour- geoisie “played practically no role” in the marriage strategy of counts and barons. Although Böhme ªnds a higher degree of intermarriage with the lower nobility, most of the marriages to members of the lower nobility took place within one family, the Schwarzenbergs, who had only recently been elevated from the rank of knight to that of baron. Their continued intermarriage with families of the lower nobility may indicate that they were still not fully accepted as equals by the old high nobility.19 Although marriages between the different levels of the Ger- man nobility were infrequent, regional studies ranging from the twelfth century through the middle of the seventeenth century consistently conclude that in such marriages, men tended to marry spouses of higher rank and women spouses of lower rank. Freed states that marriages of men from Salzburg ministerial families to women of free noble rank were “fairly common” in the twelfth century, whereas marriages between noblemen and ministerial women were rare. In the thirteenth century, minis- terials were forced increasingly to intermarry with their social inferiors, the knights, and “[o]nce again it was predominantly ministerial women, like the noblewomen before them, who mar- ried downward.”20

17 ZC, I, 364–365; II, 21–24. Lazarus von Schwendi is quoted in Jenny, Graf Froben Christoph von Zimmern, 199. 18 Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 398; Schmidt, Wetterauer Grafenverein, 481, Table 5; Molho, Marriage Alliance, 294, 332. 19 Schmidt, Wetterauer Grafenverein, 481–482, Böhme, Das Fränkische Reichsgrafkollegium, 12–14. 20 Freed, Noble Bondsmen, 99–100, 139–140.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 MARRIAGE STRATEGY AMONG THE GERMAN NOBILITY | 181 Table 2 Social Status of Spouses of Counts and Barons in Regional Studies counts and low e r re gion date n p rince s barons nobility burghers Mainza 1200–1550 630 6.3% 87.5% 6.2% 0 Franconiab 1475–1525 58 6.9% 70.1% 18.9% 3.4% Wetterauc 1450–1648 499 12.4% 83.5% 3.6% 0.4% SW Germany 1400–1699 482 9.1% 89.4% 0.8% 0.6%

a Karl-Heinz Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft im deutschen Hochadel des Spätmittelalters: 13. bis Anfang des 16.Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1993), 398. b Ernst Böhme, Das fränkische Reichsgrafkollegium im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1989), 12–14. cGeorg Schmidt, Der Wetterauer Grafenverein: Organisation und Politik einer Reichskorporation zwischen Reformation und Westfälischem Frieden (Marburg, 1989), 481, Table 5.

Spiess raised the question whether the counts and barons of the Mainz region during the late Middle Ages sought spouses of lower status for their daughters than for their sons in order to achieve a “positive balance of payments” in dowries paid and received, but concluded that such a deliberate strategy cannot be veriªed. Social rank was a far greater consideration than money in marriages of daughters, he argued. Otherwise, families of counts and barons would have consistently married their daughters to men of the lower nobility who would have accepted lower dowries; yet, few such marriages occurred. Nevertheless, much of Spiess’ evidence supports the hypothesis that sons’ wives tended to be of higher social and economic status than daughters’ hus- bands. More sons than daughters married upward into princely families, and in ten of the ªfteen families in his study, the mean value of dowries received from sons’ wives was higher than the mean value of dowries given to daughters. At least one family, the Schenken von Erbach, is said to have climbed from the lower to the higher nobility through a concerted effort to marry sons upward and daughters downward within the nobility.21 Andermann’s and Müller’s studies of the lower nobility of the Palatinate and Alsace during the late Middle Ages found that the

21 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 ibid., 402; Böhme, Das Fränkische Reichsgrafkollegium, 60–64.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 182 | JUDITH J. HURWICH only cases of intermarriage between the lower and the higher nobility involved men marrying wives of higher rank. Müller stated that in the Fleckenstein family of Alsace, “the wives of sons were generally from more prominent families than the husbands of daughters.”22 In studies extending into the early modern period, Böhme stated that the counts of Franconia from 1475 to 1530 were “more conscious of rank in choosing marriage partners for sons than in giving away daughters.” In marriages between different orders of the nobility, sons married spouses from princely families and daughters married spouses from the lower nobility. Böhme char- acterized these downwardly mobile marriages for daughters as “marriages to provide ªnancial support (Versorgungsheiraten), which were less signiªcant for the family than the marriages of sons.” Schmidt’s study of the counts of Wetterau also found that throughout the period from 1450 to 1648, “it was primarily sons who married partners from princely houses.”23 Freed’s argument that this marriage pattern was due to the legal disabilities attached to marriages between ministerials and free nobles does not account for its persistence after 1400, when ministerials were no longer considered unfree. Moreover, the same pattern was evident in marriages between princely families and the nonprincely high nobility, which were not legally “un- equal.” This family strategy probably should not be attributed so much to speciªc legal disabilities as to the more general social barriers between the different levels of the German nobility, including the rigid system of marital payments analyzed by Spiess.24 In medieval and early modern German elites, dowries were ªxed according to rank and remained unchanged (at least in face value) for long stretches of time. There was little “market orien- tation” to allow wealthy members of the urban patriciate or the lower nobility to marry their daughters into the high nobility by paying extraordinarily high dowries. Studies of dowries in France,

22 Kurt Andermann, Studien zur Geschichte des pfälzischen Niederadels im späten Mittelalter (Speyer, 1982), 217–218; Peter Müller, Die Herren von Fleckenstein im späten Mittelalter: Unter- suchungen zur Geschichtes eines Adelsgeschlechts im pfälzish-elsässischen Grenzgebiet (Stuttgart, 1990), 320. 23 Böhme, Das Fränkische Reichsgrafkollegium, 13; Schmidt, Wetterauer Grafenverein, 484. 24 Freed, Noble Bondsmen, 101.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 MARRIAGE STRATEGY AMONG THE GERMAN NOBILITY | 183 England, and Spain have found that dramatic increases in dowry levels during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were associated with increased marriages of elite men to wives of lower social status. In contrast, Freed noted that under the German system, the “dowries and dowers ªxed by custom within very narrow limits in effect protected all the members of an estate by minimizing the competition for brides with rich dowries and by blocking the upward mobility of women of inferior birth.”25 In the system of marital payments used by southwestern and western German nobles during the ªfteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the dowry (Heimsteuer), which was normally paid in cash, averaged about one-half of one year’s income from the estate of the bride’s father. In addition to the dowry, the bride’s family also provided a trousseau (Abfertigung) in clothing, jewelry, and silver plate. The main marital payment from the groom’s family was the widow’s dower, or Widerlegung (“matching payment”), which was equal in value to the dowry and consisted of lands pledged to provide an annuity for the wife in widowhood. The groom’s family also paid a Morgengabe, or “morning-gift,” which became the property of the bride. The Morgengabe was traditionally valued at one-third to one-half the dowry; however, counts and barons often ªxed it at a lower value, equal to that of the trousseau.26

25 Ibid., 179. Studies of dowry levels in Rouen, England, and Barcelona are cited in Molho, Marriage Alliance, 325. Spiess ªnds no observable increase in dowries given and received among counts and barons in the Mainz region from the thirteenth through the ªfteenth century (Familie und Verwandtschaft, 364). Reif, Westfälischer Adel, 254–256, ªnds 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: Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 347, 352–354, 359; Euler, “Wandlung des Konnubiums,” 67. 26 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 Freed, Noble Bondsmen, 173–180; Müller, Die Herren von Fleckenstein, 319; Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 344–345; Reif, Westfälischer Adel, 254–256. Spiess states that the mean value of dowries given by his ªfteen 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 Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy in England 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), 291; Eileen Spring, Law, Land and Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800 (Chapel Hill, 1993), 86. The ratio of Widerlegung and Morgengabe to dowry varied according to region and time period. See Schröder, Geschichte des ehelichen Güterrechts, II, 82, 238; Freed, Noble Bondsmen,

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 184 | JUDITH J. HURWICH Although the payments from the bride’s family and the groom’s family were theoretically equal in value, the dowry system of the German nobility functioned in such a way that it was much less costly to marry a son than a daughter to a spouse of higher social rank. Since dowries were based on the status of the husband, a son marrying a woman of higher rank would receive only a dowry commensurate with his rank, or perhaps even a lower dowry as a trade-off for his wife’s higher social prestige. The marital payments from the groom’s family were proportional to the size of the bride’s dowry; it was no more expensive for a family of counts to marry a son to a bride from a princely family than to a bride from a family of counts. Moreover, marital payments did not usually represent a permanent loss of property to the groom’s family. The lands pledged for the Widerlegung remained in its possession, and the Morgengabe normally descended to the children of the marriage. On the other hand, women had to bring much higher dow- ries to husbands of superior rank than to ones of their own social standing, and this property (paid in cash) was permanently lost to their own family. Since counts normally gave dowries of less than 10,000 gulden, and princes dowries of more than 24,000 gulden— more than a year’s income for even the wealthiest counts—it was prohibitively expensive for counts to marry their daughters to princes. Some of the “house regulations” drawn up by noble families ªxed maximum dowry levels in order to prevent ambi- tious or indulgent fathers from doing permanent damage to the patrimony of the lineage by paying exorbitant dowries to marry their daughters into higher-ranking families.27

rank of spouses in the southwest german nobility The studies reviewed above analyze the choice of spouses for sons and for daughters chieºy through the exceptional marriages that crossed the boundaries between levels of the nobility. My study of the marriage strategy of the counts and barons of southwest Germany includes the much more frequent marriages in which

171–176; 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 ªfteenth and early sixteenth centuries. 27 On maximum dowry levels in “house regulations,” see ibid., 366.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 MARRIAGE STRATEGY AMONG THE GERMAN NOBILITY | 185 both spouses belonged to the same social order. Out of 509 marriages in my sample that took place between 1400 and 1699, the status of the spouse (indicated by the title of the groom or of the bride’s father at the date of the marriage) can be ascertained for 482 cases (230 marriages of men and 252 marriages of women). The ªndings are shown in Table 3 and in ªgures 2a and 2b.28 Marriages to spouses outside the high nobility were rare for both sexes. Only seven such marriages occurred during the three centuries under study, and at least four of them were based on personal choice rather than family arrangement.29 In arranging marriages for their daughters, family heads clearly tried to avoid matches that were legally or socially considered mésalliances. However, a comparison of the status of wives of sons and husbands of daughters shows that family heads were more willing to marry daughters than sons to spouses of lower rank within the spectrum of the high nobility. Throughout the period from 1400 to 1699, men in the eleven families in this sample were more likely than women to marry spouses from princely families; women were far more likely than men to marry spouses from families in the lowest rank of the high nobility (Schenk or baron). The majority of men married into families of counts or princes throughout the period; the majority of women married Schenken or barons until the sixteenth century. The second half of the ªfteenth century saw the greatest contrast between the status of sons’ wives and daughters’ husbands: 63 percent of the daughters, but only 15 percent of the sons, married spouses from the lowest rank of the high nobility. Since this period suffered severe economic depression, families were probably investing their money in the one heir who was allowed to marry, while economizing on the marriages of daughters. During the ªrst half of the sixteenth century, the proportion of men who married spouses from princely families increased

28 The sample includes 186 ªrst marriages and 44 remarriages of men, and 224 ªrst marriages and 28 remarriages of women. Although Spiess refers to “the conªrmed 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 chieºy involved marriages to widows and marriages to spouses from non-German . 29 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 Gundelªngen to a woman of burgher status, probably his concubine.

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Fig. 2b Rank of Spouses of Daughters

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 188 | JUDITH J. HURWICH dramatically. No such increase occurred for women. Men in this sample were able to marry into princely families while they were still only counts. With the exception of one case in the Oettingen family, no women married into families of princes until their own families had obtained that rank. Greater equality between the status of daughters’ husbands and that of sons’ wives is evident in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The earlier family strategy appears to have reversed itself during the late seventeenth century: More women than men married spouses from princely families, and fewer women than men married spouses from families with title of Schenk or baron. The observed changes in late seventeenth-century family strategy are difªcult to explain. The seemingly great increase in marriage of women into princely families is due partly to changes in titles. These women were the daughters of counts who had recently obtained the title of prince, and many of the princes that they married were members of other families recently elevated to princely rank. However, there is no obvious reason why more men than women married spouses of lower rank during the economic depression of the late seventeenth century, reversing the trend that prevailed during that of the ªfteenth century. Since fewer men married in the late seventeenth century than in earlier cohorts, and those who married did so later in life, it might have been less surprising to ªnd a large surplus of women of marriage- able age forced to settle for husbands of lower rank if they married at all. It is difªcult to see how German noble fathers in the late seventeenth century managed to ªnance the marriage of more daughters than of sons, let alone to offer dowries large enough to attract spouses of higher rank for their daughters. Since the period from 1650 to 1699 is not analyzed in other regional studies of marriage in the German nobility, it is not clear whether this apparent reversal of earlier strategy was due to factors unique to this sample or was part of a more general trend.

catholic and protestant marriage strategies Fichtner ar- gued that the Protestant Reformation had a major impact on marriage strategies of German princes. Not only did more daugh- ters marry (since the convent no longer provided an alternative career for unmarried noblewomen), but Protestant ideology em-

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 MARRIAGE STRATEGY AMONG THE GERMAN NOBILITY | 189 phasized greater equality within the sibling group and encouraged more marriages of younger sons. In order to take into account the possible effect of the Reformation on the family strategy of southwest German nobles, separate calculations have been made for the different confessions, both for proportions of sons and daughters marrying (Table 1; ªgures 3a and 3b) and for rank of spouses (Table 3; ªgures 4a, 4b, 4c, 4d).30 The ªrst generation of Protestant counts and barons in the sample for this article found spouses for almost all of their children, both sons and daughters. Some of the daughters, especially those in large sibling groups, married for the ªrst time at the age of thirty or even older. In subsequent generations, Protestant counts and barons made more consistent efforts to ªnd spouses for almost all of their daughters than for almost all of their sons. Under these circumstances, Protestant women might have been forced more often than Catholic women to settle for husbands of lower social rank. The statistics for the different confessions from the mid- sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century show that, as expected, Protestant families had fewer sons and fewer daugh- ters remaining unmarried than did Catholic families. Among Prot- estants born between 1500 and 1699, 72 percent of the sons and 87 percent of the daughters married; among Catholics in the same birth cohorts, 60 percent of the sons and 74 percent of the daughters married. However, there is no evidence that Protestant women were forced to marry down more frequently than Catho- lic women. The trend in the period from 1550 to 1699 toward greater equality of rank between the husbands of daughters and the wives of sons holds for both Protestants and Catholics. For the period from 1550 to 1699, as a whole, there is no signiªcant difference between the status of Protestant women’s and Catholic women’s husbands. In the last marriage cohort, that of 1650 to 1699, Protestant women enjoyed a less favorable position compared with Protestant men than did Catholic women compared with Catholic men. However, there was an unusually large discrepancy between the number of sons and the number of daughters in Protestant families in this cohort. Since three out

30 Paula Sutter Fichtner, Protestantism and in Early Modern Germany (New Haven, 1989), 46–48.

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of the four Protestant families in the sample were nearing extinc- tion in the male line, their marriage strategies might not have been typical of Protestant noble families in general.

comparisons to other western european elites The period c. 1700 allows comparisons between the marriage strategies of men and women in the German nobility and those of Catholic and Protestant elites from other countries. In his study of inheritance practices, Cooper shows that Catholic elites practiced much more restrictive marriage policies during this period than did Protestant elites. In Florence before 1700, Milan before 1750, Toulouse before 1760, and among dukes and peers of seventeenth-century France, about half the sons and half the daughters remained unmarried. In contrast, only one-quarter or less of each sex re- mained unmarried in the Protestant patriciate of Geneva and in the English aristocracy of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.31

31 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; Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (New York, 1977), 44, 47.

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German nobles c. 1700 appear to have followed marriage strategies that set them apart from both Catholic and Protestant elites in other countries. The most striking distinction was the high proportion of German noblewomen who married. South- west German Catholic nobles in the cohort born in the period 1650 to 1699 had higher proportions of both men and women marrying than did other Catholic elites of this period. Among southwest German Protestant nobles, the proportion of men mar- rying was similar to that of other Protestant elites, but the pro- portion of women marrying was higher. Among both Catholic and Protestant German nobles, more men than women remained unmarried, whereas in most other elites c. 1700, the percentage of men and of women who remained unmarried was roughly equal. If Molho’s theory of a link between greater male celibacy and downwardly mobile marriages for women is valid, then Ger- man noblewomen, whether Catholic or Protestant, were more likely than women in other elites to marry husbands of lower status. Cooper cites several studies of other Western European elites, however, that show a marked discrepancy between the proportion of men and of women remaining unmarried. In these studies,

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 Fig. 4a Catholics: Rank of Spouses of Sons

Fig. 4b Catholics: Rank of Spouses of Daughters

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Fig. 4d Protestants: Rank of Spouses of Daughters

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 194 | JUDITH J. HURWICH higher proportions of sons than of daughters remained unmarried during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whereas higher proportions of daughters remained unmarried during the later seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. These variations, com- bined with the apparent reversal of earlier patterns in the south- west German nobility during the late seventeenth century, warn that we must be cautious about taking data for c.1700 as a reliable guide to practices in earlier eras32

This study of the southwest German nobility, 1400–1699, supports the hypothesis that in the medieval and early modern German nobility, upward social mobility took place primarily through the marriage of men of lower rank to women of higher rank. The wives of sons from German noble families were, on average, drawn from wealthier and more prestigious families than were the husbands of daughters. Although the Reformation led to an in- crease in the percentage of both sons and daughters in Protestant noble families who eventually married, Protestant German nobles followed the same strategy as their Catholic neighbors in choosing the rank of spouses for their sons and their daughters. This marriage strategy might be a speciªcally German phe- nomenon, caused by a dowry system that militated against the upward mobility of wealthy women with unusually high dowries. If so, the marriage strategy is evidence of the distinctive character of the German nobility in the medieval and early modern period, particularly the rigidity of its hierarchy. The German nobility also differed from other Western European elites in other aspects of family strategy, most notably in its reluctance to adopt primogeni- ture or other strategies of impartible inheritance long after other elites did so. However, this study also raises questions about the assump- tion that in early modern Western European elites, men were more likely than women to marry spouses of lower rank. Dewald’s and Stone’s comments about the predominance of this strategy

32 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).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219598551661 by guest on 29 September 2021 MARRIAGE STRATEGY AMONG THE GERMAN NOBILITY | 195 refer primarily to the eighteenth century, and evidence indeed suggests that the marriage strategy of German nobles differed signiªcantly from that of other Western European elites c.1700. On the other hand, both Molho’s data about the rank of spouses in ªfteenth-century Florence and the greater proportion of sons than of daughters remaining unmarried in several other Western European elites in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries suggest that a strategy of marrying daughters to spouses of lower rank may have been practiced by other elites before 1650. The marriage strategy of the German nobility may therefore have perpetuated a previously widespread practice in an era when other elites had changed their strategy. If so, the questions are, Why did other elites change their strategy, and Do the apparent changes in the marriage strategy of southwest German nobles in the late seven- teenth century indicate that the German nobility was moving in the same direction as other Western European elites? Unfortunately, so few scholars have analyzed marriages of noblewomen in the early modern period that little statistical evidence is available on the strategies used to choose their spouses. More studies of the marriages of women compared with those of men in other European elites are needed to determine whether the German nobles were indeed unique in their strategy of marrying sons up and daughters down, or whether this was a practice common in Western European elites before the eight- eenth century.

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