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Infanticide in Early Modem Gennany: the experience of Augsburg, Memmingen, Ulm, and Niirdlingen, 1500-1800 Margaret Brannan Lewis Charlottesville, Virginia M.A., History, University of Virginia, 2008 B.A., History and Gennan, Furman University, 2006 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Virginia May, 2012 i Abstract Between 1500 and 1800, over 100 women and men were arrested for infanticide or abortion in the city of Augsburg in southern Germany. At least 100 more were arrested for the same crime in the three smaller cities of Ulm, Memmingen, and Nördlingen. Faced with harsh punishments as well as social stigma if found pregnant out of wedlock, many women in early modern Europe often saw abortion or infanticide as their only option. At the same time, town councils in these southern German cities increasingly considered it their responsibility to stop this threat to the godly community and to prosecute cases of infanticide or abortion and to punish (with death) those responsible. The story of young, unmarried serving maids committing infanticide to hide their shame is well-known, but does not fully encompass the entirety of how infanticide was perceived in the early modern world. This work argues that these cases must be understood in a larger cultural context in which violence toward children was a prevalent anxiety, apparent in popular printed literature and educated legal, medical, and religious discourse alike. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this anxiety was expressed in and reinforced by woodcuts featuring mass murders of families, deformed babies, and cannibalism of infants by witches and other dark creatures. By the end of the eighteenth century, infanticide was at the center of enlightened debates about sexual crimes, torture, and the death penalty. Infanticide became a cause célèbre in spite of the relatively low, and declining, numbers of occurrence. ii Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………….i Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………….ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………iii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1: The Baby in the Pig Sty: Defining the Crime………………………………..28 Chapter 2: “Such barbarous mothers there are these days:” A Growing Problem………92 Chapter 3: Beware the Kinderfresser: Violence toward Children in the Media.……….161 Chapter 4: “The child was fresh and perfect:” The Influence of Experts…………….222 Chapter 5: “Sighs of the Poor Sinner:” Sensationalism and Decline…………………...292 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...366 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………371 iii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the help of many people. First, I must thank my doctoral advisor, Erik Midelfort. Much more than a dissertation advisor, he has also been a critic, cheerleader, editor, mentor, and neighbor. He has shown far more enthusiasm for the morbid subject matter of this work than perhaps anyone should. Beth Plummer, Ann Tlusty, and Helmut Graser, eagerly helped me learn my way through the Augsburg archive in the face of some unusual challenges. They patiently guided me to the sources I needed and frequently assisted me with the tricky handwriting and vocabulary of early modern court records. They were my company during lunch hours, occasional travel companions, short-term landlords, and constant supporters. I cannot thank them enough. I also owe thanks to Timothy Fehler, who started me down the path of early modern German history at Furman University. The dissertation began as a seminar paper for Paul Halliday, who initially asked me the difficult and important questions. Duane Osheim also helped me explore this project early on and supported my efforts through completion of the dissertation. I would also like to thank my other readers, Sophie Rosenfeld and Carrie Douglass, for their careful attention and insightful questions. Joel Harrington of Vanderbilt University was also generous with his time and advice. I am greatly indebted to the Fulbright Commission for their support during the academic year of 2009-2010. Without this fellowship, the dissertation would have been impossible. My fellow Fulbrighters have proven to be an incredibly supportive iv community. Wolfgang Weber, of the University of Augsburg, graciously served as my Ersatzdoktorvater in Germany. The German Historical Institute has been supportive of my research; their summer archival seminar was immensely useful in the lead-up to my research year and their dissertation seminar two years later helped guide me as I began to put my research into words. The University of Virginia has also supported me generously during my research travels and the years. The Dumas Malone travel fellowship allowed me to complete my research in Germany. My research would not have been possible without the knowledgeable and patient staffs of the Augsburg, Ulm, Nördlingen, and Memmingen city archives, the Augsburg city library, and the Bavarian state library in Munich. The Slawik family housed me for a few weeks at the start of my tenure in Augsburg and have remained my Augsburger family ever since. I cannot begin to thank my parents enough for their support. I could not ask for more love or encouragement. I owe so much to Martin Kane, who has put up with so much these past few years. He read these pages more times than anyone else, encouraged me to keep working while pulling me away from my computer when I clearly needed it, and has been a constant source of inspiriation and confidence. 1 Introduction On the 20th of December, 1710, twenty-year-old Samuel Keck was executed in the city of Augsburg. His head was severed from his body and the body then strung up on a wheel, and left on display for a month. On the 7th of that month, Samuel had gotten into an argument with his pregnant lover, Jacobina Bäurin. She informed Samuel that he was the father and that she was going to publicly name him as such—presumably so he would marry her. At this news, Samuel flew into a rage and stabbed Jacobina multiple times, killing her and the fetus in her womb. Samuel then took the body to the water—probably the Lech river—and threw her in. He then fled to a friend’s house. Upon discovery of Jacobina’s body, a call went around the city to find the murderer. Samuel told his friend what he had done and his friend refused to hide Samuel for fear that he, too, would be held culpable. At this friend’s house, Samuel had a change of heart. He returned to the city, where, as it was now night, he found the gates closed. After begging the guard to be let back in, explaining that he was the murderer for whom everyone was searching, he confessed to the council all of his misdeeds. He told the councilmen how upset he was to hear of Jacobina’s pregnancy. He said he knew he had done wrong by having sex with her, and was ashamed of his actions. He had not wanted anyone to find out what they had done. When Jacobina threatened to expose him as the father, Samuel had felt overcome by this fear, and killed her before he could even think about his actions.1 1 StadtAA, Urgichten, Samuel Keck, 20 December 1710. 2 That Samuel Keck killed Jacobina Bäurin was bad enough. But the murder of his own unborn child was particularly unforgivable in the eyes of his contemporaries. Samuel had sinned by fornicating with Jacobina. When this sin resulted in a pregnancy and threatened to turn his life upside-down through shame and the burden of responsibility for another, his selfish nature took over and he committed the murder. His poor son or daughter, the town councilors thought, had never had the chance to breathe, or, more importantly, to be baptized. Samuel had placed his own honor and well-being before the life of his child. Only by facing execution with a proper dose of guilt and remorse could Samuel begin to atone for what he had done and the rightful order of the community be restored. Samuel Keck was executed with a great deal of fanfare and public attention. Behind this sensation lay not just the brutal murder of a young woman, but also that of Samuel’s unborn child. Samuel Keck was a child-killer, unnatural and monstrous. The labeling of Samuel Keck as a child-killer—a designation seen in the court records and in the print media which recounted his story—connected him to a much larger discourse in the early modern world. This discourse on infanticide rose to a feverish pitch again and again throughout the early modern period. Infanticide was a cause célèbre, a crime exceeded only by witchcraft in the sway it had over the early modern imagination. Infanticide was fascinating because of the many titillating ideas it encompassed: sex, seduction, secrecy, and the spilling of innocent blood. But Samuel Keck’s case differed from the most common narrative of infanticide, a narrative which shaped early modern understandings and treatments of the crime as 3 well as later historical definitions of the crime. Infanticide was most often understood as a crime committed by a poor, young, unmarried woman, who had been seduced by some scoundrel who refused to marry her, who kept her pregnancy hidden from the judgment of others, who gave birth to her child in secret, and who finally killed her child, all to avoid the shame and other repercussions of bearing an illegitimate child. Indeed, many women, faced with dire circumstances, sought to hide their misdeeds and avoid the consequences and responsibilities of an illegitimate child through just such actions. An illegitimate child could mean the loss of employment, social status, income, support, and even domicile. Infanticide was, for many, a brutal reminder that the godly communities that Protestant reformers sought to build were constantly under threat from immorality.

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