Body Control. Confessionalized Marriage Courts in the Hohenlohe Territories between (Population ) Policy and Personal Conflict, 1648-1806

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Maren Lorenz
• Subject Area: Early Modern History
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 457436169

The project intends to combine the dimension of gender and body history with the praxeological approach of the new culturally focused histories of administration and territory. It aims to examine the role of the intersectional category of gender for the formation and stabilization of sovereignty and statehood in terms of Foucauldian governmentality and bio politics. – Meaning here the effect of gender and body norms as well as self-attribution and role ascription by others on early modern mechanisms of confessionalized state building.By scrutinizing the not yet considered marriage court records of the different Hohenlohe branches (from 1648 until the mediatization of 1806) concrete ways and forms of stabilizing early modern statehood and the permeation of all spheres of every day life down to the body of the individual will be investigated. The Hohenlohe principalities with their several partitions and overlapping sovereignties represent a typical immediate territory within the Holy Roman Empire with confessional division between the branches as well as among the subjects of their respective possessions. Lacking a gentry and estates of the country it is possible to analyze the direct interfering of the counts and their councils into the family affairs of their subjects. At the same time the confessional composition of the catholic as well as the protestant consistories were as heterogeneous as their respective population. Thus the project will focus on those proceedings that revolved around marriage, sexuality, and procreation in order to identify the role and degree of population policy, religious norms, and the influence of notions of masculinity and femininity, specifically regarding procreation. Exactly at this intersection of emotionalized and strategic conflicts about the dissolution of a marriage, or on the contrary, the intention to marry, it is possible to reconstruct the tangled situation of administrative procedures, governmental interests, and non-governmental institutions like family, neighborhood, work environment, and (village) community. Thus has to be distinguished between the function of sexual regulation in the form of population measures like marriage restrictions or marriage facilitation, and the theologically motivated battle against fornication on the other side of the spectrum.From this perspective the marriage court records will be described and evaluated as a form of state intervention in the interest of stability and demographic growth. Special attention will be given 1) to the multiple and partly contradicting norms and practices of administration, among others the request of external opinions and reports by physicians, jurists and theologians. 2) The role of civil servants and priests will be examined carefully because they were the agents between sovereign and subjects. And 3) the influence of the confessionally diverse interests of the different Hohenlohe branches will have to be taken into consideration.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants