The Prince without a Wife: Princely Bachelors in the late medieval Empire between dynastic and personal Motivation (1350–1550)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Oliver Auge
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 544901206

In the pre-modern period, the marriage policy of the nobility was of essential importance. For the princely houses, marriage promises and marriages were the basis for maintaining and gaining power, as they were the instruments of alliances and discord, peace treaties and declarations of war. Marrying off descendants as profitably as possible was therefore an integral part of aristocratic policy for the dynasty and family. The fact that a significant number of male members of the so-called Reichsfürstenstand can nevertheless be identified who neither entered the clerical state nor entered into marriage is therefore in need of explanation. Research into longstanding bachelorhood within the Reichsfürstenstand has so far been a desideratum. The main focus is on princes who remained unmarried until at least the age of 35. Since the average age of marriage for men in this state and time was around 24 years, eleven years without a wife can be considered a conspicuous deviation from the norm. On the basis of samples for the Ascanians, Guelphs, Wettins and Wittelsbachs, around 100 candidates can be expected for the entire group of princely dynasties within the period under consideration, to whom the aforementioned characteristic applies. This preliminary analysis already revealed striking differences between the dynasties, which raise further questions. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of male unmarriedness, the project aims to approach the historical phenomenon in three steps: The first step is to determine who explicitly remained a princely bachelor. This will be followed by intensive archival research, using selected examples from source material, most of which has already been studied, to investigate the reasons for remaining unmarried for many years or even for life. As the successful Kiel research into male widowhood, which offers elaborate procedures for orientation, has revealed, personal, economic, health and religious motives must be considered alongside dynastic and political motives. The final step in the analysis is devoted to the effects of bachelorhood on the unmarried princes’ room for maneuver. The overall aim of the proposed project is thus to explore for the first time the phenomenon of princely bachelorhood, which has hitherto been almost completely ignored, in terms of social, personal, political and gender history, and to introduce its full scope into the discourse on research on the late medieval Reichsfürstenstand. The results of the study should be published monographically.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants