Susanne Rau, Gerd Schwerhoff. Zwischen Gotteshaus und Taverne: Öffentliche Räume in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2004. 481 S. EUR 54.90 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-412-13203-3.

Reviewed by Jay Goodale (Department of History, Bucknell University)
Published on H-German (July, 2005)

This volume includes sixteen fairly sizeable essays--including the editors' introduction--and concludes with a brief epilogue. The essays are divided into four sections, each relating to a particular "space" in medieval and early modern society such as inns and taverns, city halls, marketplaces, and churches. The volume stems from a conference on this theme held in Dresden in 2001. The essays are all extremely strong and engaging, and represent an important contribution to this developing area of research. Each utilizes various interdisciplinary perspectives--linguistics, cultural anthropology, sociology, art history, theology, gender studies, historical anthropology--to reveal previously unseen or under-appreciated aspects of how "space" was socially constructed, politicized, infused with symbolic meaning, used as centers for communication and exchange, and perceived and experienced in radically different ways by various groups or individuals. The fine introduction articulates the volume's goals, discusses the key concepts under analysis, situates the authors' arguments against existing scholarship, provides a very thorough historical-contextual background to the various spaces (such as inns or churches) under discussion, and raises important theoretical and heuristic issues. Because each essay in this volume is of considerable interest, I have elected to discuss each of them, briefly, and in order, below.

The first section of the volume focuses upon inns. The essays reveal how important the inn was as a center of communication and information exchange, both on the local and super-regional level. They highlight the degree to which inns were politicized, and involved in the political sphere. Ann Tlusty's article "'Privat' oder 'Ã?ffentlich'?" focuses upon the role of the inn as a site that unified, in its varied attributes, both the openness of a public space and the seclusion of a private one. In assuming such a "middle position," the inn became a locus for unique and unforeseen conflict. The inn's role as a public establishment often came into conflict with its concurrent status as a private home. The somewhat ambiguous role of the innkeeper highlights the possibilities for conflict. He functioned not only as the host to his guests, but also as an agent in the service of the authorities. Indeed, the innkeeper was obligated to report illegal activities to the authorities. The early modern inn, then, could not be a place of asylum for the guests, as a private home might earlier have been used; rather, the inn was, ideally, an organ of the state's information and control apparatus. Despite the opportunities for clandestine illegal activity that inns provided, the authorities regarded them in a relatively positive light, as sites more easily regulated than "purely" private homes. This middle position the inn occupied, however, often produced conflict. The inn was a site where the rights and duties of the host were often opposed to the rights and expectations of the guests, a discrepancy aggravated by the fact that the medieval tradition of "guest-friendship" was at odds with the well-regulated aspects of sixteenth- and seventeen-century inns, and that penetration by the authorities limited the freedoms that guests in earlier times enjoyed. Tlusty demonstrates how the differing perceptions and expectations of the hosts, guests, and authorities could create conflict. In one of her examples, a light was left on in the middle of the night because the innkeeper and his wife were tending to their four-month-old infant. For the family, the light was part of its private space; for a passer-by and his companions, it was a public sign that the inn was stilll "open" and that they could enter it to get beer. For the family, the building had already assumed the temporary status of a private home; for the boon companions, it was still a public space. The ambiguities inherent in inns allowed for such conflicting perceptions, and led to the violence which resulted from them.

Beat Kümin's essay, "Wirthaus und Gemeinde," argues that early modern inns in both the Reformed city-republic of Bern and in Catholic Bavaria were regarded by communities as much more than service-industry establishments, and were viewed as sites invested with much political meaning and associations. As such, they ought to be seen as communal institutions and as sites as fundamental as the church or the city hall to early modern communities. Kümin observes that the attributes of inns allowed them to be politically instrumentalized in three ways: as communication spaces, as communal resources, and as service-industry establishments. An interesting aspect of this section is his discussion of how the inn's shield or marker documented legal sovereignty (or rather, served as a territorial signpost), and enabled the community to display super-regional solidarities to a specific federation or union. The inn, however, could also function as the gathering spot for an insurrection, or could even be used as a headquarters during an organized resistance. In this latter case, the symbols on the inn's shield could be used as objects for ritual abuse. Seen as a communal resource, the inn was politicized in that it served as a place for meetings and communal assemblies. Finally, even in its familiar role as a service-industry establishment, the inn was politicized. For example, inns were sites for the signing of contracts, for the reading of official reports, for the holding of weddings, for the reading of wills, and even for the quartering of soldiers or prisoners. In the second half of the essay, Kümin shows how inns also functioned as objects of political conflicts, such as those which arose when nobles or governments practiced methods of unfair competition. The aims of the expanding territorial state were often at odds with the rights of the commune, and challenges were made by princes regarding the competency of communes to run their own inns. In short, city councils, jurisdictional courts, clerics, and radical-religious groups all had competing interests when it came to how inns should be run, and the conflicts that emerged further reveal the extreme political nature of the inn, and its fundamentally important role in early-modern society.

The section on inns concludes with Barbara Krug-Richter's essay "Das Privathaus als Wirthaus." The essay details a murder that occurred in 1719 in an "inn" in Udorf (in Canstein). In Canstein, private homes, at well-regulated intervals, became "inns." Such a practice has been less studied than have other forms of tavern culture. The private home temporarily functioning as "inn" met the two contemporary understandings of "public." On the one hand, it was a space, like a street (and unlike a private home), to which all had access. On the other hand, it was a center where people communicated and exchanged information. (That is, the presence of people, and not the space itself, in the abstract, made it "public.") The householder-turned-innkeeper was just as responsible for upholding ordinances and functioning as an agent of the state as was the professional innkeeper. But, as Krug-Richter points out, the temporary innkeeper would soon himself be a guest at another's "inn," and he seems, consequently, to have maintained greater loyalties to the village than to the state. Other crucial differences existed. Unlike full-time inns, where the public spaces were clearly marked, and situated at the front of the building, the family-chamber (Stube) of the private house that served as the quasi-public space was usually located in the rear, and as a result, the boundary between public and private space was not so clearly determined: the border that delineated private space was no longer the threshold of the house, but the threshold of the host couple's bedroom. The presence of women in the Stube marked one of the more meaningful differences between the two types of inn. Neighbors came to know one another's houses intimately; even one's enemies could have access to one's home during the time it functioned as the inn, and robbery was just one crime that might result. As the detailed case which opens the essay reveals, the private home, during the time it functioned as an inn, assumed the character of a public space, in that it granted access to people of differing regions, classes, families, and customs, and as such, it often became the site for complex social exchanges, including, tragically, murder.

The second section of the volume features four essays on city spaces situated between fully public and fully closed. Uwe Dörk's essay "Der Verwilderte Raum" is more informed by theory than others in the volume. Dörk takes the reader on two "virtual tours" of late-medieval Bern: the first covers the area between the city hall and the minster; the second covers, in some detail, the minster itself. Both tours highlight the complex symbolism of the architecture, the arrangement of buildings and streets, and the ways in which specific public spaces were used, particularly regarding the manner by which such use created coherent systems of communication, communal-interaction, and collective identity. The tours, replicating the experiences and perceptions of late medieval residents, provide a "horizontal," (i. e., we are within the city, not above it) perception of public space, and suggest the interactive approach by which the Bernese would have experienced these spaces. With the Reformation, the written word emerged as the means for conveying knowledge and for communicating. As a result, a more abstract and less interactive ordering of public space was created. A metaphor for this new discourse is the "bird's-eye-view" city map that appeared at this time, a map that fashioned a far different perception of urban space than that which late medieval social interactions had, and which Dörk contrasts against the "horizontal" perception of space.

Frank Hatje's essay "Zwischen Repräsentation und Konfession" analyzes a confessional conflict in Baroque-era Hamburg (one that centered around the ritualized sacking of the Imperial embassy) in order to reveal the ways in which the arrangement of space played a role in configuring social relations, and how, in turn, social relations were inscribed within a specific space. The embassy had been dramatically rearranged to accommodate the holding of various Catholic religious services, services in which a good many more people than the embassy staff participated. As such, the embassy, in both the diplomatic and religious spheres, was neither fully public nor fully closed, and its granting of access to the public, along with the symbolic aspects of the building's architecture and its location within a particular section of Hamburg antagonized the local Protestant population. Its sacking damaged more than the building itself; the emperor's honor was also challenged, and the resolution of this matter became a European-wide public phenomenon, thereby revealing how spatial arrangements and public access to certain spaces were intricately tied into notions of honor--in this case, the emperor's, the city's, and the local residents'. Between "private" spaces and "public" spaces, quasi-public ones existed, and the ways in which these indeterminate sites were used could lead, as other essays in the volume show, to conflict.[1]

Joachim Eibach's essay "Das Haus: zwischen �ffentlicher Zugänglichkeit und geschätzter Privatheit" demonstrates the great differences in the meaning of concepts such as "privacy," "public," or even "domestic peace" between the early modern period and ours. The early modern house was far from a private, isolated domain. Not only could, for example, soldiers be quartered within it, but neighbors exercised varying degrees of access as well, as, for instance, when one had a bath or an oven. The house was anything but an autonomous realm; as a "household," it was highly integrated within various social, political, economic, and religious networks. Parents had political-social duties such as disciplining their servants and children, and religious-social duties, such as educating their children. Marriage, neither an affair of romance nor, in Protestant lands, a sacrament, was a matter of state, and, as such, how married couples comported themselves and ran their households was ultimately a political matter. In the practice of daily life, female neighbors visited on washdays, entered the house for births, and neighbors of both sexes had access to the house at weddings, death-bed vigils, and even charivaris. I was, however, surprised that this essay did not discuss spinning bees. This essay, like the one before it, discusses how concepts of honor were tied into quasi-public spaces; in this case, Eibach shows, in his concluding section, how concepts of honor were tied into how one maintained one's house(hold) and into notions of "domestic peace."

Section 2 concludes with Susanne Claudine Pils's essay "Raum schichten. Frauen und �ffentlichkeit in der frühneuzeitlichen Stadt." Disputing the notion that women acted within public space only in times of insurrection, such as during the French Revolution, Pils catalogs the daily experience of various women in Baroque Vienna to determine which spaces they made use of, and how women played a role in public spaces. Aristocratic women, as revealed by the seventeenth-century letters of Countess Harrach to her husband, visited city churches regularly according to the liturgical year, and used these spaces as centers for exchange and communication, wherein they, representing their families' interests, could meet and interact with members of the court, including, if they were lucky, the emperor. Thus the use of churches as public space was socially constructed for other, non-religious, functions; these spaces became centers of communication for members of court society, including women. Alternatively, more poverty-stricken women living in the outlying areas of the capital, such as the wives of socially inferior soldiers, also fashioned their own networks and actions, and these too gave specific meanings to certain public spaces within the city. Some areas, for example, could be used as sites for begging, or for black-market transactions. Abandoned barracks could be turned into pubs. The experiences of both aristocratic and impoverished women reveal that they acted in public spaces and in public roles as part of their daily practice, and that their chosen spaces for action were not biologically determined, but were rather socially constructed and ever-changing.

The third section of the volume contains essays that focus on city halls, markets, representations of them, and conflicts over them and in them. Ulrich Meier's "Die Sicht- und Hörbarkeit der Macht," informed by new methods of social science, supplements Weber's theories on charisma by showing how buildings, alongside persons, families, groups, and institutions, can display the charisma of power. Analyzing in considerable detail the daily processes and displays of power and authority that took place in medieval and Renaissance Florence's Palazzo Vecchio, Meier shows how the use of space was tightly interwoven with discourses of power, and how specific spaces and structures in Florence--particularly those of the Palazzo Vecchio--contributed to the formation and articulation of political and symbolic authority. The essay includes helpful photos, maps, floorplans, and details of Renaissance paintings to help illustrate the author's arguments.

Katharina Simon-Muscheid's "Ordnung, Aufruhr und städtische Plätze" analyzes the complex processes, relationships, and rituals that were fashioned in Paris's Place de Grève in the medieval and early modern era. The Place de Grève was situated on two important axes: one, running east-west, connected three fortified palaces of the monarch; the other, running north-south, linked the university district with the Ille de Cité and the Hôtel de Ville. Moreover, the harbor on the river (Port de Grève) by the Place de Grève, was, like the square itself, a source for the exchange of information as well as wares, and was a place which greatly shaped public opinion. This was an area for informal gatherings, for taverns, for finding work, and for official assemblies. The Place de Grève, along with the Hôtel de Ville, functioned as the symbol of the economic and political freedom and might of Paris's merchant elite; the Hôtel was the base of the powerful Provost of the Merchants, the representative of Paris's merchant elite in its dealings with the king, and the conduit between the king and his citizens. In this space, successive provosts built their own centers of power, some more successfully than others. The Place de Grève was also the site of important religious processions, of religious celebrations, such as that held on St. John's Day, of political ceremonies, and of judicial activities, such as executions. Given all these factors, the square could be alternatively a place of well-regulated order, or a place of riot and disorder. Skillfully interweaving these factors, Simon-Muscheid provides an informative overview of the various incidents that occurred in this unique spot in Paris, including, for example, a new perspective by which to frame the revolt of Etienne Marcel following the French defeat at Poitiers. She demonstrates, for the larger purposes of this volume, how, under what conditions, and for what reasons, municipal squares shape the self-understanding of a city's citizens.

Martin Scheutz's contribution, "�ffentliche Räume: Der Scheibbser Wochen-und Jahrmarkt," likewise emphasizes the multifunctionality of market spaces. The market in Scheibbs (Austria) was small and relatively unimportant until it became part of the mining and iron-production network that developed at the dawn of the early-modern period. The weekly and yearly markets held in Scheibbs served to supply provisions for the miners and the foundry workers. Scheutz demonstrates how these markets were far more than centers for the buying and selling of goods. The market served as a space over which various forms of political authority could compete for control and the right to regulate; functioned as a battleground, as a "jousting field" in which merchants fashioned economic settlements and exchanges; was utilized as a stage to display religious observances; operated as a stage upon which authority could demonstrate its coercive powers and reveal its punitive judgments; and exposed the differing perspectives and assumptions between rich and poor. I found his analysis of the numerous conflicts over who would possess the right to regulate the market interesting. The various aspects of market culture that he discusses--the regulation of foreigners in the market, the prohibition of certain trading practices, the effect of war or plague on the holding of the market, punishments for robbery--while interesting in and of themselves, help to solidify his portrayal of the market as a highly diverse, multi-functional, politicized communication space.

Michaela Fenske's essay "Marktkultur in der Frühen Neuzeit" sketches her dissertation project at Göttingen, and, though brief, it is nonetheless a very focused and interesting contribution to this volume. As an example of her research interests, she provides as a case study the four annual year-and cattle-markets held at Hildesheim in the mid-seventeenth century. Understanding market culture is not the departure point for her social-economic research project, but rather is the goal of the research itself. The brief case study raises many interesting aspects of market culture such as protest, delinquency, formation of policies regarding criminals, popular amusements, the forms and rituals of exchange, and conflicts over administration. Like the previous two essays, this one reveals markets to be a multi-functional spaces where social, economic, and cultural practices are fashioned and altered, where authority and resistance to authority are tested, and where communication networks and systems of information exchange are developed. In short, Fenske demonstrates succinctly how the early modern market as a public space was constituted.

The four essays that comprise the book's final section focus on church space. These essays reveal that religious functions were far from the only uses to which church space was put. Various groups in society used churches in diverse, non-sacral ways: to demonstrate wealth, to conclude a business transaction, to store wares. Conflicts often developed when such uses crossed paths. Distinct from more traditional approaches to church interiors that center around art-historical concerns or liturgical matters, several of the essays approach the arrangement of the church's interior from the perspective of its socio-political functional aspects. My sole lament regarding this section is that no essay on cemeteries was included.

The title of Gabriela Signori's essay "Links oder Rechts?" alludes to a seventh-century liturgical decree that prescribed the sexual segregation of the congregation, with women to be placed on the left. Skillfully integrating concepts from theology, art criticism, anthropology, and history, Signori argues that the separation of the congregation during the late middle ages and the beginning of the early modern period was based less on a specific place (i. e., women must be on the left), but was, rather, ultimately determined by the situation or by the specific function such segregation fulfilled. Crucial for determining who would sit where were factors such as social status, generation, group identity, kin affiliation, or rank. Church art reflects these realities. For example, Signori discusses two paintings by Sano di Pietro of St. Bernard preaching before two separate outdoor crowds in Siena. In the one, the women are segregated on the right side (from the viewer's perspective), while, in the other, they are segregated on the left side. She makes sense of this seeming contradiction by demonstrating how the situation, not the abstract space, was crucial for determining who sat where on each occasion. Her essay contains an interesting discussion of how, during the Reformation, the pulpit created a new focal point within the church, and how this liturgical and spatial development likewise altered the seating arrangements of the congregation. Given such evidence, she concludes that we must re-evaluate the place of women in these societies.

Similar themes are discussed by Renate Dürr in her essay "Private Ohrenbeichte im �ffentlichen Kirchenraum." Dürr first highlights the hierarchical structure of church interiors in order to contextualize her argument. Imaginatively analyzing Catholic confessional stools in post-Tridentine Hildesheim and in the city's surrounding religious foundations, she shows how the location of, and use of symbols on, these stools reproduced not only the existing penance-theology, but served, like pulpits and altars, to fashion the symbolic and hierarchical status of the priest within the church's interior space. Of particular interest is her discussion of how representations of Mary Magdalene and St. Peter on confessional stools in one church symbolized alternative, but not exclusive, messages regarding salvation, conversion, penance, love of Christ, and church history. The location of and the symbols attached to these stools allowed them to function as pedagogical instruments, making them valuable components of the church's space whether or not a priest was there to hold confession. Her discussion of Lutheran confession, due to the absence of similar surviving evidence, is confined instead to grounds for conflict. Both the pastor's ability to refuse confession (and thereby deny the parishioner communion), and the pastor's decision to reintegrate the parishioner were performed in the public space of the church, and these acts enabled the pastor, even after the Reformation, to stress or increase his authority vis-à-vis the laity. The heated conflicts that took place when parishioners were allowed to choose their own confessors not only reveal just how important confession was to the laity, but they also expose the limitations of some pastors' social power. As in Catholicism, confessional stools, even when not in use, served to remind Lutheran parishioners of the pastor's religious authority. Their location within the public space of the church determined and solidified social hierarchies and relations.

Jan Harasimowicz's essay "Evangelische Kirchenräume der frühen Neuzeit" analyzes Lutheran churches (in what today are Polish and German cities and towns) and reveals how the design and arrangement of the baptismal font, the altar, and the pulpit created a symbolic dimension to the interior space of the church, one that consciously reflected the essence of Luther's theology. Seventeen black-and-white photos of the various churches under discussion contribute to the strength of this essay. Like other essays in this volume, Harasimowicz's article discusses the social ramifications of space. The financially determined ordering of the laity's seating arrangements reflected the Lutheran conception of how God ordered the world socially. Thus seating patterns--as well as graves on walls, embellished tombs, and memorials--functioned didactically, symbolically mirroring the Lutheran conception of social hierarchies. All these linked the church's interior to theological premises and to social realities. The essay finishes with an all-too-brief discussion of how the fashioning of a Pietist identity within a congregation required spacial arrangements distinct from those needed in the Reformation era.

Andreas Holzem's essay "Kirche-Kirchhof-Gasthaus" concludes the final section. Focusing on Westphalian villages in the early modern period, Holzem argues that socially determined perceptions of a space, as opposed to the abstract space itself, are truly significant. In the late middle ages, the church-churchyard-tavern was seen by the laity as a coherent spatial ensemble; on Sundays and holidays the boundaries between the three were very fluid, as all three were important centers of communication and exchange within the village. Religious practice and social relations were interwoven. During the confessional age, however, authorities sharpened the previously hazy boundaries around sacred space, and emphasized its higher dignity. Taverns, during religious services or lessons, were now to be regarded as unchristian spaces, as part of the anti-world of disorder and sin. The attack on the profane space was a strong component of the confessional process. As the boundaries of the profane were newly delineated, a new perspective regarding a specific space--the tavern--was articulated and promulgated. Villagers accepted this new perception of space, not simply on account of the authorities' use of coercive discipline, but, more complexly, only after new relationship demands and patterns of communication within village society became aligned with the ordinances.

Some brief concluding remarks (5 pp.) by the noted sociologist of "space," Martina Löw, aptly conclude the volume. All the articles are in German. This volume--taken as a whole--is highly recommended for those interested in late medieval and early modern culture, politics, economics, and religion, as well as for sociologists, anthropologists, and geographers. Though their themes overlap, the essays obviously can be read independently of one another.

Note

[1]. An error in the book reproduces one of Hatje's illustrations twice while omitting another. The publisher has issued an errata sheet to address this issue. It can be downloaded from the publisher at http://www.boehlau.de/pdf/errata/BOEHLAU-3412132039-Errata.pdf.

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Citation: Jay Goodale. Review of Rau, Susanne; Schwerhoff, Gerd, Zwischen Gotteshaus und Taverne: Öffentliche Räume in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. H-German, H-Net Reviews. July, 2005.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10782

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