Judith J. Hurwich. Noble Strategies: Marriage and Sexuality in the Zimmern Chronicle. Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2006. 277 pp. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-931112-59-8.

Reviewed by Beth Plummer (Department of History, Western Kentucky University)
Published on H-German (July, 2008)

Marriage: A Family Affair?

After centuries of relative obscurity, the sixteenth-century Zimmern Chronicle has received significant scholarly attention in recent years.[1] After outlining the current debates on authorship of the work, Hurwich decisively asserts that it work was assembled by one family member, Froben Christoph. The long manuscript chronicles the history of the Swabian noble Zimmern family from its Roman origin until the death of its main author in 1566. While the bulk of available research focuses on intent and authorship in this relatively unique family history or on its commentary on politics and law, Hurwich focuses almost exclusively on details of the marriages and sexual relationships, placing her analysis of family in the Zimmern Chronicle in the context of sixteenth-century discussions of European nobility.

In part 1, "Family Strategies," Hurwich compares the "kinship system" of the Zimmern family and their Swabian peers to those of other contemporary German, Austrian, Spanish, French, and English noble families. Hurwich finds that unlike other European nobles, southwestern German nobility, or at least those intermarrying with the Zimmern family, retained medieval marriage, dowry, and age of marriage patterns well into the seventeenth century. They accomplished this through a careful maintenance of partible inheritance and collateral lines, placing a large number of unmarried sons into ecclesiastical or military careers together and avoiding alliances of sons with the lower nobility. In contrast, a higher percentage of Swabian noblewomen married than in other European noble families, but often to men below them in social rank. Froben Christoph's eight daughters appear to counter this trend; not only did they marry well within the Swabian nobility, but at least three married into imperial nobility. Hurwich demonstrates that in comparison to practices in other regions, religious confession appeared to have little impact as a factor in marriages between German noble families. She concludes that "southwest German counts and barons practiced a distinctive pattern of inheritance and marriage" (p. 83). The vast majority of the material for this section, which comprises over a third of the book, comes not from the Zimmern Chronicle, but from more recent demographic and genealogical studies of German and Europe such as Karl-Heinz Spiess's Familie und Verwandtschaft.[2]

In part 2, "Marriage," Hurwich turns more clearly to the Zimmern family in her exploration of who they married and how and the success and failures of these marriages. Unlike the previous section, which placed her work in European context, this section concentrates more closely on individual experiences of family members. She finds that by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, personal affection, or at least lack of antipathy, between bride and groom played a significant role in marriage choice and negotiations. While she argues that this factor was more evidence among sons than daughters, she finds that at least some Zimmern women were able to retain their dowries when they married according to their wishes. Even so, Hurwich offers numerous examples of women forced to marry against their will or not having their marriage recognized by their family until a court forced payment of a dowry. Ultimately, according to Hurwich, choice of a marital partner was driven more by dynastic concerns than personal feelings. Even brides and grooms who exercised a veto did so only within a narrow group of potential partners. The author finds that Froben Christoph was not a proponent of "romantic love." Hurwich thus highlights the contradiction that while marriage theoretically was "free," in reality, partner choice among the nobility was significantly restricted.

Despite the book title, this chapter shows that the Zimmern families' marriage negotiations often exhibited surprisingly little strategy. As Hurwich mildly puts it, "actual behavior did not always reflect the ideals expressed in the chronicle" (p. 5). Of the three main marriages investigated by Hurwich, those of Froben Christoph (1519-66), his uncle, Wilhelm Werner (1485-1575), and his father, Johann Werner II (1480-1548), only the latter seems to have been particularly strategic. He married into a family of long-term enemies in order to re-establish peace between them. At times, the marriages seem to have been downright impetuous, as is seen Wilhelm Werner's impulsive decision to marry the mother of his intended bride, or Werner VIII von Zimmern's ill-advised marriage to the widow of a man he killed in a duel. Even Froben Christoph's marriage is a puzzle, since despite extensive discussion about the circumstances that led him to marry into the Eberstein family, as Hurwich writes, "the real reasons for the decision ... are not clear" (p. 138). Hurwich uses episodes from the chronicle to illustrate "normal" weddings, even when these cases were far from "normal." In the end, this pattern suggests either that there was no "normal," or that the Zimmern family was apparently unusually impetuous. Hurwich finds that the majority of marriages discussed in the work were "unhappy" and demonstrates numerous instances of marital discord, adultery, and separation. Yet, she notes that the nobility, not only in Germany but also throughout Europe, rarely brought cases of marital dispute to secular or ecclesiastical courts, choosing instead to settle the matters privately. This tendency is most notable in the case of Froben Christoph's parents, whose informal and then formal separation came about when Johann Werner II established a household with his concubine. Hurwich argues that this decision made a profound impact on Froben Christoph's view of family and property, which remained remarkably "old-fashioned" even as he appears to have been quite unhappy in his own marriage. Even so, this assertion is somewhat problematic since little in the work shows that a genuine ideal of "companionate marriage" had in fact developed in the Swabian or European nobility of the sixteenth century.

Part 3, "Sexuality," is perhaps the most innovative section of the book. Hurwich here briefly explores one of the most unusual parts of the work, the use of the bawdy stories (Schwänke) that make up a significant portion of the chronicle. She asks why Froben Christoph included them and points out that they generally highlight male (as opposed to female) sexual impropriety. By looking at Froben Christoph's presentation of real and literary cases of concubinage and other instances of unsanctioned sexual behavior within the family, Hurwich demonstrates what she argues is a complex attitude towards sex outside of marriage among the nobility: one that accepts concubinage but is greatly concerned with female sexual honor among noblewomen. Most of her findings show that the Zimmern family's sexual behavior and moral attitudes were highly conventional, in keeping with patterns among the German and European nobility. However, she argues that Froben Christoph's view on male adultery is highly personal since he "strongly identified with his mother's cause" following his father's desertion (p. 182) and developed a distaste for the "immorality" around him beginning in his student days. Generally, however, she finds Froben Christoph, like many noblemen, open in his attitudes towards sex outside of marriage.

In the remainder of the book, Hurwich outlines how sixteenth-century shifts in legal sanctions against male adultery, concubinage, and illegitimate children did not fully change noble attitudes. In particular, Hurwich presents an interesting social study of the concubines Froben Christoph discusses within a larger context of noble concubinage, an understudied subject. She is able to reconstruct elements of their social status and demonstrates how Froben Christoph's generally benign attitude towards concubinage, like that of many of his peers, contrasted greatly with legal and theological condemnation of the practice during the Reformation. Hurwich also finds that the Zimmern family, like many noble families, provided for their illegitimate children by giving them property and expecting family loyalty, but with some sense that they should not be considered "noble" or full family members. Froben Christoph particularly criticized family members whom he felt gave their illegitimate offspring too much attention and thus acted inappropriately.

Despite the interesting quality of much of this information, one major problem with this work is the repetitiveness of the main stories told. Sometimes, Hurwich looks at various incidents from a different methodological perspective in different parts of the book. However, at other times, the same story is repeated almost verbatim within a few pages. She also argues that Froben Christoph "internalized the ecclesiastical model" of limiting sexual activity to marriage in his views on adultery and extramarital sex (p. 10). The argument at the heart of the book--which tries to generalize from one perspective to the experience of the nobility at large--is less credible precisely because Hurwich attributes much of the chronicle to the personal sentiments of Froben Christoph. Changes in his attitude are thus only hypothetically related to similar changes among the nobility. This tension between anecdotal evidence and larger trends among the European nobility makes this book both an interesting read and a frustrating one. Nonetheless, it presents a rare glimpse at one individual's presentation of personal views on family life and marital rules. Hurwich also does an interesting job of contextualizing some of the broader issues around marriage, family interests, and sexual attitudes that influenced shifting noble views in sixteenth-century Swabia.

Notes

[1]. Erica Bastress-Dukehart, The Zimmern Chronicle: Nobility, Memory and Self-Representation in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); and Gerhard Wolf, Von der Chronik zum Weltbuch: Sinn und Anspruch südwestdeutscher Hauschroniken am Ausgang des Mittelalters (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002).

[2]. Karl-Heinz Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft im deutschen Hochadel des Spätmittelalters (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1993).

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Citation: Beth Plummer. Review of Hurwich, Judith J., Noble Strategies: Marriage and Sexuality in the Zimmern Chronicle. H-German, H-Net Reviews. July, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14730

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