{"id":16966,"date":"2021-10-18T01:00:54","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T05:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erotica-readers.com\/?p=16966"},"modified":"2021-10-15T18:19:58","modified_gmt":"2021-10-15T22:19:58","slug":"the-ruined-girl-illicit-love-in-18th-century-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erotica-readers.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/18\/the-ruined-girl-illicit-love-in-18th-century-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Ruined Girl\u201d: Illicit Love in 18th Century Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n When you\u2019re completely immersed in 18th century German church records\u2014as I must confess I am<\/a>\u2014the one word you see over and over is \u201clegitimate.\u201d In birth, marriage, and even death records for children and unmarried youth, the \u201clegitimacy\u201d of a daughter or son accompanies each entry as if it were a middle name.<\/p>\n I began to wonder if any child was ever noted as \u201cillegitimate.\u201d Soon enough, those records began to emerge as well. As one might expect, these irregular situations got more attention from the priest scribe. The formula of date of birth, name of child, name and residence of parents and godparent required additional discussion of the identity of the father or the lack thereof.<\/p>\n As we storytellers know, the unusual situation gets more attention from the reader as well. Thanks to the services of a kind family member who has studied Latin, we can get a glimpse into dramas of illicit love in 18th-century Germany.<\/p>\n My first example actually dates back to the 17th century, which shows that extramarital relations most definitely did not begin in 1963, as the poet Philip Larkin suggested in his brilliant poem of social commentary, \u201cAnnus Mirabilis<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n On the contrary, we have evidence in these church records that extramarital sex occurred several times all the way back in 1677<\/a>. That\u2019s when a woman named Margarethe, who was not given a surname, gave birth to a boy she named Hieronymus.<\/p>\n In the church record, the priest notes: \u201cThe identity of the father, or fathers, is thought to be one of the soldiers from L\u00fcnnenburg who were here this year in the wintertime.\u201d One assumes he knew there could only be one biological father, but Margarethe\u2019s interactions with a number of different soldiers was apparently noted and condemned in the record for twenty-first-century readers to ponder.<\/p>\n Not all of the villagers were as judgmental. Young Hieronymus Reber agreed to stand as the babe\u2019s baptismal sponsor, and my seventh-great-grandfather, Nicholaus Hufnagel, served as an additional witness. It was unusual to have two people stand as sponsors. I like to think that Grandpa Nick understood that poor Margarethe was doing the best she could and needed the extra support of her friends.<\/p>\n During the 18th century, the mothers of illegitimate children tend to be out-of-towners, with unusual surnames, making me wonder if they sought to have the birth recorded in a neighboring parish so as to escape the sanctioning eye of the neighborhood. Generally the priest names a father and the circumstances through which his identify was discovered. One father was a French commissar, another a traveling salesman, men who could escape responsibility easily. Sadly, many of the babies died soon after birth.<\/p>\n In one case in 1720, a sick mother who had recently lost her illegitimate child was being cared for by friends in the parish of Somborn. The priest visited her every day and his kindness apparently swayed the Protestant woman into considering conversion to Catholicism. The priest notes that the woman passed away before she could officially convert, but he absolved her of her sins before she died and buried her in a Catholic ceremony anyway.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t but help see the exultation of victory in the way he underlined \u201cCatholic rite\u201d in et in Ca\u2019met: Somb: ritu Catholica<\/u> Sepulta est <\/em>[buried in the cemetery in Somborn by the Catholic rite]. Hopefully St. Peter took note when the woman passed through the Pearly Gates.<\/p>\n While illegitimate births were rare in the 17th and 18th-century records, the 19th century sees an explosion of children born out of wedlock. Perhaps the Napoleonic Wars made young people more willing to seize pleasure in the moment?<\/p>\n In 1821<\/a>, Magdalena, the wife of Jakob Kreis who was a soldier serving in Austria, gave birth to a son fathered by a local widower named Konrad Schreiber. Although the record is disapproving, a modern reader can\u2019t help but imagine the two providing comfort for each other in their loneliness.<\/p>\n