Jahrbuch für Europäische Geschichte / European History Yearbook. Band 18 Housing Capital: Resource and Representation 9783110532241, 9783110529944

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Jahrbuch für Europäische Geschichte. European History Yearbook

Jahrbuch für Europäische Geschichte European History Yearbook

Herausgegeben von Johannes Paulmann in Verbindung mit Markus Friedrich und Nick Stargardt Edited by Johannes Paulmann in cooperation with Markus Friedrich and Nick Stargardt

Band/Volume 18

Housing Capital Resource and Representation Edited by Simone Derix and Margareth Lanzinger

Herausgegeben am Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte von Johannes Paulmann in Verbindung mit Markus Friedrich und Nick Stargardt Gründungsherausgeber: Heinz Duchhardt

ISBN 978-3-11-052994-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-053224-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-053002-5 ISSN 1616–6485

Die Online Ausgabe steht unter einer Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz (vgl. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/de/). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Titelbild: Traditional Flemish architecture in Bruges, Flanders, Belgium © Alexander Spatari / Moment / gettyimages Satz: Konvertus, Haarlem Druck und Bindung: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Contents Simone Derix and Margareth Lanzinger Housing Capital: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Multifaceted Resource   1 Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith Houses and the Range of Wealth in Early Modern Gender- and Intergenerational Relationships   14 Julia A. Schmidt-Funke Haushaben: Houses as Resources in Early Modern Frankfurt 

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Alice Detjen Transforming the House: The Photography of Julia Margaret Cameron 

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Monika Szczepaniak The Country House as a Transitory Locus for Soldiers in Polish Literature on the First World War   72 Uta Bretschneider New Farmsteads in the SOZ/GDR: Politicial Implications and Adaptation Processes   88 Jonathan Voges Maintaining, Repairing, Refurbishing: The Western German Do-it-Yourselfers and their Homes   109

Forum Manfred Sing Against All Odds: How to Re-Inscribe Islam into European History  List of Contributors 

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Housing Capital: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Multifaceted Resource A House is more than just a House The house stands at the epicenter of current events, and to replace the word “house” with “real estate” is almost unavoidably to evoke a chain of associations linking houses with speculation, unsecured loans, and the most recent financial crises. Indeed, it has long been real estate that, again and again, acts as the focal point of financial bubbles and financial crises.1 On closer examination, and viewed from a buyer’s perspective, a real estate bubble – which may seem quite abstract at first glance – reveals itself to be a web of hopes and dreams coupled with the assessment of various risks. Which is to say: a house is always more than just a house. It is the dream of a place of one’s own, or of long-term financial security through home ownership. To facilitate its realization, various regional and country-specific forms of financing – a diverse array of models based on savings and credit – have been developed. And the differences between these explain, in turn, why Canadians and Americans generally purchase homes far earlier in life than do, for example, Germans.2 Housing as capital thus opens up insights into the parameters of individual life opportunities as well as new perspectives on the material foundations of ways in which families live together. It does so in terms of imponderables that could see a house turned into a bankruptcy asset;3 when houses are sold at auction or have to be sold cheaply due to divorce, for example, they become protagonists in stories of loss. Sawed-through kitchen furnishings and double beds likewise represent material manifestations of a kind of separation that affected

1 For analysis of the period between 1870 and the present based on data from 17 countries, see Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick and Alan M. Taylor: The Great Mortgaging. Housing Finance, Crises and Business Cycles, in: Economic Policy 31, no. 85 (2016), 107–152. 2 The findings of an ING-DiBA-commissioned international comparative study done in 2012 by TNS indicated that the average age at which individuals purchased dwellings in Germany was 34, as opposed to 27 in Great Britain. The study itself cannot currently be accessed online, but a summary of its central findings can be found at URL: https://www.ing-diba.de/ueber-uns/presse/ pressemitteilungen/immobilien-erwerb-mama-und-papa-zahlen-haeufig-mit/ (4 Feb. 2017). 3 For findings in the case of Switzerland, see Mischa Suter: Rechtstrieb. Schulden und Vollstreckung im liberalen Kapitalismus 1800–1900. Konstanz 2016. DOI 10.1515/9783110532241-001, © 2017 Simone Derix and Margareth Lanzinger, published by De Gruyter. Die Online Ausgabe steht unter einer Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz.

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not only relationships but also houses, which can always be viewed as ensembles of various things.4 In situations such as these, albeit not only these, the social dimension of houses as capital comes into view. Houses are visible expressions of social status, professionalization, and social position, and in this sense embody a representative resource – both in individual résumés as well as for the standing of families in an intergenerational sense. As commercial offices, workshops, retail establishments, and storage spaces, as places of medical and legal practice, as agricultural properties, etc., they served and continue to serve as means of production, as places of work, and as a basis for the calculation of taxes and other levies. Conversely, houses can generate not only social but also material capital for their owners if they are rented out, leased, or sold. They are simultaneously involved in broader economic logics and processes as investment objects and loan collateral. They can be a sign of upward and downward social mobility, as well as points of departure or return. So it is in numerous senses that houses ­represent an essential resource. In recent times, houses’ potential as objects of scholarly study has been demonstrated anew. Since its establishment in 1986, the journal Housing Studies – focused on the analysis of present-day phenomena – has grown into a central forum for house-related research in the fields of urban studies, political science, sociology, law, and geography. Since 2012, there has been a handbook that summarizes central approaches and findings in this area of research.5 Recent years have also seen historians devote increased attention to trans-epochal and interdisciplinary research on houses. On this, as well, there is now a handbook (­published in 2015) that bundles the central perspectives of European research with a focus running from the early modern period to the nineteenth century.6

4 Since as early as the Middle Ages, the German language has contained the expression (­originally derived from a shame sanction) “cut up the tablecloth,” referring to the act of ending a friendship or to the dissolution of a social group. Before this backdrop, houses and household items cut in half by couples in the context of divorces have a long tradition; see Nach der ­Scheidung: Paar zersägt Haus in zwei Teile, in: B.Z., 10 Oct. 2008; Olivia B. Waxman: This German Man Gave His Ex Literally Half of All Their Possessions, in: TIME, 19 June 2015, URL: http://time. com/3928145/german-man-divorce-ebay-video-half/ (4 Feb. 2017). 5 See David F. Clapham, William A. V. Clark and Kenneth Gibb (eds.): The SAGE Handbook of Housing Studies. London 2012. 6 One can refer here to the annual conferences of the working group “Haus im Kontext. Kommunikation und Lebenswelt,” (“Contextualizing the House. Communication and Lifeworld”) which formed in 2008 at the initiative of Inken Schmidt-Voges and Joachim Eibach. For interim findings from this multi-year exchange, see: Joachim Eibach and Inken Schmidt-Voges (eds.) Das Haus in der Geschichte Europas. Ein Handbuch. Berlin 2015.



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“Housing capital” refers first of all (in the sense of Pierre Bourdieu) to the exchangeability of various sorts of capital linked to the house. The house is thus examined as economic capital, albeit not exclusively in the sense of an object whose value is determined in a marketplace via the mechanism of price discovery.7 The present special issue also illuminates the house as something that is a store of value (hopefully) as well as an investment object, a complex interchange of related rights and obligations, and a resource via which to situate individual persons and groups in a given society. The house affords people a place in a neighborhood, a community, a region, and a (nation-)state, and it in turn allows them to be found by such entities in various ways. We thus turn our gaze onto the house as a material resource in the economic sense while at the same time shedding light on its integrally linked significance as a social, political, and symbolic resource. Precisely the fact that the house represents a resource in such diverse ways gives rise to ever-new constellations in which one can analyze the specific latitudes for action linked with the house-as-capital at various times and in various geographic settings. The German term Vermögen,8 in contrast to the English term “capital,” implies precisely this linkage of material resource and latitude for action. For Vermögen can denote not only assets, but also the opportunity and/or ability to do something.9 With this in mind, the present special issue thus presents exemplary approaches and perspectivizations – ones that we believe might be especially productive for future research and that we would now like to briefly sketch.

The House as a Bearer of Rights and Obligations A productive approach from a historical perspective is to start by asking questions with regard to the contexts in which houses themselves were bearers of both rights and obligations, and by asking which matters involving jurisdiction or competence were organized with reference to houses (which were perceived 7 On this, see Peter Boelhouwer, John Doling and Marja Elsinga (eds.): Home Ownership. Getting in, Getting from, Getting out. Delft 2005; Thomas Steger, Katharina Knoll and Moritz Schularick: No Price Like Home: Global House Prices, 1870–2012, in: Beiträge zur Jahrestagung des Vereins für  Socialpolitik: Ökonomische Entwicklung – Theorie und Politik – Session: Housing and the ­Macroecomony, No. C06-V2, URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/112848 [4 Feb. 2017]. 8 The idea for this special issue, and for five of the six contributions it contains, originated at the 2016 conference “Haus als Vermögen” (The House as Capital) co-funded by the Jenacon Foundation. 9 On the history, semantic dimensions, and analytical potential of Vermögen as a term, see ­Simone Derix: Die Thysssens. Familie und Vermögen. Paderborn 2016, Introduction.

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as stable) rather than with reference to persons (who were subject to fluctuation). For the early modern period and up to the middle of the nineteenth century, such an approach proves especially productive where communities as well as smaller units such as neighborhoods had administrative competencies – such as in cities, in market towns, and in rural areas where manorial structures did not play a major role. The classic cases were rights to use to common land, as well as grazing rights on seasonal mountain pastures that were assigned to certain houses and farms. In the same way, numerous trades and commercial enterprises – particularly capital-­intensive ones – had been linked with houses since the medieval period. Just as they sometimes came with outbuildings and furniture, houses could also possess commercial concessions or so-called trade rights, which owners acquired along with the houses themselves. And in the same way, responsibilities that lay in the public interest – like the organization of ad hoc fire brigades or tending to the common breeding bull in rural areas – were likewise allocated to houses, sometimes in a system of annual rotation.10 So viewed in these contexts, the house performed a bridging function of sorts between its occupants and the broader social and political order of a neighborhood, a village, a market town, or a city district.

The House as Inheritance At the same time, houses as capital afford deep insights into the material structure of societies. One thinks here, for example, of the house as inheritance – for inheritance is more than just an intersubjective act of passing something on from one generation to the next. Then as now, willing and inheriting are by no means as “private” in nature as they are often taken to be in public discourse. On the contrary, inheritance practices contribute decisively to the perpetuation of social structures and the reinforcement of social inequality.11 But the post-French ­Revolution debates having to do with egalitarianism, such as over the abolition of inheritance and/or decedents’ right to unfettered distribution of their estates,

10 See Margareth Lanzinger: Das gesicherte Erbe. Heirat in lokalen und familialen Kontexten, ­Innichen 1700–1900. Vienna 2003, Chapter 3. 11 This debate was recently catalyzed in a prominent way by a book by Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA 2014, and for a critical response to Piketty with an eye to housing capital, see Odran Bonnet, Pierre-Henri Bono, Guillaume Chapelle and Étienne Wasmer: Does Housing Capital Contribute to Inequality? A Comment on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century?, Sciences Po, Department of Economics, Discussion Paper, 17 April 2014.



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faded away without having had a noticeable impact on law or practice.12 Over the coming ten years, in Germany alone, 3.1 trillion euros’ worth of capital will be inherited; two thirds of this – i. e., 2.1 trillion euros – will be passed on from parents to their children.13 At the same time, these monetary figures taken from economists’ calculations render invisible just what kinds of capital are involved, here; just how much house is contained in these 3.1 trillion euros? Surrounding historical housing-related issues and policies having to do with to both social and political orders, one finds older debates of the 1970s that had to do above all with issues of demographics and population theory.14 These were based on the so-called “Stellenprinzip” (place- or niche-principle), according to which the house as a place was considered to be something on which to base one’s livelihood. Excessively schematic ways of viewing this evoke mental images such as that of the “iron chain between procreation and inheritance.”15 The underlying assumption was that marriage (and hence the establishment of a family) was tied both temporally and economically to the presence of a livelihood-securing “place” – in the form of a farm or a trade or commercial business – and that such a “place” was typically transferred solely by way of inheritance. Since the 1970s, however, abundant and well-founded criticism has been aimed at this mechanistic position.16 After all, it overlooks the fact that houses were also purchased, leased, shared, and enlarged, and that residential space could be rented; that alongside houses that made it possible to earn a living in this or that manner, there also existed income-producing fields of non-agricultural economic activity in agrarian societies – most visibly proto-industrialization in the area of textiles,17

12 See Jens Beckert: Erbschaft und Leistungsprinzip. Dilemmata liberalen Denkens, in: Kursbuch 135 (1999), 41–63; id.: Unverdientes Vermögen. Soziologie des Erbrechts. Frankfurt a. M. 2004. 13 See URL: http://www.empirica-institut.de/nc/nachrichten/details/nachricht/erben-indeutschland-2015–24/ (4 Feb. 2017). 14 Population theory-related approaches by Thomas Malthus and Gerhard Mackenroth were important points of reference in this regard. 15 This type of description is based on Charles Tilly and Richard Tilly: Agenda for European Economic History in the 1970s, in: The Journal of Economic History 31 (1971), 184–198, 189. See also Hermann Zeitlhofer: Die ‚eisernen Ketten‘ der Heirat: Eine Diskussion des Modells der ‚öko­ nomischen Nischen‘ am Beispiel der südböhmischen Pfarre Kapličky, 1640–1840, in: Christophe Duhamelle and Jürgen Schlumbohm (eds.): Eheschließungen im Europa des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts. Muster und Strategien. Göttingen 2003, 35–63. 16 See Georg Fertig: “Wenn zwei Menschen eine Stelle sehen”: Heirat, Besitztransfer und Lebens­ lauf im ländlichen Westfalen des 19. Jahrhunderts, in: Duhamelle/Schlumbohm, Eheschließungen, 93–124. 17 A classic work here is Peter Kriedte, Hans Medick and Jürgen Schlumbohm: Die Industrialisierung vor der Industrialisierung. Gewerbliche Warenproduktion auf dem Land in der Formationsperiode

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but also including more or less profitable pursuits ranging from running shops to activities in so-called economic niches. And last but not least, it was by no means all couples that adhered to the sequence postulated by the prevailing political order, this being: a place that secured one’s livelihood, followed by marriage and then children. What is more, there were also economically founded marriage restrictions enforced by public administrative authorities that existed during the early modern period and were in some respects even more pervasive during the nineteenth century. They affected couples that neither owned real estate nor commanded an income that was considered adequate and sufficiently reliable.18 In such contexts, the issue of home ownership produced inclusion and participation or exclusion and marginalization – and frequently caused such conditions to persist over the long term. The inclusive effects of house ownership – and vice versa, if absent, the exclusive effects – become particularly obvious in Julia A. Schmidt-Funke’s contribution about Frankfurt in the early modern period. It starts with the fact that civic status has been the precondition for acquiring urban real estate and leads – based on the model of the Ganerbschaft – to persistent house ownership over centuries by patrician kinship groups. Moreover, the prestige of centrally located houses conveyed to their inhabitants – primarily patricians – even though they were only rented. This is also demonstrated by the high mobility and fluctuation of property among wealthy families – an aspect that so far has not been sufficiently taken into account in property related historiographic debates. At the same time, houses in Frankfurt as a city of commerce and trade fairs could generate c­ onsiderable income for the wider population, especially, if foreign merchants signed rental agreements for accommodation or storage place for numerous years and/or at high prices. In both historical kinship research and gender history, the past few years have seen attention devoted to the implications of bequeathal and inheritance –

des Kapitalismus. Göttingen 1977; on this, see also Markus Cerman and Sheilagh C. Ogilvie (eds.): Proto-Industrialisierung in Europa. Industrielle Produktion vor dem Fabrikzeitalter. Vienna 1994. 18 See Karin Gröwer: Wilde Ehen im 19. Jahrhundert. Die Unterschichten zwischen städtischer Bevölkerungspolitik und polizeilicher Repression. Hamburg – Bremen – Lübeck. Berlin 1999; Klaus-Jürgen Matz: Pauperismus und Bevölkerung. Die gesetzlichen Ehebeschränkungen in den süddeutschen Staaten während des 19. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart 1980; Elisabeth Mantl: Legal Restrictions on Marriage: Marriage and Inequality in the Austrian Tyrol during the Nineteenth Century, in: The History of the Family 4, no. 2 (1999), 185–207; Anne-Lise Head-König: Forced Marriages and Forbidden Marriages in Switzerland: State Control of the Formation of Marriages in Catholic and Protestant Cantons in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, in: Continuity and Change 8 (1993), 441–465; Lanzinger, Das gesicherte Erbe, 126–136.



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especially the bequeathal of houses and of land – from new ­perspectives.19 This includes questions as to the resulting inequality between siblings and between men and women.20 A productive approach here is to look at the interplay between inheritance and marital property arrangements, analyzing the spheres of agency occupied particularly by those people who found themselves in an in-between situation of sorts – such as women and men who had married into a household.21 Aspects such as these were subject to laws that differed greatly between Europe’s diverse regions, and their practical application and consequences differed no less greatly. Nowadays, inheritance conflicts make up a large share of the family law cases brought before the courts.22 And in past centuries, too, inheritance was a bone of legal contention. To a certain extent, just who fought whom adhered to a system – for some constellations and situations had an inherently high potential for ­conflict due to axes of competition that were structural in nature. This raises questions with regard to forms of conflict avoidance, compromise, and pacification. How, for example, did stepfamilies with children from different

19 See Stefan Willer, Sigrid Weigel and Bernhard Jussen (eds.): Erbe: Übertragungskonzepte zwischen Natur und Kultur. Berlin 2013; David Warren Sabean, Simon Teuscher and Jon Mathieu (eds.): Kinship in Europe. Approaches to Long-Term Development (1300–1900). New York 2007; Michaela Hohkamp: Wer will erben? Überlegungen zur Erbpraxis in geschlechtsspezifischer Perspektive in der Herrschaft Triberg von 1654–1806, in: Jan Peters (ed.): Gutsherrschaft als soziales Modell. Vergleichende Betrachtungen zur Funktionsweise frühneuzeitlicher Agrargesellschaften. Munich 1995, 327–341; Margareth Lanzinger: Vererbung: Soziale und rechtliche, materielle und symbolische Aspekte, in: Eibach/Schmidt-Voges: Das Haus in der Geschichte Europas, 319–336. 20 See Christopher H. Johnson and David Warren Sabean (eds.): Sibling Relations & the Transformation of European Kinship 1300–1900. New York 2011; Bernard Derouet: Political Power, Inheritance, and Kinship Relations: The Unique Features of Southern France (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries), in: Sabean,Teuscher and Mathieu: Kinship in Europe, 105–124; Jürgen Schlumbohm: Lebensläufe, Familien, Höfe. Die Bauern und Heuerleute des Osnabrückischen Kirchspiels Belm in proto-industrieller Zeit, 1650–1860. Göttingen 1994; Christine Fertig: Familie, verwandtschaftliche Netzwerke und Klassenbildung im ländlichen Westfalen (1750–1874). Stuttgart 2012; Derix, Die Thyssens. 21 See Margareth Lanzinger, Gunda Barth-Scalmani, Ellinor Forster and Gertrude Langer-­ Ostrawsky: Aushandeln von Ehe. Heiratsverträge der Neuzeit im europäischen Vergleich. Cologne 2015 (second edition); Gabriela Signori: Von der Paradiesehe zur Gütergemeinschaft. Die Ehe in der mittelalterlichen Lebens- und Vorstellungswelt. Frankfurt a. M. 2011; Stefan Brakensiek, ­Michael Stolleis and Heide Wunder (eds.): Generationengerechtigkeit? Normen und Praxis im Erb- und Ehegüterrecht 1500–1850. Berlin 2006. 22 See Dirk van Laak: Was bleibt? Erben und Vererben als Themen der zeithistorischen ­Forschung, in: Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 13 (2016), 136–150; Jürgen Dinkel and Dirk van Laak (eds.): Reader – Erben und Vererben in der Moderne. Justus-­ Liebig-Universität Gießen, Juli 2016, URL: http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/daten/2017/ Dinkel-vanLaak-Erben-und-Vererben-in-der-Moderne-2016.pdf (4 Aug. 2017).

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marriages organize inheritance?23 As a legal instrument, there was the so-called Einkindschaft – a solution according to which children of different parents were treated as if they were of the same blood in terms of inheritance rights. Or a widower might give his children to his new wife as a morning gift – likewise with the goal of ensuring them inheritance rights equal to those of any future children.24 Studies that take into account the differing positions of women and men and their divergent interests reveal that houses were involved – far more in past societies than in today’s, and beyond the aforementioned attached rights pertaining to relationships with the outside world – in verbal agreements and contractual arrangements that modeled the matrimonial, familial, and ­kinship-related orders that existed within them. Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith, in their contribution, start from a broad notion of wealth that includes contractual rights and considers the house in relation to mobile assets and ways of estimating wealth. Their emphasis lies on gender and intergenerational relationships. Such an approach affords insights into models of social order and attributions of value: regarding the significance of house ownership in early modern societies, even if the house at issue was just a small cottage (Seldenhaus), and regarding figurations of inequality that began with the preferential succession of sons and persisted mainly for women (due to the separation of marital property that prevailed in Tyrol), but also for men who had married into a property. In the setting examined by Lanzinger and Maegraith, the priority given to the inheritance claims of progeny and (in cases of childlessness) of relatives turns out to be a central ordering category with regard to houses and capital.

The House as the Capital of Mobile People The idea of identifying the house with a state of being anchored or rooted is based on a characteristic of houses that can all too easily be taken for granted – namely, the fact that they can be moved only with difficulty and therefore tend 23 See Sylvie Perrier: La marâtre dans la France d’Ancien Régime: integration ou marginalité? in: Annales de démographie historique 2 (2006), 171–187. In this area, a great deal of research remains to be done. A volume on stepfamilies is currently in preparation: Lyndan Warner (ed.): Stepfamilies in Europe, 1400 to 1800. London 2017 (forthcoming). 24 See Gabriela Signori: Pflegekinder, Stiefkinder, Morgengabskinder: Formen sozialer Elternbzw. sozialer Kindschaft in der Gesellschaft des Spätmittelalters, in: Johannes F.K. Schmidt et al. (eds.): Freundschaft und Verwandtschaft. Zur Unterscheidung und Verflechtung zweier Bezie­ hungssysteme. Konstanz 2007, 165–180.



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to remain in one place. Houses, this fundamental concept holds, have a fixed ­location.25 And for a long time, houses’ immobility represented a political and social resource. For as stable places, they gave and still do give their inhabitants a fixed place in the world.26 But in light of accelerated and highly mobile ways of life, recent times have seen more and more house-concepts developed that work to eliminate the immobility of one’s own four walls and transform the house from an immobile asset into a mobile one – although it is very unlikely that mobile houses will become as important as there immobile precursors.27 One thinks here of so-called “tiny houses” – i. e., houses with very little floor space that not only have the environmental advantage of using comparatively little energy, but are often also easier to put up and take down and even be transported for use as construction site housing or circus wagons.28 The specific case of houses made from retired cargo ship containers even entails a reclassification – from housing for mobile wares to housing for mobile people and their possessions.29 One of the ideals upon which these new house-concepts rest is that houses should no longer limit people in their mobility but rather weigh them down with as little ballast as possible. At the same time, such houses do justice to the idea that, though mobile people may not need a house as property, they do need it as a place of storage or store of value for their – still present, albeit low-volume – physical belongings. Because while immobile houses have always forced people and their things to move out when a location change became necessary, the mobile house equips its owners with the – at least theoretical – privilege of being mobile while remaining in the same environment.

25 As an example, see Christian Siedenbiedel: Versuchen Sie einmal, ein Haus wegzutragen. Das Haus in Zeiten steigender Preise, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 Jul. 2014. 26 On irritations and problems experienced by the Numbering Commissions with “moveable” houses, see Anton Tantner: Die Unordnung der Häuser. Eine heterotopologische Miszelle, in: Wiener Zeitschrift zur Geschichte der Neuzeit 4, no. 1 (2004), 114–8. 27 The fact that this idea has historical forerunners is shown, for example, by a practice widespread in Chicago from the 1830s to the 1850s, in which the city’s inhabitants derived benefit from the balloon frame construction of their houses (invented by George W. Snow) by taking them down when needed in order to put them up again at a location of their choice. See Ann Durkin Keating: House Moving, in: Encyclopedia of Chicago, URL: http://www.encyclopedia.­ chicagohistory.org/pages/605.html (4 Feb. 2017). 28 US-based architect Sarah Susanka is viewed as the initiator of the “Small House Movement”, see Sarah Susanka: The Not So Big House. A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live. Newtown 1998. 29 In Amsterdam, 2006 saw an entire residential development (the “Wenckehof”) built out of containers, see Living in a Steel Box: Are Shipping Containers Really the Future of Housing?, in: The Guardian, 9 Oct. 2015.

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The question as to houses’ mobility and immobility thus gives rise to its own potential for inquiries, particularly in a transnational setting. Both the history of migration and research on transnational lives emphasize the significance of houses for people of cross-border mobility in particular. The desire to own one’s home can be a motivation behind migration; conversely, houses in a new place can reproduce, imitate, or quote the living environments left behind by their inhabitants in their places of origin.30 The contribution by Alice Detjen shows this with the example of the “Dimbola Lodge.” The Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron used this estate on the Isle of Wight as a reminder to the house in which she had long lived on her parents’ Ceylon plantation. It makes clear that, for repatriated British-Indians, the house – as a social, symbolic, and identity-­ forming resource – represented capital in multiple respects: it bridged the gap both to another continent and to British society. Human mobility was and still is something that takes place in widely varying conditions and contexts. Cameron’s “transnational house,” for instance, seems to embody a privilege when one contrasts it with the situation of people who are forced to flee their homes. The latter are often forced not simply to leave behind their houses, but to flee them at short notice due to war and destruction – thus also losing the mobile accessories and valuables that had been stored therein.31 Upon arrival at the destination of their escape, they are awaited not by a home but rather by mere lodgings, accompanied by dreams of return to their old houses or of building new ones. Destruction by wars, fires, or environmental catastrophes32 in the short or long term can also uproot social orders. And such breaks can simultaneously open up spaces for the imaginative capital of the house, for the imagination of permanence, and for hopes and dreams linked with the idea of the house as a bearer of continuity and as a synonym for a good life. Particularly in the context of war, the motif of longing for one’s “home” is quite strongly present – as a counter-notion to the military movements that soldiers often experience as displacement. The opportunity to live in a house even 30 For an overview of this thematic complex, see Simone Derix: Haus und Translokalität, in: Eibach and Schmidt-Voges, Das Haus in der Geschichte Europas, 589–604. 31 Bielefeld-based social anthropologist Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka holds that one can recognize the “binding power of ownership and contracts” in how people in life-threatening situations are able only with difficulty to separate themselves from their houses and the things contained therein. The term “belongings” linguistically documents the relationship between things and the belonging that they can facilitate, Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka: Zugehörigkeit in der mobilen Welt. Politiken der Verortung. Göttingen 2012, 34. 32 On London’s reconstruction following a horrific 4-day fire in September 1666 with a new ­concept oriented toward the middle class, see Christoph Heyl: A Passion for Privacy. Untersuchungen zur Genese der bürgerlichen Privatsphäre in London, 1660–1800. Munich 2004.



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for a short while is experienced as a replacement and/or and compensation for this fundamental loss. As the work of Monika Szczepaniak finds, Polish novels, short stories, and poems about World War One describe rural estates of the nobility as places where Polish soldiers felt privileged to be stationed. In that case, the country house as a space of transit for soldiers was imbued with multiple associations: it was nationalistically connoted via reminiscences of the battles for the independence of Poland, and it also bore a familial connotation – as transported via the image of the young woman waiting at the window – that contrasted ­atmospherically with the aforementioned military character. Alongside such temporary appropriations, one can also observe numerous processes of expropriating and redistributing house ownership – particularly by the state during the twentieth century – in the context of discrimination according to categories of “race” and ethnic belonging33 or discrimination based on religion, worldview, and/or social class. A further central context is that of changing state regimes and systems. The question of how such political transformation manifested itself in the context of house ownership is examined by Uta Bretschneider with reference to the permanent redistribution of houses and land resulting from the land reform implemented in Soviet-occupied East Germany between 1945 and 1948. New structures were put up on the expropriated land and, together with preexisting houses, given to the so-called Neubauer (new farmers). Bretschneider analyzes this process in light of tense interplay between state policy and the ­Neubauer group’s appropriative practices. For these people, who included numerous refugees and exiles, the houses and the land attached to them represented not only the economic basis of their existence, but also – amidst a new society – their own places to which they were quite literally “bound”. For they were permitted neither to sell such properties nor to lease or mortgage them.

One’s Own Home as a Capital-Intensive Project Housing capital is intimately linked with social persistence – a fact that, during the modern era, was increasingly a focus of public policy. The line of demarcation between the “housed” and the “unhoused” tended to grow more severe – in

33 For an overview regarding National Socialist-era Aryanizations, see Constantin Goschler and Philip Ther (eds.): Raub und Restitution. “Arisierung” und Rückerstattung des jüdischen Eigentums in Europa. Frankfurt a. M. 2003, and with a gender history focus Sonja Niederacher: Eigentum und Geschlecht. Jüdische Unternehmerfamilien (1900–1960). Vienna 2012, especially Chapter 3.

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parallel with the establishment of a society based on regular employment and the standard biography.34 The distinction between sedentary and mobile was also a central phenomenon of colonial relationships in cases where nomadic ways of life were forbidden and stigmatized.35 To this day, the house – or, in political diction, the “private home” – is linked with the idea of sedentarism and thus with social predictability.36 Owners of residences are anchored in a state and a society via the medium of their own homes. And states have gone to great expense for this idea of anchoring: Germany’s home ownership subsidy enacted in 2004, which provides a tax break for the purchase of self-occupied houses and apartments on German soil, numbers among the largest state subsidies in the history of the Federal Republic.37 At the same time, houses make visible how people continue to re-appropriate their surroundings, inscribing themselves upon and actively shaping them. From a praxeological perspective, one thinks here of all the various ways of appropriating houses and/or enhancing their value – from maintenance to repairs, ­renovations, and beautification all the way to tearing them down. Undertakings of this sort not only formed bonds within couples and families, but also entailed long-term relationships with banks, public authorities, and construction enterprises. At the same time, houses could also become projects for do-it-yourselfers. Issues to be examined in this context include not only people’s labor on their own houses, but also house-related DIY activities’ costs to and effects on people. This is the focus of Jonathan Voges’ contribution on West Germany’s do-it-yourself movement. For do-it-yourselfers, the house as an object was capital in a dual sense: it was both an expression of their economic status and a metaphor for the do-it-yourselfers’ competence-based productivity. Working on one’s own home thus followed a double-logic of preserving and raising the value of a piece of real estate – even if it, at least financially speaking, hardly paid off. At the same time, the home became a material expression of the self. 34 On the normalization of labor, see Sigrid Wadauer: Immer nur Arbeit? Überlegungen zur Historisierung von Arbeit und Lebensunterhalten, in: Jörn Leonhard and Willibald Steinmetz (eds.): Semantiken von Arbeit: Diachrone und vergleichende Perspektiven. Vienna 2016, 225–245. 35 See Jürgen Osterhammel: Die Verwandlung der Welt. Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. 5, rev. ed. Munich 2010, Chapter VII. 36 Their numbering from the eighteenth century forward marked a significant advance in the state’s ability to document its inhabitants – at first mainly for the purpose of recruiting young men for military service, and subsequently as a basis for population statistics and policies linked thereto. On this, see Anton Tantner: Ordnung der Häuser, Beschreibung der Seelen – Hausnummerierung und Seelenkonskription in der Habsburgermonarchie. Innsbruck 2007. 37 In general, see Björn Egner et  al.: Wohnungspolitik in Deutschland. Positionen – Akteure – ­Instrumente. Darmstadt 2004.



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Conclusions Especially when viewed over long periods, it becomes clear that the house can be addressed as a resource in a multitude of ways: as both a material and an economic resource and, interwoven with it, one that is also social, political, cultural, and symbolic. This is associated not least with the fact that houses exhibit multiple codes that can converge or also drift quite far apart, depending on whether the ­ olitical house is an object of life planning, refuge, loss, or (social order-related) p ideals or financial calculations. Housing as capital can also be addressed from a temporal perspective: it arises as a project and depends upon ongoing care if its deterioration is to be prevented. It requires constant investments – in the form of time, labor, and money – in order to be cleaned, maintained, renovated, remodeled, and/or paid off. The house is linked with dreams of a better or different life in the future, as well as with memories of the past. The house is at once a resource and a projection surface in dealing with a type of impermanence that cannot be eliminated from interpersonal relationships. As inheritance, it entails intergenerational ties that are at times conflict-laden, and it also impacts gender relations – in both cases reaching beyond its own walls. It is thus always both a social and a political resource. For the house, as property, functions not only as a central agency in the relationship between the individual, the family, and society, but is likewise a concern of political rule and the state. This is also true in cases of property’s expropriation or redistribution, something which was characteristic particularly of Europe during the twentieth century. The house serves as an anchor point for outward- and inward-directed relational structures. Housing as capital, however, refers not just to its being a resource, but also to a broad latitude for agency with which it is linked and which can at the same time imply social and political participation. The house as a resource makes possible certain actions – with regard to everyday life, one’s profession, social life, earning potential, etc. – and it is at the same time involved in the settings of certain actions. And housing as capital is usable and available to differing extents dependent on social belonging, gender, and age. In this context, a house can never be considered as separate from the society of other houses in which it is located – and here, it also makes a difference whether a neighborhood is in decline or has just been gentrified. Precisely this interplay on various levels – within and without, of the past and of the future, of projection and reality, of security and loss, of resource and sphere of action – is examined in its historical dimensions on the basis of the examples in the following contributions. And one must always, here, consider the house along with its eminently and immanently political significance, which makes all the clearer just how essential the things of the material world are to a broad-based history of society.

Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith

Houses and the Range of Wealth in Early Modern Gender- and Intergenerational Relationships Abstract: Throughout early modern times, house ownership in the area of southern Tyrol was of high significance. The house formed an economic entity that combined living space as well as workplace and was an assemblage of buildings, plots, objects, investments, and legal claims that served multiple purposes. The land market in this area was interwoven with the privileges accorded to relatives, the constraints of separation of marital property, specific inheritance practices, and an imbalance in gender relations. This contribution discusses the rationale of access to house ownership and the different ways in which access to this could be achieved. We investigate what was considered as constituting a house and what belonged to it. We explore the contemporary definition of a house and ask how the value of a house was determined. Finally, based on brief case studies from rural and urban areas, we explore potential repercussions of the legally structured competing interests of widowers and widows, on the one hand, and relatives, stepchildren, and children, on the other. The resulting analysis demonstrates a variety of situationally shaped solutions that resulted from litigations and negotiations in different social contexts and within a legal framework that clearly favoured descendants and next of kin over widowed spouses. Houses as living and work spaces carry great importance. The questions whether houses were either owned or rented by its occupants, who the owners of the houses were, and how this influenced the social structure of a society remain relevant. In this study, we will discuss the geographic area of southern Tyrol – today part of Italy – during the sixteenth century with references to comparable cases in the eighteenth century to identify changes in legal practices. In this region, house ownership bore extremely high significance not only in rural areas, but also in

Note: This co-authored article is based on the project “Legal Spaces and Gender Order as ­Social Processes in a Trans-Regional Perspective. Negotiating and Stipulating Property in Urban and Rural Contexts of Southern Tyrol from the Fifteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century” (University of Innsbruck | Geschichte und Region / Storia e regione, Bozen/Bolzano), 2014–2015. Both authors, Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith, as well as Christian Hagen, worked on this project. Because of the richness of material and to follow up new questions, the authors are continuing with a new project “The Role of Wealth in Defining and Constituting Kinship Spaces from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century”, financed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). DOI 10.1515/9783110532241-002, © 2017 Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith, published by De Gruyter. Die Online Ausgabe steht unter einer Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz.



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rural towns (Märkte) and in towns themselves throughout early modern times up until the nineteenth century. Similar to other regions, one reason was that the house formed an economic entity that combined living space and workplace, which generated income and served as collateral. On the other hand, in Tyrol a specific meaning of house ownership can be seen in restricted rights of use for communal meadows and alpine pastures, and in restrictive marriage policies: for both, house ownership was an almost unavoidable precondition.1 These factors illustrate the significance of house ownership and how access to a house could mean social, economic and legal participation, not least because house and farm were an integral part of agriculture, and house and workshop in some cases formed the condition for craft and trade entitlements in early modern times. In this region, the land market was only to a small degree governed by market prices. Instead, it was interwoven with privileges of relatives and the constraints of separation of marital property, with inheritance practices, and an imbalance of gender relations. Traditionally, inheritance was regarded as the main intergenerational transfer model of house ownership or claim on a house, especially in German-speaking scholarship. But marital property regimes were just as crucial in this respect: access to house ownership by married and widowed spouses was to a large extent influenced by whether, for example, community or separation of property prevailed. While previous scholarship focused on inheritance and disregarded the interplay with the marital property regime, this paper proposes a broader perspective in incorporating both aspects. The imbalance of gender relations can therefore be seen in inheritance cases between sons and daughters as well as in marital negotiations between husbands and wives or in widowhood. In addition, the separation of marital property, which prevailed in southern Tyrol, gave blood relatives priority as heirs, which can be seen in various privileges such as the so-called Einstandsrecht.2 This right to buy back real estate on the basis of being a relative to the seller within a certain time period added to the complexity of the market. In this contribution, we will discuss the rationale of access to house ownership and the different ways such access could be achieved

1 See Margareth Lanzinger: Das gesicherte Erbe. Heirat in lokalen und familialen Kontexten, Inni­ chen 1700–1900. Vienna 2003; ead.: The House as a Demographic Factor? Elements of a Marriage Pattern under the Auspices of Hindrance Policies, in: Historical Social Research 28, no. 3 (2003), 58–75; Elisabeth Mantl: Legal Restrictions on Marriage: Marriage and Inequality in the Austrian Tyrol during the Nineteenth Century, in: The History of the Family 4, no. 2 (1999), 185–207. 2 From a legal history point of view: Gernot Kocher: Eintrittsrecht, gesetzliches Vorkaufsrecht, Einstandsrecht, in: Reformen des Rechts. Festschrift zur 200-Jahr-Feier der Rechtswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Graz. Graz 1979, 121–136; for the English context: Richard W. Hoyle: Debate. The Land-Family Bond in England, in: Past & Present 146 (1995), 151–173.

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in southern Tyrol. Then we will investigate what constituted a house and what belonged to it. Following the definition of a house, it will be asked how the value of a house was determined and if this corresponded with market values or not. Finally, these aspects will be explored through brief case studies from rural and urban areas representing a diverse social spectrum. Our approach links legal contexts with caseby-case spaces of action showing multiple variations in practice, which depended on the economic and social context and the people involved. With this in mind, exemplary cases are discussed to uncover competing interests and potential for conflict. The main sources are the so-called Verfachbücher, or court records, in Tyrol.3 They contain various documents on all property-related issues such as wills, inheritance proceedings, marriage contracts, guarantees on marriage portions, endowment contracts, land purchase contracts, lease agreements, and property transfers, as well as settlements to resolve conflicts. For this analysis, we could draw on a sample with over 850 documents from early modern Brixen, Kastelruth and Sonnenburg.4 Apart from individual samples which should help to clarify various legal influences, the selection for the present essay covers a town (in this case a diocesan town), a market town and the countryside, ecclesiastic and princely territories. This enables a closer look at the nature of the property and how it was negotiated in towns and in the countryside. For a comparison, the areas analysed in the project also include territories with different inheritance practices such as the division or non-division of property. Because the regions are situated in a transitional legal space, between Italian and German legal cultures, Tyrol represents a highly productive research area.

Unequal Access to House Ownership Access to house ownership or use could be gained in various ways: through purchase on the market or from relatives, through tenure (Bestand), through inheritance or through property transfer during the lifetime of the original property owner. To find out the proportion of purchase, tenure, and inheritance in property transfers is part of ongoing research. But so far it seems that intergenerational property transfer constituted the more important practice for access in 3 On Verfachbücher see Wilfried Beimrohr: Mit Brief und Siegel. Die Gerichte Tirols und ihr älteres Schriftgut im Tiroler Landesarchiv. Innsbruck 1994. 4 Südtiroler Landesarchiv (SLA), A 742 Verfachbuch (VfB) Sonnenburg 1540–1558, 1564–1573 (1559–1563 missing); VfB Sonnenburg 1573–1600; VfB Brixen Stadtgericht 1512–1556 (compilation); VfB Brixen Stadtgericht 1528–1540, 1574, 1598–1600 (1600); VfB Kastelruth 1546, 1557–1561, 1570, 1573, 1770, 1780, 1790.



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house ownership at least in rural areas. This can be seen in the higher number of inheritance proceedings concerning house ownership in the court records than of purchase contracts. For example, in the court district of Sonnenburg in the Puster valley in 1592, three purchase contracts and nine inheritance proceedings of siblings concerning house and farm were found.5 In late eighteenth-century Kastelruth, inheritance proceedings and purchase contracts are nearly equal in number. However, most of the main holdings were still transferred via inheritance, whereas mostly small houses were available on the market.6 If inheritance bore the greatest significance in property transfers, it is important to clarify who inherited in order to identify the social group with most access to landed property. Tyrol is especially interesting, as it had areas with undivided succession as well as partible inheritance.7 In the areas relevant to the present investigation, undivided succession prevailed as inheritance practice.8 The Tiroler Landesordnung (Tyrol law code), which was introduced in 1526 and augmented for 1532 and 1573, and which was effective until the end of the eighteenth century, did not determine a specific inheritance practice.9 However, it stipulated that the son who became principal heir of the estate was granted a higher estimated share than his siblings. The siblings were then paid out from the estate. The preferential treatment of sons was justified in the law code with reference to the need to ­preserve “stem (i. e. family continuity) and name” – no matter which social stratum was concerned.10 In the

5 SLA, VfB Sonnenburg 1592. 6 SLA, VfB Kastelruth 1780: 13 purchase contracts on small houses or farms – three of them on the basis of a right to purchase back for relatives; and 11 cases of inheritance. 7 Rudolf Palme: Die Entwicklung des Erbrechtes im ländlichen Bereich, in: Paul Rösch (ed.): Südtiroler Erbhöfe. Menschen und Geschichten. Bozen 1994, 25–37; Paul Rösch: Lebensläufe und Schicksale. Auswirkungen von zwei unterschiedlichen Erbsitten in Tirol, in: ibid., 61–70. 8 See Christian Hagen, Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith: Competing Interests in Death-related Stipulations in South Tirol c. 1350–1600, in: Mia Korpiola and Anu Lahtinen (eds.): Planning for Death: Wills, Inheritance and Property Strategies in Medieval and Reformation ­Europe. Leiden 2017 (in print). 9 Tiroler Landesordnung (TLO) 1532, 1573. III 8 and 10–17. The Tyrol law code specifies that all assets should go to the natural heirs and kin born in wedlock who were blood relatives. First the descending lines are entitled to inherit, then the parents and then the siblings, their children etc. This applied to the German and Ladin speaking areas but not for the Italian speaking parts of historic Tyrol. 10 TLO 1532, 1573, III 9: “ain zimlicher Vortail / zuerhaltung Stam{m}ens vnd Namens”. According to Joseph Morsel, stem and name can be seen as synonymous with relatives since the late middle ages. Joseph Morsel: Geschlecht und Repräsentation. Beobachtungen zur Verwandtschaftskonstruktion im fränkischen Adel des späten Mittelalters, in: Otto Gerhard Oexle and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch (eds.): Die Repräsentation der Gruppen. Texte – Bilder – Objekte. Göttingen 1998, 259–325, 263–270.

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documents the term Mannsvorteil appears describing this advantage for the male descendants, as can be seen in a case in Brixen, where all three brothers inherited the main estate on the grounds of their Mannsvorteil, whereas their seven sisters were paid out their shares.11 In Sonnenburg, the expression Mannsvorteil was used for the payment of the youngest son if he was not included in the principle heirship and to ensure he received more than his sisters.12 In practice, sons were indeed preferred as successors. First inquiries showed that in most cases one or several sons inherited the main estate which in most cases included real estate.13 But there are cases of so called daughter-heirs. Daughters would inherit the main estate if there were no sons, or the present sons had no interest in the estate, for example if they joined the clergy, or if the sons were regarded as unfit to become successors. In these cases, contracts operated with the term Besitzvorteil (advantage of the property) to retain the logic of the property transfer. Especially eighteenth-century contracts often contain the gender-neutral expression of property advantage, which could therefore also refer to daughters.14 However, the frequent use of the male advantage in our samples means that an imbalance between the sexes and the siblings prevailed concerning access to real estate that was transferred within the family. In our research, we regard intergenerational inheritance and marital property regimes together, because, next to inheritance, marriage constituted a significant context of property transfer. In contrast to the inheritance clause, which left the actual inheritance practice open, separation of property is legally established in the Tyrol law code.15 This regime stipulates that on the death of either spouse, the assets are divided into the original components brought in at marriage and go to the respective heirs, that is, the children of the deceased or, in case of childlessness, the deceased’s next of kin. This distinguishes it from joint property regimes where the widow or widower inherited the estate of their late spouse and, in case of remarriage; the property could be transferred to another spouse. In some cases, this might exclude the children from succession to the property. Separation of property, on the other hand, ensured that the children retained their claim on the parental property or, if there were no children, that 11 SLA, Stadtgericht Brixen 1512–1556, fol. 420–425, 21. Jan. 1546. 12 There are several cases for Sonnenburg, for example SLA, Sonnenburg VfB 1596, 11. June 1596 (no folio numbers), inheritance proceedings of Gall Weidach in Mühlwald. 13 See Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith, “Competing for wealth: Access to landed property and women’s agency in sixteenth century southern Tirol”, paper presented at the SSHA Conference, November 17–20, 2016 in Chicago. 14 See for example the case in Welsberg 1730, given in Margareth Lanzinger et al.: Aushandeln von Ehe. Heiratsverträge der Neuzeit im europäischen Vergleich. Cologne 2015 (2nd edition), 328. 15 TLO 1532, 1573, III 38–45.



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the property would fall back to the next of kin and therefore stay in the bloodline. It also meant that a marriage did not justify any inheritance claims on the assets of the deceased spouse. Here, the descendants’ and relatives’ interests in terms of assets had priority. However, a spouse could bequeath to his or her spouse half the assets which had been acquired; or the option of either a third or the usufruct of all assets which originated from familial property.16 In the case of a house, for example, usufruct could ensure the further use of the house by the widowed spouse. This option was rarely used in rural contexts and, when it was, mainly by childless couples. But in towns such as Brixen such bequests can be found more frequently.17 The limitation of bequests to a third is related to legal constraints on testamentary freedom. Testamentary freedom was handled differently in the German-speaking territories. The practice could span from unrestricted testamentary freedom, for example in Braunschweig, to non-existing testamentary freedom such as in Schleswig where it was barred until the nineteenth century. In some regions, only movables could be bequeathed.18 In comparison, Tyrol’s regulation was situated in the middle. The degree of testamentary freedom in Tyrol depended on the origin of the assets: a bequest of inherited assets was limited to a third. Such assets were not regarded as freely disposable but as part of the claim of the blood relatives and were therefore strictly regulated. Of acquired assets, on the other hand, half could be disposed of freely. These constraints on testamentary freedom had implications for the intergenerational transfer of a house or part of a house and ensured the claims of the blood relatives on familial property. It becomes apparent that the gender imbalance between sons and daughters regarding access to real estate is perpetuated in widowhood between widows and widowers through the regime of separation of property. This poses the question in how far wealth functioned as a significant medium via which kinship spaces were constructed. To answer the question posed at the beginning – who inherited and thus had most access to landed property – we can conclude that the specific inheritance and succession practice as well as separation of property led to a continuous gender imbalance, but also to an imbalance between the siblings: while the principal heir received the house and its appurtenances, the siblings were either paid out with their shares in cash or with an obligation, and had to move 16 TLO 1532, 1573, III 3. 17 Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith: Konkurrenz um Vermögen im südlichen Tirol des 16. Jahrhunderts, in: L’Homme. Z.F.G. 27, no. 1 (2016), 15–31, esp. 21–3. 18 See Peter Landau: Die Testierfreiheit des Deutschen Rechts im späten Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, in: Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Germanistische Abteilung 114, no. 1 (1997), 56–72.

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off the property.19 Their access to house ownership was thereby restricted. They brought their monetary shares into their marriage, but in widowhood, they had to move off the property of their deceased spouse unless it had been negotiated that they could remain in the house. A bequest of lifelong usufruct could make a big difference, but this was dependent on bequests or negotiations with the relations in court. Thus, the imbalance was perpetuated unless a person could purchase a house on the market. This affected women more than men, the reason being contractual wealth arrangements where, during inheritance proceedings, e. g. the land titles remained mostly in male hands.20 On the other hand, women were active on the land market and can be found as buyers and sellers of real estate in all our samples. It remains to be determined where the money they used originated from, whether it was inherited, part of their marriage portion, or otherwise acquired. With the combination of the described inheritance and succession practice, which include the separation of property, southern Tyrol represents a case of strong kinship entitlements in contrast to systems of joint property.21 This makes Tyrol a specifically attractive area of investigation.

What Constituted a House and what Belonged to it? A house, as mentioned above, was not just a house. Pieces of land could belong to a house, and these could entail gardens, arable fields, meadows, pastures, forests, paths, and fences. In addition, workspaces and trade buildings belonged 19 The different initial positions and perspectives of siblings who had to move off the property (weichende Erben) has been broadly researched by social historians. See for example Bernard Derouet: Political Power, Inheritance, and Kinship Relations: The Unique Features of Southern France (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries), in: David Warren Sabean, Simon Teuscher and Jon Mathieu (eds.): Kinship in Europe. Approaches to Long-Term Development (1300–1900). New York 2007, 105–124; Christine Fertig: Familie, verwandtschaftliche Netzwerke und Klassenbildung im ländlichen Westfalen (1750–1874). Stuttgart 2012; Jürgen Schlumbohm: Lebensläufe, Familien, Höfe. Die Bauern und Heuerleute des Osnabrückischen Kirchspiels Belm in proto-industrieller Zeit, 1650–1860. Göttingen 1994. 20 For Sonnenburg and Brixen during the sixteenth century see Janine Maegraith: Widows’ Endowments and the Question of Property: Use, Ownership and Transmission of Property in Urban and Rural Contexts in Early Modern Tyrol, in: Margareth Lanzinger et al. (eds.): Litigating –­ Mediating – Stipulating. Negotiations of Gender and Property (forthcoming conference proceedings). 21 See Gertrude Langer-Ostrawsky: Vom Verheiraten der Güter. Bäuerliche und kleinbäuerliche Heiratsverträge im Erzherzogtum Österreich unter der Enns, in: Lanzinger et al.: Aushandeln von Ehe, 27–119.



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to the house, such as a workshop, a shop or an inn, a mill – and the buildings relevant to the household economy such as baking house, bathhouse, stables, shed, and barn. Sales contracts show that livestock and fodder were also considered as part of the house. On the whole, most contracts concerning property transfers give a detailed description of what belonged to the house. The sales contract of a cottage in Pflaurenz, court district of Sonnenburg, in 1594, for example, lists the cottage and site (Hofstatt), with oven, bathhouse, cabbage garden, and with all that belongs to it.22 A house in this early modern context, therefore, should be viewed as an assemblage of buildings, plots, objects, investments, and legal claims serving multiple functions as a space for living, working and training. The reference to “all that belongs to it” suggests movable goods. In order to incorporate this in the analysis it is useful to employ a broader understanding of wealth: not only real estate, houses, and farms constituted wealth, but also mov­ able goods, and it is important to identify the significance of the latter in relation to the house.23 Movables that can be traced in early modern probate inventories had various provenances and were subject to different forms of transfer. They constituted one part of the estate and, as Karin Gottschalk has shown, not all assets were part of the bequest but some were designated for different forms of transfer.24 For example, a part of the movables originating from the mother were designated for the daughter(s), and part of the father’s movables were to go to the son(s). Therefore, some of the assets were pre-assigned, and in Tyrol, this was codified in law.25 In our context, this was also true for the third of the mov­ able goods assigned to widows. According to the Tyrolean law code, widows were entitled to the restitution of their marriage portion and trousseau, pay-out of the morning gift (Morgengabe) promised to them by their husband, temporary accommodation in the house, and a third of the movables. But this third did not comprise all kinds of movables; silver, cash, foodstuff, craft tools, livestock, and the husband’s books were excluded.26 The movables the widow was entitled to could comprise important household items. They were then taken out of the estate to be given to the widow as her entitlement – no matter whether they were acquired 22 SLA, VfB Sonnenburg 1594, “Matheiß Wielandts Kaufbrief”, 16. July 1594 (no folio numbers). 23 See Renata Ago: Gusto for Things: A History of Objects in Seventeenth-century Rome. Chicago 2013; Janine Maegraith and Craig Muldrew: Consumption and Material Life, in: Hamish Scott (ed.): Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History. Oxford 2015, vol. I, chapter 14, 369–397, 379–380. 24 Karin Gottschalk: Erbe und Recht. Die Übertragung von Eigentum in der frühen Neuzeit, in: Stefan Willer, Sigrid Weigel and Bernhard Jussen (eds.): Erbe: Übertragungskonzepte zwischen Natur und Kultur. Berlin 2013, 85–125. 25 TLO 1532, 1573, III 9. 26 TLO 1532, 1573, III 41.

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through an earlier inheritance or by purchase. Together with the widow taking her trousseau out of the household, this could lead to housekeeping problems, as it would have had to be restocked with the missing items. The inquiries during the revision of the last version of the Tyrol law code of 1573 show that such restitution claims could frequently lead to difficulties in the household economy.27 Thus, mobile or additional parts of a house or estate, which could also comprise pieces of land brought in as a marriage portion, were economically closely interlinked with house and farm. However, many of the endowment contracts for widows do not list the third of the movables. But they do contain a negotiated sum of money which is called the “widow’s right” and consists of the claims of a widow already discussed. It could be that in these cases the third of the movables was not given out in kind, but was factored into this sum of money in order to retain the objects within the household. In early modern Leipzig, Gottschalk found in her sample cases in which the content of a deceased wife’s trousseau (Gerade) were handed to a female relative if there was no daughter in the house, which left the widower deprived of those objects.28 Similarly, marriage contracts of the eighteenth century rarely contain a description of the movables brought in by the wife, whereas sixteenth-century contracts refer to bedlinen, pillows, blankets, kerchiefs, jewellery etc. One explanation for this change could be that essential components of the trousseau – such as household goods – were regarded more as fixed components of the house. Thus, a description would not have been necessary and the wife’s personal items would have been treated as distinct. On the other hand, the interpretation of such cases has to take their social context into account and consider the size of the households: the absence of certain household items such as cooking utensils had a larger impact on poorer households than on more affluent ones. At the same time, widows’ endowment contracts in the eighteenth century show that widows were frequently granted accommodation in their deceased husband’s house in form of the allocation of a room, the use of the kitchen and patch of the garden, firewood and an allowance, for example. This was not always the case in the sixteenth century. In return, her marriage portion remained as capital on the house and was not paid out. In this context, further evidence can be found for the increasing linkage of movables and household goods to the house: in the eighteenth century, widows received the necessary household and kitchen goods only as usufruct and were obliged to return the goods, which means they could

27 Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Dip. 904, Teil II, fol. 16r–27v, 24v. 28 Karin Gottschalk: Eigentum, Geschlecht, Gerechtigkeit. Haushalten und Erben im frühneuzeitlichen Leipzig. Frankfurt a. M. 2003, 13 and chapter 1.



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 23

not bequeath them, e. g. to a daughter or a niece. Michael Peintner, principal heir to the inn “Zum Schwarzen Adler” in Innichen, for example, promised in the endowment contract for his widowed mother Maria Felizitas Klammerin in 1784, to renovate a house for her within one year and to grant her free accommodation, free firewood and cabbage, and a patch of the garden as lifelong usufruct. In addition, he pledged to pay her interest rate on her marriage portion of 3,000 guilders, which amounted to 120 guilders annually, plus 18 pounds of flax per year, a daily ration of milk and the necessary house and kitchen utensils. The latter had to be returned to the household after her death, or if she decided to leave.29 The assured restitution of household goods could indicate a change in the composition of the trousseau; maybe the proportion of the household goods of women brought in at their marriage decreased in relation to the goods which were linked to the house, but this would have to be verified in conjunction with the social context of the households. With such endowment or retirement contracts, frequently found from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the owner secured the investment in the house, in this case the 3,000 guilders marriage portion, and thus averted financial difficulties which would have arisen with a payout of the money. As was the case in other areas, too, houses and their appurtenances could also serve as collateral and provide access to the credit market. In Tyrol, they also served as security for the marriage portion and the promised morning gift. This way, the money of the spouse was mortgage-backed on the property. In addition, deferred and unpaid inheritance shares could also rest on the property. The debtor, in most cases the husband or principal heir, was liable with his entire assets, so that the creditors could hold him to account with claims on his property. This raises the question how far this liability influenced the flexibility of the assets and the marketability of a house. That contemporaries regarded the general mortgage on all the assets of a debtor as an economic problem can be seen when the Josephine Law Code (Josephinisches Gesetzbuch) of 1786 established that only one specific property or piece of land, and not all the assets, were to be used as collateral.30

29 Tiroler Landesarchiv Innsbruck (TLA), VfB Innichen 1784, fol. 1021r–1023r, 1022v–1023r. “die Kraut und Holz freye Hörberg nebst einem Antheil Garten zum lebenlänglichen Genuß einzuräumen, auch ihr alljährlich sammt den Interessen per 120 fl noch jährlich 18 Pfund haar [flax], täglich eine halbe Wiener Maß frische Milch, auch das nothwendige Haus und Kuchlgeräth gegen seinerzeitgen Rückstellung abzuweichen.” 30 Josephinisches Gesetzbuch, Drittes Hauptstück, § 69, cited after Joseph Kropatschek: Handbuch aller unter der Regierung des Kaisers Joseph II. für die k. k. Erbländer ergangenen Verordnungen und Gesetze in einer sistematischen Verbindung, vol. 10, 1786. Vienna 1788, 353.

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 Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith

As mentioned above, a house could also serve as collateral during the ­sixteenth century and we could find in the court documents, in inventories as well as inheritance proceedings, that assets and debts (Aktiva and Passiva) were recorded. Houses therefore played a significant role in the credit market and in household economies; but their role for early modern Central Europe has hardly been systematically researched yet.31 An analysis of the structure and workings of the ubiquitous asset management and credit market in southern Tyrol still remains to be done.

The Value of a House The establishment of the value of a house and farm or the economic assessment of a household in southern Tyrol remains similarly vague. The value of a house could have implications on the house as collateral, on sale and re-sale, on buying a new property after selling the old one, as well as on the negotiation of the inheritance shares. Although the court records are incredibly rich in detail, their very structure conceals information on the actual or negotiated value of a house – at least to a certain extent, since they do not equal land registers: whereas sales contracts give the negotiated value, the inheritance proceedings often do not. Sixteenth-century contracts contain the values of the inheritance shares to be portioned out, on material goods to be distributed, and on the name and location of the real estate to be inherited. But neither the value of the estate nor the approximate income of a farm, for example, are given. All we learn about values, therefore, is the amount of the total inheritance shares to be paid out. These can allow a relational assessment, as could the analysis of dues and taxes, which in addition gives insight into the economic performance of the workshop or farm. However, eighteenth-century contracts contain the estimated value of the holding. But those estimates were negotiated values and information on the income of the holdings was likewise not given. The linkage of the holdings with information available from sales contracts, inventories, inheritance proceedings, property transfers, and dues and taxes is the purpose of our further research. This analysis can shed light on the question how prices were formed, who defined them, and if they changed over time, resembled market values, or remained fixed. These are frequently discussed issues and, together with the question of whether

31 Sheilagh Ogilvie, Markus Küpker and Janine Maegraith: Household Debt in Early Modern Germany: Evidence from Personal Inventories, in: Journal of Economic History 72, no. 1 (2012), 134–167.



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 25

the calculation of the inheritance shares was based on the actual income and value of the holdings, they are fundamental to understand this early modern economy. In addition to the value of a house, inheritance transfers or usufruct contracts also needed to take into account the aforementioned debts and obligations together with their interest payments, which rested on the holdings. These could be deferred inheritance shares, marriage portions, or apprentice’s dues. If one applies a broad definition of wealth, then other claims have to be examined as well, such as entitlements to accommodation of a widow or of the parents who had transferred their property to the heir. Were such entitlements included in the calculation of the value, and if so, how? Widows who became administratrix of the holdings had to pay for the apprenticeship, education and provisioning of the children; and they had to keep the holdings in good condition, which could include investments in the upkeep of the buildings and the land. Some of the documents show claims on paid improvement works. In Sonnenburg, for example, a wife pledged to refund her husband with the amount he invested in the upkeep of her house.32 All this is based on the assumption that a house as economic foundation can carry all these obligations. A broader understanding of wealth calls for a more social approach to understanding values. Giovanni Levi proposes the idea of a “social value”, which follows different principles than the formation of a market price. He states that exchange of real estate and economic behaviour cannot be solely regarded in terms of economic profit maximisation. Instead, behind an apparent market mechanism regulating the land market other aspects are at work, such as the issue of resources, power relations, social values or maintaining existing relationships.33 He further points out that prices formed within familial contexts represent several underlying arrangements that can be expressed more or less in monetary terms. Thus, many purchases are not necessarily based on the exchange of money, but can be negotiated on the basis of past settlements.34 Our samples show that future settlements are also negotiated and that the transition of property could be gradual, with additional temporary tenure contracts, for example.35 In her research on a monastic territory in

32 SLA, VfB Sonnenburg 1595, 19. July 1595, Helena Lienspergerin promises to refund her husband with the amount of 25 guilder he invested for the restoration of the house. 33 See Giovanni Levi: Das immaterielle Erbe. Eine bäuerliche Welt an der Schwelle zur Moderne. Berlin 1986 (orig. L’eredità immaterial. Carriera di un esorcista nel Piemonte del Seicento. Torino 1985), 87. 34 Levi, Das immaterielle Erbe, 100. 35 SLA, Sonnenburg VfB 1595, 27. October 1595 (no folio numbers).

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 Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith

Styria during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Birgit Heinzle describes the phenomenon of external consultants being summoned to assess the value of the estate inheritance proceedings.36 For southern Tyrol, this approach could not be confirmed. But purchase contracts hint at previous negotiations regarding the final price, probably between the seller and the buyer, with phrases such as “the properly agreed on, settled, and decided purchase money”.37 Similarly, the value of an estate appears to have been the result of the inheritance negotiations between the local court, the assessors of the judge, the main heirs, the guardians, and the recipients of the inheritance shares. Documents of the eighteenth century suggest that the successor was given the value for the holdings according to court and land custom “for the old price” or “for the price the parents got possession of it”.38 This means that the value from the last transfer through inheritance was seemingly “frozen” without taking into account the time elapsed between the purchase and the inheritance transfer. The reasoning behind this approach could have been to limit the pay-out of the inheritance shares to the siblings and thus the charges for the successor in title. Older scholarship concluded that such appraised or outdated values at least give the proportional values of the houses and holdings on a local level and they were probably relational to each other rather than based on market values.39 This would come close to Levi’s “social value”, and a house and its ownership would then reflect the owner’s social as well as economic embeddedness in the community. This can be illustrated by emerging economic limits that become visible in bankruptcies, or by cases where a widow could not be paid out in cash due to lack of money or insolvency of the estate. In such cases, the widow could ideally acquire usufruct

36 Birgit Heinzle: Das “Geschäft” mit dem Land: Landtransaktionen in der ländlichen Gesellschaft der Herrschaften Aflenz und Veitsch, 1494–1550. PhD thesis, University of Vienna 2017, 282–283. 37 SLA, Sonnenburg, VfB 1596, 28. March 1596 (no folio numbers): “ist die ordenlich abgeredt gemacht unnd be­schlossen Khaufsuma”. 38 TLA, VfB Innichen 1764, fol. 246r. “Drittens solle ihme sohn Franz in consideration seiner kindlichen hilf auf Ihr der eltern verableiben die behaußung und gietterlen in der tax, wie sy eltern solche an sich gepracht, besizlichen nach g[eric]hts und landts geprauch und mit regardie­ rung des gepihrenden bsiz vorteils [...] eingeraumbt werden.” TLA, VfB Innichen 1800, fol. 75v: “doch sollen haus und gütter auf ableben des genüssenden theils den allenfälligen kindern von dieser ehe [...] in alter taxe, wie solcher heut dato in dem besitz erklärungskontrakte enthalten ist, zufallen”. 39 See Marianne Zörner: Die Besitzstruktur der Nordtiroler Dörfer und ihre Veränderung vom 17. bis in die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Innsbruck 1988. Zörner found, for example, that the sales price in the area she researched was always higher than the appraisement; both values deviated between 5 % and 837 %; ibid., 5.



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 27

of the house and administer the holdings independently, which was often a more beneficial solution for the widow.40

The Many Properties of a Cottage (Seldenhaus) The monastic court district of Sonnenburg was a predominantly rural area characterised by agricultural villages and farms. The rural population consisted not only of peasant families, but also of craftsmen and small traders, servants and labourers. Therefore the court records contain several references to houses and cottages and to tenants. The following case study illustrates the many properties a cottage could have: After the death of Erasmus Rederlehner in Mühlwald, court district of Sonnenburg, in September 1600, the endowment of his widow Anna Redin and of his heirs was negotiated. The couple did not have any children, and so Erasmus Rederlehner’s next-of-kin appeared in court: his cousin Magdalena Gasserin and four other claimants.41 He left a cottage behind, a small farmhouse belonging to a bigger farm. His widow received 140 guilders for her marriage portion and widow’s rights, her “faithful” labour, and her wear and tear in cash. All her material goods such as her trousseau with her clothing, linen, bedclothes, and fabrics were returned, and in addition she was given accommodation in the cottage for another three months. For this, she had the claim on a certain amount of grain, flour, lard, and bread.42 The third of the movables was not mentioned and may have been factored into her monetary endowment under the widow’s rights. In this case, the widow had only a temporary claim on accommodation in the house and was then obliged to move out – this would point to the perpetuated gender imbalance regarding access to a house as mentioned above. But the same case also demonstrates the possibility of women inheriting real estate in the absence of male heirs: two days later, the endowment of the heirs was negotiated and Magdalena Gasserin was appointed principal heir. This was decided on the basis of a settlement between her and Rederlehner from 1574, which stipulated that the cottage should revert to the property of her farm 40 In one case the widow received the estate as usufruct in Sonnenburg so that she did not have to be paid out with her marriage portion which would have exceeded the estate’s value. In return she had to raise her sons on the estate and in case of her remarriage had to leave it to the sons, SLA, Sonnenburg VfB 1596, 19. June 1596 (no folio numbers). For a similar phenomenon in early modern Venice see Anna Bellavitis: Die Mitgift in Venedig zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, in: L’Homme. Z.F.G. 22, no. 1 (2011), 23–37, 29, 35. 41 SLA, VfB Sonnenburg 1600, 28. Sept. 1600 and 30. Sept. 1600 (no folio numbers). 42 Unterhalt: 1 star Weizen, 1 star Roggen, 1 star Gerste, ½ star Mehl, 2 pfund gesottenes Schmalz, das vorhandene Brot.

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 Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith

“Gasser”. Magdalena was the owner of the Gasser farm and now gained the cottage situated in her holdings together with its cattle, movables, household goods, knives, cash and incoming debts. But in return she had to pay out the other heirs with their share of 70 guilders and accommodate the widow for another three months. Apart from this, she was obliged to raise, educate and look after the illegitimate child of Erasmus Rederlehner for a further nine years – Rederlehner had promised to take in the child for 15 years. This case illustrates how a small farmhouse, a cottage, could be the object of inheritance negotiations which in sum far exceeded the value of the house. In purchase contracts of two cottages in the same area, the sales price ranged from 20 to 67 guilders.43 But the sum of the endowment money came to 210 guilders, of which 140 guilders were the property of the widow who probably had invested her money on the holding. Nevertheless, the inheritance claim must have reflected the economic value of the house and the income, as Magdalena Gasserin had to pay out the heirs with their 70 guilders within one year. The case also demonstrates the various degrees of access to house ownership and to accommodation. In the absence of male heirs, women could become principal heirs and acquire real estate. A widow’s access could be limited if she did not own the house or it was given to her as lifelong usufruct. In addition, according to the law code, the illegitimate child of the deceased had no claim on its father’s inheritance. But the father had promised to take care of the child until it was 15 years old and this obligation was transferred to the succeeding house owner. Thus, the transfer of the house ownership included the transfer of obligations which could exceed the value of the house.

The Importance of the House as Workplace and Source of Income Litigations between competing groups of heirs illustrate the importance a house had, especially if it was the site of a trade. In some cases, a workshop represented the privilege (Gerechtsame) to practise the trade, as was the case with apothecaries, who needed a concession.44 The litigation between a practising 43 SLA, VfB Sonnenburg 1593, 20. Jan. 1593 (no folio numbers); VfB 1595, 23. May 1595 (no folio numbers). 44 Pharmacies and their numbers were regulated through ordinances. The first Apothekerverordnung for Vienna and Austria was passed in 1564, and even in 1773 the concession system was retained, see for example Mathias Macher, Das Apothekenwesen in den k. k. Oestreichischen Staaten. Wien 1840; Sammlung der politischen Gesetzte und Verordnungen für das Erzherzogthum Oesterreich ob der Enns und das Herzogthum Salzburg, vol. 17. Linz 1838, 377: General-Sanitäts-Normativ 10. April 1773.



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Figure 1: “Testament margreta Apoteggerin”: the first page of the duplicate of Margreta Hulbmair’s will drawn up in 1539, in the presence of her gender guardian and the guardians of her children. In this will she bequeaths her husband, Oswald Schredeneck, either a third or lifelong usufruct of all her assets but with the condition that her children’s two-thirds remained protected (SLA, VfB Brixen Stadtgericht 1539, fol. 6v–8v).

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 Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith

apothecary and the heirs of his late wife in Brixen demonstrates the central role the house had. In 1539, Margreta Hulbmair died in Brixen. She had been married to the apothecary Peter Dedentis, who died around 1533 or 1535 leaving her with one son and five daughters – and an estate with a house and shop in Brixen. ­Margreta remarried an apothecary called Oswald Schredeneck from Carinthia. For Margreta, this marriage ensured further income with the continuation of the apothecary. For Oswald, who had married into his wife’s property, it brought the opportunity to exercise his profession, and to obtain citizenship and property in Brixen.45 In January 1539, Margreta drew up a will because she was ill (Figure 1).46 In view of his love and faithfulness, she bequeathed her husband Oswald the choice of either lifelong usufruct or the ownership of a third of all her assets while two thirds should remain with her children. For this, Oswald was obliged to raise and look after her underage children and to train the son as an apothecary. As soon as he was old enough to take over the shop, Oswald was to resign, but could retain the third of her assets. This means that she bequeathed her husband the temporary continuation of the apothecary shop and usufruct of the house. Margreta died shortly afterwards, at the end of March, and Oswald appeared in court at the beginning of April with the request to reopen the apothecary shop.47 During the 30 days after the burial and until the beginning of the inheritance proceedings with a church service for the deceased (Dreißigste), the estate had to be “frozen” to ensure that nothing of the assets was changed. Accordingly the apothecary shop had been closed by the court. But Oswald stressed that he and his stepchildren were dependent on the income of the shop and requested it to be reopened. This was granted on the condition that he did not alter anything in the estate. The apothecary shop situated in the house constituted the livelihood of the family. Before the inheritance proceedings could commence on the thirtieth, the husband of Margreta’s daughter, Hans Baumgartner who was also a trained apothecary, protested against the will of Margreta and the couple’s marriage c­ ontract.48 He and the other heirs of Margreta repeated this protest at the actual proceedings on the thirtieth; they demanded an inventory to be drawn up of both the house and the apothecary shop.49 This was regular procedure during inheritance

45 Erika Kustatscher: Die Städte des Hochstifts Brixen im Spätmittelalter. Verfassungs- und Sozialgeschichte von Brixen, Bruneck und Klausen im Spiegel der Personengeschichte (1200–1550). Innsbruck 2007, 87 and 89; on Oswald Schrodenegger see CD-ROM . 46 SLA, VfB Brixen Stadtgericht 1539, fol. 6v–8v. 47 SLA, VfB Brixen Stadtgericht 1539, fol. 57v–58v. 48 SLA, VfB Brixen Stadtgericht 1539–1540, fol. 39r. 49 SLA, VfB Brixen Stadtgericht 1539, fol. 59r–60v.



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proceedings and according to the law code. For his part, Oswald showed willingness to negotiate during the court settlement.50 But the heirs denied the legitimacy of the will since the deceased did not have ownership of the whole estate, parts of it was property of her first husband and was therefore with his death legally her children’s property. Thus, according to the relatives the will did not comply with the law code. Whether Margreta owned the whole estate or not can unfortunately not be established. However, after tough negotiations, Oswald was offered the following settlement: His stepchildren or children of his late wife’s first marriage were granted the whole estate. Oswald, on the other hand, was to receive 900 guilders paid out in instalments as part of the bequeathed third, his trousseau and all his material goods. Also, the apothecary remained with the children and their next of kin which excluded Oswald from access to it. Crucially, he was not allowed to run another apothecary shop in Brixen as long as that of the children was in business. With this decision, his livelihood was endangered and any competition with the children’s shop ruled out.51 On the same day of the settlement, the son-in-law Hans Baumgartner signed a tenure contract to run the shop for the next ten years, after which he had to pass it on to the son of Margreta.52 With the shop’s income he was to make the payments for Oswald and raise the orphaned children. With his protest against Margreta’s will, Hans Baumgartner could establish his own position as apothecary in Brixen and secure his income. But the struggle for house, shop, and income continued. In subsequent litigation, Oswald was denied any access to the movables of the estate, including a silver cup that his late wife had given him as a gift.53 The heirs systematically excluded Oswald from any access to the house, the apothecary shop, and the movables of his late wife – contrary to the clause in his late wife’s will. But, similarly to widows with no house ownership, as a propertyless widower he had no power to oppose the determination of the heirs and next-of-kin. This case illustrates the importance of the house and workshop providing a livelihood, especially in conjunction with the exercise of a specific trade. Both apothecaries fought hard for this, but in the end, the widower had to give in. To practise his trade, he had to leave and later he went to Bruneck where he became a tradesman.54 The case also shows how closely interlinked house ownership was with blood relationship and inheritance practice, even in the urban context, and how separation of property could constrain access to property because of the priority of the next of kin, even contrary to testamentary 50 SLA, VfB Brixen Stadtgericht 1539, fol. 63r–73v. 51 SLA, VfB Brixen Stadtgericht 1539, fol. 63r–73v. 52 SLA, VfB Brixen Stadtgericht 1539–1540, fol. 72v–73v. 53 SLA, VfB Brixen Stadtgericht 1539, fol. 114v–115v and fol. 122v–123v. 54 See Kustatscher, Die Städte des Hochstifts Brixen, CD-ROM .

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 Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith

provisions. In court, access to a house could be gained, but also lost. The difficult position of men who married into their wife’s property did not change over the period and similar cases can still be found in late eighteenth century court records.

Retaining the House in Usufruct The previous case showed how a propertyless widower had to leave the house although his late wife had bequeathed him usufruct. This can often be seen with widows throughout the period, but when there were small children, the widow could be given usufruct. Such was the case in the rural area of Kastelruth in the eighteenth century. The example highlights the entanglement of the different assets, the children’s priority and the opportunity for women to gain the administration of the holdings under certain conditions. On January 13, 1780, the inheritance proceedings of a wealthy farmer named Johann Santifaller, who had died the previous year, commenced in Kastelruth.55 He was the owner of the Ladins and Kachlerhof holdings and left behind his widow Katharina Proßlinerin and two children, the twins Joseph and Anna. Since they were only 15 years old and hence not of age, two guardians were appointed. The widow was accompanied by her brother Christian Proßliner, who acted as her gender guardian (Anweiser or Geschlechtsvormund). At the beginning, it was recorded that the widow would be granted an usufruct contract. Then all the assets are listed and described: first the Ladins holding (Figure 2) with house, stables, garden, several arable fields with the description of the amount of seed and their location, forest, meadows, and pastures; the list also contains information on the provenance of the plots with some of the land having been acquired. The second holding, the Kachlerhof, was ascribed a value of 5,500 guilders; Santifaller had inherited it from his father in 1762. It contained a house, stables, garden and several pieces of land and an alpine pasture. Altogether the real estate was worth 7,288 guilders. In addition, financial assets (Aktiva) of 492 guilders were listed. Santifaller’s debts contained mainly dues and interest payments on debts, but also the money brought in by his wife: 200 guilders, which probably constituted her marriage portion as negotiated in their marriage contract of 1763, and 119 guilders that she had inherited. This is followed by the expenses after his death, which comprised the funeral costs (Funeralien) and funeral offerings (Todtengaben) such as salt for the poor, masses, bequests for two farmhands and one maid, and other offerings. All taken together the debts amounted to 2,388 guilders plus the court fees, leaving an estate of 5,311 guilders. 55 SLA, VfB Kastelruth 1780, fol. 52v–71r.



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Figure 2: The Ladinshof in Kastelruth: the building structure dates back to the sixteenth century; the picture was taken in 1945, in: Helmut Stampfer (ed.): Bauernhöfe in Südtirol. Bestandstaufnahmen 1940–1943, vol. 6: Unteres Eisacktal, part 2: Kastelruth, Völs. Bozen 2007, 170.

The court stated that it was well known that the widow was a very good housekeeper. Therefore she was granted usufruct of the holdings for a time of seven years, by which time the children would be 21 years old and of age. The usufruct contract outlined terms that were common especially if underage children were present: the widow had to pay all dues and taxes; she had to look after the children and see to their food, clothing and care; she was to let them learn to read and write and the girl to sew; and she had to give them 40 guilders every year; she was obliged to carry out annual repairs to the buildings with wood from the estate’s forest; in case the daughter married, she had to be provided with a new trousseau, a set of bedclothes and a wedding breakfast (Frühsuppe). All in all, there were 13 distinct clauses, which illustrates that usufruct also came with obligations and was closely watched by the guardians and the court. In principal it meant that the widow had to administer the estate for her children until they came of age and that she was not allowed to make any substantial changes to it. However, she became the administratrix of large holdings, was allowed to keep the remainder of the revenues after covering the costs and repairs, and

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could remain in the house holding an independent position. In case the widow decided to remarry the contract would have to be renegotiated. Solutions where the widow could administer the estate can be found for the whole period, but this eighteenth century contract stands out with its detailed specifications of the widow’s obligations.

Conclusion Our survey of house-related elements as well as claims and conflicts opened up many questions and research agendas. A fruitful approach to grasping the complexity of the ways to access and keep house ownership is to interlink fundamental logics of a society, such as the importance of consanguinity and the children’s unconditional and primary claim to ownership of the holdings. Negotiating power existed, as we have seen, contextually and situationally, albeit to a very different extent. However, the initial positions for negotiation were not equal and depended on property status, gender, and the attitude taken by the relatives. The apothecary as stepfather confronted with the competition of a relative had a weaker position than the farmer’s widow in Kastelruth who enjoyed a good reputation as a housekeeper. Especially for women and men without landed property, it made a difference whether contracts or wills offered secured opportunities or if they could easily be contested by designated heirs. Settlements concerning real estate were embedded in these legal and familial practices and could therefore uphold existing inequalities. This interlinking approach could also be fruitful for areas with different legal practices and would open up the possibility for comparison. A feasible way to capture the complexity of a house as wealth is to analyse the entanglement of the different assets, belongings and obligations. The wealth of a house, in our view, encompasses not only the real estate and the available money, but also rights, obligations and claims derived from them as well as everyday objects or possible stores of value. Taking the multiple functions of a house into account, inheritance negotiations and questions regarding succession and agreements in favour of widows and widowers reveal the multifaceted meanings of wealth and its impact on social relations. The various kinds of contracts and proceedings can give insights not only into a broad range of wealth arrangements, but also into varying degrees of constraints and openness in view of future changes visible in the negotiations preceding the settlements, and into differences according to social status. With this, the necessity to link different types of documents – especially in the absence of tax registers, as in the sixteenth century – became apparent.

Julia A. Schmidt-Funke

Haushaben: Houses as Resources in Early Modern Frankfurt Abstract: This contribution analyses houses as resources in early modern Frankfurt. Examining the ways in which early modern homeowners made money of their ­properties, the work focuses on the house as nucleus of urban sociality and it considers how individuals created and made meaning of their homes. In so doing, the contribution reinforces recent findings regarding the importance of and complex meanings given to houses. The Frankfurt case shows that houses reflected and perpetuated early modern inequality by multiplying opportunities for economic, social, and cultural participation. Homeownership thus played a central role in early modern urban life, and homeowners expressed the importance of their houses by decorating them carefully. As bearers of names, symbols, and inscriptions, houses were conspicuous representations of the prestige, confession, and memoria of their inhabitants, and of their own significance as stable resources in early modern urban life. In early modern Frankfurt as in many other cities, owning a house meant inclusion. Although home ownership (Haushäblichkeit) had no longer been required for obtaining civic rights since the fourteenth century,1 civic status remained the condition for acquiring urban real estate. Denizens – that is to say all those who lived in the town without benefitting from full civic rights – should not belong to the community of house owners. Based on a privilege that dated back to the reign of Emperor Sigismund and that was renewed and extended by Emperor Maximilian II, the imperial city of Frankfurt strictly limited home ownership to citizens, both men and women, in the city law (Erneuwerte Reformation) of 1578.2 In these years, Frankfurt saw an increasing immigration of Calvinist and Lutheran refugees from the Netherlands for whom the city with its two annual fairs seemed a promising location for commercial activities. The city council reacted to these dynamics in a more and more xenophobic way, especially towards the

1 For a survey, see Eberhard Isenmann: Bürgerrecht und Bürgeraufnahme in der spätmittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Stadt, in: Rainer Christoph Schwinges (ed.): Neubürger im späten Mittelalter. Migration und Austausch in der Städtelandschaft des alten Reiches, 1250–1550. Berlin 2002, 203–249, esp. 220–1. 2 Der Statt Franckenfurt erneuwerte Reformation, Frankfurt a. M. 1578, II 3 § 6. Cf. Gottlieb Schnapper-Arndt: Studien zur Geschichte der Lebenshaltung in Frankfurt a. M. während des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt a. M. 1915, vol. 1, 150. DOI 10.1515/9783110532241-003, © 2017 Julia A. Schmidt-Funke, published by De Gruyter. Die Online Ausgabe steht unter einer Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz.

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Calvinist exiles. Although the councillors accepted the settlement of the refugees in Lutheran Frankfurt, they restricted their admission to civic rights, the practice of religion, and the acquisition of immovable property.3 In 1583, the town council explicitly forbade the sale of houses to the foreigners (die Welschen) without the consent of the councillors.4 By exclusion, then, the city enforced the link between home ownership and citizenship. On the other hand, the two were not as strongly linked as it might appear. Renting was a common practice among citizens. A register of the city’s houses dating from 1761 shows that only two thirds of all civic households lived in their own property.5 Renting, moreover, was not an indicator of poverty, since even wealthy citizens rented houses, albeit whilst owning houses of their own.6 A highly appreciated building like the Trierischer Hof, situated in the city’s commercial centre and owned by the archbishop of Trier, was rented by a succession of high-status families.7 Since 1356, the elections of the Holy Roman Empire’s head took place in Frankfurt, and the archbishop of Trier was one of the princely electors. He kept the right to lodge at the Trierischer Hof, so that the tenants were obliged to host him and his entourage during his stays in Frankfurt.8 The princely dignity and the economic importance of the Trierischer Hof must have been such that renting it was nonetheless worthwhile. While renting did not necessarily imply poverty, home ownership was not sufficient evidence of wealth. In 1761, the larger part of all 2917 houses consisted of smaller dwellings of moderate value.9 Furthermore, owning a house did not always correspond to owning ground because the city’s laws allowed houses to be built on sites that were leased by emphyteusis.10 To sum up, in early modern Frankfurt relationships between dwellings and their inhabitants, between ownership, wealth and citizenship were manifold, they had

3 Friedrich Bothe: Die Entwickelung der direkten Besteuerung in der Reichsstadt Frankfurt bis zur Revolution 1612–1614. Leipzig 1906, 246. 4 Ibid., 244. 5 Ralf Roth: Stadt und Bürgertum in Frankfurt am Main. Ein besonderer Weg von der ständischen zur modernen Bürgergesellschaft 1760–1914. Munich 1996, 128. 6 Hans-Georg Lippert: Das Haus in der Stadt und das Haus im Hause. Bau- und Wohnformen des 13.–16. Jahrhunderts. Gezeigt an Beispielen aus Limburg an der Lahn und anderen Städten in Hessen. Munich 1992, 191; Schnapper-Arndt, Lebenshaltung, vol. 1, 130. 7 Namely by those of Holzhausen, Feyerabend and Baur von Eysseneck. See Rudolf Jung and Julius Hülsen: Die Baudenkmäler in Frankfurt am Main, vol. 3: Privatbauten. Frankfurt a. M. 1902, 396. 8 Michael Matthäus: Hamman von Holzhausen (1467–1536). Ein Frankfurter Patrizier im Zeitalter der Reformation. Frankfurt a. M. 2002, 54, 63–4. 9 Ibid., 128–9. 10 Der Statt Franckenfurt erneuwerte Reformation, II 15.



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various economic, legal, social and cultural implications – and thus need to be considered in a differentiated way. Not so long ago, historical research rediscovered early modern houses and housing practices as topics of social and cultural history.11 At the same time, economic perspectives have played a minor role, and less attention has been paid to houses as economic reservoirs, as workplaces, or to their crucial role within “household strategies”.12 However, not least in a Bourdieusian perspective,13 houses must be taken seriously as economic capital when they are discussed as social, cultural or symbolic capital.14 Since Bourdieu points out the convertibility of one form of capital into another15 (although he himself has relatively little to say regarding economic capital),16 it is highly relevant to know how and to what extent houses saved and generated money, or caused expenses. In what follows, I will analyse houses as resources in early modern Frankfurt17 in three steps, starting with an economic perspective in the stricter sense of the term. The article first examines how early modern house owners made money

11 See Joachim Eibach: Das Haus. Zwischen öffentlicher Zugänglichkeit und geschützter Privatheit (16.–18. Jahrhundert), in: Susanne Rau and Gerd Schwerhoff (eds.): Zwischen Gotteshaus und Taverne. Öffentliche Räume in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Cologne 2004, 183–205; id.: Das offene Haus. Kommunikative Praxis im sozialen Nahraum der europäischen Frühen Neuzeit, in: Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 38 (2011), 621–664; id. and Inken Schmidt-Voges (eds.) in cooperation with ­Simone Derix, Philip Hahn, Elizabeth Harding and Margareth Lanzinger: Das Haus in der Geschichte Europas. Ein Handbuch. Berlin 2015; Daniel Jütte: Living Stones. The House as Actor in Early Modern Europe, in: Journal of Urban History 42, no. 4 (2016), 659–687. 12 Laurence Fontaine and Jürgen Schlumbohm: Household Strategies for Survival: An Introduction, in: International Review of Social History 45 (2000), 1–17. Fontaine and Schlumbohm’s concept of “household strategies for survival” originally refered to the laboring poor, but it is even useful for the analysis of wealthier people because it sheds a light on the variety of economic activities besides the male breadwinner’s earnings. 13 Pierre Bourdieu: Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital, in: Reinhard Kreckel (ed.): Soziale Ungleichheiten. Göttingen 1983, 183–198. English translation: Pierre Bourdieu, The Forms of Capital, in: John G. Richardson (ed.): Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York, 241–258. 14 For this plea cf. Marian Füssel: Die feinen Unterschiede in der Ständegesellschaft, in: id. and Thomas Weller (eds.): Soziale Ungleichheit und ständische Gesellschaft. Special Issue of Zeitsprünge 15, no. 1 (2011), 24–46, esp. 44. 15 Bourdieu, Ökonomisches Kapital, 185–8. 16 See Peter Streckeisen: Soziologische Kapitaltheorie. Marx, Bourdieu und der ökonomische ­Imperialismus. Bielefeld 2014, 233. From a historian’s point of view, see also Simone Derix: Die Thyssens. Familie und Vermögen. Paderborn 2016, 15–6. 17 The article is based on the findings of my Habilitation, see Julia A. Schmidt-Funke: Haben und Sein. Materielle Kultur und Konsum im frühneuzeitlichen Frankfurt am Main. Habilitationsschrift Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena 2016.

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from their properties. Shedding a light on societal resources, the article then focusses on houses as nuclei of urban sociality. Contrasting the dynamics of Frankfurt’s real estate market with the ideal of stable and permanent home ownership, I will finally consider how people created their homes and how they made meanings of them and with them. In doing so, I use Bourdieu’s ideas as stimuli rather than adhering to a strictly Bourdieusian view. His assumptions about different forms of capital, their accumulation and mutual substitution are definitely inspiring, but the question to what extent they represent suitable categories for the study of societies in history remains controversial, and this article does not aim for an exegesis of Bourdieusian theory.18

Making Money with Houses In early modern Frankfurt, houses served as economic resources when people worked in, rented, or sold them – or even used them as securities when lending and borrowing money. Early modern credit markets knew a variety of credit transactions that were based on real property. As real estate-secured loans did not fall under the Christian ban on usury, they had been very common in the Middle Ages and maintained relevance in the early modern period. Normally, interest on such loans amounted to five percent because Canon Law justified this relatively low rate – much higher ones were charged for personal loans. Three types of real estate-secured loans existed in early modern Frankfurt: the Insatz, the Gülte, and the Restkaufschilling. Only Christians could function as loaners, while Frankfurt’s Jewish inhabitants were excluded from real estate-backed credits,19 as they were de facto excluded from homeownership. In the 1460s, the city council had started to erect the Jewish ghetto, the so-called Judengasse, and that entailed the expropriation of their former houses.20 As a result, Jewish loaners concentrated on ­personal loans and pawnbroking.

18 Therefore, Derix, Thyssens, 14–20, pleads for the German term “Vermögen”. For a general overwiew of Bourdieu’s influence on early modern history, see Füssel, Die feinen Unterschiede. 19 See Friedrich Bothe: Frankfurts wirtschaftlich-soziale Entwicklung vor dem dreissigjährigen Kriege und der Fettmilchaufstand (1612–1616). Frankfurt a. M. 1920, 283; Isidor Kracauer: Ge­ schichte der Juden in Frankfurt a. M. (1150–1824). Frankfurt a. M. 1927, vol. 1, 315. 20 See Isidor Kracauer: Die Geschichte der Judengasse in Frankfurt am Main, in: Hermann Baerwald and Samuel Adler (eds.): Festschrift zur Jahrhundertfeier der Realschule der Israelitischen Gemeinde (Philanthropin) zu Frankfurt am Main, 1804–1904. Frankfurt a. M. 1904, 307– 464, esp. 308–313.



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Insatz signified hypothecary credit, while Restkaufschilling was a credit transaction between the buyer and the seller of real estate. The buyer only paid one part of the purchase price, owed the other part to the seller and remitted an annual interest of five percent until he could pay the complete price. For instance, in 1558, Johann von Glauburg the Elder sold the house Braunfels to the immigrant Augustin Le Grand with a Restkaufschilling of 3,000 florins, so that Le Grand had to pay 150 florins annual interest.21 Gülten, in turn, were a kind of bond and relied on the idea that the interest consisted in the earnings of the real estate that was burdened by the bond. Gülten therefore could be paid in natural products,22 but this played a minor role in inner-urban transactions. In the Middle Ages, Gülten lasted forever; the so-called Ewiggülten encumbered the property forever, and the debtor could never repay them.23 The city of Frankfurt gave up this principle of permanency in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, favouring repayable Wiederkaufsgülten. The city council forbade contracting new Ewiggülten in 1439 and enabled the repayment of already existing Ewiggülten in the Reformation era.24 Frankfurt’s house owners often assembled a greater number of real estatesecured loans.25 In the early seventeenth century, for instance, the tailor Conrad Gerngroß and his wife mortgaged their three houses (two on the Zeil in the northern city centre and one in Sachsenhausen, on the other side of the Main River) with Insätzen of 150, 200, and twice 300 florins.26 They had also taken out two loans in the form of Gülten, one of about 120 florins in favour of Magister Jost Authaeus, a city official, and another Gülte of about 400 florins in favour of the patrician Johann Hector von Holzhausen.27 Altogether, they borrowed 1,470 florins and thus presumably paid an annual interest of 73 ½ florins. While poorer house owners like the Gerngroßes accumulated debts, wealthier people like the patrician Johann Hector von Holzhausen amassed

21 See Institut für Stadtgeschichte Frankfurt a. M. (IfSG), Hausurkunden, 1016; Jung and Hülsen, Baudenkmäler, 62. 22 For a list of such natural products, see Wilhelm Lühe: Die Ablösung der ewigen Zinsen in Frankfurt a. M. in den Jahren 1522–1562. Beitrag zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Reformationszeit, in: Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst 23 (1904), 36–72, 229–272, esp. 243–4. 23 Schnapper-Arndt, Lebenshaltung, vol. 1, 33–4. 24 For the long-lasting conflict about the repayment of the Ewiggülten, see Lühe, Ablösung, and Hermann Dechent: Kirchengeschichte von Frankfurt am Main seit der Reformation, vol. 1. Leipzig 1913, 38–9, 100–1, 131, 173. 25 Schnapper-Arndt, Lebenshaltung, vol. 1, 147–8, lists the real-estate loans for 18 houses sold in 1643. 26 Bothe, Frankfurts wirtschaftlich-soziale Entwicklung, 323. 27 Ibid.

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interest. Patrician families based their wealth and their identity substantially on property income. They formed an exclusive circle of those who could live from their unearned income (“irer gülten und renthen zu leben han”),28 as a 1488 sumptuary law put it. Patrician families held great numbers of Gülten and owned several houses, having considerable income from renting them as tenements or during the fairs. In the early sixteenth century, Claus Stalburg the Rich earned 935 florins a year from his Gülten.29 He owned five great houses in the city’s commercial centre and eight tenement houses; he also held shares in two further houses.30 When the fair business went well, the larger houses yielded between 80 and 90 florins,31 and the Handelshöfe up to 300 florins.32 In her study of Strasbourg’s late-medieval real estate market, Gabriela Signori suggests that such a patrician accumulation of bonds and property was rather a result of an Aristotelian, security-seeking household strategy than the consequence of profit maximisation.33 Security, however, did not mean modesty, but ensuring social status and distinction. Corresponding to patrician concerns, the wealth- and identity-giving properties had a particular status in the city’s law. Houses and grounds, stocks and bonds belonged to the legal category of immovable goods, which privileged their owners in taxation, inheritance, and law of obligation.34 Given that patrician families were able to preserve their wealth across centuries, their property-based economy seems to have been an effective way to maintain well-being and social precedence, although (or even because) it did not generate immense riches. Houses, however, were equally important for the economic strategies of the middling sort, particularly during the fairs. Everybody who lived in the area where the fairs’ business took place tried to benefit from it. Renting accommodation

28 Johann Philipp Orth: Zusäze vieler wichtigen und merkwürdigen materien samt deren anhange und zugaben, welche zu einer weiteren erleuter- und ausfürung, wie auch vermerung der meisten über die sogenante erneuerte Reformation der Stadt Frankfurt am Main gemachten […] anmerkungen. Frankfurt a. M. 1775, 388. 29 See Friedrich Bothe: Frankfurter Patriziervermögen im 16. Jahrhundert. Ein Beitrag zur Charakteristik der bürgerlichen Vermögen und der bürgerlichen Kultur. Berlin 1908, 19, 51. 30 Ibid., 116. 31 Ibid., 116, 130, 132. 32 See Friedrich Bothe: Das Testament des Frankfurter Großkaufmanns Jakob Heller vom Jahre 1519, in: Archiv für Frankfurts Geschichte und Kunst 9 (1907), 339–403, esp. 361–2. 33 See Gabriela Signori: Hauswirtschaft und Hofherrschaft im spätmittelalterlichen Straßburg (13. und 14. Jahrhundert), in: Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 38 (2011), 1–24, esp. 6. 34 See Bothe, Patriziervermögen, 1–2, 50.



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or storage space guarantied significant and regular income,35 especially when foreign merchants signed rental agreements for numerous years. For instance, in 1567, the publisher’s widow Margarethe Gülfferich rented several rooms of her house in the Mainzergasse to the Cologne bookkeepers Arnold Johann and Gottfried Birkmann for a period of twelve years.36 Owning a house in the highlyfrequented areas also enabled various commercial operations in or in front of the building, and Frankfurt’s house owners apparently claimed a right to put up stalls in adjacent spaces. At the forefront of the Fettmilchaufstand, an anti-patrician and anti-Jewish uprising in the early seventeenth century under the leadership of Vincenz Fettmilch, Frankfurt’s burghers protested against the city council’s plan to demand fees for the stands in front of the houses.37 As a result, the places covered by the houses’ eaves remained free from taxes, in contrast to the lanes between the houses that belonged to the city’s common land (Allmende).38 An eighteenth-century supplication of three Frankfurt neighbours sheds a light on the business that went on in front of the houses.39 The supplicants’ houses backed onto the town wall nearby the riverside. Behind the town wall there was located the quay, and the three neighbours used the space at the back of their houses in different ways: A timber merchant’s widow stored her goods there; a spice trader installed a quayside entrance to his warehouse, and an innkeeper sold beer to the people on the quay from his windows. All this came to the ears of the councillors because a Nuremberg retailer impeded the neighbours’ activities with his vast stand on the quay. The profitability of houses during the fairs was the principal cause of their high prices. A late eighteenth-century traveller remarked: “If houses are offered for sale, especially those that are located in the frequented streets, they are sold for enormously high prices, which is almost astonishing”.40 The same observer

35 See Thomas Bauer: Stuben, Kammern und gehimmelte Betten. Die Beherbergung der ­Messegäste in Frankfurt am Main, in: Patricia Stahl (ed.): Brücke zwischen den Völkern. Zur Ge­ schichte der Frankfurter Messe, vol. 2: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Frankfurter Messe. Frankfurt a. M. 1991, 299–307, esp. 301. 36 See Heinrich Pallmann: Sigmund Feyerabend, sein Leben und seine geschäftlichen Verbin­ dungen. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Frankfurter Buchhandels im sechzehnten Jahrhundert. Frankfurt a. M. 1881, 136–7. 37 See Bothe, Frankfurts wirtschaftlich-soziale Entwicklung, 426; Matthias Meyn: Die Reichsstadt Frankfurt vor dem Bürgeraufstand von 1612 bis 1614. Struktur und Krise. Frankfurt a. M. 1980, 66. 38 See Bothe, Frankfurts wirtschaftlich-soziale Entwicklung, 567–8. 39 IfSG, Rechnei vor 1816, Nr. 430, fol. 123–4. 40 Philipp W. Gercken: Reisen durch Schwaben, Baiern, die angränzende Schweiz, Franken, die Rheinische Provinzen, und an der Mosel [et]c. in den Jahren 1779–1787, vol. 4: Von der Reichsstadt Frankfurt am Mayn, Homburg, Darmstadt, Hanau, Aschaffenburg, Gelnhausen [et]c. [Frankfurt a. M.] 1788, 6.

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was convinced that rents and sale prices were as high as in Hamburg, Vienna, and Berlin,41 and that even a “miserable, narrow”42 house, destined for immediate demolition and bought for 8,000 to 10,000 florins, promised large profits due to the building site’s value. Although prices and rents increased during the eighteenth century, Frankfurt already had a dynamic real estate market in the sixteenth century. Ownership changed often, as can be seen in the case of the Deublingers, a wealthy family of merchants and jewellers originating from the imperial city of Ulm.43 In the sixteenth century, the Deublingers were engaged in the cloth trade. Around 1530, Barthel Deublinger owned three houses in the cloth traders’ quarter in the midst of the city: the Würzgarten,44 the Gadeneck, and the New Red House (Neues Rotes Haus) in the Tuchgaden. The latter bore a corbel with the Deublingers’ coat of arms and the date 1545 – a reference to building activities in that year.45 In the same year, Barthel and his wife Margaretha sold three cellars on the Weckmarkt for 180 florins;46 maybe this transaction helped to finance the building costs of the New Red House. In 1556, the couple belonged to the wealthiest inhabitants of Frankfurt, paying the town’s highest tax rate for a capital of 8,000 florins.47 Barthel and Margaretha Deublinger had four children who reached adulthood: Clara, Thomas, Margaretha, and Seifried. Thomas and his wife Ursula sold the Würzgarten in 1608 for 6,000 florins.48 Seifried married Anna, daughter of the Steinmetz family, and was therefore involved in the construction of the houses of the Great Angel (Großer Engel) and the Little Angel (Kleiner Engel), which were situated at the northeastern corner of the Römerberg, Frankfurt’s central city square.49 On behalf of his mother-in-law, he and his sister-in-law’s husband were concerned with building the Great Angel.50 Finished in 1562, the splendid, newly built timbered house remained in the hands of the family for less than four

41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 See Alexander Dietz: Frankfurter Handelsgeschichte. Frankfurt a. M. 1910–1925, vol. 1, 246, t. 2, 263; Walther K. Zülch: Frankfurter Künstler 1223–1700. Frankfurt a. M. 1935, 318–9, 352–3. 44 See Johann G. Battonn: Oertliche Beschreibung der Stadt Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt a. M. 1871–1875, vol. 3, 174–5. 45 See Dietz, Handelsgeschichte, vol. 2, 263; Walter Sage, Das Bürgerhaus in Frankfurt a. M. bis zum Ende des Dreißigjährigen Krieges. Tübingen 1959, 74–5. 46 IfSG, Hausurkunden, 1591. 47 Bothe, Entwicklung der direkten Besteuerung, 159. 48 IfSG, Hausurkunden, 1437. 49 Jung and Hülsen, Baudenkmäler, 98. 50 IfSG, Hausurkunden, 875; Jung and Hülsen, Baudenkmäler, 98–9.



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decades and was sold by Seifried and Anna’s heirs in 1597.51 The same happened in 1609 with the Prince’s Corner (Fürsteneck) that Seifried and Anna Deublinger had acquired in 1582.52 The Prince’s Corner belonged to a small number of stone houses with turrets, which Frankfurt’s wealthiest families had erected in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.53 The Deublingers bought the Prince’s Corner together with two adjacent tenement houses and a small courtyard; they refurbished it and chose it as their residence. According to the tax roll of 1587, Seifried and Anna Deublinger had a capital of 10,500 florins at their disposal.54 Nevertheless, their heirs had to sell the dwelling and apportion the revenue among themselves.55 Over a period of nearly a hundred years, the Deublingers thus owned buildings situated in the best locations of the old city centre, but they did not maintain these properties for longer than two generations. The Deublingers may have followed a commercial and somewhat speculative ­strategy by using real estate as short-term or middle-term investments.56 However, it seems to be more likely that they aspired to long-term possessions, which they could not realise because for lack of resources or due to spatial mobility.

Partitions and Associations The Deublingers’ case shows that the dynamics of Frankfurt’s real estate market not only resulted from the high values of the houses. They were also a consequence of Frankfurt’s inheritance law, which was – as in many other German cities – a partible inheritance system. Male and female heirs had to apportion real estate among themselves. Therefore, if heirs were not able or willing to share ownership of the property, they had to sell it. From an economic viewpoint, however,

51 Jung and Hülsen, Baudenkmäler, 98. 52 Ibid., 26; IfSG, Hausurkunden, 1716. 53 Christian Freigang: Madern Gerthener und der Aufstieg Frankfurts zum Architekturzentrum im Spätmittelalter, in: id. (ed.): Das neue Frankfurt. Innovationen in der Frankfurter Kunst vom Mittelalter bis heute. Wiesbaden 2010, 11–21, esp. 19; Lippert: Haus in der Stadt, 130–2. 54 Bothe, Entwicklung der direkten Besteuerung, 65. 55 IfSG, Hausurkunden, 1486; IfSG, Hausurkunden, 1490; IfSG, Hausurkunden, 1720. 56 Kaspar claims this for Lübeck. Cf. Fred Kaspar: Bau- und Raumstrukturen städtischer Bauten als sozialgeschichtliche Quelle, in: Peter-Johannes Schuler (ed.): Die Familie als sozialer und historischer Verband. Untersuchungen zum Spätmittelalter und zur frühen Neuzeit. Sigmaringen 1987, 165–200 esp. 172.

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apportionment was not an attractive prospect for the heirs because it endangered the functionality of the house. That is why Frankfurt’s families – ­particularly patrician families – practised a special form of inheritance and property management, the so-called Ganerbschaft. Ganerbschaft guaranteed and organised the collective possession of real estate; it was also practised in the lower nobility of Hesse and Franconia.57 In Frankfurt, some of the most important houses and Handelshöfe belonged to a Ganerbschaft for centuries: the Steinernes Haus (from 1654 to 1898),58 the Saalhof (from 1390 to 1696),59 the Rebstock (from 1627 to the early eighteenth century)60 or the Nürnberger Hof (from 1522 to the twentieth century).61 As a Ganerbe, owners could only sell their shares to other Ganerben or to the Ganerbschaft as a whole.62 Although it enabled continuity in property holding, Ganerbschaften nonetheless posed problems, for they consisted of wider personal networks that were not necessarily congruent with kinship. They formed no legal entity (Rechtsperson),63 and were based solely on collective administration and funding. This could hinder the maintenance of the building when some of the Ganerben refused to invest. Therefore, Frankfurt’s city law of 1578 stipulated how to cope with such kinds of conflict.64 Ganerbschaften combined economical with social purposes – in Bourdieusian terms, they intertwined economic, social and even cultural capital. The Ganerbschaft of the Kaufhaus unter den Neuen Krämen65 apparently had been suited to economic interests. It owned and managed a Kaufhaus that served as commercial centre during the fairs and probably also as a venue for wedding celebrations.66 The Ganerbschaft of the Kaufhaus was connected to the wool weavers’ guild,

57 Vgl. Georg Beseler: Die Lehre von den Erbverträgen, vol. 1: Die Vergabungen von Todes wegen nach dem älteren deutschen Rechte. Göttingen 1835, 81–4. 58 See Jung and Hülsen, Baudenkmäler, 42. 59 Ibid., 4–5. 60 Ibid., 384. 61 Ibid., 366. When the Baudenkmäler were published in 1914, the Ganerbschaft still existed. 62 Der Statt Franckenfurt erneuwerte Reformation II 5. 63 See Beseler, Die Lehre von den Erbverträgen, 82. 64 Der Statt Franckenfurt erneuwerte Reformation VIII 10 § 1. 65 IfSG, Handel Ugb 381; IfSG, Handel Ugb 384. 66 It is not clear if there existed simultaneously two Kaufhäuser in Frankfurt. Battonn, Oertliche Beschreibung, vol. 3, 170–3, and Dechent, Kirchengeschichte, 226, refer to an “altes Kaufhaus” that was situated in the street between Römerberg and St. Bartholomew. The Ganerbschaft, in contrast, was located in the street between Römerberg and Liebfrauenberg. However, “das Kaufhaus” was the place where weddings took place in the seventeenth century. See IfSG, Ratssupplikationen, 1628, vol. II, fol. 149–150; Ratssupplikationen, 1628, vol. III, fol. 175–6.



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which had been one of the most important guilds before loosing its significance in the last decades of the sixteenth century.67 When the Ganerben of the Kaufhaus gave themselves a new constitution in 1580, they declared that wool weavers should preferably function as shareholders.68 The Ganerbschaft consisted in 40 shares, called Stämme or Städte, of which one person could own several.69 Among the Ganerben were persons like Heinrich Kellner, lawyer and the city’s syndic, or the jurymen (Schöffen) Konrad Humbracht und Anton Eller. Whereas these men belonged to the patriciate, most Ganerben did not.70 In the case of the Ganerbschaft Alten-Limpurg, economic purposes stood back behind social and cultural concerns, since it represented the exclusive community of a patrician association, a so-called Stubengesellschaft.71 Hence, Alten-­ Limpurg relied on two congruent forms of corporation that centred on houses. When the Stubengesellschaft arose in the Late Middle Ages, it first had its location in the house Limpurg on the western Römerberg. In 1495, it acquired the southern of the city hall’s, i. e. the Römer’s, neighbouring stone houses and moved into it, transferring the name of its old domicile to the new property. For the next four hundred years, this house remained in the hands of the association.72 The spatial proximity to Frankfurt’s political centre corresponded with Alten-Limpurg’s political influence, since its (male) fellows dominated the city council until the early eighteenth century. In the late sixteenth century, the Stubengesellschaft adopted the name of Ganerbschaft, thus seemingly expressing a changing self-concept of its fellows. During the sixteenth century, Alten-Limpurg had successively conceived a noble identity, and implementing the name of Ganerbschaft probably underlined its claim that patricianship was as noble as knighthood. Furthermore, the name of Ganerbschaft distinguished Alten-Limpurg from the city’s other ­associations, above all from its rival, the Gesellschaft Frauenstein.73 Frauenstein was the second, less influential Stubengesellschaft of early modern Frankfurt. Like Alten-Limpurg, Frauenstein obtained its name from its 67 See Georg Witzel: Gewerbegeschichtliche Studien zur niederländischen Einwanderung in Deutschland im 16. Jahrhundert, in: Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst 29 (1910), 117–182, 419–451, esp. 177–8. 68 IfSG, Amtsbuch der Ganerbschaft zum Kaufhaus, fol. 1v. 69 Ibid., fol. 1v. 70 Ibid., fol. 49r. 71 See Andreas Hansert: Aus auffrichtiger Lieb vor Franckfurt. Patriziat im alten Frankfurt. Frankfurt a. M. 2000; id.: Geburtsaristokratie in Frankfurt am Main. Geschichte des reichs­ städtischen Patriziats. Vienna 2014, esp. 193–4; Franz Lerner: Die Frankfurter Patriziergesellschaft Alten-Limpurg und ihre Stiftungen. Frankfurt a. M. 1952. 72 See Hansert, Aus auffrichtiger Lieb, 38–9; id., Geburtsaristokratie, 501–2. 73 Hansert, Geburtsaristokratie, 222.

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domicile, house Frauenstein, located on the northern side of the city hall.74 Like the male Alten-Limpurg fellows, the Frauenstein members could become councillors, though they held fewer chairs. Early modern prospects of the Römerberg like Caspar Merian’s 1652 copperplate (Figure 1) clearly show the congruence between spatial position and societal hierarchy.75 Depticting the Römerberg as the place of the emperor’s election, Merian listed the Römer (1), the “noble house” of Alten-Limpurg (2) and the “honourable association” of Frauenstein (3).

Figure 1: Caspar Merian: Römer oder Rathhauß zu Franckfurt am Mayn, copperplate, Frankfurt a. M. 1658, 58,5 x 38 cm © Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg

74 Hansert, Aus auffrichtiger Lieb, 38–9; id., Geburtsaristokratie, 501–2. 75 Caspar Merian: Römer oder Rathhauß zu Franckfurt am Main, in: ibid.: Beschreibung vnd Abbildung Aller Königl. vnd Churfürstl. Ein-Züge, Wahl vnd Crönungs Acta, So geschehen zu Franckfurt am Mayn, im Jahr 1658.: Sampt andern darzu gehörigen vnd beygefügten Sachen. Frankfurt a. M. 1658, URL: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/merian1658/0091 (1 June 2017).



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The Frauensteiner association resided at Frauenstein until the end of the seventeenth century, when it acquired the Braunfels that had previously been sold to Augustin Le Grand. Braunfels stood not in the neighbourhood of the town hall, but it was the most important building on the Liebfrauenberg, a place at the northern end of the city’s commercial centre. It was a stone house in the style of the Prince’s Corner, and had several times served as the emperor’s lodgings. Already one of the most prestigious houses of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Frankfurt, Braunfels grew even further in standing when Frauenstein bought it in 1694 for 15,000 florins and it became the site of the Frankfurt stock exchange.76 The examples of Alten-Limpurg and Frauenstein show clearly how houses structured social and political arrangements. This was especially true at the time of the Fettmilch Uprising (1612–1615). Since the Late Middle Ages, not only patrician associations, but also retailers and craftsmen had had their own houses or even Stuben.77 Whereas the retailers’ Stube (Krämerstube) did not develop into a guild-like corporation, limiting its political influence,78 the guilds paralleled the house-centred associations of Alten-Limpurg and Frauenstein. Some of them even held chairs in the city council.79 During the Fettmilch Uprising, artisans and retailers temporarily ruled the town and stipulated that every burgher had to be the member of a corporation. By doing so, they forced all those to establish new associations who were not part of an already existing Stubengesellschaft or guild.80 One of the newly founded associations was the Crane’s Society (Kranichgesellschaft). Its fellows were mainly Calvinist merchants. As its domicile, it chose the house Crane, which was located in immediate proximity to the town hall and to the houses of Alten-Limpurg and Frauenstein, thus expressing its claim for political participation and its rivalry to the established patrician associations.81 Although the uprising was put down and patrician authority was restored, Frankfurt’s political landscape underwent significant changes: Except for patrician Stubengesellschaften, all guilds and associations were dissolved and their

76 See Jung and Hülsen, Baudenkmäler, 61–1. 77 See IfSG, Handwerker Akten 454. 78 See Schmidt-Funke, Haben und Sein, 74–5. 79 See Konrad Bund: Frankfurt am Main im Spätmittelalter 1311–1519, in: Frankfurter Historische Kommission (ed.): Frankfurt am Main. Die Geschichte der Stadt in neun Beiträgen. Sigmaringen 1991, 53–149, esp. 91. 80 See Robert Brandt: Autonomie und Schutz der “Nahrung”, Bürgerrecht und Judenfeindschaft: Das Frankfurter Innungshandwerk während des Verfassungskonflikts 1705–1732, in: Mark Häberlein and Christof Jeggle (eds.): Vorindustrielles Gewerbe. Handwerkliche Produktion und Arbeitsbeziehungen in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit. Konstanz 2004, 229–248, esp. 239. 81 See Dietz, Handelsgeschichte, vol. 2, 83; Bothe, Frankfurts wirtschaftlich-soziale Entwicklung, 657.

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movable and immovable properties confiscated.82 Losing political influence went hand in hand with losing houses. The most striking act of this physical rearrangement was the ritual demolition of Vincenz Fettmilch’s house and the erection of a pillar of shame (Schandsäule).

Figure 2: Conrad Corthoys: Eigentliche Abcontrafactur der auffgerichteten Columnen und Säulen, broadsheet, Frankfurt a. M. 1617, 40 x 29 cm (detail) © HAB Wolfenbüttel

The house’s symbolism thus was inverted from civic inclusion into a sign of exclusion or even damnation (Figure 2).83 Furthermore, it reflected the physical erasure of Fettmilch himself. He was dismembered, beheaded and quartered, and 82 See Dietz, Handelsgeschichte, vol. 2, 83, 97; Benedict J. Römer-Büchner: Die Entwickelung der Stadtverfassung und die Bürgervereine der Stadt Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt a. M. 1855, 186; Gerald L. Soliday: A Community in Conflict. Frankfurt Society in the 17. and Early 18. Centuries. Hanover, NH 1974, 142–3. 83 Conrad Corthoys: Eigentliche Abcontrafactur/ der auffgerichteten Columnen vnd Säulen/ so auff dem Platz Vincents Fettmilchs Kuchen Beckers geschleifften Behausung/ zu ewiger



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his head was impaled on the bridge over the Main.84 Against this background, it seems all the more convincing to think of houses as a “second skin”,85 as the “physical body of the household”86 or as “living stones”.87 Houses doubtlessly represented persons or groups of persons – and early modern house owners made this visible with names and words, figures and symbols.

Names and Meanings When the Frankfurt retailer Jacob de Marsegni drew up his last will in 1621, he requested that the dwelling he had purchased with his “housewife” during their marriage would never fall into other hands, but should be given to one of his children and remain in the hands of his heirs in perpetuity.88 De Marsegni, son of an immigrant from the Southern Netherlands,89 had a close relationship to his Frankfurt house. His desire to preserve it might have had economic or rather emotional reasons. Perhaps, the housefather de Marsegni cared paternalistically for the well-being of his successors, or he wished for a somewhat dynastic connection between the house and the family, and maybe his experience of migration made this even more desirable. As Gerhard Fouquet pointed out, early modern people were less tied to their homes and hometowns than nineteenth-century historians imagined. The Cologne housefather Hermann von Weinsberg, for

 ­gedechtnuß/ menniglichen zum abschewlichen Exempel vnd Vilen zur trewer Warnung/ den 21. August 1617. zu Franckfurt am Maeyn ist auf gerichtet worden. Frankfurt a. M. 1617, URL: http://www.gbv.de/vd/vd17/23:244747K (1 June 2017). For a similar Venetian case, cf. Jütte: ­Living Stones, 659. 84 See the inscription of the Schandsäule (Figure 2): „Daß dieser platz bleib tod vnd wust Dran Vincentz Fettmilch schuldig ist, Welher die Statt dreij gantzer Iahr/ Gebracht hat in manch groß gefahr. Deßen er erstelich hat daruon, Getragen diesem boesen Lohn: Daß er endlich an der Richtstatt Sein zween Finger verloren hat, Hernach den Kopff guirtheilt bald Vn die Viertel gehencke auff drauff An die vier Straßen dieser Statt, Den Kopff man auffgestecket hat An Brucken­ thurn, Auch weib vn kint Ewig des Lands verwiesen seind Das Hauß geschleyfft daß ich alhier Zu trewer warnung stehe dir Den 28 Febr: 1616.“ 85 Klaus Schreiner and Gerd Schwerhoff: Verletzte Ehre: Überlegungen zu einem Forschungskonzept, in: id. (eds.): Verletzte Ehre. Ehrkonflike in Gesellschaften des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit. Cologne 1995, 1–28, esp. 21. 86 Arno Haldemann: Das gerügte Haus: Rügerituale am Haus in der Ehrgesellschaft der Frühen Neuzeit, in: Eibach and Schmidt-Voges, Das Haus in der Geschichte Europas, 433–448, esp. 447. 87 Jütte, Living Stones. 88 IfSG, Testamente, Kasten 4, fol. 3v. 89 See Dietz, Handelsgeschichte, vol. 2, 12, 310.

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instance, moved ten times during his lifetime.90 On the other hand, he is one of the best examples for the ideal of a housing tradition since his personal testimony, the Book Weinsberg, centres on his home, the house Weinsberg. Leaving and selling one’s house was certainly an everyday experience, but staying in place and holding on to one’s property appears to have been thought preferable. Jacob de Marsegni and his wife Johanneta de la Ward lived in a timbered house, located in a narrow street nearby the Römerberg. Its name was Güldenes Hähnchen, meaning little golden rooster, whereas in the late sixteenth century the building on this site had been called Black Hat (Schwarzer Hut).91 The change of names presumably marks a rebuilding in the years around 1600. House names were a usual form of denoting addresses in medieval and early modern Europe,92 but they were not stable, and changes in name normally hint at architectural changes.93 Since naming houses after their builder was a common practice,94 and the previous owner of the Goldenes Hähnchen had been Jakob de Haan,95 a wealthy merchant from Lille and business partner of Jacob de Marsegni, it is almost certain that De Haan had left his mark in the name of the house. Jacob de Marsegni and Johanneta de la Ward took over their previous owner’s house name, but perhaps they found another way to link their own family with their home. They could have put up a coat of arms, an inscription, a carving or a wall painting on the façade.96 This was by no means a solely noble or patrician custom.97

90 See Gerhard Fouquet: „Annäherungen“. Große Städte – kleine Häuser: Wohnen und Le­ bensformen der Menschen im ausgehenden Mittelalter (ca. 1470–1600), in: Imma Kilian and Ulf Dirlmeier (eds.): 500–1800. Hausen, Wohnen, Residieren. Stuttgart 1998, 347–502, esp. 488. 91 Battonn, Oertliche Beschreibung, vol. 3, 182–3. 92 See David Garrioch: House Names, Shop Signs and Social Organziation in Western European Cities, 1500–1900, in: Urban History 21 (1994), 20–48; Ernst Grohne: Die Hausnamen und Hauszei­chen. Ihre Geschichte, Verbreitung und Einwirkung auf die Bildung der Familien- und Gassennamen. Göttingen 1912; Christof Rolker: Haus- und Familiennamen im spätmittelalterlichen Konstanz: Inklusion und Exklusion über Namen, in: Gabriela Signori and Karin Czaja (eds.): Häuser, Namen, Identitäten. Beiträge zur spätmittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Stadtge­ schichte. Konstanz 2009, 65–78; Anton Tantner: Vom Hausnamen zur Hausnummer: Die Adres­ sierung des Hauses, in: Eibach and Schmidt-Voges, Das Haus in der Geschichte Europas, 605–621. 93 Der Statt Franckenfurt erneuwerte Reformation, II 3 § 20. Cf. Grohne, Hausnamen und Hauszeichen, 97. 94 See Garrioch, House Names, 32–3. 95 See Dietz, Handelsgeschichte, vol. 2, 52; Bothe, Frankfurts wirtschaftlich-soziale Entwicklung, 80. 96 See Grohne, Hausnamen und Hauszeichen, 71–2. For the Netherlands compare Simon Schama: Überfluß und schöner Schein. Zur Kultur der Niederlande im Goldenen Zeitalter. Munich 1988, 337. 97 This claims, on contrast, Kaspar, and Lippert supposes a “passepartout”-style. Cf. Kaspar, Bau- und Raumstrukturen, 174; Lippert, Haus in der Stadt, 191.



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Some Frankfurt families made extensive use of heraldic decoration. For instance, the status-conscious Philipp Eisenberger, author of an illustrated family chronicle, and his patrician wife Catharina Bromm utilised the exterior of their Frankfurt house in order to display their noble ancestry and patrician kinship. Through matrimony Eisenberger, who originated from Ginsheim near Mainz, became a fellow of Alten-Limpurg in 1578. After his wife had inherited the house Ehrenfels in Frankfurt’s Schnurgasse, the couple adorned the façade with the coats of arms of its ancestors, thus mirroring the family trees inside Eisenberger’s family chronicle.98 Likewise, the interior of patrician houses could be studded with coats of arms on furnishings, textiles and dinnerware, thus making visible the inhabitants’ networks and lineage.99 The Great Angel, built in 1562 by Anna Steinmetz and her sons-in-law, also bore heraldic elements on its façade, namely the coats of arms of Anna and her husband Peter Steinmetz.100 Whereas such Allianzwappen were a common feature of early modern houses, the Great Angel’s coats of arms even showed more than matrimonial relationship.101 Anna’s husband, who had died in 1541, had been deacon of the collegiate church of St. Bartholomew. He then converted to Protes­ tantism and married Anna in 1536.102 His brother Hans in contrast remained Catholic, and after Peter Steinmetz’s death, Hans contested the widow’s inheritance.103 Hans died in 1561; in the same year, his elder son Johannes, a Catholic clergyman, became Peter’s successor as deacon of St. Bartholomew. Under these circumstances, the Great Angel’s heraldic decoration, conspicuously located in the middle of the façade, became a confession. The house may already have been finished104 when, in November 1562, Emperor Maximilian II’s election and coronation took place in Frankfurt. On his way from the Römer (the place of election) to St. Bartholomew (the site of coronation), the emperor not only passed the Great Angel, but also a neighbouring house with a Lutheran iconographic ­programme.105 An early eighteenth-century copperplate of Emperor Charles’ VI 98 See Hartmut Bock: Die Chronik Eisenberger – Edition und Kommentar. Bebilderte Geschichte einer Beamtenfamilie der deutschen Renaissance – Aufstieg in den Wetterauer Niederadel und das Frankfurter Patriziat. Heidelberg 2001, 351. 99 See Schmidt-Funke, Haben und Sein, 298–303. 100 See Fried Lübbecke: Das Haus zum Engel in Frankfurt am Main. Berlin 1929, Taf. 30, 4; Jung and Hülsen, Baudenkmäler, 102. 101 See Lübbecke, Haus zum Engel, 11–3. 102 See Battonn, Oertliche Beschreibung, vol. 1, 215, Anm. 17. 103 See Irene Haas: Reformation, Konfession, Tradition. Frankfurt am Main im Schmalkaldischen Bund 1536–1547. Frankfurt a. M. 1991, 48. 104 IfSG, Hausurkunden, 875. 105 See Dechent, Kirchengeschichte, 226.

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coronation festivities (Figure 3) illustrates the Great Angel’s prominent place at the Römerberg’s corner – and demonstrates the eye-catching effect of its façade.106

Figure 3: Der Römerberg, copperplate, Frankfurt a. M. 1712, 28 x 36 cm © Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt

Frankfurt houses thus referred to denominational conflict and displayed confessional identity, reacting to the fact that the officially Lutheran town had become quasi-multidenominational in the Reformation era due to Catholic persistence and Calvinist migration.107 106 Der Römerberg, in: Vollständiges Diarium, alles dessen, Was vor, in und nach denen [...] Wahl- und Crönungs-Solennitæten [...] Caroli des VI. Erwehlten Römischen Kaysers […] passiret ist [...], Frankfurt a. M. 1712, URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:1-222905 (1 June 2017). 107 Cf. Anton Schindling: Multikonfessionalität als Chance: Die Reichs- und Messestadt Frankfurt am Main zwischen Reformation und paritätischem Alten Reich, in: Axel E. Walter (ed.): Regionaler Kulturraum und intellektuelle Kommunikation vom Humanismus bis ins Zeitalter des Internet. Festschrift für Klaus Garber. Amsterdam 2005, 779–795.



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A close relationship between house and owner also existed in the case of the Golden Scales (Goldene Waage). The Calvinist spice merchant and confectioner Abraham de Hamel and his wife Anna de Litt erected the building in the early seventeenth century.108 Outside and inside the house, the couple devised an elaborate iconographic programme. Beside the couple’s Allianzwappen above the door to the spice shop, Abraham de Hamel and Anne de Litt decorated their newly built home with biblical scenes depicting the life of Abraham and the apocryphal Book of Tobit. They placed a carving of the sacrifice of Isaac on one of the house’s pillars, showing Abraham sacrificing the ram (Hammel in German). The couple also chose Abraham’s life for a splendid stuccoed ceiling in their Stube and added scenes showing Tobit’s wife Anna.109 Since the Reformation, the Old Testament had gained in importance in Protestantism and especially in Calvinism,110 influencing Calvinist naming.111 Furthermore, Old Testament or Apocryphal subjects inspired early seventeenth-century Dutch artists including Rembrandt, who painted a scene from the Book of Tobit in 1626.112 Therefore, seventeenth-century observers probably read the Golden Scales’ decoration not only as references to its builders, but also as a profession of Calvinism. Although Catholics homeowners also decorated their houses in reference to their patrons,113 Abraham de Hamel and Anna de Litt went further. Did they do so in a specifically Protestant or Calvinist way? In pre-reformation Frankfurt, wealthy couples would have invested in endowments and ecclesiastical art in order to present themselves and to preserve memoria,114 and Catholics of the early seventeenth century continued to do so.115 ­Calvinists generally rejected such practices, but in addition, Frankfurt’s Calvinists had no opportunity to express or represent themselves in ecclesiastical art inside 108 See Heinrich Bingemer: Führer durch die goldene Waage. Frankfurt a. M 1935; Jung and Hülsen: Baudenkmäler, 109–122; Otto Ruppersberg: Der Erbauer der Goldenen Waage, Abraham von Hamel, und seine Hinterlassenschaft, in: Festschrift zum fünfzigjährigen Jubiläum des Städtischen Historischen Museums. Frankfurt a. M. 1928, 62–84. 109 See Jung and Hülsen, Baudenkmäler, 117–9. 110 See Herman J. Selderhuis: Calvin, John, in: Hans-Josef Klauck et al. (eds.): Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, vol. 4. Berlin 2012, 833–7, esp. 835–6. 111 See Anna-Maria Balbach: Jakob, Johann oder Joseph? Frühneuzeitliche Vornamen im Streit der Konfessionen, in: Jürgen Macha et al. (eds.): Konfession und Sprache in der Frühen Neuzeit. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven. Münster 2012, 11–30, esp. 12. 112 Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Tobit and Anna with the Kid, 1626, oil on panel, 39,5 x 30 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, SK-A-4717. 113 See Garrioch, House Names, 28–9, 33. 114 For example Jakob Heller and his wife Katharina von Melem. See Bothe, Das Testament des Frankfurter Großkaufmanns, 362–7. 115 For example the family of the Frankfurt merchant Pithan. See Ursula Opitz: Philipp Uffenbach. Ein Frankfurter Maler um 1600. Berlin 2015, 204–8.

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a church, for there was no Calvinist church in Frankfurt. As the city had forbidden the free practice of religion, the home became the tableau of denominational self-expression. A somewhat inverted relationship between houses and their inhabitants existed in Frankfurt’s Jewish ghetto. Whereas Christian homeowners marked their houses, in the Judengasse the houses marked their inhabitants. In the later Middle Ages, a house’s name was frequently transferred to the people who lived in it.116 This custom fell out of use among Christians, but in Frankfurt, Christians who generally ignored proper Jewish surnames still named Jews after their houses. Frankfurt Jews, meanwhile, came to identify themselves with their houses’ names and signs. From the late sixteenth century, they used house names as surnames on gravestones, and from the middle of the seventeenth century, they decorated gravestones, religious objects and even earrings with the houses’ signs.117 This quasi-heraldic use of house signs, which seems to have been practised only by Frankfurt Jews, is a fascinating example of reinterpretation and appropriation.118 The Ghetto and its houses had been erected by the city council and stood for the repression and marginalisation of the Jewish population. But early modern Frankfurt Jews apparently appreciated the houses as signs of p ­ rotection and inclusion, for they represented their membership of the privileged group of Jews who owned the legal status of Judenstättigkeit.

Conclusion Analysing housing capital in early modern Frankfurt reinforces the importance and complexity of houses that recent research has pointed out. Whereas it is neither questionable nor surprising that houses served as resources for numerous purposes, it is still illuminating to examine how they did so under early modern urban circumstances. First and foremost, houses reflected and perpetuated early modern inequality. Owning a house multiplied the possibilities of economic, social and cultural participation or – as Bourdieu would have put it – the chances 116 See Michael Brocke: Der Alte Jüdische Friedhof zu Frankfurt am Main. Unbekannte Denkmäler und Inschriften. Sigmaringen 1996, 52–54; Grohne, Hausnamen und Hauszeichen, 153–4. 117 See Robert Diehl: Frankfurt am Main im Spiegel alter Reisebeschreibungen vom 15. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Nebst einem Anhang: Lobgedichte auf Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt a. M. 1939, 47; Annette Weber, Splendid Bridal Gifts from a Sumptuous Wedding Ceremony of 1681 in the Frankfurt Judengasse, in: Jewish Art 20 (1994), 168–179. 118 Cf. Marian Füssel: Die Kunst der Schwachen: Zum Begriff der ‘Aneignung’ in der ­Geschichtswissenschaft, in: Sozial.Geschichte 21 (2006), 7–28.



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of capital accumulation and transformation. However, in early modern Frankfurt real property was limited on citizens and Christians. Only owners profited from lower interest rates on real estate-secured loans, and only owners benefitted from lodging visitors to the fairs. Even if house ownership was far from a guarantee of wealth, it certainly helped. It does not seem that early modern Frankfurt citizens tried to conceal this economic importance of their houses. Whereas Bourdieu emphasises the dissimulation of economic purposes by the display of social and cultural capital,119 Frankfurt’s patricians or house-centred associations visibly dedicated themselves to both economic and social or cultural purposes. What made more of a difference was what business they were engaged in, because patrician identity was based on unearned income. Thus, not economic capital as a whole, but manual labour was rendered invisible. Houses conspicuously ­mirrored the crucial role they played on the economic and social level. As bearers of names, symbols, and inscriptions, they represented not only their inhabitants’ prestige, confession, or memoria, but also their own importance as essential and stable resources for early modern urban life.

119 See Bourdieu, Ökonomisches Kapital, 184.

Alice Detjen

Transforming the House: The Photography of Julia Margaret Cameron Abstract: This contribution seek to explore a space and symbolic site that was of greatest importance to the Anglo-Indian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879): Dimbola, her home on the Isle of Wight from 1860–1874. It is there that Cameron took up photography, soon thereafter turning her home into a studio. Her maids acted as models and assistants while neighbours, friends, and family were persuaded to sit for her. How did Cameron come to be so focused on and fascinated by this setting? Given her transcultural biography and bourgeois status, it is likely that ideas of “home” and “identity” were essential components of her inquiry, both personally and as an artist. Why was photography chosen as the medium of this inquiry? Having earned a great deal of recognition for her portraits of “famous men and fair women”, the artist figured as a hostess to Victorian society — a significant female role model of domestic culture for the Anglo-Indian community in which she had previously lived. I turned my coal-house into my dark room, and a glazed fowl house I had given to my children became my glass house! The hens were liberated, I hope and believe not eaten. The profit of my boys upon new laid eggs was stopped, and all hands and hearts sympathised in my new labour, since the society of hens and chickens was soon changed for that of poets, prophets, painters and lovely maidens, who all in turn have immortalized the humble little farm erection.1

When writing these lines in 1874, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) was looking back on a most fertile period in her life: Her career as a photographer and artist, who had portrayed eminent Victorian faces and figures. As Cameron tells us, she converted her house into a studio by integrating the technical needs into her living environment. Demanding space for the exposure of the plates and the development of prints was only the first step: she involved almost everybody who was around and at hand. Among them her parlour maids, local children, family, and illustrious friends such as her neighbour, the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) — and even guests were asked to pose or help her. Obviously, her

1 Julia Margaret Cameron: Annals of my Glass House [1889], in: The Photographic Journal (July 1927), 296–301, 298. Cameron wrote down her memoirs in 1874, before moving to Ceylon (Sri Lanka). They were published posthumously in 1889. Also cited in full length by Helmut Gernsheim: Julia Margaret Cameron. Her Life and Photographic Work. New York 1975 [1948], 180–3. DOI 10.1515/9783110532241-004, © 2017 Alice Detjen, published by De Gruyter. Die Online Ausgabe steht unter einer Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz.



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home was a central space for Cameron’s artistic work. How can we best understand Cameron’s home as a resource for her photography? How did her images emerge from the setting of the Victorian household she lived in? From which social and cultural position did Cameron act as a female photographer? In order to analyze Cameron’s house and photography, which seem to refer back to each other, I will investigate the setting of her work by bringing together aspects of cultural and social history. I will discuss how Cameron’s domestic attitude was formed. Finally, we can see Cameron’s working methods as profoundly symbolic acts, her photographs not only referring to the domestic setting in which they were taken, but also to the wider frame and notion of “home” in Victorian society and the concept of the nation.

The House as Original Site of Photography Over the course of about fifteen years, Cameron took around 1,200 photographs, of which prints are held today mostly in museum collections in Great Britain and the United States of America. Hers is one of the rare and most remarkable bodies of work produced by a female amateur in the early Victorian period. Today, ­Cameron’s former house Dimbola Lodge in Freshwater, Isle of Wight, is a museum and gallery that commemorates the photographer’s work. Little remains of the period inside: None of her furniture or personal belongings are on display, only a selection of photographic prints on the walls. This presentation seems quite appropriate when we consider Cameron’s photography, in which Dimbola and its surroundings barely appear. The focus lies on faces and figures that are sometimes shown in close-up, whereas the studio background is often left completely in the dark. This has the astonishing effect of revealing the powerful presence of many of the sitters: “She is absolutely alive and thrusting her head from the paper into the air”,2 wrote Cameron’s close friend, the astronomer and researcher into photochemistry, Sir John Herschel (1792–1871), of Mountain Nymph Sweet Liberty (Figure 1) — a print of which is on display at Dimbola. In that picture, the face of a young woman emerges from the darkness, surrounded by her loose hair and draped clothes.3 The print measures about 360 x 281 mm (14 1/8 x 11 1/8 in.), and the head is nearly life-size or, to be more precise, the size the head would

2 Herschel in a letter to Cameron in 1866 that she cites in Cameron, Annals, 301. 3 The sitter was Mrs. Keene (dates unknown), one of the rare professional models Cameron worked with. Julian Cox and Colin Ford: Julia Margaret Cameron. The Complete Photographs. Los Angeles 2003, Appendix E, 516.

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appear when looking at a person in front of us. By focusing on the sitter’s right eye, leaving the other parts slightly out of focus, Cameron created an effect of liveliness. The title refers to a poem by John Milton (1608–1674), L’Allegro: “Com, and trip it as ye go / On the light fantastick toe / And in thy right hand lead with thee / The mountain nymph, sweet liberty.”4 Since the effect of this promising figure is so strong, the background can be seen as an aesthetic basis or sine qua non of the picture. Can we take this as a metaphor, asking for an “unseen” basis of Cameron’s photography? Indeed, many of her figures seem to emerge from a suggestive underground, an effect often enhanced by drapery, at the same time ensconcing and veiling the figure. Her depiction of Mary Mother (Figure 3) is typical for this aesthetic strategy. Looking at early works of British photography, the German ­philosopher Walter Benjamin found it characteristic how the depicted people were “at home” in the setting, seemingly growing into it during the minutes of exposure.5 The conditions of early photography seem to be recorded in its products, and as I will discuss in this article, this phenomenon has both an empirical basis and a symbolic dimension. Though Dimbola seems to vanish in the photographs, Cameron vividly described it in her memoirs. This gap is a starting point for my analysis, in which I would like to shed light on the photographer’s house and studio. Furthermore, there is the question what symbolic meanings of the house are articulated by Cameron’s practice and in her works. Speaking ironically of the former inhabitants of her glass studio and the poultry her sons were tending to, Cameron refers to her home as a “breeding-place” — one in which photographs were developed, but which obviously also transformed its mistress into the hostess of a new and illustrious society. In fact, amateurs usually followed their passion from home, friends and relatives being their frequent motives.6 This practice also points to a privileged class: The bourgeois home, symbol of property, is also synonymous with spare time and liberty from hard work. Interestingly, all four inventors of photography, Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877), Louis Daguerre (1787–1851), Nicéphore Niépce (1765–1833), and Hippolyte Bayard (1801–1887), were members of the bourgeoisie who pursued their experiments at home, as the art historian Wolfgang Kemp recently observed.7 According to Kemp, photography did not only respond to the contemporary need for representation, it also satisfied class-specific desires 4 Cited in Cox and Ford, The Complete Photographs, Appendix F, 525. 5 Walter Benjamin: Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. Drei ­Studien zur Kunstsoziologie. Frankfurt a. M. 1977 [1936], 52. 6 See Grace Seiberling with Carolyn Bloore: Amateurs, Photography, and the mid-Victorian ­Imagination. Chicago 1986, 3. 7 Wolfgang Kemp: Photography, a Home Birth, in: PhotoResearcher 22 (2014), 10–21.



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of appropriation: “[P]hotography developed as the function of a medium showing possession, and possession is simply the raison d’être and ground for production of the bourgeois class [...].”8 Not surprisingly, their homes or views from their homes were frequently pictured. An example for photography’s cultural and practical “embeddedness” in the home can be found in one of Fox Talbot’s note books: Among the names of correspondents, servants’ wages and bills, as well as details concerning the estate, notes on experiments in ­photography appear — obviously being part of daily household affairs.9

Figure 1: Julia Margaret Cameron: The Mountain Nymph Sweet Liberty (sitter: Mrs. Keene), 1866, Albumen print, 360 x 281 mm (14 1/8 x 11 1/8 in.), published in: Colin Ford (ed.): Julia ­Margaret Cameron: 19th Century Photographer of Genius. London 2003, 117. 8 Kemp, Photography, a Home Birth, 14. 9 See Henry Fox Talbot’s note book, ADD MS 88942/1/277 in the British Library, London.

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What makes Cameron’s case both typical and exceptional is not only that she was one of the few women in the field. Furthermore, the way she dealt with her home as a setting and inspiration seems to reflect a profound interest in the idea of home, from a bourgeois and yet individual, artistic perspective: In her memoirs, Cameron links the method of photography with the idea of the house as a starting point (“my new labour”). Thus she refers to an essential quality of which the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas later remarked that “[T]he privileged role of the home does not consist in being the end of human activity but in being its condition, and in this sense its commencement.”10 In Lévinas’ understanding, home is something we carry with us like a device or means by which we perceive the world.11 Or, as Wolfgang Kemp puts it, in terms of early photography the home can be described as “a setting that is as formal as it is formative”.12

Dimbola Lodge, an Anglo-Indian Home Investigating the conditons of artistic creation often starts by examining the artist’s milieu. So let us take a closer look on Cameron’s bourgeois way of life that centred on her house. First of all, the name Cameron gave her home was characteristic: It was called “Dimbola”, referring to the family’s estate on the Island of Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon). The Camerons were Anglo-Indians, who had lived in Calcutta before they moved to England. For repatriates, it was not unusual “to exhibit their associations with India through the external modification and internal refurbishment of their newly acquired property”.13 Julia’s husband Charles Hay Cameron (1795–1880) was twenty years older than her and worked as a lawyer for the Council of Education for Bengal in the colonial administration. His position allowed him to acquire coffee and rubber plantations, the income from which was expected to finance a comfortable life in England upon retirement14 — the more so since the family’s hopes that Charles would be offered a lucrative post as a governor were not fulfilled. Still, “coming home” was not easy after years abroad, as 10 Emmanuel Lévinas: Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority, transl. by Alphonso Lingis. The Hague 1979, 152. 11 See ibid., 153. 12 Kemp, Photography, Home Birth, 10. 13 Georgina Gowans: A Passage from India: Geographies and Experiences of Repatriation, 1858–1939, in: Social & Cultural Geography 3, no. 4 (2002), 403–423, 405. 14 For the political conditions under which Sri Lanka was colonialized in that period see James S. Duncan: Embodying Colonialism? Domination and resistence in nineteenth-century Ceylonese coffee plantations, in: Journal of Historical Geography 28, no. 3 (2002), 317–338, esp. 320.



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the geographer Georgina Gowans observes: “For those who had worked in India [...], fractures in existing class structures were particularly keenly felt and, having occupied positions of power based on rigid hierarchies of both class and race, [they] were required to re-negotiate their identities in multiple ways on return.”15 Spa towns and coastal resorts were preferred areas in which to settle down. Here, they were most likely to maintain a lifestyle they were accustomed to. In addition, the mild climate was suitable for those who were suffering from various diseases. It was not uncommon for repatriates again to form communities apart from the metropole when returning to England. This observation seems to bear out a central thesis of post-colonial theory, that “colony and metropole are terms which can be understood only in relation to each other, and that the identity of coloniser is a constitutive part of Englishness”,16 as the historian Catherine Hall puts it. The Camerons were most typical in that respect: They lived with friends and relatives for some years, before they finally chose a seaside resort, the Isle of Wight, to settle down. It was a fashionable place then, since Queen Victoria’s (1837–1901) new summer residence, Osborne House, had been built there in 1851. This aristocratic lifestyle was copied by the middle classes, for whom spending time off in the countryside became a matter of distinction.17 Especially among writers, artists and intellectuals, the island became a fashionable spot during the summer months. Some of them became permanent residents, for instance the queen’s Poet Laureate Alfred Tennyson, whose home Farringford was next door to Cameron’s, and the painter George Frederick Watts (1807–1904), who had built his house The Briary near Freshwater. Both of them were close friends with Julia Margaret, who discussed aesthetic and philosophical questions with them, as their correspondence shows.18 What kind of house was Dimbola? Initially there were two similar cottages, which were bought from a local sailor and were connected with a stair tower some years later. The Camerons had six children, of whom four had already left home. But their younger sons lived with them, as well as five orphaned relatives and a foster child. The family lived in the building bordering on the road. The other, Sunnyside, was let to summer guests or given to friends and relatives, many of 15 Gowans, A passage from India, 407. 16 Catherine Hall: Civilising Subjects. Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867. Cambridge 2002, 12. 17 See Anne Martin-Fugier: Riten der Bürgerlichkeit, in: Michelle Perrot (ed.): Geschichte des privaten Lebens, vol. 4: Von der Revolution zum Großen Krieg. Frankfurt a. M. 1992, 201–265, ­233–240. See also Gunilla-Friederike Budde: Auf dem Weg ins Bürgerleben. Kindheit und Erziehung in deutschen und englischen Bürgerfamilien 1840–1914. Göttingen 1994, 93–6. 18 Cameron’s letters are scattered over various archives. See for detailed information the ­catalogue raisonée by Cox and Ford, The Complete Photographs, Appendix D, 508–510.

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whom were invited for longer visits. For instance, the scientist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) came with his family in the summer of 1868, posing several times for his portrait. It is not unlikely that the habit of a generous hospitality was culturally shaped by Cameron’s socialization in colonial India, as the historian Elizabeth Collingham’s research on that topic suggests: Indeed, Anglo-Indians were said to be more domestic than their compatriots in Britain. [...] This policy of open house contrasted with visiting customs in Britain where visitors were usually formally invited and were expected to observe certain conventions governing the separation of host and guest at appropriate times of the day. Indian hospitality grew out of the fact that British official society in India was so small and homogeneous that Anglo-Indians could afford to open their houses to strangers without running the risk of being embarrassed by social inferiors abusing their kindness. In fact such generous hospitality was essential to the British in India as it helped to cultivate a sense of community.19

It is possible that this “policy of open house” made Cameron more relaxed in terms of etiquette, allowing her to invite people to pose for her quite informal. The huge number of her sitters, who were all not her clients, is remarkable and may have been an effect of Cameron’s culturally conditioned sociability. Obviously, the house was a central space both in English and in Anglo-Indian circles, but slightly differently marked. We can trace this in the two photographs of herself that Cameron had taken in 1863 by Oscar Gustave Rejlander (1813–1875), whose visit might have inspired her to engage herself in photography. In her portrait, Cameron shows herself as having “come home”, resting on the doorstep of her house, as if washed ashore, completely absorbed in the book she is reading, her only possession (Figure 2). The themes of interiority and exteriority are also articulated in Rejlander’s second photograph: With the camera outside, we see Cameron through an open door sitting at a piano, appearing as the typical female bourgeois dilettante.20 It is interesting that these portraits carefully draw on the relationship between inside and outside, seeming to comment on Cameron’s status in society. “Home” as an interior realm that is yet to be arrived at also refers to the romantic notion of the house allowing us to dream peacefully, as the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard put it.21

19 Elizabeth M. Collingham: Imperial Bodies. The Physical Experience of the Raj, c. 1800–1947. Cambridge 2001, 101–2. 20 See Oscar Gustave Rejlander: Julia Margaret Cameron at Her Piano, 1863, Albumen print, 155 x 110 mm (6 1/16 x 4 5/16 in.), published in Cox and Ford, The Complete Photographs, 45. 21 See Gaston Bachelard: Poetik des Raums. Frankfurt a. M. 2007 [1957], 33.



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Figure 2: Oscar Gustave Rejlander: Julia Margaret Cameron, 1863, Albumen print, 160 x 115 mm (6 5/16 x 4 ½ in.), published in: Cox and Ford, The Complete Photographs, 7.

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Dreaming of a home and house was not only a bourgeois desire, it was also part of the imaginary geography Anglo-Indians had in their thoughts while abroad.22 As Georgina Gowans has shown, there was a shift in the status of the house from the so-called “nabobs” during the first period in British colonialism, and the following generation, the Anglo-Indians: It was no longer a symbol of wealth and influence, like the “nabob’s” newly acquired country seat, but instead signified the lost hopes of families living in “genteel poverty”.23 The Camerons too were facing difficulties: Apart from the higher expenses, the family had further trouble because of a fungus that destroyed their coffee plants, ruining their financial basis. At the time Julia Margaret took up photography, the family was more or less bankrupt and dependent on the help of friends.24 This seems to be of some importance, giving Cameron’s symbolic appropriation of her house through photography additional meaning. In fact, Cameron initially had the idea of earning money, as she wrote to her friend John Herschel: “When I started Photography I hoped it might help me in the education of one of my Boys [.] I soon found that its outlay doubled its returns.”25 Cameron did not open a studio for a simple reason: “If I could photograph professionally I should have a margin for the advancing of my Boys. & I am always resolving to do so but never have yet begun – fearing to lose my liberty in the choice of my sitters [...].” 26 Here, Cameron refers to her son Hardinge (1846–1911), who had to abandon his studies at Oxford for lack of money.27

Mistress and Maid Indeed, “liberty” is a cue, referring to Cameron’s status at home, which might have been shaped by her Anglo-Indian way of life: According to Elizabeth Collingham, in the colonies the mistress’s freedom from household tasks meant that she had plenty of time to spend on herself, which gave her the hardness of the confident aristocrat. It was this figure, moulded by the

22 See Gowans: A passage from India, 407–9. 23 Ibid., 407. 24 See Mike Weaver: Julia Margaret Cameron: The Stamp of Divinity, in id. (ed.): British Photography in the Nineteenth Century. The Fine Art Tradition. Cambridge 1989, 151–161, 154. 25 Cameron to Herschel, January 28th, 1866. HS 5.162, Royal Society London. 26 Cameron to Herschel, February 6th, 1870. HS 5.170, Royal Society London. 27 See Helmut Gernsheim: Julia Margaret Cameron. Her Life and Photographic Work. New York 1975 [1948], 37.



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requirements of prestige within the domestic sphere, with a superior distanced air and a hardened manner and body, which came to epitomize the memsahib.28

Cameron’s status was enhanced by the rank as official hostess she was given in order to fulfil the representational duties of the British governor’s absent wife, who had remained in England. It is very likely that the family inhabited a bungalow in Garden Reach, a suburban area preferred by expatriates. Here, domestic life would have been quite different from the Victorian household: The constant attendance of servants meant that not only the children, but also their domestics, had to be endured wandering about the house freely. [...] The layout of the Bungalow meant that children were inevitably more of a presence within the Anglo-Indian domestic space than they were in Britain, while the constant attendance of Indian servants allowed the security provided by spatial barriers to be replaced by people. The entire Anglo-Indian attitude towards children thus exhibited a laxity which would have been unthinkable among the metropolitan middle classes.29

At Dimbola, the Camerons had fewer servants than in Calcutta. Their cottage was small and, unlike in the ideal Victorian household, the division of spheres between family and staff was not as differentiated: Throughout the nineteenth century, the bourgeois home was not only divided into different functions, but also architecturally divided into separate spheres for family and staff: “The idea which underlies all is simply this. The family constitute one community: the servants another”,30 as Robert Kerr wrote, architect and author of The Gentleman’s House. Kerr’s contemporary, the French architect Viollet-Le-Duc explained the division regarding the model of society: “[I]n a democratic condition, [...] each department in the dwelling must be distinct and definite, in proportion to the equality that exists before the law between masters and servants.”31 Therefore, the two parties were to meet only in terms of service. Of course, there would have been thousands of trespasses. But this is not the point here: Possibly, Cameron’s former way of life and the cramped conditions at Dimbola brought her into closer contact with her staff than it was usual for her class. Although many amateurs were helped by their staff, these maids and servants rarely appeared before the camera. And when they did, they were not likely to perform holy figures, myths, and allegories, as in Cameron’s photographs. Clementina Maude, Viscountess 28 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, 173. 29 Ibid., 100. 30 Robert Kerr: The Gentleman’s House, or, how to Plan English Residences from the Parsonage to the Palace. London, 3rd Edition 1871 [1864], Reprint London 1972 [1864], 68. 31 Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-Le-Duc: Discourses on Architecture, vol. 2, transl. by Benjamin Bucknall. Boston 1875 [1863], 265.

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Hawarden (1822–1865) for instance, a contemporary amateur, focused on her teenage daugthers, who posed in costumes and draperies — whereas other family members and servants seldom appear. Cameron’s artistic credo “to arrest all beauty that came before me”32  was meant literally, her house being the immediate surrounding where she made the observations for her visionary transformation of the people in her everyday life into figures of art.

Figure 3: Julia Margaret Cameron: Mary Mother (sitter: Mary Hillier), 1867, Albumen print on gold-edged cabinet, image size 116 mm x 97 mm (4 5/8 x 3 7/8 in.) © National Portrait Gallery, London.

32 Cameron, Annals, 298.



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Given the domestic rules in the Victorian period, Cameron’s practice as ­mistress and artist was indeed quite unusual. Her three housemaids were among the figures she photographed most frequently: Mary Ryan (1848–1914), Mary Ann Hillier (1847–1936) and Mary Kellaway (born 1846) were depicted by Cameron as heroines from history or mythology, as the aforementioned Mary Mother for instance (Figure 3). This seems to be a crucial point: The photographic embodiment of a saint could only be convincing if the model was anonymous, as maids or servants were usually regarded.33 Indeed, Cameron’s maids never appear as themselves: They were not portrayed in the true sense of the word. Their status in the picture was objective, as it was in their representation of the family they were working for, and by whom they were commanded: The architectural separation discussed above did not prevent that servants were often patronized in a manner comparable to children.34 Their subordinate status is reflected in photographic group portraits, which show servants always in the same bourgeois pose as their employers, wearing proper uniforms. An attempt towards empowerment through representation is the remarkable case of Hannah Cullwick (1833–1909), a London housemaid who allowed herself to be photographed at work in filthy clothes. By this embodyment, Cullwick claims the status of a more significant subject, the art historian Renate Lorenz argues.35 Obviously, Cameron disregarded certain rules and expectations and did so quite openly, also taking her maids with her when she exhibited her works. Nevertheless, she affirmed the social hierarchy between mistress and maid, thus remaining within the ideological framework of her class.

A Victorian Hostess Not only did photography, and especially Cameron’s pictures, have a domestic basis due to certain structures it evolved. Home was also an important setting for its reception: Prints were collected in albums, where they had both a private and public character. As the sociologist Deborah Chambers states, it was also a gendered medium in families:

33 Many thanks to Dagmar Bruss for our discussion of the maid-model’s status in the representation. 34 On this aspect see Pamela Horn: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Servant. Stroud 1996 [1975], 129, as well as Leonore Davidoff et al. (eds.): The Family Story. Blood, Contract and Intimacy, 1830– 1960. London 1999, 163. 35 See Renate Lorenz: Aufwändige Durchquerungen. Subjektivität als sexuelle Arbeit. Bielefeld 2009, 117.

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Public discourses of familial heritage are authenticated and celebrated through this cultural form not only as blood ties, continuity and connection, but also as intimacy, security and spatial belonging. [...] Significantly, the family photograph album has evolved as a predominantly feminine cultural form, as a visual medium for family genealogy and storytelling.36

By giving prints as well as albums to friends and family members, filling them over the years, Julia Margaret followed the feminine role of “keeper of the past”.37 Photography, assembled in albums, symbolically tied families together – and not only kin relations but also the nation as an imagined community: Apart from family and friends, images of admired celebrities and members of the British Royal Family were included in albums. Figure 3 shows that prints were mounted on cardboard and signed by Cameron, sometimes also by the sitter. In the home, the album had the function of a symbolic aperture of the house, while certain domestic practices were circling around it, as Helmut Gernsheim states: “[T]he album [...] served as an illustrated book of genealogy and expressed a form of hero-worship. It was an excellent means of whiling away the awkward half-hour before dinner, indicating to visitors the tastes and prejudices of their host.”38 These social and respresentative functions of the album can be compared with portrait galleries in stately homes,39 where pictures referred to genealogy as an “inner” continuity as well as to more distant connections and relations. By mentioning the hero, Gernsheim speaks of a central narrative of the nineteenth century most famously articulated by the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881). Tracing back the course of history to great men’s lives, Carlyle was particularly interested in the portraits of his protagonists, and used them in his narration.40 Remarkably, he was among the founders of the National Portrait Gallery in London, where eminent figures of British history were commemorated. There was a close link between this institution and the political state of affairs, as the art historian Marcia Pointon argues: The national portrait gallery is a phenomenon exclusive to the industrialized west, to the English-speaking nations, and to the modern period commencing around the mid-nineteenth

36 Deborah Chambers: Family as Place: Family Photograph Albums and the Domestication of Public and Private Space, in: Joan M. Schwartz and James R. Ryan (eds.): Picturing Place. Photo­ graphy and the Geographical Imagination. London 2003, 96–114, 96–7. 37 Ibid., 97. 38 Helmut Gernsheim: Lewis Carroll: Photographer. New York 1969, 8. 39 See Marcia Pointon: Hanging the Head. Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England. New Haven 1993, esp. 13–24. 40 Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History was a lecture series before it was published in book form. It is not clear whether he used portraits in the course of the lectures, but they were included in the book that appeared in 1841.



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century, a period characterized in Britain by increasing parliamentary power, constitutional debate and colonial expansion. Portrait galleries were founded as state-controlled enterprises [...], designed from its inception for mass public consumption.41

Photography was not yet a medium that was recognized by museums. Also, the National Portrait Gallery purchased portraits only ten years after the person passed away. So photography served the reception of contemporary figures in the everyday life, at home and in public space, where carte de visite photographs could be viewed in the showcases of professional studios.

Figure 4: Julia Margaret Cameron: [Thomas] Caryle, Albumen print, 1867, 364 x 258 mm (14 5/16 x 101/8 in.). Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program. 41 Pointon, Hanging the Head, 228–9.

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Julia Margaret Cameron took Carlyle’s photograph in 1867, which counts among her most remarkable portraits (Figure 4). She inscribed a print from it on the reverse with the sentence “Carlyle like a rough block of Michelangelo’s sculpture”,42 and indeed his head seems to have a rocky surface, the visage carved out by means of light and shade. Cameron treated the outer features as a kind of raw material that was modeled by her with the camera. By representing Carlyle as an unfinished sculpture, Cameron suggests to carve out essential qualities of her sitter. This process is witnessed by the viewer, who sees Carlyle’s inner and outer features seemingly oscillating on the surface: Cameron’s technique of “out of focus” is explicitly at work, having a dynamizing effect. Pointing light at his head, Cameron shows Carlyle as an alert mind — but also as a person who is “rough around the edges”, possibly commenting on his contested opinions. In her work as a photographer of eminent figures, Julia Margaret Cameron in a way set up an imaginary “National Portrait Gallery”. In doing so, she acted as a symbolic hostess, a role model that was central to Victorian femininity both in the colony and in the metropole: Wives acted as “gatekeepers”, who were obliged to introduce newcomers into society and who, by pursuing their own interest and that of other family members, established contacts.43 It can be taken as evidence of the fragility of that concept of society that the house as well as the idea of the house played such an important role, being one of the most powerful frames to integrate peoples’ thoughts, beliefs, and dreams, as Gaston Bachelard remarked.44 This was also true for Cameron, who had to close her Isle of Wight studio in 1875, when she and her husband were no longer able to finance a living in England. They returned to their estate in Sri Lanka, which was run by their older sons. There, Cameron occasionally took phtographs of the landscape and groups of local people that have a more documentary character. Some of her studies of local girls and women are highly expressive, but different from the close-up portraits she took in England, Cameron kept her distance towards the models, which refers to a more remote position as a whole.

Conclusion Looking at Cameron’s studio practice and her portraiture, it is obvious that the artist transformed her home in many respects. First of all, Cameron demanded 42 Cited in Cox and Ford, The Complete Photographs, 313. 43 See Leonore Davidoff: The Best Circles. Society Etiquette and the Season. London 1973, 41–4; as well as Catherine Hall: Trautes Heim, in: Perrot: Geschichte des privaten Lebens, vol. 4, 51–93, 86. 44 Bachelard, Poetik des Raums, 33. 45 Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own. London 2004 [1928].



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physical space for her artistic aspirations, “a room of her own”45 in the words of her grandniece Virginia Woolf. In addition, she appropriated the home symbolically through photography by putting herself into a new and subjective relationship with her environment. As dicussed above, her search for an empowering position was marked by her status as an Anglo-Indian repatriate. How to negotiate the appropriation of both physical and symbolic space was a central question for her. She reflected on this by referring to her own domestic sphere. Therefore, her house became the starting point but also a resource for her imagination. The fact that the house as such remains invisible in most of the photographs indicates a suggestive status, which played an important role in the AngloIndian imaginations of homecoming. It is also telling in terms of the fragile economic conditions the Camerons lived in. Clearly, the house is given an imaginative status itself: In her portraiture of famous men, Cameron turned cultural and contemporary desires towards the idea of “home” into representations, assembling an imaginary gallery of national eminences. The way she worked with her staff, casting her maids as models, Cameron negotiated social, cultural and spatial boundaries. She challenged and affirmed, at the same time, the Victorian model of a society living in separate spheres. The highly expressive faces of young women Cameron depicted can be read as allegories of art: the “Mountain Nymph” (Figure 1) for instance, who seems to be “born” out of paper as Sir John Herschel wrote, symbolizes the life-giving power of art itself. This contemporary idea was articulated among others by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: His Zarathustra praises the act of creation as giving birth, and the creator himself as being a new-born child in that process.46 In Cameron’s artistic practice it becomes clear that this capacity does not evolve and unfold from a vacuum but in the very specific space of her living environment. In this respect, Dimbola can be regarded as an essential resource for Cameron’s artistic endowment of life with meaning.

46 “Schaffen — das ist die grosse Erlösung vom Leiden, und des Lebens Leichtwerden. Aber dass der Schaffende sei, dazu selber thut Leid noth und viel Verwandelung. Ja, viel bitteres Sterben muss in eurem Leben sein, ihr Schaffenden! Also seid ihr Fürsprecher und Rechtfertiger aller Vergänglichkeit. Dass der Schaffende selber das Kind sei, das neu geboren werde, dazu muss er auch die Gebärerin sein wollen und der Schmerz der Gebärerin.” Friedrich Nietzsche: Also sprach Zarathustra. Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen [1883], in: Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (eds.): Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 4. Berlin 2005, 110. URL: http://www.nietzschesource.org/ eKGWB/Za-II/print (3 June 2017). Many thanks to Corinna Schubert for pointing me to this passage. See also on this aspect Christian Begemann: Gebären, in: Wörterbuch der philosophischen Metaphern, ed. by Ralf Konersmann. Darmstadt 2007, 121–134, 131.

Monika Szczepaniak

The Country House as a Transitory Locus for Soldiers in Polish Literature on the First World War Abstract: In Polish literature on the First World War, aristocratic estates, which played a central role in the creation of a national conditio heroica, were commonly described as locations for troop stationing by Polish military forces (Legiony Polskie). These houses offered idyllic accommodation for exhausted combatants who were fighting for an independent Poland as well as a storage place for necessities, recalling the tradition of bygone wars of liberation and at the same time symbolising an ideological fulcrum. In addition, soldiers were confronted with the occupation and destruction of country houses by enemy forces, which represented a trauma. Based on a close examination of selected novels, stories, and poems that address the First World War, this essay considers the material, emotional, and ­symbolic significance of the country house as a transitory locus for soldiers from the dual perspectives of spatial analysis and studies on masculinity.

Transitory Idylls In Wacław Denhoff Czarnocki’s poem Dwór (Manor House) from the collection Piosenki i wiersze (Songs and Poems, 1918), a soldier who “lived in the trenches” during the Great War recalls his childhood on an ancient estate where he was raised in the spirit of patriotism for an oppressed Polish people. A key component of this programme of male socialisation was the adoption of a military and patriotic tradition, transported by fathers and reinforced by the portraits of grandfathers looking down from the walls on their young male descendants. The purported knighting ceremony was carried out against the backdrop of these portraits and old suits of armour, creating “odd thoughts made of hard steel”.1 The house, full of historical

1 Wacław Denhoff Czarnocki: Piosenki i wiersze. Warsaw 1918, 28 (“Myśli dziwne kułem z twardej stali”). Citations from Polish are the author’s translations – M. S. The analysed texts are mostly examples of popular genres and were destined for a broad reading public. Note: This article was prepared within the research project No. 2013/09/B/HS2/02077 funded by Narodowe Centrum Nauki (National Science Centre Poland). DOI 10.1515/9783110532241-005, © 2017 Monika Szczepaniak, published by De Gruyter. Die Online Ausgabe steht unter einer Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz.



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requisites,2 which played such a crucial role in the man’s upbringing, was a precious inheritance defiled in the chaos of war and now lying destitute. The sheer thought of his ruined property causes the reflective soldier to lament his loss. The poem problematizes a characteristic constellation for many Polish soldiers and particularly for those of aristocratic birth: socialisation on a country estate (a typical Polish manor house is presented in Figure 1), a patriotic upbringing, membership of paramilitary organisations, voluntary participation in the cause of national liberation under the guise of the Polish Legions, which were – even during the War – stylised as the nation’s elite, or compulsory combatant status in the Prussian, Austro-Hungarian or Russian armies. The parental house as well as the belongings therein, which are symbolically charged, are inherently tied to the development of masculine identity in soldiers and form an important

Figure 1: Manor House Firlejowszczyzna near Lublin, “Tygodnik Ilustrowany”, 1875. 2 One imperative requisite is the sabre, which was used by grandfathers as a weapon in ­battle, now hangs “honourably” on the wall and is the subject of legends – see a further poem by ­Denhoff Czarnocki, Opowieść o ułańskiej zakochanej szabli (Story of an Amorous Uhlan Sabre). The word ‘sabre’ is a feminine in Polish (szabla), which has drastic consequences: the grandson inherits the weapon, goes off to war and becomes romantically involved with his sabre – until they are separated in death and the sabre comes to lie in the grave next to the “lovely Uhlan” (Denhoff Czarnocki, Piosenki i wiersze, 73–8).

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component in their biographies, which are framed within a patrilineal genealogy of the recurrent community of struggle. For these men, military experience represents a clear and definite break in their biographies in that they become closed off from civilian life. A soldier leaves home and is placed in a strange environment, often associated with high levels of mobility and stops at several transitory locations. As a consequence of the transitory status of soldiers in many war narratives, the motif of longing for home – house, mother, wife, nature etc. – is a key component, emotionally charged, and commonly paired with the traumatic experience of an irrevocable loss of home and means. Military movements are often experienced by individual soldiers as displacement. At the same time, the opportunity of inhabiting a (country) house, albeit perhaps for only a short time, is experienced as a substitute and, moreover, compensation for fundamental sense of loss. In Polish literature on the First World War, aristocratic country estates, which played a central role in the creation of the national conditio heroica, were commonly used for troop stationing by Polish military forces (Legiony Polskie). They offer not only imagined, even longed-for accommodation for exhausted combatants f­ ighting for an independent Poland, but are also a storage place for requisites, recalling the tradition of bygone wars of liberation and, at the same time, forming an ideological buttress. Household objects and artefacts are not simply mediators in the processes of remembrance, but also point towards a future in which the soldiers will be able to live as citizens in an independent Poland. Relevant h ­ istorical dimensions, the intimate connection with nature and the national sense of mission – all characteristic of aristocratic self-conception in many European countries at the time3 – acquire a specific regional flavour and become imbued with topical significance, which participates in the narrative of a “stateless nation”4 as well as the culture of sacrifice and defeat.5 By way of contact with the emotionally charged ‘patriotic’ 3 Cf. Daniel Menning: Adel und Haus: Deutungshorizonte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, in: ­Joachim Eibach and Inken Schmidt-Voges (eds.): Das Haus in der Geschichte Europas. Ein Handbuch. Berlin 2015, 571–587. 4 On the question of aristocratic culture in Poland, see Janusz Tazbir: Kultura szlachecka w Polsce. Rozkwit – upadek – relikty. Poznan 2013. Tazbir denotes the country house as “a symbol of stability, a place of cultivation of tradition and a collection of souvenirs”, 170. 5 Poland disappeared as a sovereign state during the partitions (1772–1918), divided among the empires of Russia, Prussia, and Austria. However, in this period of a national crisis Polish culture remained strong and was maintained by intellectuals, artists, writers, as well as by families in private spheres, predominantly in aristocratic manor houses. There were demands for selfgovernment, conspiratorial activities and many resistance movements in partitioned Poland. The last of the Polish uprisings against Russia erupted in January 1863 and caused increasing oppression. After the collapse of the Empires in 1918 Poland became an independent republic and was restored as nation.



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atmosphere of the country houses, which may be viewed as a crucial element of the prevailing “moral geography” (A. Smith), soldiers are reminded of the sacrifice of ‘blood’ and ‘work’ – homo militaris and homo faber – and also further motivated by the ‘spirits’ of fallen freedom fighters and rebels. The country estate, where the soldiers are stationed, represents the high social and moral status of their owners, who support the struggle for independence and receive the military in generous manner. Moreover, the estate is a reservoir of valuable items and vestiges, thus participating in economic, political and emotional logics. Yet the familiarly connoted sphere of the country estate often implies a threat to the military habitus, since a young woman waiting at the window is a key component in the mise-en-scène of the soldiers’ arrival. This combination of ‘manor house and woman’ (dworek z panienkami) and ‘Uhlan with spores’ (ułan z ostrogami),6 which represents, on the one hand, the beauty of life in the country and, on the other, the heroism of the freedom fighter, occupies a central position in the Polish imaginary universe and is – as a national icon – highly emotionally tinged and patriotically connoted. The young daughters of the house or the housekeepers appear alluring with their “lips, as lovely as forest fruits”7 – they welcome the gallant Uhlans into the house, as in the famous war song Przybyli ułani (The Uhlans Are Here)8 or in numerous contemporary paintings and postcards (cf. Figure 2).

Figure 2: The Uhlan and the Girl. Picture Postcard, 1914, in: Witold Sienkiewicz (ed.): Legenda Legionów. Opowieść o Legionach oraz ludziach Józefa Piłsudskiego. Warszawa 2008, 223.

6 Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer: Przedmowa, in: Józef Relidzyński: Wieją wiosenne wiatry. Poezye wolnościowe i legionowe. Z przedmową Kazimierza Przerwy-Tetmajera. Krakow 1916, 7–8, here 7. 7 Rajmund Bergel: Czasy i ludzie. Poezye. Krakow 1917, 88 (“wargi krasne jak leśna jagoda”). 8 Feliks Gwiżdż: Przybyli ułani, in: “My, Pierwsza Brygada …” Mała antologia poezji i pieśni I wojny światowej. Kraków 2002, 29.

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Such an idyllic meeting of a “dashing” cavalryman and a physically attractive woman before the backdrop of nature is portrayed in Gustaw Daniłowski’s war and romantic novel Tętent (Hoofbeat, 1919). Bohdan Borski, a handsome cavalry officer, meets a beautiful lady, who, in turn, invites him into her country house, where he spends one of the most memorable times of his life. While Lena is enamoured with the striking man in uniform and the heroic aura of the Polish Legions, Bohdan becomes wrapped up in the lady’s femininity and the comfort of the estate and the surrounding gardens. The kitschy depiction of the pair’s “drunken bliss”9 in the rural locus amoenus of love can be characterized as transitory idyll. The amorous adventure lasts twenty days, the duration of the officer’s leave, before Bohdan resists the temptation to desert and takes leave of his lady. Because of his mobility, the enamoured soldier has to gather pace, therefore he prefers the modus “without hesitation”10 – he is a “champion of erotic shortening and speed”.11 What follows is the female passion of waiting, which is brought to a bitter end with the news of her lover’s death. Of course, a similar fate awaited mothers who had fashioned their sons into brave combatants in the struggle for Polish independence and who were subsequently forced to wait for their return from the Great War. Being absent from home was, in turn, the fate of freedom fighters, who were supported by the women left behind. The polish manor house fulfils the role of a privileged space for the pain, suffering, and mourning of the mothers. In Artur Schröder’s poem Dworek (Little Manor House, 1917), an oneiric image is evoked, which stems directly from memories and longing: a small, old, quiet and remote Polish house and a female figure on the veranda, staring out at the path, reciting the rosary and waiting for her son’s return from the “bloody” war.12 In her war diary Na ostatniej placówce (At The Last Watch Post, 1925), Elżbieta Dorożyńska, referring to the Second Brigade of the Polish Legions, indulges in sacrificial phantasies: “Oh God, I would tear myself in pieces, I would give my soul to care for these poor creatures that they may feel at home in my house!”13 Women appear in many war narratives as guardians of houses, while they are simultaneously reduced to their educative and moulding functions. In their sedentariness and rootedness, female figures contrast starkly with the military choreographies of mobility; they are portrayed in the roles of caregivers and

9 Gustaw Daniłowski: Tętent. Powieść współczesna. Warsaw 1925, 43 (“pijane szczęście”). 10 Manfred Schneider: Liebe und Betrug. Die Sprachen des Verlangens. Munich 1992, 28. 11 Ibid., 238. 12 Artur Schröder: Dworek, in: id.:“My, Pierwsza Brygada …”, 99. 13 Elżbieta z Zaleskich Dorożyńska: Na ostatniej placówce. Dziennik z życia wsi podolskiej w latach 1917–1921. Warsaw 1925, 33 (“O Boże, toż ja bym siebie pokrajała na kawałki, duszębym oddała, aby nakarmić tych biedaków, aby im dobrze było w moim domu.”).



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providers, supporting the ideology of military masculinity. However, especially in times of war, female figures also become vulnerable, losing the security of the home environment and of a stable system of property ownership. The Polish aristocratic country estate, which served as a storage place and reservoir for national traditions, heirlooms, treasures, books, paintings and patriotic requisites in times of a partitioned Poland, became a common place for the stationing of the Polish Legions at the outbreak of the First World War.14 The historian Urszula Oettingen has examined the portrayal of country estates in diaries of soldiers in Piłsudski’s Legions, noting that the legionaries were received in quite differing manners, since a part of the landed gentry in Congress Poland evinced decidedly Russophile tendencies. Thus, for the Polish officers and soldiers the country house was “not an economic category, but rather a symbol of Polish character”,15 a moral underpinning, a cultural ensemble of thought and behavioural patterns, a vessel for unarticulated needs and yearnings, a national myth. In prose narrative, these qualities are often incorporated by things, artificial objects and atmospheres, which remind the soldiers of their places of origin and thereby provoking nostalgic reactions and suggesting the masculine genealogy of national militancy. The transitory locus for soldiers turns into a national oneiric house. A great number of literary texts on the Great War include references to Polish uprisings against the Russian Empire, which are both documented and recalled by various material witnesses to history in aristocratic houses. In Józef Relidzyński’s poem O dworku (On the Manor House, 1916), a sense of joy is evoked since the estate in question – as at times of national rebellion – once more sees splendid Polish Uhlans. While the cavalrymen descend from their horses, it appears as if the ancestral portraits are “emerging from their picture frames”16 and an atmosphere of general enthusiasm spreads throughout the scene. The weapons from the time of the January Uprising 1863, having been hanging “idle” on the walls, can now be used by the progeny of the rebels, who as small children “used to play Uhlans”.17 The nights spent by the soldiers in country estates are occasionally 14 On the route of the Polish Legions and their engagement with aristocratic country seats, see Janusz Cisek and Marek Cisek: Do niepodległości. Warsaw 2008, 97–8. Country houses are marked on the relevant map. 15 Urszula Oettingen: Dwory na szlaku działań grupa Józefa Piłsudskiego w 1914 r. w Królestwie Polskim w świetle źródeł pamiętnikarskich, in: Studia Historyczne XLV, no. 2 (2002), 163–173, here 176. 16 Józef Relidzyński: O dworku, in: id.: Wieją wiosenne wiatry, 56–7, here 57 (“zda się, portrety stare z ram wyszły”). 17 Cf. Józef Relidzyński’s poem Ułański pałasz (The Uhlan’s Backsword, 1916) in the volume Wieją wiosenne wiatry, 16–21. Relidzyński portrays a patriotic, military socialisation in a country house and a dream of revenge on the eternal enemy Russia.

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described as “regal”, yet this depiction does not serve simply to underline the dimension of comfort, but also to highlight the significance of cordial hospitality. In his war diary Drogą Czwartaków (On the Trail of the Fourth Infantry Regiment, 1916), Władysław Orkan traces a sensuous, sentimental, nature-loving military masculinity and describes a place of recuperation in an architectural scene: the man of the house appears in the garden with a table and some chairs and states that his daughter “will bring a pot of curdled milk, black bread and fresh milk. It is idyllic”.18 In a further village, which resembles an estate of minor country gentry, some soldiers are met on the road by women who offer them water, milk and fruit  – the fruits of labour on the land in small white pots and trays. The manor house Leśna – a small white castle, a park and a pond – “represents convalescence for eyes that are used to rubble and ash”.19 A welcome change of scenery offers itself to soldiers of the Second Brigade of the Polish Legions as portrayed in Stanisław Rostworowski’s Szablą i piórem (With Sabre and Feather, 1916) when they arrive at a country house in Bukovina near Kolomyja and find a silver dinner service, comfortable beds and precious paintings – “all things, which everyday culture considers self-evident, yet become phantasy in times of war”.20 One particular attraction are musical instruments: two grand pianos, one pianola and three gramophones upon which the musically versed officers and soldiers pounce to produce “a cacophony of sonatas, fugues, opera arias and operetta songs”21 until, finally, a cavalry captain is compelled to interrupt the music. In this scene of playing instruments like crazy, the soldiers appear as if they are immersing themselves in expedited pleasure, attempting consciously to enjoy in the face of looming catastrophe a moment of happiness in a gradually disappearing atmosphere of homeliness – not only in the sense of material culture, but also of the sensual as well as affective dimension of the house. In the stories included in Juliusz Kaden-Bandrowski’s collection Bitwa pod Konarami (The Battle Near Konary, 1915), a quasi-magical aura is evoked around the legionaries, which is further underpinned by sacral connotations – the scene here is that of a celebration for combatants in the familial sphere of the “national” landscape as a spiritual topography. An integral part of this landscape are white manor houses. One of these country seats is described programmatically as

18 Władysław Orkan: Drogą Czwartaków. Os Ostrowca na Litwę 1915. Krakow 1916, 110 (“A za nim córka przynosi garnek mleka kwaśnego, chleb razowy i masło świeżutkie. Sielanka”). 19 Ibid., 119 (“wytchnienie dla oczu – po utrwalonych obrazach zgliszcz”). 20 Stanisław Rostworowski: Szablą i piórem. Kraków 1916, 133 (“to wszystko, co kultura życia codziennego uważa za naturalne, a co na wojnie staje się wprost marzycielską fantazją”). 21 Ibid., 183 (“kakofonia sonat, walców, fug, solów operowych i operetkowych kawałków”).



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“a  theatre of splendour and pride.”22 The house is a high-walled edifice with baroque elements, a tall gate adorned with the crests of former estate owners, superb cupolas at all sides, herbaceous borders with two ornamental ponds, wonderful rooms, Gdańsk ceramic stoves and, naturally, an ancient piano. In this symbolically charged interior, Brigadier Piłsudski sits in a chair like a magnate; the sabre rattling and the clinking of spores are audible; and soldiers give a rendition of the song of the Polish Legions, Poland Is Not Yet Lost. In the garden, a suggestion of a long-gone age is perceivable as if those generals and officers “who found eternal rest here hundreds of years ago, who bestowed sound to the piano for the last time and who received the last message […] have left behind an indubitable trace, which is now being followed by the strict and kind brig­ adier.”23 The imposing house with its historicising interior lends itself perfectly to the concept of a transitory locus where the placing of the military leader in the sphere of national gender myths may be staged in a romantic manner. The next place where the soldiers are stationed (Sieczków) – “a tiny country house, which crouches amongst the gooseberry and redcurrant bushes”24 and “had sworn to survive”25 – also hands the soldiers an exemplary reception: “milk soup, bread and butter, fried egg, conversation and respect …”.26 The scene in the next manor house, encompassing prayer in groups and songs in front of a picture of the Virgin Mary, is highly notable: girls are to be found kneeling next to soldiers and this microcosm forms a type of refuge for “faith and strength, chivalry and love, blue uniforms and white headscarves, song, light and aromatic green.”27 In Kaden-Bandrowski’s work, the images of the house, estate and garden create seclusive, oneiric and atmospheric values that chime with Gaston Bachelard’s poetics of space and his theory that the “house is one of the greatest powers of integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind.”28 The house “becomes the real being of a pure humanity which defends itself without ever being responsible for an attack”,29 it becomes an imagined zone of protection.

22 Juliusz Kaden-Bandrowski: Bitwa pod Konarami. Krakow 1915, 18 (“teatrum świetności i dumy”). 23 Ibid., 19 (“Jakby ci, co sto lat temu odeszli i ostatni dźwięk rzucili w fortepiano i meldunek tu przyjęli ostatni […] – jakby tu gdzieś zostawili niemylny ślad, za którym idzie srogi i łaskawy Brygadier”). 24 Ibid., 20 (“dworek malusi do agrestu i porzeczek przycupnięty”). 25 Ibid., 21 (“który sobie przysiągł, że przetrwa”). 26 Ibid. (“zacierka na mleku, chleb z masłem, jajka sadzone i rozmowa i szacunek …”). 27 Ibid., 22 (“wiara i siła, rycerstwo i miłość, siwe mundury i białe szmateczki chustek, śpiew, światło i zieleń wonna”). 28 Gaston Bachelard: The Poetics of Space. Translated by Maria Jolas. Boston 1994, 6. 29 Ibid., 44.

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The soldiers feel the atmosphere made up of colours, odours and tinctures of objects and appear to form an emotional collective with the latter. According to Gernot Böhme, atmospheres are “spaces in the respect that they are ‘tinctured’ through the presence of things, of persons or environmental constellations, that is, through their ecstasies. They are themselves spheres of the presence of something, their reality in space.”30 Significant material things radiate and extend themselves, as it were, into their environment and, in the so-called narrative of the Polish Legions, create a charged atmosphere in which an aura of the past and almost enchanting sensual qualities dominate. The houses are not simply conceptualised as mediums of memory and identity in terms of symbolic and cultural capital, but also as translocal fulcrums for national consciousness and for military masculinity in its heroic variant. Moreover, they are factors of emotionalization and a mental profiling of combatants fighting for Polish independence. Indeed, they gain significance as “imaginary places of desire for mobile persons”31 in the modern world and crucial anchors of a long-awaited return to spatially divided household and family orders.

Orgies of Destruction Beyond the work of the “dreaming consciousness”32 – the construction of retrospective and forward-looking utopias – mobile soldiers are confronted with the destruction or occupation of country houses by enemy troops, which represented a traumatic experience within the framework of a nationally connoted history of loss. In Andrzej Strug’s novel Odznaka za wierną służbę (Distinction for Honourable Service, 1920), an officer stationed in a manor house furiously plays Chopin33 pieces because he knows that the piano will be destroyed by the first grenades in the coming battle. The imposing library – thousands of treasured works in

30 Gernot Böhme: Atmosphere as the Fundamental Concept of a New Aesthetics, in: Thesis ­Eleven 36 (1993), 113–126, here 121–2. 31 Simone Derix: Haus und Translokalität: Orte der Macht – Orte der Sehnsucht, in: E ­ ibach and Schmidt-Voges: Das Haus in der Geschichte Europas, 589–604, here 604. 32 Bachelard, Poetics of Space, XX. 33 Fryderyk Chopin – one of the greatest composers and pianists of his time – left Poland for Paris and served as an important symbol of Polish cultural identity in the time of struggle for independence, marked by oppression of Polish political and cultural life.



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several languages34 – as well as paintings on the walls, old furniture, fine china, rugs and all the other precious objects collected over the generations will also be burned: “That is the law of conflict. Focused and appalled, the huge library views its own fate. In spite of all rational judgement, it is difficult to imagine that the books cannot perceive the dreadful hour of obliteration. It will be gruesome here …”.35 By applying an affective condition to the books in the face of their impending destruction, the text passes judgement on the culture of war in which symbolic capital is placed in the service of military success, material culture and intellectual values are ruined and people are obviously no longer able to mourn their losses. An aforementioned text, Rostworowski’s With Sabre and Feather, depicts soldiers’ quarters in an aristocratic house near Miechów, which is furnished with all types of historical requisites and from which emanates an accordingly reverent atmosphere: “The old clock in the corner determines the hours of the guard changes.”36 Later, we learn that the owner is now in his grave, his daughter is the wife of cavalryman and the house has been demolished. “The ground is full of weeds …”.37 Another country estate was so utterly and systematically destroyed by the Cossacks that the narrator is taken aback by the precision with which the enemy proceeded: torn paintings, smashed mirrors and loose pages of books strewn all around. Such systematic, rationally organized violence can be associated with the opposite situation – the building of the house or creating the own place, which is – according to Mircea Eliade – not a “machine to live in” but “the universe that man constructs for himself by imitating the paradigmatic creation of the gods, the cosmogony”.38 The devastation of the house is like an annihilation of axis mundi. The cavalrymen of the Polish Legions, which commonly came from aristocratic families, leave the building, which symbolises the ruins of cultural and

34 The library can be interpreted as a representation of the connection between Polish national discourse and transnational (European) literature and culture. The books are doomed to die and the narrator suggested that they can “feel” the coming obliteration – perhaps as “body parts” of the nationalised house. 35 Andrzej Strug: Odznaka za wierną służbę. Warsaw 1920, 82–3 (“Takie już prawo wojny. Ogromna biblioteka czeka na swój los w skupieniu i zgrozie, a wbrew wszelkim trzeźwym rozsądkom niepodobna przypuścić, żeby nie czuły książki okropnej godziny zniszczenia. Czyni się tu jakoś strasznie …”). 36 Rostworowski: Szablą i piórem, 114 (“W rogu stary zegar znaczy godziny zmiany wystawionych wedet”). 37 Ibid. (“Porosło tam zielsko …”). 38 Mircea Eliade: The Sacred and the Profane. The Nature of Religion. Translated by Willard R. Trask. New York 1959, 56–7.

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social capital, in a wistful, dark mood as if they had been witness to a funeral. The death of the house is mourned as if it were the passing of a living being whose departure is emotionally difficult to accept. Władysław Orkan documents burned-down houses in Lublin and the surrounding areas; in many cases, only the ovens and chimneys of once-great houses remain. In front of one such oven with a stove, standing in the open air, a woman is to be found crouching while cooking her evening meal: “Just like at home. Only the walls and ceiling are missing”.39 Whilst this image displays the fundamental, anthropological situation of the supply of food, for which the few rescued elements of the household infrastructure suffice, further images depict ruined country houses that have been abandoned by their owners and destroyed by Russian troops. The “traces of barbarism”40 are visible everywhere: intentionally wrecked mirrors, stains on the walls caused by inkwells thrown at them, and broken crockery. Notably, country houses are repeatedly imagined in narrative texts as living human bodies and thus anthropomorphised. They are capable of emotion and interact with soldiers and other material things. In front of the Leśna estate, soldiers survey objects scattered about on the lawn: “fragments of expensive vases, pieces of statues, broken bits of golden frames, wreckage from valuable furniture, torn books and letters”.41 Confronted with this extent of destruction, the soldiers feel the emptiness of the house wistfully looking at them through the smashed windows and the open doors “in grave-like silence”.42 The old domestic is hardly able to find the words to describe the barbarism of the Russians, who also stole horses and set barns alight: “only the walls now remain”.43 The house that has been left in ruins is experienced as a stump, a wound, a grave. Those household articles, now lying outside as detritus, seem to be components of one organism – that of the destroyed corporeal house. The soldiers have the domestic gather up the remains and take them back into the skeletal house. The soldiers themselves undertake a reckless chase, seeking to avenge this ignominy, while at the same time being haunted by the traumatic images of the country house lying in waste: “The house followed us as if it were an open coffin”.44 In Kaden-Bandrowski’s The Battle Near Konary, the country estate is also experienced as a grave. The text unfolds before the commencement

39 Orkan: Drogą Czwartaków, 31 (“Jak w domu. Tylko brak ścian i powały”). 40 Ibid., 109 (“ślady barbaryi”). 41 Ibid., 119 (“skorupy drogich waz, szczątki gipsów, kawałki ram złoconych, drzazgi bezcennych mebli, książki stargane, listy”). 42 Ibid. (“z grobowym spokojem”). 43 Ibid., 120 (“te mury ino zostały”). 44 Ibid., 121 (“Dwór szedł za nami, jak trumna otwarta”).



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of the battle while the narrator understands the building is destined to be left in ruins. “People had removed all the objects from the house and placed them in the garden. In the middle of the flower bed stood something resembling a monument of mourning or a grave. From this grave, a black flower stands in bloom, attempting to catch the stars of the bloody night sky in her open, flexible arms. I noticed that it was a piano and the flower its pedal.”45 A woman clothed in black appears to underpin the scenario; the soldiers feel not only sadness, but also pride at being sons of this soil. In Eugeniusz Małaczewski’s short stories, which are set in Volhynia and Podolia, Polish country estates are also destroyed by civilians. The Polish soldiers are given a melancholy opportunity to confront the traces of traditional aristocratic culture as it lies defiled. One of the soldiers is taken in by a Ukrainian peasant and sees the delicate porcelain cups, a Bechstein piano in which the hens hatch their eggs, and copies of the renowned literary and cultural magazines Chimera and Tygodnik Ilustrowany being used as heating fuel – all these objects had obviously been stolen from Polish estates.46 The narrator perceives this as violence perpetrated against his own symbolic universe, which is associated with his degradation as a ‘slave’ forced to work for an Ukrainian women in her house and on her field. Another story depicts the battles close to the protagonist’s home in Jaskroniec. Here, ancient estates are also plundered. One of the houses is described as an “honourable receptacle” in which the “collective soul” of an aristocratic family is formed.47 Full of memories and mementoes, the vessel becomes an easy object of looting, which is presented as extreme violence in the realm of things, symbolic articulations and imagery – not simply in the dimension of material obliteration, but also in the sphere of “intercorporeality” to use Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s term.48 The spaces depicted here possess a bodily, physical dimension and are inherently formed by things that are bound up with

45 Kaden-Bandrowski, Bitwa pod Konarami, 23 (“Ludzie wszystkie rzeczy z dworu wynieśli na ogród. W pośrodku klombu stał jakby monument żałości czy grób. Z grobu tego lira kwitła czarna, w giętkie, rozwarte swe ramiona łapiąca gwiazdy krwawego nieba nocy. Zoczyłem, że to jest fortepian i lira jego pedałów”). 46 Cf. Eugeniusz Małaczewski: Koń na wzgórzu. Krakow 1921, 125–6. 47 Ibid., 227. 48 “Intercorporeality” is a concept focusing on the mutual interaction between human b ­ odies (according to Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception (1945) the human body should be conceptualized as “body-subject” in contrast to the Cartesian “cogito”) and the world, the things, other human bodies. It emphasises the role of social interactions in the construction of the body, thereby highlighting the importance of our interactions with other human and nonhuman ­bodies. On the concept of intercorporeality see: Scott L. Marratto: The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity. New York 2012.

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cultural narratives. The story of a living environment and a nationally connoted culture, which is told through the depiction of houses and objects, comes to a dramatic end. The “wild instincts” of the Russians described in many literary texts are held responsible for a primitive and systematic orgy of destruction. They may be categorised as an absolute lack of culture – destruction, demolition and arson clearly offer the Russian soldiers a perverse sense of enjoyment. The negative image of Russia and Russians as an archenemy, originating from the traumatic historical experiences during the period of partitions, manifests itself in the form of barbarisation as well as imagination of the own superiority in terms of culture. One specific object of reflection is the library with its numerous precious and ancient copies of books, which now lie around shredded and torn apart. It becomes clear that the library has been defiled in quite a particular manner. For instance, a historic copy of Plato’s Dialogues has been sullied with human excrement.49 The house resembles a vast sewer; the window ledges, the shelves and the piano have all been covered with faecal matter. In the midst of the ravaged estate, the soldiers find the body of a Polish officer, who has been buried alive and whose hand protrudes “desperately” from the ground.

Illusions of Property In her war memoirs Pożoga. Wspomnienia z Wołynia 1917–1919 (Wildfire. Memories of Volhynia 1917–1919, 1921), Zofia Kossak-Szczucka considers the fatal pogroms and the destruction of Polish country estates in the chaos of the Great War and the Russian Revolution from a civilian perspective. The text reads as a litany of cruelty, degradation, demolition and, at once, as a critical engagement with the fluctuating world of material and spiritual aristocratic culture in Polish areas in the East. Country houses are laid to waste, plants and trees in the surrounding parks and gardens are torn out, swans are brutally killed, and soil is churned up so that owners are no longer able to identify their homes when they return. “Chimneys were sometimes left behind, the only traces left of their former property, towering in the skies like a living grievance. But, in most cases following the pogroms, the only things left are miserable skeletal houses with no roofs or supports, with torn-off door frames – like wretched, burned corpses.”50 49 Cf. Małaczewski, Koń na wzgórzu, 228. 50 Zofja Kossak-Szczucka: Pożoga. Wspomnienia z Wołynia 1917–1919. Kraków 1922, 56 (“Gdzieniegdzie zostawiano jeden główny komin, jako ślad jedyny byłego majątku, sterczący ku niebu



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The Polish partisans attempt to defend the country estates, but are not entirely successful, leaving the author of this memoir wistfully to recall the obliteration of her parents’ estate: “On this day, the reeking boots of soldiers and peasants stomped painfully also on my heart and tore the lovely bond that tied me to the distant time of my childhood in my memories.”51 She mourns the ruined country houses and estates, which document her shame and her downfall like a “cry of horror and despair”;52 she perceives deep wounds in the buildings and hears the “soul of objects” bemoaning their terrible fate. Here we also find that objects, as products of literary imagination, are assigned sensual and emotional dimensions – they can be harmed, suffer and cry just like humans. The perspective of the civilian population focusses on material culture, which requires urgent protection since they are subject to uncontrolled attacks and orgies of destruction carried out by peasants and soldiers. Due to their mobility, soldiers are no longer able to exert any influence on the fates of their own houses (they are looked after by women and domestics), but they use the memories of their homes “in an attempt to come to terms with the emotional and cognitive dissonances of their own experience of mobility”.53 Their transitory territorial positionality does not mean a disengagement from their own culture, especially since it has no place in the state, but their culture is localised precisely in aristocratic country houses. An integral part of soldiers’ experiences is the confrontation with transformations of household and property orders, with the destruction and degradation of things and with the devastation of the atmospheric and emotive values that they themselves had created. The stationing of troops on aristocratic country estates marks a collision of tradition and modernity as well as epiphanies in Polish culture or, rather, the confrontation with the loss of material and spiritual qualities which had always been closely related to Polish culture and which they, albeit in a rudimentary manner, still represent. Significantly, the soldiers in the Polish Legions create a spectacular substitute for the complex of the Polish country house in Volhynia on the River Styr where, in July 1916, the

 niby żywa skarga. W przeważnej ilości wypadków na miejscu pogromu zostawały opłakane ­szkielety budynków, bez dachów i belek, z wydartemi futrynami, podobne do żałosnych, osmalonych trupów”). 51 Kossak-Szczucka, Pożoga, 92 (“Tego dnia śmierdzące buty żołnierzy i chłopów przeszły boleśnie i po moi sercu, depcząc wszystko, co wiązało drogą nitkę wspomnień między mną a odległym dniem mego dzieciństwa”). 52 Ibid., 163 (“okrzyk grozy i rozpaczy”). 53 Norbert Franz and Rüdiger Kunow: Mobilität und Reflexion. Zur Entkoppelung von territorialer und kultureller Identität, in: id. (eds.): Kulturelle Mobilitätsforschung: Themen – Theorien – Tendenzen. Potsdam 2011, 7–12, here 8.

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battle of Kostiuchnówka took place. As Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski recollects from his written accounts, “a [strange] front architecture blossomed again [there],”54 which imitated Polish aristocratic estates. A fanciful wooden town was constructed, a quasi-urban, artificial base – houses with quaint verandas, stairs and floors; even a small chapel was built.55 The regiments attempted to outdo each other in the originality of construction and of the interiors, which symbolised an imitation of familial comfort, military tradition, historical continuity and the bond with nature, while also representing a further mobilisation factor.

Figure 3: Stefan Sonnewend: Head Quarter of the Polish Legions in Legionowo 1916, in: Witold Sienkiewicz (ed.): Legenda Legionów. Opowieść o Legionach oraz ludziach Józefa Piłsudskiego. Warszawa 2008, 228.

This type of architecture (Figure 3) creates not only a substitute for lost homes and estates – an illusion, as it were, of feeling at home in foreign lands – but also steels patriotism and serves both as a strategy in the acquisition of territory and as a stage for cultural struggle. In the imagination of the Legions, it marks the fault line 54 Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski: Wymarsz i inne wspomnienia. Łomianki 2012, 168 (“­zakwitła architektura frontowa”). 55 The settlement existed from November 1915 to June 1916.



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between ‘modern’ Polish chivalry as the avant-garde of Western civilization and the pitfalls and dangers of Volhynia’s bogs and marshes as a locus terribilis with images of country houses in ruin. What distinguishes this region from Galicia, Bukowina and several regions in the Congress Kingdom is that it may be considered a sphere of wilderness, barbarism and inhospitableness.56 Legionowo, the headquarters of the Polish Legions and other elements of front architecture, will soon be reduced to debris and, with this act of destruction, the dream of retaining ancient aristocratic property and the corresponding societal order, in which each person has their assigned position, dissipates completely. What symbolically occurs here is the irrevocable transition from an aristocratic culture of sedentariness to modernity, for which the Great War stands and in which the processes of dispossession happen rapidly and violently, huge swathes of people are made homeless and houses are destroyed en masse. The destruction of houses becomes a striking and pregnant “metaphor of the separation from aristocratic culture, sedentarism and association with one particular space and one particular time”.57 In this context of crisis during the First World War, the country house can be considered a crucial resource, operating far outside of its own walls and highlighting alternative concepts of ownership, which ties in neatly with Zofia Kossak-Szczucka’s reflection formulated in the face of ever-increasing devastation: “Is ‘ownership’ – this potent source of motivation in life – not one of the world’s greatest illusions? A person’s true property is what he loves, and real possession is decided by the sum of feelings, thoughts, energies and sensibilities that he has dedicated to the object. The more goodwill and positive energy invested in the object, the more familiar and the more distinctive it appears to him, the more painful the separation from it, all the more joyous their reunion.”58

56 Cf. Krzysztof Stępnik: Rekonesans. Studia z literatury i publicystyki okresu I wojny światowej. Lublin 1997, 46. 57 Urszula Ottingen: Motyw dworu w sztuce legionowej, in: Tadeusz Jaroszewski (ed.): Dwór polski. Zjawisko historyczne i kulturowe. Materiały V Seminarium zorganizowanego przez Oddział Kielecki Stowarzyszenia Historyków Sztuki, Instytut Historii Wyższej Szkoły Pedagogicznej im. Jana Kochanowskiego w Kielcach oraz Kielecki Dom Środowisk Twórczych, Kielce 7–9 października 1999. Warsaw 2000, 217–231, here 220. 58 Kossak-Szczucka, Pożoga, 164 (“Bo czyż nie jedną z wielkich ułud świata jest ‘prawo własności’, ten potężny motor życia? Człowieka własnością prawdziwą jest tylko to, co ukochał, a o istotnem posiadaniu rozstrzyga suma uczuć, myśli, sił i wrażeń, które danej rzeczy oddał. Im więcej w nią włożył dobrej woli i energii, tem ona mu bliższą i tem więcej swoją, tem boleśniejsze rozstanie, radośniejszy powrót”).

Uta Bretschneider

New Farmsteads in the SOZ/GDR: Politicial Implications and Adaptation Processes Abstract: The 1945–1948 land reform led to the emergence of 210,000 new farmsteads on former “Junker land” in the Soviet Occupied Zone of Germany (the later German Democratic Republic). Farmland, fields, wooded areas, farmhouses, barns, and farming equipment from the inventory of manor state families were confiscated and given to applicants. These “new farmers”, which included families of agricultural workers, landless farmers, as well as German refugees and expellees of the Second World War, were expected to form their own social group. Their property from the land reform was “bonded”: i. e., they were not allowed to sell, lease, or mortgage it. This paper analyses these new farm houses as standing at the intersection of state action for socio-political reform and the legitimation of the ruling party on the one side and individual adaptive processes on the other. What role did the land reform play in the lives of the families living in the new farmer houses? What political implications were tied to the new structures? And what processes of adaption and interpretation of state intentions could, and can, be read into the new farmer houses? In order to answer these questions, archival sources, contemporary publications, as well as statements from witnesses have been taken into account. In northern Thuringia on 26 May 1946, the keystone was ceremoniously laid for a new settlement that was to become a prototype: Großfurra-Neuheide became the first new farmer settlement (Neubauernsiedlung) in the Soviet Zone of Occupation (SOZ, Sowjetische Besatzungszone). Project planning, led by Hermann Henselmann and Toni Miller, began in 1945 at the Weimar university of Baukunst und Bildende Künste.1 Miller planned the district as a “village green type, expanded 1 Sabine Ortmann: Zwischen Aufbruch und Verwerfung – die Neubauernsiedlung Großfurra/ Neuheide, in: Thüringisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege (ed.): Aus der Arbeit des Thüringischen Landesamtes für Denkmalpflege. Bauaufgaben des 20. Jahrhunderts. Erfurt 2005, 109–112, esp. 109. The district of Sonderhausen was particularly effected by the land reform. 51 manor ­houses and 14,000 hectares of land came under its aegis. Andreas Dix: “Freies Land”. Siedlungsplanung im ländlichen Raum der SBZ und der frühen DDR 1945–1955. Köln 2002, 198–9.; Along with ­Großfurra, Seega and Bruchstedt constituted the model villages of the “first hour”: Ulrich Wieler: Bauen aus der Not. Architektur und Städtebau in Thüringen 1945–1949. Köln 2011, 131 ff.; for ­further information on Henselmann see: Frank Hager: Biographie und Beruf im staatlichen Spannungsfeld. Der Architekt Hermann Henselmann in der Zeit des “Bauens in nationaler ­Tradition”, in: BIOS 27, no. 1/2 (2014), 169–186. Note: Translation: Edward C. Hamelrath DOI 10.1515/9783110532241-006, © 2017 Uta Bretschneider, published by De Gruyter. Die Online Ausgabe steht unter einer Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz.



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road”.2 The village (Figure 1) comprised 18 farms, each with nine hectares of fertile land, and three hectares of wooded area.3 The farmhouses were built according to Henselmann’s design by the name of “Thuringia”. As so-called Streckhöfe, they combined the areas of living, livestock, and storage under one roof. Of a total area of up to 220 square metres, approximately 60 square metres were given over to living quarters.4 The farmhouses were built in the half-­timbered style (Fachwerkbauten), making use of local building materials, with the gabled areas wood-encased and the saddle roofs fitted with dormer windows.5

Figure 1: New farmer settlement Großfurra-Neuheide, © Uta Bretschneider, 2013.

2 Dix, “Freies Land”, 203. 3 Ortmann, Zwischen Aufbruch und Verwerfung, 109. 4 The above refers to New Farmstead design “Thuringia” built in Kloster Veßra. Kreisarchiv ­Hildburghausen, Gemeinde Kloster Veßra, 929/263a, Bauakten 1945–1951, unpag., Entwurf zum Neubauerngehöft des Erich Moor, 15 May 1948. 5 Ortmann, Zwischen Aufbruch und Verwerfung, 109–110; see also: Christian Schädlich: Die ­Neubauernsiedlung Neuheide in Großfurra, in: Architektur der DDR 2 (1989), 54.

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Monument preservationist Hermann Wirth claims that the designs reflected a “clichéd idea of a Thuringian Street-Common-Village (Straßen-Anger-Dorf)”.6 However, this form of Streckhof is rarely found in Thuringia today. The founding of the prototype settlement of Großfurra-Neuheide was intended as a fundamental revolution in the rural landowner- and power-structures. In the autumn of 1945, land reform was introduced into the SOZ (Figure 2). By 1948, this came to include 3.3 million hectares of land, corresponding to 35 per cent of the useful agricultural land of the whole of the SOZ at the time, equivalent to the entire surface area of the state of Brandenburg today.7 The property of alleged or known National Socialists, as well as that of landowners who possessed more than 100 hectares, was confiscated without any form of compensation. This included taking arable land, pastures, and forests as well as building structures and farming equipment. The confiscated property fell to a state land fund, which was subsequently redistributed. The result was that, between 1945 and 1948 in the SOZ, approximately 210,000 new farms emerged on the so-called “Junker” estates. The land reform made “new farmers” (Neubauern) of agricultural labourers, landless farmers, small-scale tenant farmers, as well as refugees and expellees of the Second World War. Ideologically, the term was heavily loaded, for these people were supposed to form a separate social group. However, the term “new farmers” was in no way a creation of the immediate post-WWII era. The term was already in use after the First World War, when manor estates (Gutsanlagen) were “relocated” (aufgesiedelt). And in the era of National Socialism, new farmers were supposed to be the “pioneers” who helped to implement the expansion policy in the East. In the following paper, the “new farmer houses” (Neubauernhäuser) of the post-war era are analysed as standing at the intersection of state action for socio-political reform and the legitimation of the ruling party on the one side and individual adaptive processes on the other. What role did the land reform play in the lives of the families living in the new farmer houses? What political implications were tied to the new structures? And what processes of adaption and interpretation of state intentions could, and can, be read into the new farmer houses? In order to answer these questions, archival sources, contemporary publications, as well as statements from witnesses have been taken into account.8 6 Hermann Wirth: Neubauernsiedlung Großfurra-Neuheide. Über Unwegsamkeiten und Missverständnisse im Denkmalschutz, in: Heimatbund Thüringen (ed.): Heimat Thüringen. ­Kulturlandschaft – Umwelt – Lebensraum no. 2/3 (2002), 53–4, esp. 53. 7 http://www.statistik-portal.de/Statistik-Portal/de_jb01_jahrtab1.asp (24 March 2016). 8 The source material was collected as part of the dissertation project: “Vom Ich zum Wir”? Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene als Neubauern in der LPG (“From I to We”?: German Refugees and Expellees of WWII as New Farmers in the Agricultural Cooperatives). Uta Bretschneider: “Vom Ich zum Wir”? Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene als Neubauern in der LPG. Leipzig 2016.



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Figure 2: Land reform certificate, 1948 – Archive of the Hennebergisches Museum Kloster Veßra, A III Nr. 7.

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Designing | Constructing In essence, the design for the new farmer houses was based on the ideas of the Planning Commission (Planungsverband) that existed from 1945 to 1951 at the University of Weimar (Hochschule Weimar).9 Toni Miller, mentioned above, led the Project Group “Rural Building and Settlement” (Ländliches Bau- und Siedlungswesen), which, among other things, was occupied with the construction of new farmsteads.10 Due to the destruction wrought by the war and the ­temporary “re-agriculturalization”11 of society, as well as the land reform, entirely new challenges and new areas of work for rural architecture emerged. Therefore, due to the difficulty of obtaining supplies, “long-established makeshift ­construction methods” were to be propagated and developed, in particular those using clay.12 As early as 1946, the design portfolio Grundlagen des ländlichen Bauwesens. Typen für landwirtschaftliche Kleingehöfte (“Foundations of Rural Architecture: Designs for Small Farmsteads”) from the Planning Commission was published, which contained a total of 34 designs, among them the “Thuringia” type described above.13 In accordance with the principle “form follows function”, the new farmer houses were built with the internal work flow of the farmstead in mind.

9 Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar (ThHStAW), 6-32-0130, Land Thüringen, Ministerium für Wirtschaft und Arbeit Nr. 2576, Maßnahmen zur Durchführung der Bodenreform im Land Thüringen, 1945–1948, Aufbau und Aufgaben der Planungsgemeinschaft Wiederaufbau (gez. von Prof. Henselmann), 20 Oct. 1945, 17–19; Wieler, Bauen aus der Not, 128 ff. In Brandenburg, the Office for Reconstruction (Amt für Wiederaufbau) also submitted designs. Katja Schlenker: Das unbequeme Erbe. Mecklenburgische Gutsanlagen und Herrenhäuser seit 1945. Rostock 2003, 102. 10 Andreas Butter: Das Funktionalistische Fachwerkhaus? Ländliche Nachkriegs-Architektur im Osten Deutschlands und die Moderne, in: Ulrich Kluge et al. (eds.): Zwischen Bodenreform und Zwangskollektivierung. Vor- und Frühgeschichte der “sozialistischen Landwirtschaft” in der SBZ/ DDR vom Kriegsende bis in die Fünfziger Jahre. Stuttgart 2001, 251–276, esp. 255; Toni Miller: Die landwirtschaftlichen Versuchshöfe des Landes Thüringen, in: Neue Bauwelt 22 (1946), 3–7, esp. 3. 11 Arnd Bauerkämper: Traditionalität in der Moderne. Agrarwirtschaft und ländliche Gesellschaft in Mecklenburg nach 1945, in: Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 51 (2003), 9–33, esp. 31. 12 ThHStAW, 6-32-0130, Land Thüringen, Ministerium für Wirtschaft und Arbeit Nr. 2576, Maßnahmen zur Durchführung der Bodenreform im Land Thüringen, 1945–1948, Aufbau und Aufgaben der Planungsgemeinschaft Wiederaufbau (gez. von Prof. Henselmann), 20 Oct. 1945, 17–19, here 18. On the use of clay building methods in this context see Uta Bretschneider: Improvisieren und Aneignen. Neubauernhäuser in der Nachkriegszeit, in: Volkskundliche Kommission für Thüringen e. V. and Thüringer Freilichtmuseum Hohenfelden (eds.): Haus und Hof. Leib und Leben. Hohenfelden 2015, 95–106, esp. 98–9. 13 Dix, “Freies Land”, 60 ff.



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Figure 3: Sketch of a new farmstead type “Thuringia”, in: Planungsverband Hochschule Weimar (ed.): Grundlagen des ländlichen Bauwesens. Typen für landwirtschaftliche Kleingehöfte. Weimar 1946.

As a result of the lack of building materials, the limited possibilities for individual initiative, and the granting of credit only being done in steps, the designs often allowed for multiple stages of construction. Toni Miller advocated a construction design in sections in accordance with the so-called “cell system” (Zellensystem). Here the buildings – depending on the availability at any given time of financial and material resources – were to be expanded and, with the development of the economy, allowed to grow (Figure 3).14 From 1946, the theoretical considerations of the working group were amended by practical attempts. This is how, among other things, the “landwirtschaftliche Versuchsbauten des Landes Thüringen” were created. On this topic, Miller wrote: “the goal is to identify the best, most economically productive small farms”.15 The three prototype farms that were created in Weimar – closed, half-open, and open construction style – still exist today, albeit in a rather dilapidated state.16

14 Miller, Die landwirtschaftlichen Versuchshöfe, 3–4. 15 Ibid., 4. 16 Ibid. The building situated in the Rainer-Maria-Rilke-Street 46 in Weimar (type Halboffen) is under a preservation order until today.

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To deal with the materials shortage, the university in Weimar tried out clay construction methods – a so-called “Clay Construction School” was established and in 1947 a “Clay Construction Primer” published.17 Richly illustrated, the book offered practical instruction on extracting and preparing loam, as well as the various processing forms.18 Rammed-earth clay, cobbed clay, clay brick ­techniques (Stampflehm-, Lehmweller-, Lehmziegeltechniken) were to be used in the construction of a new farm house. However, since the nineteenth century, this type of building had been largely replaced by bricks and had thus fallen into obscurity.19 Therefore it came as no surprise that contemporary builders viewed the “rediscovered” material with great scepticism. They considered it to be outmoded and “dirty”. So, due to the lack of expertise, numerous mistakes were made in the construction, which did nothing to improve the reputation of clay construction – which today, under the physical construction aspect, is highly regarded.20 As a result, the following order was issued in Thuringia in 1947: “To the extent that it is locally and economically justifiable, the Building Approval Commission is to stipulate, emphatically, the use of natural building materials. Other building materials and procedures recently approved and recommended here are to be strongly promoted.”21 In general, the designs of the Planning Commission reflected architectural tradition. The classical Streckhöfe of the new farmers after land reform looked like – of course in a more reduced version – a new farmer farmstead of the national socialistic settlement projects. Documents found at the Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar include, along with plans for the post-war period, designs from the 1930s. The sources of inspiration were obvious. And it was not only in the term “new farmer” that certain strands of tradition could be found to have endured. Subsequent land reform architectures – those that emerged in the early 1950s in the transition to cooperative agriculture – resembled the agricultural labourer’s houses of the

17 The “Clay Construction School of the State of Thuringia” (Lehmbauschule des Landes Thüringen, Landeslehrstelle für Naturbauweise) was subordinate to the University of Weimar and e­ xisted between 1948 and 1951 in the building of the later “German Bee Museum” in Oberweimar. Art. “Lehmbauschule”, in: Gitta Gunther et al. (eds.): Weimar. Lexikon zur Stadtgeschichte. Weimar 1998, 274. 18 Forschungsgemeinschaft ländliches Bau- und Siedlungswesen Hochschule Weimar (ed.): Lehmbaufibel. Weimar 1947 (new editions: 1993 and 1999). 19 Dix, “Freies Land”, 277. 20 Ibid., 281. 21 Originally the order was published in 1946, but, thanks to the transition to Central Economic Planning, required modification. Kreisarchiv Hildburghausen, Gemeinde Heckengereuth, 2027/6, Bausachen, Zuteilungen, Hochwasser, Gewerbe, 1945–1956, unpag., 6. Anordnung über die ­Baulenkung durch die Baupolizeibehörden. Neuordnung für 1947, 14 May 1947.



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1930s.22 Of course, this continuity comes as no surprise when one considers that both Henselmann and Miller had already been working on agricultural structures before 1945.23

Subsidies | Interventions In the post-war era, the villages experienced a veritable building boom and “changed their faces” as it was repeatedly called in contemporary publications. As far as the new farmer houses were concerned, a specific type of serial architecture was introduced to rural structures. In reference to the building ordinance, four essential forms were established for the land reform buildings. First, new farmsteads were set-up within already existing village areas. Sometimes these buildings, with their typecast architecture, formed a visual counterbalance to the traditional orientation of villages towards the manor house. ­Secondly, entire streets were created with only new farmsteads within or just on the edge of the village boundaries. Thirdly, individually secluded farmsteads were usually built directly on the fields. Fourth, and last, complete settlements – such as Großfurra-Neuheide – arose in close proximity to the villages. In the course of the land reform measures, the new farms each received, on average, five to ten hectares depending on the quality of the soil. This land was not given out for free. Per hectare, the market value of one harvest of rye was to be

22 For example, the design portfolio of the THÜHAG and the Planning Commission contained numerous designs from the period before 1945 that show strong similarities with the later land reform structures. ThHStAW, 6-32-0130, Land Thüringen, Ministerium für Wirtschaft und Arbeit Nr. 3050, Entwürfe und Bauzeichnungen für Neubürgersiedlungen, Neubauerngehöfte, Kleinsiedlungen und Volkswohnungen der Thüringischen Gemeinnützigen Heimstätte Aktiengesellschaft Weimar und des Planungsverbandes Bauhochschule Weimar, 1945–1949. On the National Socialist’s tradition of New Farmsteads see also: Reichsnährstand, Reichshauptabteilung 1 (ed.): Der Weg zum Neubauernhof. Für die deutsche Landjugend. Berlin [second half of the 1930s]. On the designs for the later land reform buildings see: Das Bodenreform-Bauprogramm 1952, herausgegeben vom Ministerium für Aufbau der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Kreisarchiv Hildburghausen, Rat des Kreises, EA 1730/2, Bodenrecht 1950–1951, unpag. 23 Ulrich Wieler: Was vom “Planungskollektiv Bauhaus” übrig blieb. Der “Planungsverband Hochschule Weimar” 1945–49 als institutionelle Versuchsbaustelle, in: Klaus-Jürgen Winkler (ed.): Neubeginn. Die Weimarer Bauhochschule nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg und Hermann Henselmann. Weimar 2005, 67–79, esp. 69. Toni Miller was born Anton Müller in 1914 near Budapest. He held the chair for Rural Structures and Settlement at the State University for Architecture and Visual Arts from 1946 to 1949. He then fled to the Western Zone. Written information on the subject Toni Miller from the University Archive, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, 27 May 2014.

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used as the measure of payment. The payments varied from district to district and in accordance with soil quality – fees ranged from 179 Reichsmark per hectare in Mecklenburg to 277 Reichsmark in Thuringia.24 This amount of land was far too small to ensure financial viability. Therefore, along with the heavily state-­ influenced architecture of land reform, numerous aid packages were necessary in order to stabilize the new farms commercially. The biggest problem for the new farmers was the lack of useable buildings. This led the Soviet Military Administration to issue Order No. 209 in September 1947 – the so-called “New Farmer Construction Program”. The intention was to construct 37,000 buildings for living and working by the end of 1948.25 The real need, however, was significantly higher. In any case, by October 1948 only 15,000 buildings were up and ready to be used.26 So why did construction proceed at such a slow pace? Building owners lacked the financial means, and their chances to take part in the work at the construction sites themselves were limited because there was so much else to do. There was a constant lack of materials, vehicles, and workers.27 Nevertheless, in the long run, as a result of Order No. 209, about 95,000 farmhouses were built, as well as over 100,000 animal stalls, and 38,000 barns.28 Along with the construction program that was phased out with the beginning of the collectivization of the agricultural sector in 1952, subsidized credit was a form of state support. The Soviet Military Administration had already issued Order No. 62 at the beginning of 1946. It guaranteed new farmer families a loan of up to 1,500 Reichsmark as a “business loan” and 4,500 Reichsmark as a ­“building loan”.29 In 1948, the Deutsche Wirtschaftskommission (German Economic  Commission)

24 Wolfgang Meinicke: Die Bodenreform und die Vertriebenen in der SBZ und in den Anfangsjahren der DDR, in: Manfred Wille et al. (ed.): Sie hatten alles verloren. Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands. Wiesbaden 1993, 55–85, esp. 63. The journal Die Ähre listed the following prices: 262,90 Deutsche Mark der Deutschen Notenbank in Thuringia and 174. 60 Deutsche Mark der Deutschen Notenbank in Mecklenburg. O. A., Der Schulungs‐Brief, in: Die Ähre. Monatsschrift der Zentralvereinigung der gegenseitigen Bauernhilfe, vol. 3 (March 1950), 7–9, esp. 8. 25 Arnd Bauerkämper: Problemdruck und Ressourcenverbrauch. Wirtschaftliche Auswirkungen der Bodenreform in der SOZ/DDR 1945–1952, in: Christoph Buchheim (ed.): Wirtschaftliche Folgelasten des Krieges in der SOZ/DDR. Baden-Baden 1995, 295–322, esp. 309. 26 Meinicke, Die Bodenreform und die Vertriebenen, 145. 27 Bauerkämper, Problemdruck, 313. 28 Meinicke, Die Bodenreform und die Vertriebenen, 80. 29 Archiv des Hennebergischen Museums Kloster Veßra, BI 7f Nr. 9, Schreiben der Landeskommission zur Durchführung der Bodenreform an die Kreiskommissionen in Thüringen, Betr.: ­Neubauernkredit, 30 Oct. 1946.



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set the maximum credit for the establishment – or conversion – of a new farmstead at 15,000 Deutsche Mark der Deutschen Notenbank.30 And with the debt-relief and financial aid law for peasant and mid-level farmers passed by the provisional Volkskammer of the GDR in the summer of 1950, all outstanding loan repayments over 15,000 Deutsche Mark der Deutschen Notenbank were cut in half.31 Despite this relief and the reduced rates, the debt continued to be a considerable strain on many new farmer families. It was particularly hard on the refugees and expellees amongst them, most of whom had arrived in the SOZ with no means of their own. One interviewee who grew up in a new farmstead, and whose family had been driven out of East Brandenburg, remembers: “I had to hear it over and over as a child: ‘We have to get that done and we are in debt.’”32 Her sister added: “There was always some kind of financial difficulties and there was always some borrowing here and some borrowing there.”33 As a result of the difficult economic situation and aided by minimal interest rates, many new farmer families paid back their debts very slowly. It was not unusual for debts to be paid off only after the peaceful revolution of 1989/90. “The amount was so minimal. What was it, 90 Marks per year? So then I checked with the bank after the Wende and there were still 2,000 Marks to pay, which I paid off immediately.”34 With the end of the GDR, the land reform record could be deleted in the land registry after the remaining debt was paid off. In March of 1990, the limitation on disposal for land reform ownership was annulled. With this action, a unique form of property ownership came to an end.35

30 Bauerkämper, Problemdruck, 317. 31 Meinicke, Die Bodenreform und die Vertriebenen, 78. 32 Ingeborg Lösch, born 1939. Was driven out of district Landsberg, Brandenburg (today Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland) along with her family (the father was a prisoner of war). After many stops along the way, they landed in Kloster Veßra in 1948 (Interview 12 May 2011), line 13. 33 Bärbel Lohner, born 1940, sister of Ingeborg Lösch. Was driven out of district Landsberg, Brandenburg (today Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland) along with her family (the father was a prisoner of war). After many stops along the way, they landed in Kloster Veßra in 1948 (Interview 4 Nov. 2011), line 955. 34 Peter Lang’s, born 1956, parents (the father was a “resettler” from East Prussia, the mother came from Kloster Veßra) took over a New Farmstead and were one of the founding member of the agricultural cooperatives Vorwärts (“onwards!”) – occasionally the father was even chairman of the LPG (Interview 11 June 2011), line 729. 35 URL: https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2000/ bvg00-144.html (9 May 2016).

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This special form appeared in its origin, in Article 6 of the Thuringia Land Reform Law of 1945: “1. The businesses created from this order may not be wholly or partially divided, leased out, or mortgaged. In exceptional cases, the distribution or leasing of these businesses may be allowed by a decision of the state administration. 2. The business owners shall receive the land free of debt. The tax levies for the year 1945 will come from those who take a yield from the land in question.”36 The new farmsteads were “bound property” or “limited ownership” as the scope for state intervention was vast, while the rights of the “owners” were rather modest. This included heritability, where in this case “change of ownership” regulations (Besitzerwechselvorschriften) trumped hereditary rights. From the state’s point of view, this was intended to secure the continuity of the agricultural business operation. This set-up also made it difficult to give up a land reform parcel. A witness to these events is still angry when talking about the conditions of those times: “My parents built the connecting piece (Zwischenstück, i. e. connecting extension – UB). And – I believe, it was up to 3,000 Marks – this credit was paid off. It was really a small amount. And the person that took it over, Mr. B, had always promised that he would pay my parents off. They even left the lamps and the curtains there. They left Veßra with nothing – and they never saw a penny of what they were owed. I mean, they had paid for everything out of their own pocket, the entire structure and they never got a penny for it.”37 This example illustrates: when remitting the land, all property rights ceased to exist. On the one hand, the operational tasks demanded that one keep to a preconceived procedure: a waiver was to be submitted and had to be approved by the local land reform commission and the corresponding district. In this, the procedure called for clearly defined reasons, e. g. illness or death. On the other hand, if a new farmer became criminally delinquent, or if their land was not being adequately run (i. e. financially stable), the land reform area could be withdrawn.38

36 Archiv des Hennebergischen Museums Kloster Veßra, BI 7c Nr. 37, Gesetz und Ausführungsverordnung zum Gesetz über die Bodenreform im Lande Thüringen, 15 Sept. 1945, 9–10. 37 Jutta Schenk, born 1941 in Kloster Veßra (her mother was housewife and part-time farmer, as well as a seasonal worker on the estate). The parents took over a new farmstead in 1945, were founding members of the agricultural cooperative Vorwärts (“onwards!”) in Kloster Veßra in 1953; members of the cooperative until resignation in 1965 and moving out of Kloster Veßra (Interview 10 May 2011), line 302. 38 Sebastian Pries: Das Neubauerneigentum in der ehemaligen DDR (Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe 2, Rechtswissenschaft 1581). Frankfurt a. M. 1994 68 ff.; Elke Scherstjanoi: SED-Agrarpolitik unter sowjetischer Kontrolle 1949–1953 (Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte 70). München 2007, 172 ff.; compare also: Ira Spieker: Neubauern (3 June 2015), in: Online-Lexikon zur Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa, 2012, URL: http:// ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/55207.html (24 March 2016).



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The difficult situation of many new farmer enterprises, which often amounted to an existential crises, led to many farms being given up. Most of all, it was former agricultural worker families who, although they understood the running of a farm, became so totally overwhelmed with running an independent business that they turned their backs on the land reform economy. In the immediate post-war era many women waiting for their husbands and sons to return from war and captivity took land during the land reform. There are no exact statistics for women participating in the land reform (yet). But Jonathan Osmond estimates for the area of Saxnoy that approximately 8,000 of the 21,000 new farmsteads have been conducted by women.39 In autumn 1946, in general (regarding all farm businesses), almost 121,000 female farmers run farms without their husbands. Until 1949 the number decreased to 88,000. Although the female new farmers were supposed to have the same rights as ‘complete’ new farmer families in the process of land distribution, they had to deal with many problems and often gave up their businesses after receiving the news of the death of their husbands.40 In addition, the gradual growth of the industrial sector led to a rising number of people leaving the rural economy. At the end of the 1940s, the returns to the state land fund increased so intensely that the new distribution of every single new farmer position became impossible. As a consequence, the so-called “local agricultural businesses” (Örtliche Landwirtschaftsbetriebe) had to take over the running of those lands designated as “devastated grounds” (devastierte Flächen).41 This was a complex construct that brought very unsatisfying levels of profit. At the end of 1953, 24,000 local agricultural operations in the entire GDR were working a total of 700,000 hectares of land. Gradually they were integrated into the newly emerging agricultural cooperatives (Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaften, LPG).42

39 Jonathan Osmond: Geschlechtsspezifische Folgen der Bodenreform in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone: Gutsbesitzerinnen, Bäuerinnen, Landarbeiterinnen nach 1945, in: Arnd Bauerkämper (ed.): “Junkerland in Bauernhand”? Durchführung, Auswirkungen und Stellenwert der Bodenreform in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone. Stuttgart 1996, 153–168, esp. 155. 40 Siegfried Kuntsche: Das Bauerndorf in der Nachkriegszeit. Lebenslagen und Alltag, in: Evemarie Badstübner (ed.): Befremdlich anders. Leben in der DDR. Berlin 22000, 64–116, esp. 90; see also Bretschneider, “Vom Ich zum Wir”?, 323–326; Uta Bretschneider: Umsiedlerin – Neubäuerin – Genossenschaftsbäuerin. Lebensumstände und Handlungsspielräume 1945–1960, in: Ariadne. Forum für Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte 63 (2013), 64–71. 41 Christel Nehrig: Zur sozialen Entwicklung der Bauern in der DDR 1945–1960, in: Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 41 (1993), 66–76, esp. 72; also see: Dix, “Freies Land”, 319. 42 Ibid., 319.

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All together, up to 1952, about one third of all new farmer families gave up their farms.43 Even those that did not have constantly to struggle to survive. Arnd Bauerkämper estimates a mere 15 per cent of all land reform farms to have been relatively stable.44 Therefore it can come as no surprise that the new farmers were among the first to join the agricultural cooperatives founded in 1952. Thus, the early participants in land reform involuntarily became the pioneers of collectivization. This represents a structural connection between land reform and collectivization.45 Although it may appear illogical to break up mostly functioning large farm businesses in favour of highly fragile small farm business, only later – in the form of the Genossenschaft (collective) – to re-incorporate them, land reform was deemed a necessary ideological step. Considering the situation of the war’s end and its societal, political, and supply challenges, a more direct transition from the large manor farms to collective farming immediately after the war would have been barely possible, if not unthinkable.

Implications | Legitimations With this outline of the emergence of the new farmsteads and the conditions that enabled them, it has become clear that they were subject to a variety of state interventions. Nevertheless: what concrete political implications were bound up with both the new farmers as a social class and with their buildings? In order to answer this question, it is worth taking a look back at the aims of the radical agrarian reform in the period from 1945 to 1948. The kickoff for the land reform began with a speech by the later president of the GDR, Wilhelm Pieck, on 2 September 1945 in the town of Kyritz in

43 Arnd Bauerkämper: Umbruch und Kontinuität. Agrarpolitik in der SBZ und der frühen DDR, in: Ernst Langthaler and Josef Redl (eds.): Reguliertes Land. Agrarpolitik in Deutschland, Öster­ reich und der Schweiz 1930–1960. Innsbruck 2005, 83–97, esp. 85. 44 Arnd Bauerkämper: Die vorgetäuschte Integration. Die Auswirkungen der Bodenreform und Flüchtlingssiedlung auf die berufliche Eingliederung von Vertriebenen in die Landwirtschaft in Deutschland 1945–1960, in: Dierk Hoffmann and Michael Schwartz (eds.): Geglückte Integration? Spezifika und Vergleichbarkeiten der Vertriebenen-Eingliederung in der SBZ/DDR. München 1999, 193–214, esp. 203. 45 Jens Schöne: Frühling auf dem Lande? Die Kollektivierung der DDR-Landwirtschaft. Berlin 2005, 10–1; Falco Werkentin: Klassenkampf auf dem Land. Zu den Methoden der Kollektivierung von 1952 bis 1960, in: Michael Beleites et al. (eds.): Klassenkampf gegen die Bauern. Die Zwangs­ kollektivierung der ostdeutschen Landwirtschaft und ihre Folgen bis heute. Berlin 2010, 47–66, esp. 47.



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Brandenburg.46 Under the motto Junkerland in Bauernhand (“Junker property into peasant hands”) Pieck portrayed the “reform” as an initiative from below: “What has not been accomplished, despite centuries of war and revolution in Germany, will now be achieved on the way to a democratic land reform. The Junker hold on power will be broken, and their land handed over to farmers and agricultural laborers.”47 With this, Pieck expressed one of the central aims of the land reform: the elimination of National Socialism, which – in the interpretation given it at the time – was closely linked to the dominating Junker class. Traditional hierarchies in the rural areas were to be broken up and the structures and actors of the National Socialist regime were to be suppressed. In this sense, the land reform was classified as an “anti-fascist, democratic revolution” (antifaschistisch-demokratische Umwälzung). Secondly, the reform was to serve as a cornerstone for the “building of Socialism” (Aufbau des Sozialismus). The new farmers were to represent farmers of the “new type”. Loyalty to the Communist Party of  Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD) and the Socialist Unity  Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) was to be promoted and an alliance between “farmers and the (industrial) working class” to be created. Thirdly, supply aspects were made a part of the desired aims. Therefore, radical redistribution was to offer “help to self-help” and to try to secure the supply of foodstuffs in the immediate post-war period. It was also intended to contribute to the integration of refugees and expellees who had flooded into the area.48 The land reform completely overturned rural property relationships. Manor farmer families – as the “village elite” – were stripped of their power and had their property confiscated. With agricultural worker families and the refugees and expellees from former German and East European territories – designated as “resettlers” (Umsiedler) – two groups of people who had mostly up to that point been landless were to obtain property: the agricultural labourers, who had been 46 Jens Schöne: Das sozialistische Dorf. Bodenreform und Kollektivierung in der Sowjetzone und DDR (Schriftenreihe des Sächsischen Landesbeauftragten für die Stasi-Unterlagen 8). Leipzig 2008, 60–1; Jürgen Ast and Kerstin Mauersberger: Zweite Heimat Brandenburg. Flucht, Vertreibung, Neuanfang. Berlin 2000, 86–8. In 1985 a land reform memorial was dedicated in Kyritz. In 2015 there was supposed to be another memorial to celebrate the anniversary, but this has yet to be completed. Uta Bretschneider: Um-Deutungen – Zeitgenössische und aktuelle Darstellungsmodi von Bodenreform und Kollektivierung, in: Markus Gloe et al. (eds.): Standortbestimmung Deutschlandforschung (Schriftenreihe der Gesellschaft für Deutschlandforschung 108). Berlin 2016, 35–54, esp. 51. 47 Wilhelm Pieck: Junkerland in Bauernhand. Rede zur demokratischen Bodenreform Kyritz, 2. September 1945. Berlin 1955, 20–1. 48 For further information see: Bretschneider, “Vom Ich zum Wir”?, 203–4.

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dependent on the manor farm owners, and the “resettlers”, who had lost their livelihoods as a result of their forced migration. Such gifts of land were intended to make particularly loyal citizens of the recipients. Yet the idea bore little fruit. In general, however, the new farmers represented an excellent screen onto which ideological concepts could be projected. They were perhaps the first social group supposed to represent the “new socialist man”. And naturally, the “new socialist man” had to have an adequate “socialist architecture” with specified construction styles. Frank Hager has assessed the situation as follows: “The new architecture had to befit the ‘new man’ and therefore to reflect both the socialist aim of total planning and the regional building traditions.”49 This especially applied to the new farmsteads. The new farmers were a part of the founding mythology of the self-proclaimed “worker’s and peasant’s state” (Arbeiter- und Bauernstaat) and therefore an important element in the GDR’s claim to legitimacy.50 In the contemporary interpretation, the farmers that emerged from the land reform contributed to the establishment of the “alliance between farmers and the working class” (Bündnis zwischen werktätigen Bauern und der Arbeiterklasse): “The working farmers, freed in the antifascist-democratic revolution from oppression and economic exploitation, forged the alliance of the industrial workers and the agricultural workers and, at the same time, created a stable basis.”51 In accordance with the government’s plans, the new farmers were to make up ONE social group in the rural areas. However, in their composition they were extremely ­heterogeneous, particularly in their origins and agricultural know-how. The buildings of the new farmers represent the culmination of political measures directed at controlling settlement and intervening in social development. Within village society, the new farmsteads were to represent a turn away from, indeed an opposition to, the architecture of the manor farm. As part of land reform, and as a consequence of the new farmstead program, about 2,000 manor farmhouses were torn down in the SOZ. Others were partially restored, but the key architectural features eliminated. It is estimated that by doing this, about 71  million bricks and approximately five million tiles were extracted for use in new construction.52

49 Hager, Biographie und Beruf, 171. 50 See Spieker, Neubauern. 51 Kurt Groschoff et al.: Genossenschaftsbauern – gestern, heute, morgen. Die Klasse der Genossenschaftsbauern im Prozess der Gestaltung der industriemäßig produzierenden Landwirtschaft in der DDR. Berlin 1977, 19. 52 Jens Schöne: Die Landwirtschaft der DDR 1945–1990. Erfurt 2005, 16.



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The price for pushing both ideology and material acquisition was the irretrievable loss of historic landmarks. Yet contemporary policy insisted that “[t]here can be no doubt that the manor house lost its right to existence with the disappearance of the class that it served. If such a building cannot be reconfigured to serve the new needs, its demolition is only a matter of time.”53 With the elimination of the previous hierarchies, the corresponding architecture was also to be expunged from collective memory. In a sense, the buildings were punished in lieu of their owners. This highly symbolic act invested houses with a certain agency as embodiments of rule in the village landscape standing in the way of changing power relations. In this sense, many of the answers offered by Anke Rees, a scholar in cultural sudies, are applicable to the question of what the buildings have to do with the people, and in particular the manor houses. “They tempt, steer, keep secret, and block. They protect and preserve, close and hide, open and expand. They awake emotions and memories.”54 Rees adds: “You can’t just do anything you want with them. They ‘go underground’, or they stumble along, reassert themselves and occasionally collapse.”55 Some of these manor houses “went underground” and became useful for public service. Kindergartens, senior citizens’ residences, and hospitals all found homes in such places. This was symbol-laden reutilization, which turned places for the few into places for the many, the common people of the villages. Along with the intended visibility of the new economic order, the new farmsteads made visible – unintentionally – the social status of the new farmers as “emergency farmers” (Notbauern). In other words, the intended look of “opposition” came at the cost of an unintended stigmatization. Many new farmsteads remained provisional for a long time. As soon as physically possible, families moved into the core farmhouses, which were sparsely furnished and often without running water. As late as 1949, nearly half of the new farmsteads were without electricity.56 Sometimes, the buildings remained in their provisional state for a long time. One interviewee explained: “The other rooms were never finished because somewhere, something was always missing. I mean, every Mark that came our way was immediately spent on something that was more important at the time. So the other things never got taken care of. And my father was not exactly a great carpenter.”57 53 Walter Ohle: Ehemalige Guts- und Herrenhäuser in Mecklenburg, in: Denkmalpflege in Mecklenburg (1951/52), 90–113, esp. 92. 54 Anke Rees: Das Gebäude als Akteur. Architekturen und ihre Atmosphären. Zürich 2016, 16. 55 Ibid. 56 Bauerkämper, Problemdruck, 318. 57 Bärbel Lohner, line 865.

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Reutilization | Reinterpretation Besides the political intervention and influence – state control – that came with the new farmsteads, the subjective processes of adaptation require consideration. In various ways, the given construction types were made into unique buildings that the residents created for themselves. On the one hand, they created as much of a cosy or liveable atmosphere as circumstances allowed. On the other, they created a working space to match their needs, because plans that appeared as logical and rational on paper did not necessarily prove so in practice. One way of adapting was permanent work on the buildings. This was necessary to compensate for the difficult supply and personnel situation, but it also meant that the owners could make their future home through their own physical labor. Individual work and adaptive measures are closely linked in such instances. A building that was made possible only through borrowed capital on unknown land was made into one’s own by working on it with one’s own “sweat and blood”. In addition, a garden could represent a form of adaptation – here the new farmer family could make use of the land around their home, thereby also making it their own. Another form of adaptation came in the form of deviation from the prescribed designs. One interviewee described the possibilities: “My father tried to turn a curse into a blessing. He spoke with the construction people. He said: ‘What could we at least touch up a bit? Because that size will not do at all for a proper new farmstead. It may be OK for the collective farms, but that’s it.”58 The father had the stairs into the upper floor arranged differently. Instead of a crawl-space basement, the building got a full proper cellar. In order to enlarge the attic space, he had a jamb wall installed. The gardens located next to the new farmer house offered opportunities to adapt the new surrounding by working the soil and growing plants as well. It is needless to say that the kitchen gardens in addition played an important role for the food supply of families. Ultimately, the new farmer families changed and added to the prescribed building designs in the course of time. Most of all, with the transformation wrought by collectivization in the years 1952 to 1960, the small farms lost their role as a microcosm of living and working. Therefore, they could be reutilized and converted – at least as far as lack of material and government restrictions permitted.

58 Rudolf Peters, born 1940. Fled with his family in January 1945 from Waldheide, Silesia (today Świętoszyn, Poland). After many stops along the way, they settled in Altenhain (Interview 8 March 2013), line 5.



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Especially after the German reunification 1989/90 the former land reform buildings were transformed into modern one or two family houses. As it was no longer necessary to use parts of the new farmer houses for agriculture, the areas of livestock and storage turned into living areas as well. Contemporary building materials were used and the seriality of the post war period was turned into a seriality of the mushrooming DIY markets. Nevertheless the land reform farmhouses are identifiable as such until today in many Eastern German villages.

Conclusion This period of the land reform economy was determined by a series of problems. There was a lack of financial resources, personnel, specialized knowledge, agricultural equipment, livestock, and buildings. Unlike established farming businesses, the new farmer families had to struggle with an array of shortages. To hand over agricultural products was a particular burden, because farmers had to simultaneously build up a working business while paying the state its due. Most – especially in the case of the so-called “resettlers” – could not fall back on a social network that could have offered them support. Not least, they lacked any kind of continuity or tradition, as well as equipment and knowledge, which are so central to the successful running an agricultural business of an old farm family. In addition, many of the new farmer families used part of the existing manor houses for community purposes. Thus they were actually “farmers without homesteads” for a long time. On top of that, the newly built new farmsteads – most of which were set up as Streckhöfe – put a face on the strangeness of the new farmers in their new roles and in the expanded structures of the village. The new farmsteads made it very clear to everyone what the problems of ownership were in the land reform economy – limited property rights and thus the power of state control over the whole process. As mentioned above, the difficulties of the special status of the new farmers drove them to become the main protagonists in the collectivization of agricultural lands that culminated in the so-called “Socialist Spring” (Sozialistischer Frühling) of 1960. In the course of this radical transformation process, the rural areas of the GDR once again underwent shifts in their social structure. New forms of management as well as different forms of village architecture were established. To mention just one example, the prescribed material for large animal stalls and blocks of flats was now concrete in a style that had only, up to that point, been seen in the cities.

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Figure 4: New farmer house in the open-air museum AGRONEUM, © Uta Bretschneider, 2014.

The new farmsteads can be analyzed as an intersection of state measures socialpolitical and regime legitimating and individual adaption processes. Particularly interesting in this respect is that the buildings, although the new farmer economy in the SOZ/GDR existed only from 1945 to (at the latest) 1960, its architectural legacy is still present and visible today in the rural landscape of eastern Germany. Nevertheless, a deeper study and mapping of these regions has yet to be done. Since the 1970s, at least four new farmsteads have found a new use in museums. These are the Hennebergisches Museum Kloster Veßra, the ThünenMuseum Tellow, the Deutsches Landwirtschaftsmuseum Schloss Blankenhain, and the AGRONEUM Alt Schwerin (Figure 4). And, although they were converted to museums at different times (1970s, 1980s and in the middle of the 1990s), they still reflect the standard GDR interpretation of the land reform as a success. None of the problems addressed above, the various and overlapping crises and the high number of farmsteads that had to be given up, are discussed in these museums.59

59 See Bretschneider, Um-Deutungen.



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Figure 5: Land reform monument in Großfurra, © Uta Bretschneider, 2013.

On the question of the legal confirmation of the land reform, there have been heated juridical and political debates since 1990, some of which have yet to die down. On the one hand, there are the families from whom everything was confiscated in 1945 without any compensation, who are fighting to obtain some sort of restitution. On the other hand, there are the families who, since the collapse of

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the GDR, have been fearing for the property that is theirs since the land reform.60 Unfortunately, the laws and decisions in these matters are a vast theme that is beyond the scope of this paper. In summing up, let us return to the beginning, and with this, let us go back to Großfurra-Neuheide. Here, a memorial plaque dedicated in 1965 may be found (Figure 5). It bears the inscription: “Junkerland in Bauernhand: 20 years of democratic land reform, 1945–1965. The first New Farmer Settlement in Germany.” (Figure 5) Of special interest is the line: “first New Farmer settlement in Germany”. Today, this plaque is the only hint of this particular aspect of history in the area. The Central Monument List of the GDR (Zentrale Denkmalliste) listed the new farmsteads and the memorial plaque in Großfurra in 1979 under the rubric “Memorial to the Culture and Life of the working classes of the people” (Denkmale zur Kultur und Lebensweise der werktätigen Klassen und Schichten des Volkes).61 The Thuringia Memorial Law of 1992 confirmed the status of the location. However, in 2004 it was struck from the list of monuments.62 The residents repeatedly had defied the stipulations, and the once standardized new farmsteads were completely altered through roof-surface windows, canopies, glass roof tiles, etc. – another form of adaption, and indeed in a very stubborn form.

60 Under certain circumstances, the following applied: Whoever was not working in agriculture on 15 March 1990, or who had not worked at least 10 years in agriculture, had their land reform property returned to the state. Hans Modrow and Hans Watzek (eds.): Junkerland in Bauernhand. Die deutsche Bodenreform und ihre Folgen. Berlin 2005. 61 Gesetzesblatt der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Berlin, 5 Oct. 1979, special print no. 1017, Bekanntmachung der zentralen Denkmalliste, 25 Sept. 1979, 7. 62 Ortmann, Zwischen Aufbruch und Verwerfung, 110 ff.

Jonathan Voges

Maintaining, Repairing, Refurbishing: The Western German Do-it-Yourselfers and their Homes Abstract: Joyful work or “forced labour” – evaluations of do-it-yourself-activities could not be more contradictory but, nonetheless, they had something in common: the emphasis on the special relationship between the do-it-yourselfer and his home. How was this relationship interpreted by do-it-yourself-publications and by do-it-yourselfers themselves? In what sense was the house described as a form of property? Using different sources (media coverage, handbooks, magazines, and surveys) this contribution analyses how the house was presented as an asset that was, on the one hand, a materialisation of the owners’ well-being and, on the other, of his (and in some cases, especially since the 1970s her) manual skills. During the second half of the twentieth century, homes required not only financial investment, but also investments of (leisure) time and manpower in order to maintain, or even increase, their value. “‘It’s not a house’, said Judas Priest/’It’s not a house, it’s a home.’” Bob Dylan, The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest

Introduction Contrary to diagnoses of its obsolescence, the single-family home continues to be the focus of many people’s aspirations. In October 2016, the German broadsheet newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung asked how such an ecologically problematic, economically irrational, and demographically redundant form of dwelling still could be the dream of so many families. One reason for the unbroken appeal of the single-family home is that it allows home improvement; the habit of visiting home improvement stores is one of the main characteristics of the average homeowner, the article states.1 “I build, therefore I am”, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung titled around the same time to describe the popularity of DIY. In order to explain why the desire to do something by oneself was spreading across 1 Gerhard Matzig: Vier Wände und ein Todesfall. Das Einfamilienhaus könnte als Wohnmodell bald ausgedient haben. Ein Nachruf auf den Traum vom Eigenheim im Grünen, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 22/23 Oct. 2016. DOI 10.1515/9783110532241-007, © 2017 Jonathan Voges, published by De Gruyter. Die Online Ausgabe steht unter einer Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz.

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society, the article’s author ventured that it was “un-alienated work that would please Karl Marx: With one’s work one expresses oneself, one’s creativity”.2 In fact, the reasons, motivations, and interpretations of do-it-yourself and home improvement are not as new as these articles suggest.3 Similar accounts have appeared since the late 1950s, both in the mainstream media and in specialized publications for do-it-yourselfers like the popular magazine Selbst ist der Mann, which first appeared in 1957. And the space where most of these do-ityourself-activities took place was the single-family home,4 whose transformation traces those of the tastes of West Germany, the manual abilities of its populace, and the merchandise available at its home improvement stores.5 In my paper, I want to discuss how “maintaining, repairing, refurbishing”6 became day-to-day practices in the Federal Republic of Germany and other European countries. How did do-it-yourselfers interact with their surroundings? How did they transform their house into a project – in the most cases a neverending one? In the process, houses did not only become self-made (or at least self-altered) homes, but also the visible expression of the owner’s Vermögen in that word’s dual sense in German: on the one hand the house was a symbol for one’s wealth, on the other it became the manifestation of the inhabitant’s abilities in the realm of home improvement.7 For a discussion of these questions, I will start with a short overview of the history of do-it-yourself and home improvement in the Federal Republic of Germany and in its western European neighbours. Leaving this macroscopic 2 Anne-Christin Sievers: Ich baue, als bin ich! Die Deutschen im Do-it-yourself-Fieber, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 9 Aug. 2015. 3 As most Germans and Europeans did in the years from the 1950s to the 1980s I understand doit-yourself and home improvement as synonyms. For a broader understanding of DIY (including other practices of making things by oneself) in a historical perspective see Reinhild Kreis: Why not Buy? Making Things by Onself in an Age of Consumption, in: Bulletin of the GHI 56 (2015), 83– 97. With a more interdisciplinary focus Nikola Langreiter and Klara Löffler (eds.): ­Selber Machen. Diskurse und Praktiken des „Do it yourself”. Bielefeld 2017. 4 For a short overview about living in suburbia in Western Germany and Europe, see Johann Jessen: Wohnen in verstädterter Landschaft, in: Tilman Harlander (ed.): Villa und Eigenheim. Suburbaner Städtebau in Deutschland. Stuttgart 2001, 316–329. 5 “In the construction method and the used building materials one can see the level of the building technologies available for everyone at the home improvement stores at the construction or reconstruction period.” Johann Jessen and Christina Simon: Städtebau. Vom eigenen Haus mit Garten zum suburbanen Wohnquartier, in: Harlander, Villa, 350–381, 353. 6 For this triad see John McGowan and Roger DuBern: Do it yourself für die ganze Familie. ­Instandhalten, Reparieren, Verschönern. München 1985. 7 For this double meaning of the German term “Vermögen”, see Elmar Seebold: Kluge. Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. Berlin 242002, 955.



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perspective, in a second chapter I want to illustrate how the individual hobbyist described and interpreted his (for he was mostly male) activities, especially as far his relationship with his dwelling is concerned. In a last step, I want to shed light on the question of what home improvement means for the general question of the house as a form of property.

Becoming “a Nation of Drillers and Tinkerers”. Do-it-yourself in Western Germany and Europe What’s wrong with the Americans, not a few western German commentators asked in the early 1950s.8 Why do members of an “affluent society” do things by themselves when they could engage professionals? Should do-it-yourself be judged just “another US craze”, as the Deutsches Handwerksblatt proposed,9 or would, on the contrary, Europeans soon be following the Americans’ lead?10 We know that the second position proved to be right; but even Peter von Zahn, the author who gave the German educated readership of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit their first insights into the “do-it-yourself-culture”11 of his neighbours in an average American suburb, had his problems explaining the motivations of his research objects. But only a few years after such articles appeared in European media, the French as well as the British, the German, and the Dutch were all part of the global “do-it-yourself-movement”.12 For the German case, the year 1957 could be regarded as the breakthrough, when the first edition of the German do-it-yourself-periodical Selbst ist der Mann was published. The editors welcomed 8 This paragraph is mainly based on my dissertation dealing with the “do-it-yourself-movement” in the Federal Republic of Germany from the 1950s to the 1980s. 9 Heinrich J. Klein: “Do it yourself” – auch bei uns?, in: Deutsches Handwerksblatt 8, no. 3 (1956), 73–4. 10 See Peter von Zahn: Selbstgemacht – in USA, in: Die Zeit, 27 Oct. 1955 and id., Fremde Freunde. Bericht aus der Neuen Welt. Hamburg 1953, 217. For the DIY-friendly policy to support home ownership (especially for former soldier – GI-Bill) see Jürgen Martschukat: Die Ordnung des Sozialen. Väter und Familien in der amerikanischen Geschichte seit 1770. Frankfurt a. M. 2013, 277. 11 For the term see Anne Honer: Aspekte des Selbermachens. Aus der kleinen Lebens-Welt des ­Heimwerkers, in: ead.: Kleine Leiblichkeiten. Erkundungen in Lebenswelten. Wiesbaden 2011, 138–149. 12 In 1963, a comparative study dealing with leisure-time activities of European people concluded that DIY was equally popular in France and the Federal Republic; one in five citizens of both nations was a do-it-yourselfer. The figure for Italy was nearly one in three, for Belgium and the Netherlands more than one in three. The British were leading at that time: 41 per cent of theBritish population engaged in DIY the beginning of the 1960s. See Erwin K. Scheuch: Soziologie der Freizeit, in: René König (ed.): Handbuch der Empirischen Sozialforschung. Vol. 2. Stuttgart 1969, 735–833, 781.

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their readers to the worldwide circle of happy amateur handymen, spread a lot of the cultural pessimistic zeitgeist of automatization, alienation, and technophobia, and sang the praises of a self-made environment (see Figure 1). The USA were regarded as the role model, where 75 per cent of home maintenance tasks were already done by amateurs, and nearly a quarter of all lumber products and specialised plastics were processed by do-it-yourselfers: “That will be the same in Germany soon. […] Good luck for a happy start to the happy land of do-it-yourself.”13 In the following years, the Germans (as did other Europeans) became more and more ambitious; while they did rather small projects in the 1950s the time and money spent on do-it-yourself-activities grew. In 1965 the German magazine Der Spiegel published a title story dealing with DIY. On the one hand, commentators in the highbrow media could not resist mocking what they regarded as a hobby of their petit-bourgeois fellow citizens. On the other, they were quite impressed by their abilities, by the sheer amount of materials they installed in their houses, and by the battery of machines some of them already kept in their basements: “Every second [West German; J.V.] is part of a mass movement, which is called ‘do it yourself’ – a movement without banners and statutes that has evolved into a new economic factor in just a few years.”14 Around the same time Selbst ist der Mann asked its readers to leave their modest beginnings behind them. There is no task around the house the do-it-yourselfer could not perform by himself, the new message went. It was all about learning, and not shying away from work that might once have been considered the domain of the professional builder.15 And the readers followed. The do-it-yourselfers of the 1970s and 1980s still did what their predecessors in the 1950s had done, but they integrated new tasks as well.16 An article series in the middle of the 1970s even showed interested readers how to renovate a completely derelict old building – without engaging professional builders and with only the tools and materials one could buy at a home improvement store.17 “An old house may be romantic, but it is unhygienic, 13 Erwin O. Genzsch: Herzlich Willkommen, in: Selbst ist der Mann 1, no. 1 (1957), 1 and 3. 14 N.N.: Do it yourself. Die Axt im Koffer, in: Der Spiegel no. 17 (1965), 47–59 (see Figure 2). 15 N.N.: “Selbst ist der Mann” im zehnten Jahrgang, in: Selbst ist der Mann 10, no. 1 (1966), 3. 16 In 1980s Germany, decorating, painting and carpet laying were still the most widespread DIY tasks (70, 62 and 42 per cent). But more than a third of German DIYers performed more complex tasks (carpentry 37, electrical installation and interior fittings 35, bathrooms 33 per cent). See N.N.: Do it yourself, in: Bodo Harenberg (ed.): Aktuell. Das Lexikon der Gegenwart. Dortmund 1984, 170. 17 The motto of the project is characterized quite well by the title of one of the articles in the series: “Don’t be afraid, there is a solution for every building problem.” N.N.: Haben Sie keine Angst, für alle Bauprobleme gibt es eine Lösung, in: Selbst ist der Mann 17, no. 6 (1975), 6–11.



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Figure 1: Division of labour within the family. Do it yourself in the late 1950s. Cover of the first edition of the German DIY magazine Selbst ist der Mann, 1957

Figure 2: The family father as technically skilled and well-equipped DIY enthusiast. Cover of Der Spiegel no. 17 (1965).

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if bathrooms and toilets are missing; uncomfortable, if there is no real kitchen; cold, with an old-fashioned heating system that does not work properly; not cozy, if – because of outmoded doors and windows – the wind blows through the whole house; not nice to look at, if the facades crumble everywhere. But there is a way out: rebuilding, extending, renovating, modernisation. […] Use the possibilities: Increase the value of your dwelling”.18 “Value” in this case really meant market value as well as an elevation of one’s own joie de vivre at home. Increasing the value of the house meant first of all that you had to invest: on the one hand time, especially leisure time, which grew in all Western European countries since the 1950s19 and which was increasingly spent on do it yourself-activities20 (even though an influential French sociologist asked if one should call DIY a leisure time activity or a special kind of work – or something in-between, which he described as “demi-loisirs”).21 When the question arose to what activities the “head of the household” should devote his time, DIY had some good arguments on its side: it took placed at home (meaning that men were not in bars or elsewhere; a few social scientists even called home improvement a “domestication” of men, Figure 3),22 the families benefited directly from its results (if the tasks were successful), and DIY made a twofold promise about its pecuniary benefits; on the one hand it was presented as a way to keep the market value of the house high, while on the other, money was saved by dispensing with the services of professionals.23

18 N.N.: Viel Eigenhilfe und Initiative, Geld vom Staat und von der Bausparkasse und unsere Vorschläge machen Ihr altes Haus wieder jung, in: Selbst ist der Mann 19, no. 4 (1975), 6–13. 19 See for example Tony Judt: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. New York 2005, 478. 20 See for example, for the Austrian case, Christoph Badelt: Empirische Befunde zur “Parallelen Wirtschaft” in Österreich, in: Jiří Skolka (ed.): Die andere Wirtschaft. Schwarzarbeit und Do-it-yourself in Österreich. Wien 1985, 59–82. Badelt’s empirical enquiry showed that in the mid1980s, 58 per cent of Austrian men between 16 and 70 were engaged in what he called “household production” and that they spent an average of nearly five hours a week on these tasks. (Which in most cases means all of Saturday afternoon.) Comparable results could be found for other European countries. 21 Joffre Dumazedier: Nichtproduktive Beschäftigung, in: Erwin K. Scheuch and Rolf Meyersohn (eds.): Soziologie der Freizeit. Köln 1972, 120–131. Demi-loisirs were activities that were “more or less prescribed”, like activities connected to the job and “domestic and familial duties […], that were partly done for their own sake and partly for utilitarian reasons”. Ibid., 125. 22 For the American case see Steven M. Gelber: Do-it-yourself. Constructing, Repairing and Maintaining Domestic Masculinity, in: American Quarterly 49, no 1 (1997), 66–112. 23 For a general description of time conflicts, see Elizabeth Shove: Everyday Practice and the Production and Consumption of Time, in: ead., Frank Trentmann and Richard Wilk (ed.): Time, Consumption and Everyday Life. Practice, Materiality and Culture. Oxford 2009, 17–33, 20.



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Figure 3: Combining rough manhood and gentle fatherhood; the family father as DIY educator for his son. Emil Lux: Alles zum Heimwerken und Basteln. Der Lux-Ratgeber für den Heimwerker und Bastler. Remscheid 1965, 39.

But saving money via home improvement meant (and this is the other form of investment) spending quite a lot of money on tools, materials, and other utensils.24 The sociologist Walter Siebel made this connection quite clear in an article for the weekly Die Zeit in the middle of the 1980s: The only people who were successful in the informal economy (which for Siebel comprised cash-in-hand jobs as 24 See for example Ronald Hitzler: Die Maschinen des Heimwerkers. Kreativer Lebensstil, alternative Lebensform oder technische Konsumhypertrophie, in: Technik und Gesellschaft Jahrbuch 5 (1989), 206–218.

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well home improvement) were those who were successful in the formal economy as well – just because they were the only ones who could afford to buy what the growing number of home improvement stores had to offer.25 Saving money by doing things on your own became a lucrative market for different players. In the middle of the 1960s, a few western German builders’ merchants and lumber dealers made a trip to the USA. They wanted to investigate how their products were sold across the Atlantic. However, they were not only interested in the wholesale business most of them were engaged in, but also (and maybe even more) in the way their American colleagues retailed the products not only to professionals but to private customers as well. Otmar Hornbach – one of the members of this study trip – made many very detailed sketches, took a lot of photographs and started to develop his own concept of a building supplies supermarket (“Bausupermarkt”) after he returned to his home in RhinelandPalatinate in the late 1960s.26 He became one of the first movers in the field of home improvement stores in the Federal Republic of Germany, but it did not take long for challengers to follow.27 The revolutionary idea of reducing prices by  pooling purchases from suppliers (for which the home improvement store is one of the main examples in retailing)28 was attractive not only for the entrepreneurs but also for the customers; the sector boomed in an otherwise slack economy,29 not only in the Federal Republic of Germany but in western Europe in general.30

25 See Walter Siebel: Mythos Schattenwirtschaft. Nur wer Arbeit hat, ist auch erfolgreich in Schwarzarbeit und Selbsthilfe, in: Die Zeit, 25 Apr. 1986. 26 The documents about Hornbach’s study trip to the USA, the stores he visited there and the planning process after he returned can be found in Hornbach Baumarkt AG. Unternehmensarchiv. Folder: Bornheim. 27 For the concept of first movers and challengers, see Alfred D. Chandler: Scale and Scope. The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism. Cambridge 1990, 35. 28 See for example Robert Nieschlag: Strukturwandlungen im Handel, in: Heinz König (ed.): Wandlungen der Wirtschaftsstruktur in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Berlin 1962, 493–524. Nie­schlag even characterized pooling purchases as a significant aspect of the “revolution in trade”. 29 For an overview on the European economy in the 1970s and 1980s, see for example Anselm Doering-Manteuffel and Lutz Raphael: Nach dem Boom. Perspektiven auf die Zeitgeschichte seit 1970. Göttingen 2008, 35 ff. For a contemporary view on the close connection between the economic crisis and a boom in DIY, see N.N.: Kein Firlefanz. Unter den direkten Auswirkungen des Streiks leiden zahlreiche Branchen. Nur die Baumärkte legen zu, in: Der Spiegel no. 27 (1984), 51–2. 30 See for example Deutsch-französische Handelskammer (ed.): Der französische Heimwer­ kermarkt. Paris 1985, and Deutsch-niederländische Handelskammer (ed.): Branchenstudie. Branchenmosaik Niederlande. Zahlen & Trends. Der Do-It-Yourself-Markt. Den Haag 1986.



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The 1970s and 1980s were the time not only of booming retailers and ever more ambitious home improvement projects, but also of a growing recognition of DIY in the social sciences. Not only Western Germany became a ‘nation of drillers and tinkerers’ around that time. The alliterative play on the phrase “Dichter und Denker” gives this a particular ring in German: “Ein Volk von Bohrern und Bastlern”.31 While Jonathan Gershuny predicted the rise of a “self-service economy” in the 1970s,32 in contrast to Daniel Bell’s more famous “service society”,33 some German commentators even spoke about the society of the future as a “Do-it-yourself society”.34 Beside these very extensive societal ideas, which were inspired by the growing importance of DIY in European and Western societies in general, a more specific approach examined what people were actually doing when they engaged in DIY. “Home improvement as lifestyle” with its own knowledge production, consumer infrastructure and interpretation system was their topic,35 and they found that one of the driving forces of this “do-it-yourself-culture” was owning a house that could be transformed into a home for the do-it-yourselfer and his family. Only the single-family dwelling offered the “opportunity structure” for DIY tasks going beyond adjusting mere “odds and ends” around the house (Kleckerle-Aufgaben).36 And the relationship between the do-it-yourselfer and his house became a special one: he made it his project, indeed, as one of the

31 Peter Gross, Ronald Hitzler and Anne Honer: Selbermacher. Symbolische Repräsentationen durch Schattenarbeit. Heimwerken als Erfahrungsstil und soziale Praxis. Bamberg 1985, 1. 32 See Jonathan Gershuny: After Industrial Society? The Emerging Self-service Economy. London 1978. 33 Daniel Bell: The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. New York 1973. Gershuny criticizes Bell as follows: “Instead of capital investment taking place in industry, and industry providing services for individuals and households, leaving industry engaged in what is essentially intermediate production, making the capital goods – the cookers, freezers, televisions, motor cars [one might add drills, saws and screwdrivers; J.V.] used in home production of the final product. This is the trend towards the do-it-yourself-economy – almost the antithesis of Bell’s service economy.” Gershuny, Industrial Society, 81. 34 Peter Gross: 12,5 Millionen Hijacker – “Selbst ist der Mann”. Heimwerken als Lebensstil und Lebenssinn, in: Gdi-Impuls 4, no. 2 (1986), 3–11. 35 Gross, Hitzler and Honer: Selbermacher. Symbolische Repräsentation durch Schattenarbeit, 9. 36 Anne Honer: Die Perspektive des Heimwerkers. Notizen zur Praxis lebensweltlicher Ethnographie, in: Detlef Garz and Klaus Krainer (ed.): Qualitativ-empirische Sozialforschung. Konzepte, Methoden, Analysen. Opladen 1991, 319–340, 332. In the middle of the 1980s, a study by the Institut für Freizeitwirtschaft showed that “[t]he first and most important correlation exists between living situation and DIY activity: The higher the rate of homeownership, the higher the involvement in DIY.” Institut für Freizeitwirtschaft (ed): Spezialstudie DOIT-YOURSELF. Heimwerken und Heimwerkerbedarf in der Bundesrepublik bis 1990. Vol. 1. München 1984, 101.

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most successful advertising campaigns for a home improvement store in Germany went,37 a never-ending project.

Creating a “Practical, Cosy, and Stylish Home”. Do-it-yourselfers and their Houses There was as significant rise in DIY spending in the years around 1980 in Great Britain. Between 1974 and 1980, expenditure more than tripled, from 96 million pounds to 325 million pounds. Especially from 1979 to 1980 an enormous increase occured: From 256 million pounds to 325 million pounds38 – something that is hard to explain at first sight in a crisis-ridden society like that of Britain in the late 1970s.39 The reason for this increase was a politically promoted increase in home ownership. Under the Thatcher government, tenants were given the opportunity to buy their council houses and flats at less than their market value if they had lived there for a specified amount of time. The rationale for this policy was quite simple: “They [the Conservative Party; J.V.] knew that council tenants were likely to vote Labour and that home owners were likely to vote Tory.”40 For the social and cultural history of DIY, the increase in spending on home improvement equipment shows that owning a house was maybe the most convincing argument to start working around one’s home – to keep its market value and its residential value high and to use it as a kind of stage where you could show what you had attained and what you could accomplish – financially and practically. In the middle of the 1960s, one of the most popular German DIY publications made this connection rather clear. In the introduction to his “Handbook for more or less skilled people”, Otto Werkmeister praised not only the practical benefits of making improvements to one’s own home, but also their idealistic worth: pride in “the work done by one’s own hand” that the man of the house could show off to “his wife, his family, his friends and his neighbours”. A “household where everything is spotlessly clean and where everything functions the way it should” was

37 “Mach es zu Deinem Projekt”. “Es” in this case meant (not only, but in particular) the house. Lena Herrmann: Hornbach fordert. “Mach es zu Deinem Projekt!”, URL: http://www.wuv.de/ marketing/hornbach_fordert_mach_es_zu_deinem_projekt (10 Jan. 2017). 38 Raymond Edward Pahl: Divisions of Labour. Oxford 1984, 101. 39 See Alwyn W. Turner: Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s. London 2008, and Andy Beckett: When the Lights Went out. Britain in the Seventies. London 2010. 40 Richard Vinen: Thatcher’s Britain. The Politics and Social Upheaval of the 1980s. London 2009, 201.



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not just a question of money, but of manual skills (which everyone was supposed to be able to acquire by reading the book).41 With just “a little bit of money and a lot of taste”, one was able to create a “practical, cosy, and stylish home”, the 1975 edition of Werkmeister’s book went on.42 Werkmeister discussed the question of how to become the proud owner of a home of one’s own making, but he brought up economic issues, too. Only a bad “Hausvater” (it is interesting that he should use this characteristically early modern term) would do nothing about a leak in the roof or in a pipe. A good one would “search for the cause and eliminate it”. “Huge values perish each year because iron corrodes, lumber rots, commodities, furniture, tools become unserviceable. He who knows to do it by himself preserves values and creates more of it. Admittedly, you have to do it properly.”43 In the 1980s, the authors of another DIY publication made the connection even more explicit: “A dwelling of one’s own is more than a place to live in – it can be the biggest investment in your life and the grounding of your financial security. If it is to be a solid investment, your house must be kept in proper shape by regular inner and outer maintenance work. The best insurance police is fixing problems before they cause real trouble.”44 Both quotations from DIY books make quite clear an aspect central to the notion of the “house as property”. As an investment – and a considerable one at that – the house appealed because, rather than lying around in a bank account or a safe deposit box, it gave immediate value: one could live in it and adapt it to the changing needs of the family. Against these positive aspects, one of the biggest problems was that it lost value if nothing was done to maintain it. The notion of “Hausvater” pointed in an interesting direction often discussed when dealing with DIY: the specialised publications did not only address people as homeowners but in most of the cases (at last until the 1980s, if not until today) explicitly as men.45 The average interpretation follows the work of Gelber, who spoke of DIY as a possibility to create a “domestic masculinity” by finding tasks

41 Otto Werkmeister: Die Axt im Haus. Ein Handbuch für Geschickte und Ungeschickte. München 1966, 12. 42 Otto Werkmeister: Das Do-it-yourself-Wohnbuch. Ideen, Material, Technik, Werkzeuge. München 1975, 5. 43 Werkmeister, Axt, 12. 44 McGowan and DuBern, Do it yourself, 6. It is interesting that this publication was the German translation of a British manual; in both nations, home improvement was propagated with quite similar arguments. 45 For an example in popular culture in Germany see for example the chanson “Männer im Baumark” by Reinhard Mey dealing with men at their favorite of all stores: the do-it-yourself-store.

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for men without asking them to help their wives doing housework.46 This interpretation is correct but deserves differentiations;47 the domestic masculinity gained through DIY was not static, especially for the Western German case (and maybe even for the GDR)48 one can observe a rather radical change in the gender roles transported by DIY from the 1950s to the 1980s. In the late 1950s the do-it-yourself-publications started as canticles of family values, depicting family fathers being at the centre of work in and around the house. Especially the relationship between fathers and their sons, which was described as rather problematic around that time especially (but not only) in catholic media,49 was shown as a form of trustful, but hierarchically structured work situation of master and apprentice. The “view of work” which was – in the perspective of one of the most prominent psychologists in Germany – missing for most boys because their father’s work did not take place at home anymore,50 the DIY publications reintroduced it to the household. Even though, the “absent father” stayed a much-lamented figure – even if they did DIY and were at home, they were not part of the family, but were working in the basement (causing dirt and noise).51 The situation changed since the late 1960s and especially in the 1970s and 1980s. While on the one hand more and more women started their careers as DIYers – assisted by a rather uncommon coalition of the feminist women’s magazine “Emma” demanding their readers to break the masculine monopole of DIY52 and owners of DIY-stores, desperately on the search for new customers, because the semi-professional men started to buy their materials and tools in newly opened DIY-discount-stores53 – on the other hand new forms of masculinity came 46 Gelber, Do it Yourself. 47 It is interesting that for the South American case Pérez asks for another form of differentiation, including class in the analysis of “domestic masculinities” via DIY (the plural form is crucial in her argument) in Argentina. Inés Pérez: Masculine Ways of Being at Home. Hobbies, Do-It-Yourself and Home Improvement in Argentina (1940–1970), in: Gender & History 27, no. 3 (2015), 812–827. 48 See for example Dominique Krössin: Wie mache ich’s mir selbst? Die Zeitschrift practic und das Heimwerken, in: Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (ed.): Wunderwirtschaft. DDR-Konsumkultur in den 60er Jahren. Köln 1996, 160–165. 49 See for example Rudolf Rüberg: Vater oder Familienfunktionär?. Dortmund 1963. 50 Alexander Mitscherlich: Auf dem Weg zur vaterlosen Gesellschaft. Ideen zur Sozialpsychologie. München 1963, 180. 51 See for example Rüberg, Vater, 9, and for the Argentine case the descriptions of the same phenomenon in Pérez, Ways, 814. 52 N.N.: Scheinduelle im Heimwerkermarkt, in: absatzwirtschaft 20 (1977), 32–40, 34. 53 See for example the description of the Dutch DIY-market in N.N.: Niederlande. DIY-Frau emanzipiert sich, in: b + h 4 (1979), 15.



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to the foreground. Instead of the “gentle fatherhood”54 presented in the 1950s and early 1960s now the “rough manhood”,55 the possibility to work with strong electric appliances and the notion of doing real men’s work56 became the “hegemonic masculinity” (Connell) in Western German DIY. “Machines ahead” men gave in to the assumption that “paradises could be built”, the feminist critic Katharina Rutschky wrote in 1990 in an article dealing with men’s magazines. And she went on describing the relationship between the masculine DIYer and his house: “The DIYer needs a home as a background, in front of which his obsession is less obvious as others’.” The house, in the perspective of Rutschy, was nothing else than a cover-up for the “strange autotelicness” of what men did in their leisure time.57 In this perspective, it is not surprising that beside all the enthusiastic descriptions of the joys of DIY one can read completely different interpretations of the phenomenon, too. The feminist critic of “domestic masculinities” via DIY not the only one. Others came from the completely opposite side of the political spectrum: It was nothing but “forced labour” in and around your own home, the right-wing sociologist Robert Hepp stated in the early 1970s.58 The “ideology of the single-family home”, which dominated the discourse of lifestyle hopes in the European post-war societies,59 made homeowners slaves to their own houses. In many cases, they were 54 Till van Rahden: Fatherhood, Rechristianization, and the Quest for Democracy in Postwar West Germany, in: Dirk Schumann (ed.): Raising Citizens in the Century of the Child. The USA and German Central Europe in Comparative Perspective. New York 2010, 141–161, 151. 55 Roger Horowitz: Introduction, in: id. (ed.): Boys and Their Toys? Masculinity, Class, and ­Technology in America. New York 2001, 1–12, 3. 56 It is rather interesting that the DIY publication draw a line between tinkering on the one hand (minor work which could also be done by women and children) and building on the other hand – tasks that were reserved for man. One context, in which this separation was made, was for example the case of masculine household accidents. In 1975 Selbst ist der Mann reported that only 4,3 per cent of German DIYers had an accident – the authors of the magazine admitted that their own ­likeliness for accidents was much higher: “It is the question if someone is just tinkering or really building.” The author claimed for himself (and his readership) to belong to the second group. N.N.: Selbstmord mit Hammer und Säge. Leichtsinn beim Heimwerken, in: Selbst ist der Mann 19 (1975), 56–9. 57 Katharina Rutschky: Unsere Presse – Neue Folge: So sind Jungs – Magazine nur für ihn, in: Merkur 44 (1990), 600–6. 58 Robert Hepp: Selbstherrlichkeit und Selbstbedienung. Zur Dialektik der Emanzipation. München 1971, 58. 59 See for example Ursula A. Becher: Geschichte des modernen Lebensstils. Essen, Wohnen, Freizeit, Reisen. München 1990, 243 ff. Especially for the West German case, see Meik Woyke: ­“Häuschen im Grünen.” Die Popularisierung der Suburbanisierung im 20. Jahrhundert, in: Daniela Münkel and Lu Seegers (eds.): Medien und Imagepolitik im 20. Jahrhundert. Deutschland, Europa, USA. Frankfurt 2008, 273–292.

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able to buy or build their houses, but not able to pay the professional craftsmen’s bills as soon as maintenance work was due. “They thus had no choice but to become members of a movement in which even ‘forced labour’ is counted as a hobby”, Hepp continued.60 “Whoever is not wealthy enough to buy the required services on the market must settle for doing everything on his own that he cannot pay for.”61 Surveys concerning the motivation of do-it-yourselfers that identified “joy”, “pride”, and the desire to perform “un-alienated work” at home as a counterbalance to the work one had to do in one’s job were,62 for Hepp, based on nothing but ill-informed answers misinterpreted according to the bourgeois expectations of the interviewers.63 Even though both evaluations of DIY seem to be as controversial as possible (on the one hand joyful work, on the other hand forced labour), both shared basic assumptions, and it was possible to find a middle ground. A book published by the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), a manufacturer of electric tools and appliances, spoke of home improvement as “love at second sight” – what had started out of necessity would soon become a pleasure.64 Both extremes saw a close connection between owning a house and DIY; the first interpreted the house as a facilitating structure, the other one as imposing chores. In both cases, the relation between the owner and his dwelling became a never-ending story: “There is no reasonable cause to end home improvement”, one DIY publication 60 Hepp, Selbstherrlichkeit, 58. 61 Ibid., 50. 62 See for example one French example dealing with men living around Paris who described their DIY activities mainly as done “uniquement par plaisirs”. Joffre Dumazedier and Maurice Imbert: Espace et Loisir dans la société française d’hier et de demain. Paris 1967, 181. You can find the same testimonies in German and British studies as well. 63 In the late 1950s, one could find rather similar interpretations on an European scale – without Hepp’s critical edge. At an international conference on DIY in Switzerland, a French speaker mentioned the “problem of decoration”. “To please the individual tastes of its inhabitants, they have to do a lot of tasks around the house. The majority of families have ever-higher expectations for the comfort and convenience of their homes and are more interested in the problems owning a house can cause. To furnish and mainatain without high costs and too much drudgery there is only one solution: Do everything by yourself wherever possible. Growing numbers of dwellings and higher standards of taste and comfort will lead to a growing number of tasks everyone has to do by themselves.” Michel David: Die Dienstleistungen in der modernen Gesellschaft, in: Donald Brinkmann (ed.): “Do-it-yourself” und der Handel. Rüschlikon 1958, 9–30, 25. 64 “Naturally, the joy in working with machines, tools, and materials can be ‘love at first sight’. But admittedly most do-it-yourselfers will discover their joy in handiwork later on. For them the necessity of doing things on their own came first (because the badly-needed builder could only come after weeks or months, because he will charge disproportionately high prices, which one can save with a bit of skill and effort). With the first success, joy will come as well as the ambition to do ever greater tasks – interesting, diverse tasks, which we no longer do in our everyday work.” Peter Fellner: Liebe auf den zweiten Blick … Heimwerken. Stuttgart 1971, 7.



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told its readers in the early 1970s,65 meaning it less as a threat than a promise! And the reason for never stopping was not only that a house required continuous maintenance to preserve its value, but to establish a closer relationship between dwelling and resident: “[Financial and practical reasons; J.V.] are only a part of the satisfaction the do-it-yourselfer experiences: much more important for him is that he enters into a personal relationship with what he did by himself.” In most cases, this meant a “beautifully and practically equipped home and garden”.66 Were these depictions only part of the normative discourse around DIY as it could be found in specialised books or magazines? Could one find similar descriptions by home improvers about their work, and especially about their relationship towards their houses? In the first German scholarly publication on DIY, which mainly dealt with empirical material from the USA, because there were no surveys in Europe yet for this topic,67 Jochen Zschocke tries to analyse the motivations. Beside the element of saving money, Zschocke cites job dissatisfaction, the acknowledgement of men’s manual skills, the prestige men attained within their families, and in the eyes friends and neighbours, the conviviality with their families while working (here the argument of a female driven domestication of men is mentioned) and – last but not least – “Eigentumsliebe” (love of one’s property) as reasons to take up DIY. The “close connection with something can lead to the point that one wants to take care of it and preserve its value”. “Consider the owner of a single-family home, who is induced by the joy of his own house to engage with it in his leisure time, keep it in shape and embellish it.” Yet this relationship is no one-way street, but self-reinforcing: “While the love of one’s propery is the reason for do-it-yourself on the one hand, it will on the other hand tighten the relationship between owner and house.”68 The research of the aforementioned group of social scientists in the 1980s came to a similar conclusion: “The DIYer’s home is […] essentially an eternal building site.”69 For Anne Honer, a member of this group of researchers, the paradigmatic do-it-yourselfer is not just one who acts as soon as a problem around the house is visible, but the one who looks around for and indeed creates possibilities 65 Ibid., 13. 66 Rudolf Wollmann: Selber machen aber wie? Das große Werkbuch zum AEG Heimwerker. Ravensburg 1976, 3. 67 For a first overview about do-it-yourself in the USA, see Carolyn M. Goldstein: Do It Yourself. Home Improvement in 20th-Century America. New York 1998. 68 Jochen Zschocke: Die distributionswirtschaftliche Bedeutung des amerikanischen “Do it yourself-Prinzips” und seine Anwendungsmöglichkeiten in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Köln 1958, 24–5. 69 Ronald Hitzler and Anne Honer: Reparatur und Repräsentation. Zur Inszenierung des Alltags durch Do-It-Yourself, in: Hans-Georg Soeffner (ed.): Kultur und Alltag. Göttingen 1988, 267–283, 268.

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for DIY.70 The place to look for such tasks is the house: “In his home improvements, the do-it-yourselfer objectifies himself. In his home improvements, his good ­qualities become manifest: originality, skill, craft, expertise, diligence, endurance etc.”71 The dwelling that is permanently transformed into a home is therefore an expression of the DIYer’s “Vermögen” in both senses of the word: On the one hand, it is a representation of what he can afford; one the other, of what he is able to do.

“Be at Home in Your Place”: Conclusion “It is a feeling of pride to own a house and to contribute to its embellishment at the same time”, J.W. Walter, the producer of so-called “Schalenhäuser” (shellhouses) stated at the aforementioned conference in Switzerland in the late 1950s.72 Because of the possibilities his product offered, people (and this meant in the most cases men) were able to afford a larger dwelling by doing a lot of the work by themselves.73 The value of the house as property could be increased by investments – not only of money but also of time and manual labour; and value did not only mean exchange value, but also the emotional value of a comfortable family home. Why is the relationship of the do-it-yourselfer with his dwelling interesting for contemporary history? On the one hand, because we can observe an ever-­growing part of the European leisure market;74 on the other, it sheds new light on established discourses concerning post-war history and especially the history of the 1970s and 1980s – for example, the question of a value shift in the realm of work ethics.75 Third, it could be an interesting contribution to a contemporary history of the self.

70 See Honer, Perspektive, 328. 71 Ibid., 335. 72 G. Törnqvist: Diskussion, in: Brinkmann, “Do-it-yourself”, 45–56, 46. Schalenhäuser were dwellings for which the building company only provided the outer shell, while all the interior fittings had to be arranged by the client. 73 This possibility to invest not only money but also manpower and time was one of the reasons for the growing popularity of home ownership among workers. See Hartmut Häußermann and Walter Siebel: Soziologie des Wohnens. Eine Einführung in Wandel und Ausdifferenzierung des Wohnens. Weinheim 1996, 268. 74 See for example as a short overview Jonathan Voges: Vom Handwerk zum Heimwerk? Zur Diffusion professionellen Wissens in den Haushalten im Zuge der Do-it-yourself-Bewegung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, in: Ferrum 86 (2014), 89–96. 75 See for example Jonathan Voges: (Arbeits-)Ethos der Freizeit? Do it yourself und Heimwerken und der Wertewandel der Freizeit, in: Bernhard Dietz and Jörg Neuheiser (eds.): Wertewandel in der Wirtschaft und Arbeitswelt. Arbeit, Leistung und Führung in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. München 2016, 73–94.



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Pascal Eitler and Jens Elberfeld suggest a discussion that focusses in more detail on the construction of the “self” in the confrontation of self and context. In this process, the self is “generated always newly and differently, maybe changed, not only on the level of representation and semantics, but also on the level of materialisation and practices”.76 In the case of home improvement, the home became the place of materialisation, and the practices were called “do-it-yourself”, a term which even includes the “self” as a significant element. “To be yourself is work – work that is never finished and that is always driven forward.” Eitler’s and Elberfeld’s characterisation of the self is very similar to the descriptions of the house as a never-ending project. Andreas Reckwitz takes up this thread on and transforms this idea into a concept that can be operationalized using a praxeological approach.77 A practice for Reckwitz is “a socially regulated, routinized and customary physical behaviour […] that contains forms of implicit know-how, interpretation, motivation and emotion”. – In this case, we are dealing with all the practices that can be summarized under the term of “home improvement”. For Reckwitz, the most interesting aspect is the analysis of the relationship between “subject and object cultures”, for example, “architectures and room ensembles” as “extensive artefact complexes in which the subjects move around”. At the same time, architectures and room ensembles constitute a “constructional arrangement that restricts or enables certain subject formation”.78 From the perspective of a history of do-it-yourself in post-war era, this definition is a little bit too static, but a good point to begin with. For the most interesting thing about do-it-yourself is that subjects is continuously alter their living space, and that the constructional arrangement does not just enable or restrict one’s selfconstruction, but changing one’s surroundings is one of the main elements of the ambitious DIYer’s self. ‘Be at home at your place’ was the promise, do-it-yourself offered its aficionados.79 From this perspective, the house becomes not just a home for his family, but also the material expression of his self and his “Vermögen” as property and ability. 76 Pascal Eitler and Jens Elberfeld: Von der Gesellschaftsgeschichte zur Zeitgeschichte des Selbst – und zurück, in: id. (eds.): Zeitgeschichte des Selbst. Therapeutisierung – Politisierung – Emotionalisierung. Bielefeld 2015, 7–30, 17. 77 For a praxeological approach to history, see Sven Reichardt: Praxeologische Geschichtswissenschaft, in: SozialGeschichte 22 (2007), 43–65. 78 Andreas Reckwitz: Auf dem Weg zu einer praxeologischen Analyse des Selbst, in: Eitler and Elberfeld, Zeitgeschichte, 31–45. 79 Peter Gross: Bei sich selbst zu Hause sein. Die Selbermacher-Mentalität in der Freizeitgesellschaft oder: Die Bastler als Avantgarde, in: Blätter der Wohlfahrtspflege 133, no. 7/8 (1986), 177–179.

Forum

Manfred Sing

Against All Odds: How to Re-Inscribe Islam into European History Abstract: The central place that Muslims and Islam are accorded in the European media and public debates today contrasts with their near-complete absence in parts of European historiography until recently. While right-wing demagogues campaign against refugees, Muslims and the supposed Islamization of Europe, their argument that Islam does not belong to Europe is, at least partially, supported by the rather patchy awareness of a continuous and multi-facetted Islamic history in European societies and, horrible dictu, even in some history departments. Recent research challenges this neglect, tries to overcome the “Othering” of Islam, and demands a new conceptualization of European history that leaves behind the Europe/Islam binary. As the construction of a European identity and a European space is based on “Othering” – a definition of what is not European –, the conscious and visible integration of Muslims into European history poses a systematic challenge to narratives of Europeanization. The article draws attention to the difficulties that spring from this challenge and discusses new approaches in scholarship that try to overcome them. Reflecting on the status of Muslims as a minority in Europe, the anthropologist Talal Asad once coined the paradoxical phrase: “Muslims are clearly present in secular Europe and yet in an important sense absent from it.”1 This simultaneous presence and absence of Muslims in the West has found a recent expression in the popular rediscovery of thirteenth-century Sufi master Jalaluddin Rumi. In times of hate speech and fake news, seekers of love and truth have made him a best-selling author in the USA.2 The “Rumi renaissance”3 has even seized showbiz celebrities like singer Madonna, actress Tilda Swinton, or Coldplay’s Chris Martin (“It kind of changed my life”).4 The new veneration for the Persian poet (d. 1273), who is “typically referred to as a mystic, a saint, a Sufi, an enlightened man,”5 has been substantially sparked by the new English translations by the American 1 Talal Asad: Formations of the Secular. Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford 2003, 159. 2 Jane Ciabattari: Why is Rumi the best-selling author in the US?, in: BBC culture (21 Oct. 2014). URL: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140414-americas-best-selling-poet (6 Jan. 2017). 3 Ibid. 4 Rozina Ali: The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi, in: The New Yorker (5 Jan. 2017). URL: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-erasure-of-islam-from-the-poetry-of-rumi (6 Jan. 2017). 5 Ibid. DOI 10.1515/9783110532241-008, © 2017 Manfred Sing, published by De Gruyter. Die Online Ausgabe steht unter einer Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz.

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poet Coleman Barks (b. 1937). Rather than retranslating the original poems, Barks transformed the stiff language of earlier academic translations – e. g. by British Orientalist Reynold Nicholson (d. 1945) – into free verse in a contemporary idiom; Barks’s delving into Rumi has yielded 22 volumes since 1976. Curiously, however, Rumi’s lifelong engagement with the Koran and his permanent re-working of Islamic material remain mostly invisible in this smooth English style, whereas references to Jesus, Joseph and the Bible are retained. Nonetheless, as one scholar put it, “the universality that many revere in Rumi today comes from his Muslim context.”6 While Barks believes that people may read Rumi “with a strong impulse that wants to dissolve religious boundaries (…) and end sectarian violence,”7 the religious as well as the Islamic context are often lost in his translations. Instead, Rumi’s teachings stand as “timeless wisdoms (…) suitable to satisfy the spiritual need of the many who do not identify with the traditional religions but are in search of personal development.”8 For example, a half-sentence on the houris, the virgins promised in Paradise, (“Whoever asks you about the Houris”) is rendered as “If anyone asks you how the perfect satisfaction of all our sexual wanting will look.”9 One verse reads “Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field / I will meet you there,”10 while the original refers to imān (belief, faith) and kufr (unbelief), implying that there is a meeting-point beyond belief and unbelief. Omid Safi, professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at Duke University, points out that already in the nineteenth century, translators and theologians separated mysticism from its Islamic roots, thus arguing that people like Rumi were mystics not because, but in spite of Islam. Safi therefore calls extracting the spiritual from its religious context a form of “spiritual colonialism.”11 Today, as a permanent spotlight is directed at Muslims and Islam in the media, the Western reception of Rumi similarly neglects his Islamic references and contexts as well as his heterodox beliefs. The universality of his message works against its Islamicity, thus obscuring the idea that Islam “can be like that, too.”12 Talal Asad’s phrase quoted at the beginning, which may help to understand such paradoxes, dates back to 2003. At that time, the study of Muslims in Europe and the West was developing

6 Ibid. 7 Ciabattari, Why is Rumi. 8 Francesco Alfonso Leccese: Islam, Sufism, and the postmodern in the religious melting pot, in: Roberto Tottoli (ed.): Routledge Handbook of Islam in the West. London 2015, 441–454, here 451. 9 Ali, The Erasure. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid.



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“in the atmosphere of a gold rush,”13 as a new and fast-growing field of research. Since then, the output in the field has further multiplied,14 new scholarly platforms have been established,15 and fundamental essays collected in an anthology16 as well as in new handbooks – e. g. the Cambridge Companion to American Islam (2013), the Oxford Handbook of American Islam (2014), the Oxford Handbook of European Islam (2015), and the Routledge Handbook of Islam in the West (2014). While these efforts certainly add to our knowledge about the many facets of Muslim life outside Muslim societies and empires, there can be no doubt that these publications generally show a certain bias. A significant amount deals with popular issues like the headscarf debates, questions of security, deviant behavior, and cultural conflict, so that one is inclined to conclude that “the governance of Islam is the fastest growing focus of research on Islam in Europe,”17 for which the overwhelming majority of research grants seems to have been awarded after 2001.18 In opposition to what has been termed the “domestication” or the “securitization” of Islam,19 its alter ego, the study of “Islamophobia,”20 is also gaining ground. However, it is also fair to note that many researchers in the field are well aware of these biases and take issue with them.21 Even in 2003, the sociologist Levent 13 Levent Tezcan: Das Islamische in den Studien zu Muslimen in Deutschland, in: Zeitschrift für Soziologie 32, 3 (2003), 237–261. 14 If one looks up, for example, the combinations from the world field “Islam” and “Muslim” with “Europe” on Google’s Ngram Viewer (which does not consitute scientific research because the basis of Google’s data is not transparent), one finds a seven- to ten-fold increase since the 1980s. 15 See for example the Journal of Muslims in Europe, established in 2012, the Yearbook of Muslims in Europe, established in 2009, or the online resources Euro-Islam.info, and Islamopediaonline. org, founded in 2007, both coordinated by Jocelyne Cesari. 16 David Westerlund and Ingvar Svanberg (eds.): Islam in the West, 4 volumes, London 2011. 17 Thijl Sunier (2012): Beyond the Domestication of Islam in Europe: A Reflection on Past and Future Research on Islam in European Societies, in: Journal of Muslims in Europe 1 (2012), 189– 208, here 191. 18 Jorgen S. Nielsen: Book reviews, in: Journal of Muslims in Europe 1 (2001), 217; Maurits S. Berger: A Brief History of Islam. Thirteen Centuries of Creed, Conflict and Coexistence. Leiden 2014, 235. 19 Sunier, Beyond the Domestication, 191. Jocelyn Cesari: The Securitisation of Islam in Europe, in: Research Paper No. 5 (2009). URL: http://aei.pitt.edu/10763/1/1826.pdf (06 Feb. 2017); Farid Hafez: Disciplining the “Muslim Subject”: The Role of Security Agencies in Establishing Islamic Theology within the State’s Academia, in: Islamophobia Studies Journal 2, 2 (2014), 43–57. 20 See the Islamophobia Studies Journal at Berkeley, founded in 2012, and the Islamophobia Studies Yearbook at the University of Salzburg, founded in 2010. 21 Birgitte Johannsen and Riem Spielhaus: Counting Deviance: Revisiting a Decade’s Production of Surveys among Muslims in Western Europe, in: Journal of Muslims in Europe 1 (2012), 81–112; Jocelyn Cesari: Introduction, in: idem (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of European Islam. Oxford 2015, 1–20, here 3–5.

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Tezcan wondered what was specifically Islamic about many studies of Muslims in Germany.22 In 2012, Thijl Sunier, a cultural anthropologist and professor of “Islam in European societies” at the University of Amsterdam, complained that “whereas Islam has become the common denominator for a wide range of phenomena, attitudes, and developments,”23 the narrowing down of research foci “has caused a serious academic neglect,” especially when it comes to everyday life, religious practices, and the production of religious knowledge among Muslims. Yet again, with these limitations in mind and looking back on three decades of research on Muslims in Europe, it is certainly not wrong also to identify “an increase in research and a thematic diversification in academic literature.”24 What makes the phrase of a simultaneous presence and absence of Islam in Europe pertinent is, however, not so much the quantitative aspect of biased research foci, but the underlying difficulty of integrating Islam into European history, of treating Islam as an integral part of European self-understanding and identity construction. As the presence of Muslims in contemporary European societies is a “reason for concern”25 to many political observers, they tend to justify their concerns with references to history, in which Islam plays the role of the “Other,” the negative counterpart to everything European. Such an understanding of history is not only characterized by certain non-random “memory holes,”26 but also by an approach to the concept of “Europe” as a static entity in spite of its historically changing form, inner diversity, and politically or ideally constructed character.27 Such a partly exclusive understanding of Europe has its own history. For centuries, historians and theologians have constituted “Europe” and “European identity” by opposing it to cultural, religious, and political Others, thus defining

22 Tezcan, Das Islamische. 23 Sunier, Beyond the Domestication, 191. 24 Riem Spielhaus: Germany, in: Jocelyne Cesari: The Oxford Handbook of European Islam. Oxford 2015, 104–157, here 106. 25 Cf. Berger, A Brief History, 14. 26 Ibid, 16. 27 It’s worth noting here that “Europe is a more ambiguous term than most geographic expressions. Its etymology is doubtful, as is the physical extent of the area it designates. […] To many British and some Irish people ‘Europe’ means essentially continental Europe. To the south, Europe ends on the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Yet, to the Roman Empire, this was mare nostrum (‘our sea’), an inland sea rather than a frontier. […] The greatest uncertainty lies to the east, where natural frontiers are notoriously elusive. If the Ural Mountains mark the eastern boundary of Europe, where does it lie to the south of them?” See Timothy C. Champion et al: The History of Europe, in: Encyclopaedia Britannica: 1–48, here 1. URL: https://www.­ britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe (19 May 2017).



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Europe as a culturally, religiously, politically, or geographically homogeneous idea, albeit with porous and changing borders. Europe as a representation of a Christian commonwealth that was saved from Arabs and Turks is a myth created retroactively, exemplified by dates like 732 (battle at Tours and Poitiers), 1453 (fall of Constantinople), 1529 and 1683 (sieges of Vienna). Even while a notion of “Europeanness as a diversity-in-unity”28 prevails today, the process of Othering is still directed towards what is perceived as the “non-European” Other. As Christianity is considered “an intrinsic part, and to some even the main propellant,”29 of the European superior civilization, the “unity-in-diversity” narrative is often complemented by the notion of “Europe-as-Christendom,” which, having even survived secularization, forms one of the grand narratives that can hardly be challenged, partly because its power is at the level of the unconscious.30 As Islam has, for a long time, represented the most intimate non-European Other, its presence-cum-absence is intrinsically interwoven with Europe’s selfperception. That Western European countries have become the home of millions of Muslim migrants after World War II increases the urgency of reflecting on the historical relationship between the concepts of “Europe” and “Islam” in terms other than incommensurability, military conflict, or cultural exchange. A new kind of historiography has to leave behind the persistent narratives of different cultural spheres or three Islamic ‘waves’ to Europe – Arab expansion, Ottoman conquest, and twentieth century migration – by instead drawing a historically informed picture of the permanent Muslim presence in Europe which formed the basis for the entanglement as well as the production of differences between Europeans and Muslims. As cultural and religious plurality is today understood as one of the main characteristics, if not assets, of Europe, it is no longer convincing to regard Islam as Europe’s Other. As Europe’s Other is rather its own past of racism, nationalism, war, and genocide, it is possible to say paradoxically that “we – Christians, Muslims, Laics, Europeans and non-Europeans – are the real ‘others’ when we decide to free ourselves from our own inventions when we study the past.”31 Arguing that there was a continuous history of Islam in Europe is therefore not only a contribution to a “transcultural history”32 in its own right, a history

28 Berger, A Brief History, 29. 29 Ibid, 30. 30 Ibid. 31 Antonio Brusa: Who were the “others” at Poitiers? Medieval Islam as both cultured and daily stereotype, in: Gerdien Jonker and Shirza Thobani (eds.): Narrating Islam. Interpretations of the Muslim World in European Texts. London 2010, 151–167, here 164. 32 Madeleine Herren et al. (eds.): Transcultural History. Theories, Methods, Sources. Heidelberg 2012.

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that transcends conventional national and religious boundaries. It also critically engages with current methodological discussions among historians about what it means to write “European” or “global” history.33 These discussions rarely take up the entanglement of Islam with Europe, although European historiography should deconstruct “centrisms and exceptionalisms”34 and work from a transnational as well as a transcultural template, as professor of West European History Jörn Leonhard suggests. While he reminds us that the writing of European history today “can no longer be the result of a Eurocentric historiography,”35 the question remains what the adjective “European” actually denotes. As he rightly points out, in the face of colonialism and genocides, European history can no longer be understood as a normative project, illustrating a worldwide unfolding of European (superior) values and internal peculiarities.36 Defining a ‘kernel’ as European is as doubtful as is Europeanizing nearly everything, with which Europeans came into contact. Therefore, no matter whether the adjective relates to a small or a vast geographical space (European nations, a European ‘continent,’ European empires, or globalized Europe), any history writing of Europe can be accused of being “Eurocentric,”37 either because it downplays the border-crossing nature of Europe or overstates it. Although historians have also distinguished different processes of a Europeanization of space that have constituted Europe both as a meaningful category since the early modern era and as an “imagined community” that spans national cultures and states,38 such a constructivist understanding of Europe does neither explicitly nor selfevidently include Muslims or Islamic cultures. The additional question therefore is in how far phenomena that were hitherto not considered to be European or relevant for European identity construction can be inscribed into these processes of Europeanization. Leonhard’s plea for a comparative approach to European history and “an intensive dialogue with the writing of global and world history”39 33 See Jörn Leonhard: Comparison, Transfer and Entanglement, or: How to Write Modern European History today?, in: Journal of Modern European History 14, 2 (2016), 149–163; and “How to Write Modern European History Today? Statements to Jörn Leonhard’s JMEH-Forum” (with Michael Espagne, Jonas Kreienbaum, Frederic Cooper, Christoph Conrad, and Philipp Ther) in: Journal of Modern European History 14, 4 (2016), 465–491. 34 Leonhard, Comparison, Transfer and Entanglement, 162. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid, 151–155. 37 See the discussion ibid, 154 f., and by Jonas Kreienbaum: Eurozentrismus, europäische Geschichte und das Problem der Empires, in: Journal of Modern European History 14, 4 (2016), 469–474. 38 Ulrike von Hirschhausen and Kiran Klaus Patel: Europäisierung, in: Docupedia-Zeitge­ schichte (29.11.2010). URL: https://docupedia.de/zg/Europ%C3%A4isierung (06 Feb.2017). 39 Leonhard, Comparison, Transfer and Entanglement, 162.



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might still fall short of transcending what Jeremy Adelman, director of the Global History Lab at Princeton, has dubbed the “Anglosphere.”40 If, according to Adelman’s polemical criticism, global history was “an Anglospheric invention to integrate the Other into a cosmopolitan narrative on our terms, in our tongues,”41 it is no wonder that the framework of global history mostly remained national or at least loyal to the West, describing encounters with non-Westerners as one-way exchanges. Although global history tried to add “the rest” to the West, nonWestern historians in history departments are small in numbers42 and, “defined by their fundamental difference,” mainly there “to embellish but not challenge the national canon.”43 Depicting the continuous story of Islam in Europe does therefore not simply re-inscribe Islam into a space called Europe, but it re-negotiates this space and its presumed identity. The relation between Islam and Europe “is not a static situation, but an interaction of two,”44 which takes place on different – local, regional, and global – levels, involving conflict and war as much as conversions and the transfer of knowledge, ideas, and images. A more inclusive historiography of Islam questions the social, religious, spatial, cultural, legal, and political conceptualizations of both “European” and “Islamic” history. What Europe can then gain from rediscovering the history of the Muslim Other is a different understanding of its own collective identity and Otherness.45 In the following pages, I start my discussion by highlighting three underlying difficulties that are connected with the Othering of Islam: the framing of Islam as a ‘problem’ in contemporary history, its partial neglect since early modern era, and its confinement to a disciplinary no-man’s-land. After that, I ask why the Othering of Islam is so deeply ingrained in European identity constructions and whether a theoretical reflection of these processes of Othering really helps to overcome them. Finally, I turn to different examples of new scholarship that challenge Western-Eurocentric history writing by either striving for the integration of Islam into European History or taking Muslims’ belonging to European history for granted. 40 Jeremy Adelman: What is global history now?, in: aeon (02 March 2017). URL: https://aeon. co/essays/is-global-history-still-possible-or-has-it-had-its-moment (12 May 2017). 41 Ibid. 42 In the UK, for example, only 13 percent of historians study the non-Western world, while 41 percent focus on Britain and Ireland, “homelands to one percent of world’s population”; see ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Berger, A Brief History, 22. 45 See Raja Sakrani: The Law of the Other. An Unknown Islamic Chapter in the Legal History of Europe, in: Rechtsgeschichte 22 (2014), 90–118.

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Islamic Framing, Historical Neglect, and Disciplinary No-Man’s-Land Debates on the systematic integration of Turkish and Ottoman history into the framework of a transnational European history writing date back to the 1950s when several symposia were held without feasible results.46 A series of studies of school textbooks in different European countries has shown that Europe and Islam are still – historically as well as contemporarily – depicted as different political and cultural entities, be it under the aspect of military confrontation or that of cultural exchange.47 In contrast to their predecessors, newer textbooks are more sensitive to the production of crude stereotypes, but they still tend to over-emphasize medieval Muslim cultural achievements (“on which later European success is built”) and downplay historical confrontations while, at the same time, drawing a line from the crusades to the twin towers attacks on 9/11. Thus, in spite of the enduring debate on Eurocentrism and Orientalism, Muslims have remained “these familiar strangers,”48 whom European schoolbooks do not present as an integral part of (European) history, but rather as an isolated subject relevant solely in instances of confrontation. When popular discourses today ascribe Christian or Judeo-Christian ‘roots’ to Europe, this happens not only in spite of the historical Muslim presence in many parts of Europe, but also in spite of the ‘fratricidal’ wars between nominally Christian monarchies and between Catholics and Protestants that caused much more casualties than their clashes with Muslims.49 It’s not just that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been described as the most warlike and destructive in European history until the 1940s, but in the period between 1618 and 1678, Poland enjoyed 27 years of peace, the Dutch Republic 14, France eleven and Spain only three, and the Ottoman Empire was at peace for only seven years in roughly the same period.50

46 Luigi Cajani: Bringing the Ottoman Empire into the European Narrative: Historians’ Debates in the Council of Europe, in: Gerdien Jonker and Shiraz Thobani (eds.): Narrating Islam. Interpretations of the Muslim World in European Texts. London 2010, 95–119. 47 See Gerdien Jonker and Shiraz Thobani (eds.): Narrating Islam. Interpretations of the Muslim World in European Texts. London 2010. 48 Lucette Valensi: Ces étrangers familiers. Musulmans en Europe (XVIe–XVIIIe siécles). Paris 2012. 49 For an estimation of the deathtoll of the Thirty Years’ War alone see for example John Theibault: The Demography of the Thirty Years’ War Re-revisited: Günther Franz and his Critics, in: German History 15, 1 (1997), 1–21. 50 Geoffrey Parker: Crisis and Catastrophe: The Global Crisis of the Seventeenth Century Reconsidered, in: American Historical Review 113, 4 (2008), 1053–1079, 1056.



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In the centuries of wars and alliances, conquests and re-conquests, which contributed to the making of modern Europe, the conflicts and alliances between nominally ‘Christian’ states and their ‘Moorish’, ‘Arab’, or ‘Turkish’ counterparts did not stand out except for reasons of propaganda and counter-propaganda.51 Britain, for example, was at peace with the Barbary regencies from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, apart from the period from 1620 to 1682; “it did not enjoy such peaceful relations with any Christian country, not even Portugal.”52 The prevailing view of a belligerent Muslim history in Europe mainly goes back to three characteristic features and their consequences: the framing of what Muslims do and think as “Islamic,” a historiography of Muslim-European interaction full of “memory holes”, and the disciplinary incompetence for an in-between-subject like Islam in Europe.

The Framing of Islam in Contemporary History The simultaneous presence and absence plays out differently, depending on whether things Islamic are framed as “Islamic” or not. Rumi seems to work well without an Islamic frame, to a certain degree, while other issues also involving Muslims – from migration to terrorism –, lo longer work without an Islamic frame. In the 1980s, people from around the Mediterranean were mostly perceived as sharing a Mediterranean culture, and migrants from these countries were referred to as foreigners or guest workers, belonging to certain national or ethnic groups. Since the end of 1990s, however, Muslim culture has emerged as a separate explanatory category.53 Muslims are now referred to as the most problematic of all migrant groups in Europe, who are in need of integration and pose a security problem, which means that we have to talk, research, and know more about them.54 The transition from a Mediterranean or national categorization to an Islamic frame signals not only a cultural turn, but is part of the creation of the 51 Gilles Veinstein: The Great Turk and Europe, in: Henry Laurens, John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein (eds.): Europe and the Islamic World, Princeton 2012, 163–185; Géraud Poumarède: Pour en finir avec la croisade. Mythes et réalités de la lutte contre les Turcs aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Paris 2004. 52 Sakrani, The Law of the Other, 96 with reference to Godfrey Fisher: Barbary Legend. War, Trade, and Piracy in North Africa, 1415–1830. Oxford 1957, 11 f. 53 Sunier, Beyond the Domestication; Spielhaus. Germany, 106. 54 Riem Spielhaus: Muslime in der Statistik: Wer ist Muslim und wenn ja wieviele?, Berlin 2013, 5. URL: https://mediendienst-integration.de/fileadmin/Dateien/Muslime_Spielhaus_MDI. pdf (30 Dec. 2016).

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“Islamic problem”.55 The “Islamic problem frame” treats Muslims as a naturally given category, unifies them under a label, and designates them as a religious group, while they are nationally, ethnically, linguistically, culturally diverse and often not very religious. In fact, nowhere in the world are Muslims more diverse than in Europe today. Suffice to say that in an ordinary German town of 44.000 inhabitants one can find around 3.500 Muslims from 27 nations, a third of whom has German citizenship; and while they have founded five different Islamic associations, only a fifth of all Muslims in the town belong to them.56 This heterogeneity shows that “Muslims do not represent an existing collective that only needed to be discovered and described.”57 Rather, not only politicians, Muslims and state-sponsored Islam conferences, but also “researchers are contributing to the making of a new collective and to creating and legitimizing or at least approving, Muslim speakers’ position,”58 as Spielhaus has put it. Violence committed in the name of Islam and denoted as “Islamic” is one of the most powerful driving forces contributing to the “Islamic problem frame” and falsely unifying Muslims. As “Islamic” violence fits the stereotype of Islam’s aggressive nature, even publications that aim to give a multi-facetted picture of Islam cannot avoid addressing this overlap. Thus, the introductory pages of the above-mentioned handbooks – with their chapters on historical, social, cultural, political, economic, and religious facets of Muslim life – inevitably refer to the “Islamic problem frame” although their overall purpose is different. Either they state that “the idea of this book originated in the aftermath of September 11th”,59 or they draw on the experiences of “the American Muslim community at least since September 11, 2001”,60 or they ask whether “Islamic religious principles (are) compatible with liberal secular European values?”61 Even sociologist Nilüfer Göle, summarizing four years of field research in 21 European cities on ordinary Muslims and their everyday life, felt obliged to start her book with the question of whether Islam is compatible with European 55 Cesari, Introduction, 5. 56 Jörn Thielmann: Muslime in Rheinland-Pfalz, in: Friedrich Kahlenberg and Michael Kißener (eds.): Kreuz – Rad – Löwe. Rheinland-Pfalz. Ein Land und seine Geschichte, vol. 2. Mainz 2012, 614–617, here 615 f. 57 Spielhaus, Germany, 106. 58 Ibid. 59 Roberto Tottoli, Introduction, in: idem (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Islam in the West. London 2015, 1–15, here 1. 60 Juliane Hammer and Omid Safi: Introduction, in: idem (eds.): The Cambridge Companion to American Islam. New York 2013, 1–14, here 3. 61 Cesari, Introduction, 1.



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values or not.62 And three weeks after the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris 2015, she added an afterword to the German translation of her book about “social coexistence in spite of the attacks.”63 Historian Tijana Krstić also admits that the interdisciplinary study of the early modern Mediterranean has become, since September 11, 2001, “a sort of laboratory for testing new models of cultural and religious interaction beyond the ‘clash of civilizations’”.64 The unintentional, albeit unavoidable impression, which this initial framing gives, is twofold. On the one hand, it suggests that Europe is an unproblematic category, while Islam is introduced as the problematic part of the equation. Thus, the relationship is not framed as a dynamic, two-sided interaction, but as a static relationship in which Europe signifies the norm and the space, while Islam stands for the tension added to it. On the other hand, the variety of questions that are addressed in these handbooks in order to overcome stereotypes about Islam, often have no direct relation among each other or with “Islamic” terrorism beyond being labelled as “Islamic.” Therefore, they have little effect in undermining the “Islamic problem frame,” but just let it work.

The Neglect of Islam in Early Modern History The problem is different with regard to a big chunk of European history in which Muslims do not traditionally appear. Since the category of “Islam” dominates contemporary debates, and the focus of most studies on Muslims in Europe is contemporary, much scholarship, as good as it may be in other respects, corroborates the myth of a virtual Muslim absence from Europe beyond the Balkans, especially for the long period prior to the post-1945 migration and after some kind of a golden age. This is not only a problem of a truncated history of Muslims in Europe, but of classification and methodology. The reasons for a selective interest in the Muslim presence in Europe, as Krstić sees it, are lack of interest on the part of historians, the political inexpediency of the topic, lacunae in the sources, and missing records.65 In the sources from 62 Nilüfer Göle: Europäischer Islam. Muslime im Alltag. Aus dem Französischen von Berthold Galli. Berlin 2016, 9. 63 Ibid, 267–276. 64 Tijana Krstić: Islam and Muslims in Europe, in: Hamish Scott (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Early European Modern History, 1350–1750: Volume I: Peoples and Place, 670–693, here 671. 65 Krstić, Islam and Muslims, 671.

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the early modern period, terms used for Muslims referred to their ethnic origin (like Arabs, Turks, Persians, or Moors) or were of biblical origin (like Hagarenes, Ishmaelites, or Saracens),66 if at all. There is also an ambiguity in sources that categorize merchants as Orientals or Levantines, “which could designate any merchant from the east, including Greeks, Jews, Armenians, Maronites, Persians, Turks, or Arabs.”67 Neither do ethnic terms reveal the religion of a person who might easily be a Christian or a Jew, nor does religious terminology explain how religious someone is. This also means that the words “Muslims” and “Islam” entered European languages only belatedly. According to Tolan, Veinstein and Laurens, “musulman” can be traced back to the mid-sixteenth century in French, while “Moslim” was first used in English in 1615. “Islam” appeared for the first time in French in 1697, in English in 1818.68 When the term pops up today, it is used à la Huntington as an antagonist to European or Western “civilization”. This notion of the two “civilizations,” which are allegedly in opposition, confrontation, contact, or exchange, tends to downplay the historical complexity and diversity of relations. Europe and the Islamic world work merely as “umbrella terms”69, under which a variety of individuals and groups can be subsumed. Historians of the Early Modern Age study “the relations between Genoese and Tunisians, Constantinopolitans and Alexandrians, Catalans and Maghribis,”70 as Tolan, Veinstein and Laurens put it. These relations were far from being one- or two-dimensional because early modern European states had Muslim subjects, renegades, and allies, just as Muslim states had Christian and European ones.71 The multiplicity of actors and their changing relations prohibits their categorization as representatives of clearly defined European-Occidental-Christian or Asian-OrientalMuslim camps: their actions, identities, loyalties, and interests transgressed such borders and categorizations; studies that elaborate on these transgressions dwell in an uncertain, often speculative space, since traditional historiography hits the 66 John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein, and Henry Laurens: General Introduction, in: Henry Laurens, John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein (eds.): Europe and the Islamic World. Princeton 2012, 12–17, here 15. 67 Krstić, Islam and Muslims, 685. 68 Tolan, Veinstein, and Laurens, Introduction, 14 f. 69 Ibid, 15. 70 Ibid. 71 See for example Felix Konrad: Soziale Mobilität europäischer Renegaten im frühneuzeitlichen Osmanischen Reich, in: Henning P. Jürgens and Thomas Weller (eds.): Religion und Mobilität. Zum Verhältnis von raumbezogener Mobilität und religiöser Identitätsbildung im frühneuzeitlichen Europa. Göttingen 2010, 213–234; and recently Tobias P. Graf: The Sultan’s Rene­gades. Christian-European Converts to Islam and the Making of the Ottoman Elite, 1575–1610. ­Oxford 2017.



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wall because of the problematic source material.72 The basic problem for the study of persons and groups we tend to call “Muslims” today is different for contemporary history and early modern history. Today’s Muslim presence is accompanied by the assumed absence of their heterogeneity, while their former heterogeneity, for a long time, prevented their representation as “Muslims.” While the ones are hidden behind the label of Islam, the others are “hiding in plain sight”.73

Disciplinary No Man’s Land and its Consequences From a disciplinary point of view, European Islam is positioned in an academic no man’s land, since only a few academic chairs in Europe are explicitly dedicated to it. Each of the different disciplines – historiography, Islamic studies, migration studies, and religious studies – has its constraints and blind spots in how it deals with European Muslims. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that most historians – with the exception of scholars of the history of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe – may excel in European history without referring to Islam. As Muslims are marginal for their master narratives, they tend to mention Muslims only when it is unavoidable. Scholars of Islamic studies are primarily interested in manuscripts written in ‘exotic’ languages or in ‘Oriental’ societies past and present, but not in the strangers next door.74 As they tend to work in language-oriented departments, theses written on English, French or German-speaking Muslims are not the rule. Scholars of migration studies have acquired a certain sensitivity for Islam, which means that they have to deal with a wide range of phenomena that are nowadays treated as “Islamic” issues, although they were formerly not considered especially Islamic.75 Yet most of them take a rather prosaic view of integration problems and the state’s errors, shunning the emotionalization of the Islam debate, which highlights exceptional cases of failed integration at the expense of everyday success.76 In religious studies and the

72 See for example Natalie Z. Davis: Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds. New York 2006. 73 See Krstić, Islam and Muslims, 670. 74 Maurus Reinkowski: Islamwissenschaft und relevante Redundanz, in: idem and Abbas Poya (eds.): Das Unbehagen in der Islamwissenschaft: ein klassisches Fach im Scheinwerferlicht der Politik und der Medien. Bielefeld 2008, 19–35. 75 Tezcan, Das Islamische, 237–261. 76 See for example the farewell lecture by Klaus J. Bade: Leviten lesen: Migration und Integration in Deutschland, in: Institut für Migrationsforschung und Interkulturelle Studien 31 (2007), 43–64.

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sociology of religion, the minority of researchers that takes an interest in Islam in Europe mainly studies Muslims as religious actors and Islam with a focus on public space.77 In spite of the conflicts revolving around mosques and mosque building, the majority of people counted as Muslims in Europe today are not very religious; only twenty to thirty percent are members of religious associations.78 Because of these fragmented interests, the number of specialists on European Islam is rather small and, given the overwhelming public demand, their research does not enjoy great currency. Public debate is dominated (1) by non-specialists with provocative theses, while (2) most historians only have a selective interest in Muslims and (3) a basic consensus on the nature of the interaction between Islam and Europe is missing from a field in which diametrically opposed interpretations are offered. (1) Typical for non-specialized historians is that they publish simplified and ideologized theses on the relations between Islam and Europe. David Lewis, a US scholar of American and African history, follows the recent trend to treat early Islamic civilization sympathetically by arguing that the Franks would have been better off had they lost at Poitiers and adopted the superior culture of the Muslims.79 In contrast, the doyen of social history in Germany, Hans-Ulrich Wehler (1931–2014), criticized the incomplete integration of Muslim immigrants in European societies while arguing against the accession of Turkey to the EU. In several statements made after 2001, he expressed a conviction that Islam had always been, throughout the centuries, the opponent to Europa and never contributed to or become part of its culture and social life.80 In France, the medievalist

77 See for example Samuel M. Behloul, Susanne Leuenberger, and Andreas Tunger-Zanetti (eds.): Debating Islam. Negotiating Religion, Europe, and the Self. Bielefeld 2013; Bärbel Beinhauer-Köhler and Claus Leggewie: Moscheen in Deutschland. Religiöse Heimat und gesellschaftliche Herausforderung. München 2009; Martin Baumann: Religion und umstrittener öffentlicher Raum: Gesellschaftspolitische Konflikte um religiöse Symbole und Stätten im gegenwärtigen Europa, in: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 7 (1999), 187–204; for an art historical perspective see Christian Welzbacher: Euroislam-Architektur. Die neuen Moscheen des Abendlandes. Amsterdam 2008; for a geographer’s perspective Thomas Schmitt: Moscheen in Deutschland. Konflikte um ihre Errichtung und Nutzung. Flensburg 2003. URL: http://www.geographie.nat.uni-erlangen. de/wp-content/uploads/tschm_publ_moscheen-dtschl.pdf (08 Feb. 2017). 78 For the data from different countries see Jocelyne Cesari: The Oxford Handbook of European Islam. Oxford 2015; for the EU see Felice Dassetto et al: Islam in the European Union. What’s at Stake in the Future?. Brussels: Mai 2007. URL: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ etudes/join/2007/369031/IPOL-CULT_ET %282007 %29369031_EN.pdf (07 Dec. 2016); for the German case see Spielhaus, Muslime in der Statistik. 79 David L. Lewis: God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570–1215. New York 2008, chapters 6 and 7.



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Sylvain Gouguenheim, in his 2008 book Aristote au Mont-Saint-Michel,81 refuted the thesis that Europe owed its knowledge and especially its knowledge of Greek classics to Arab transmission. While the book caused an uproar among Gouguenheim’s medievalist colleagues in Europe, the scholar of physics Jim Al-Khalili popularized, in The House of Wisdom,82 the opposing, equally simplistic view that Europe’s success story was built on Arab foundations.83 In a newspaper article published in 2006, the German ancient historian Egon Flaig argued that Islam was not a religion like any other, but strove for global dominance;84 five years later, he published a world history of slavery in which he maintained, among other things, that Islam had upheld the worst system of slavery in the world.85 This helped him ascribe the cruelties of slavery to the Muslim “Other” and abolition to the Europeans.86 (2) While these and other examples represent poor scholarship, a selective interest in Islam can go hand in hand with excellent work. A prominent example is German historian Ulrich Herbert’s work on the politics of foreigners in Germany, in which Muslims or Islam are hardly mentioned at all.87 The same is

80 For a discussion and contextualisation see Jörg Hüttermann: Visuelle Selbstrepräsentation islamischer Identität in Deutschland. Konfliktanlässe und -kontexte im Wandel, in: Dorothea Lüddeckens, Christoph Uehlinger, and Rafael Walthert (eds.): Die Sichtbarkeit religiöser Identität. Repräsentation – Differenz – Konflikt. Zürich 2013, 185–250, here 211–214. 81 Sylvain Gouguenheim: Aristote au Mont-Saint-Michel. Les racines grecques de l’Europe chrétienne. Paris 2008. 82 Jim Al-Khalili: The House of Wisdom. How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance. New York 2011. 83 For both books see Jan-Hendryk de Boer: Rezension, in: H-Soz-Kult, 28.09.2011. URL: www. hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-14783 (27 Jan. 2017). 84 Egon Flaig: Der Islam will die Welteroberung, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (15.09.2006). URL: http://www.faz.net/frankfurter-allgemeine-zeitung/essay-der-islam-will-die-welteroberung1354009.html (27 Jan. 2017). 85 Egon Flaig: Weltgeschichte der Sklaverei, München 2009. For a similiar argument compare Tidiane N’Diaye: Le Génocide voilé. Paris 2008, and a riposte by Moritz Behrendt: Selektive Thesen zum arabisch-muslimischen Sklavenhandel, in: Qantara (7.10.2010). URL: http://de.qantara. de/node/7954 (18 May 2017). 86 See Ulrike Schmieder: Review of: Flaig, Egon: Weltgeschichte der Sklaverei. München 2009, in: Connections. A Journal for Historians and Area Specialists, 25.06.2010. URL: www.connections. clio-online.net/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-13181 (27 Jan. 2017). 87 Ulrich Herbert: Geschichte der Ausländerpolitik in Deutschland. Saisonarbeiter, Zwangsarbeiter, Gastarbeiter, Flüchtlinge. München 2001. A rare exception is his critique of anti-Muslim stereotypes in the German debate of the 1980s, ibid, 260 f. An earlier version of the book appeared in 1986 as Geschichte der Ausländerbeschäftigung in Deutschland 1880 bis 1980: Saisonarbeiter, Zwangsarbeiter, Gastarbeiter. Berlin 1986.

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also true for his widely acclaimed 1,250-page history of Germany in the twentieth century, in which the terms “Islam,” “Islamic” or “Muslim” also appear rather sparsely and only in the context of migration after 1945.88 This, in itself, would not be problematic since it is possible, coherent, and legitimate to write a history of migration by relying on ethnic and national significations for migrants, whereas, as has already been argued, the label of Islam is ideologically loaded and obscures Muslim heterogeneity. For example, a recently published handbook on migration is devoid of any terminology that would treat “Muslim” refugees as a special category; instead, they are named according to their national, ethnic, or regional origin.89 The same holds true for an encyclopedia on migration in Europe since the seventeenth century where “Muslim” is also not a category of analysis.90 However, two points are problematic in Herbert’s history of Germany. The first point is that the Muslim presence in Germany before 1945 is not mentioned – not even in the cases where one might have expected it: the German allies of Muslim origin in the Great War and the Nazi-Muslim collaboration.91 Certainly, the author may claim that he had to focus on the main story. In his book, he argues that the long twentieth century was not an age of extremes; but rather that in the first half of the century, industrial society lived through a clash between two radicalisms and liberal democracy, while in the second half, there was a compromise between liberalism, capitalism, and the welfare state. Also arguing against the idea that the end of the Cold War marked a world political caesura, he further tries to show that the fundamental economic changes of the 1970s can help explain the structures of the globalized world of the twentieth-first century. Here, however, the second problem appears. Herbert cannot avoid mentioning the terrorist attacks by members of the “radical Islamist network” al-Qaida in 2001 and make it somehow fit into his narrative.92 He offers two explanations for the attacks. The first one, which seems incompatible with his master narrative, is that the attacks represent a radical break and a new global antagonism between the West and Islam. Therefore, he seems to prefer the second view, which holds

88 Ulrich Herbert: Geschichte Deutschlands im 20. Jahrhundert. München 2014. 89 Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gil Loescher, Katy Long, and Nando Sigona: The Oxford Handbook of Refugee & Forces Migration Studies. Oxford 2014. 90 Klaus J. Bade, Pieter C. Emmer, Leo Lucassen, and Jochen Oltmer (eds.): Enzyklopädie Migration in Europa. Vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. Paderborn 2007. 91 See e. g. Gerhard Höpp: Muslime in der Mark. Als Kriegsgefangene und Internierte in Wünsdorf und Zossen, 1914–1924. Berlin 1997; idem: Muslime unterm Hakenkreuz. Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Islamischen Zentralinstituts zu Berlin e.V., Moslemische Revue 70 (1994), 16–27. 92 Herbert, Geschichte Deutschlands, 1242–1244.



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that 9/11 expressed an intensified confrontation between the rich North and the global South, a belated response to colonialism and imperialism that nonetheless allowed the United States to stabilize its position as the only remaining superpower. While both explanations obviously have their weaknesses, the main difficulty is that 9/11 is too complex a phenomenon to discuss on two pages and does not neatly fit into Herbert’s picture of the twentieth century. This leads him not to mention that al-Qaida emerged because of the Cold War, that a liberal democracy supported, trained, and armed these extremists, and that the attacks were presumably planned by the Hamburg cell. The last point would have made 9/11 part of German history and necessitated a consideration of this local background, too. In view of subsequent so-called ‘homegrown’ terrorist attacks in Europe, one might also ask why some people raised and educated in liberal European societies turn to religiously legitimatized violence. From here, beyond a selective interest in post-1960 migration and 9/11, further questions could be posed that might lead to the intricacies of Muslim histories in twentieth-century Germany. This, obviously, would have been another history of Germany, to write which was certainly – and legitimately – not Herbert’s intention. However, such a history from the margins of Germany or Europe could fill quite some “memory holes” with the help of recent scholarship. For example, there is new research on how European powers as well as Germany used Islam as a weapon in the Great War.93 New research has also tried to calculate the number of Muslim victims of the Nazis.94 Other authors have shed new light on the extent of Muslim collaboration in Eastern Europe and the Nazi respect for Islam (a “warrior religion” struggling with “Jewish Bolshevism”), which went hand in hand with the recruitment of tens of thousands Muslims for the Wehrmacht and SS, many of whom fought and died, for example, in the Battle of Stalingrad.95 The prescribed admiration of Islam helped the Nazis to pragmatically circumvent racial theory, but also confronted them with the difficulty, for which they were not prepared, to distinguish Muslim from Jewish communities, who had closely lived side by side for centuries. There is also new research that depicts Muslims’ lives in interwar

93 David Motadel (ed.): Islam and the European Empires. Oxford 2014; Wilfried Loth and Marc Hanisch (eds.): Erster Weltkrieg und Dschihad. Die Deutschen und die Revolutionierung des Orients. München 2014. 94 Bernd Bauknecht: Muslime in Deutschland von 1920 bis 1945, in: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 9 (2001), 41–81; Höpp, Muslime in der Mark. 95 David Motadel: Islam and Nazi Germany’s War. Oxford 2014; for more recent literature on this see Jeffrey Herf: Review Essay: Nazi Germany and Islam in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, in: Central European History 49 (2016), 261–269.

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Germany and Europe and their ideological entanglements,96 and two popular scientific books trying to disentangle the involvement of different secret services with Muslim organizations in Germany, especially in Munich since the 1930s.97 Two challenges posed by this new literature are similar to Herbert’s general questions: With regard to the variety of Muslim lives in the first and second half of the twentieth century, one might ask how they relate to each other. And with an idea of a long twentieth century in mind, one could also try to trace the presence of Muslims in European countries back to eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.98 (3) The aforementioned Gouguenheim controversy is an example of a tendency on the part of certain scholars to challenge the supposed “consensus” on the impact of Islam on the making of Europe. In fact, however, there is no such consensus. Although several historians in the twentieth century have treated Europe and Islam not as mutually exclusive, but as inter-connected entities, the  implications of their views have remained controversial. While some historians argue that modern Europe is indebted to the legacy of the Islamic civilization and call Islam a “midwife”99 for modern Europe, others question the

96 Geoffrey P. Nash (ed.): Marmaduke Pickthall. Islam and the Modern World. Leiden 2017; Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad, and Mehdi Sajid (eds.): Muslims in Interwar Europe: A Transcultural Historical Perspective. Leiden 2016; Gerdien Jonker: The Ahmadiyya Quest for Religious Progress. Missionizing Europe 1900–1965. Leiden 2016; Mehdi Sajid: Muslime im Zwischenkriegseuropa und die Dekonstruktion der Faszination vom Westen. Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Šakīb Arslāns Artikeln in der ägyptischen Zeitschrift al-Fatḥ (1926–1935). Berlin 2015; Götz Nordbruch and Umar Ryad (eds.): Transnational Islam in interwar Europe: Muslim activists and thinkers. New York 2014; Nathalie Clayer and Eric Germain (eds.): Islam in Inter-War Europe. London 2008. 97 Stefan Meining: Eine Moschee in Deutschland: Nazis, Geheimdienste und der Aufstieg des politischen Islam im Westen. München 2011; Ian Johnson: A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA and the Muslim Brotherhood in the West. Boston 2010. 98 For the German case see e. g. Stephan Theilig: Türken, Mohren und Tataren. Muslimische (Le­ bens-)Welten in Brandenburg-Preußen im 18. Jahrhundert. Berlin 2013. For Yemenis in Britain see Mohammed Siddique Seddon: The Last of the Lascars. Yemeni Muslims in Britain, 1836–2012. Leicestershire 2014; Fred Halliday: Britain’s First Muslims. Portrait of an Arab Community. London 1992. 99 Michael Borgolte: Der Islam als Geburtshelfer Europas, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (23.03.2011). URL: http://www.bpb.de/apuz/33398/der-islam-als-geburtshelfer-europas (27 Dec. 2016). See also Nayef Rodhan (ed.): The Role of the Arab-Islamic World in the Rise of the West. Implications for Contemporary Trans-Cultural Relations. Houndsmill 2012; Jack Goody: The Theft of History. Cambridge 2009; David Lewis: Islam and the Making of Europe, New York 2008; Mark Graham: How Islam Created the Modern World. Beltsville 2006; John M. Hobson: The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation. Cambridge 2004.



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relevance of the Muslim contribution to the development of modern sciences and societies.100 Not only do they understand the relationship between Islam and Europe as a belligerent history of intimate enmity, conquest, and attempts to convert Christians,101 they also have a negative view of the inner structures of Muslim empires or “Islamic civilization” with regard to the treatment of Jews and women, social mobility, multi-religious coexistence, and political freedom. In light of such outright negative judgements, another group of historians revisits the history of Islamic Iberia and the “Ottoman mosaic” to find models of diversity, tolerance, and “successful peaceful coexistence”.102 Another, more sober approach tries to reconstruct the striking parallels between Greek-Arabic-Jewish lines of thought and ‘European’ intellectual history103 or it judges the Ottoman Empire in comparison with other empires in world history, thus uncovering similar political or social conflict lines and tendencies of conflict management.104 Since such opposing interpretations of the past permeate public and political debates about Europe and its identity, it is not astonishing that especially in the history of European law systems, the Islamic past has, for quite some time, been “pushed aside (…), buried and denied.”105 Since Max Weber defined

100 Maurits S. Berger: “The Third Wave: Islamization of Europe, or Europanization [sic] of Islam?”, in: Journal of Muslims in Europe 2 (2013), 115–136, here 127 f. 101 Bernard Lewis: What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle East Responses. London 2002; Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Rise of Christian Europe. London 1965. 102 Kemal Karpat and Yetkin Yıldırım (eds.): The Ottoman Mosaic: Exploring Models for Peace by Re-exploring the Past. Seattle 2010; Jeremy F. Walton: Beyond Convivencia and Conflict? Reflections on the History and Memory of Andalusian and Ottoman Religious Belonging, in: Jadaliyya (22.01.2017). URL: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/25916/beyond-convivencia-and-conflict-reflections-on-then (17 Feb. 2017). 103 See for example George Makdisi: The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West. Edinburgh 1981; idem: The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West. With Special Reference to Scholasticism. Edinburgh 1990; Gerhard Endreß: Der arabische Aristoteles und sein Leser. Physik und Theologie im Weltbild Alberts des Großen. Münster 2004; Kurt Flasch: Meister Eckhart. Die Geburt der „Deutschen Mystik” aus dem Geist der arabischen Philosophie. München 2006; idem: Meister Eckhart. Philosoph des Christentums. München 2010. 104 Maurus Reinkowski: Das Osmanische Reich – ein antikoloniales Imperium?, in: Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 3, 1 (2006), 34–54. URL: http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/1-2006/id=4652 (17 Feb. 2017); Jörn Leonhard and Ulrike von Hirschhausen: Empires und Nationalstaaten im 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen 2011; Ulrike von Hirschhausen: A New Imperial History? Programm, Potenzial, Perspektiven, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 41 (2015), 718–757. 105 Sakrani, The Law of the Other, 101.

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rationalization and codification as the “proprium” of European law and opposed it to the qadi justice and since the mere term “Shariʿa” has nowadays become a swearword in Europe, “the formation of Europeanization in its normative and identitary dimension excludes any extra-European legal interference from the outset.”106 Until today, the history of European law mostly remains blind to the interferences and linkages between Roman and Islamic law and to the fluid and permeable circulation of Muslim law concepts on European soil. Only recently, some scholars have drawn more attention to the complex dynamic of intercultural adoption, re-transfer, rupture, and innovation.107

The Theory and Criticism of Othering: What Are They Good For? Since “Islam’s role in delimiting the boundaries of Europe has increased dramatically in recent years (…), Muslim bodies, practices, and communities have become new markers of difference and estrangement from ‘European values’.”108 Spaces associated with Muslims and Islam – like Bradford, the banlieues of Paris, Kreuzberg, or Molenbeek – “now mark a frontier of ‘Europeanness’ within Europe itself.”109 Theoretically, this problem has to do with the fact that for Europeans, the Muslim “Other” is not just another “Other”. Compared to other minorities, enemies, strangers or aliens, the Muslim “Other” was Europe’s most intimate “Other” because of a continuous, albeit changing interaction, the reversal of

106 Ibid, 91. 107 On the influence of Roman law on Muslim law see Benjamin Jokisch: Islamic Imperial Law: Harun-Al-Rashid’s Codification Project. Berlin 2007; Richard Potz: Islamisches Recht und europäischer Rechtstransfer, in: Europäische Geschichte Online (EGO), ed. by Institute of European History (IEG). Mainz (11.01.2011). URL: http://www.ieg-ego.eu/potzr-2011-de (17 May 2017). On Islamic influences on European law development see John A. Makdisi: The Islamic Origins of the Common Law, in: North Carolina Law Review 77, 5 (1999), 1635–1739; Richard Potz: Islam und islamisches Recht in der europäischen Rechtsgeschichte (2011), in: Europäische Geschichte Online (EGO), ed. by Institute of European History (IEG). Mainz (11.01.2011). URL: http://www.ieg-ego.eu/ potzr-2011a-de (17 May 2017); Sakrani, The Law of the Other, with more literature. 108 Walton, Beyond Convivencia. 109 Ibid. Meer argues that Muslims are not being asked to commit to “patriotism, peace at home, war abroad, modernity, secularism, integration, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, tolerance, and monogamy” because these are intrinsically valuable, but “as a pre-condition for belonging in the West at all,” see Naser Meer: Miscrecognizing Muslim Consciousness in Europe, in: Ethnicities 12, 2 (2012), 178–196, here 193.



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power relations since early modern times, and a closeness that lent itself to religious and cultural polemics.110 Historical image production formerly rested on ahistorical notions of the Europeanization/Christianization of Europe and the Orientalization/Islamization of Islam,111 whereas many of those who shape contemporary public discourse believe that today’s choice is only between an “Islamisation of Europe” or a “Europeanization of Islam,”112 thus reviving the old stereotype that Europe must, once again, be saved lest it falls prey to Muslims. Such a perception reveals that “the European image of what Islam represents is more persistent than what Muslims actually do, and this image is continuously fed by statistics and historical narratives.”113 Talal Asad has claimed that the problem of understanding Islam in Europe has less to do with Muslims themselves than with the peculiar way in which “‘Europe’ is conceptualized by Europeans.”114 This follows from a certain way of writing “European history” as a history of “European civilization” in which not all inhabitants of Europe are “really” or “fully” Europeans, but can be treated as marginal (like Russians or European Jews) or as completely external like in the case of Arab Spain.115 Asad uses Hugh Trevor-Roper’s classical The Rise of Christian Europe (1965) as an example. The book appeared at a time when British decolonization was more or less complete, a flood of immigrants from former colonies was stemmed by legislation, and the option of joining Europe politically was an important part of the debate over Britain’s post-imperial role.116 In this context, Asad argues that Islam constitutes “Europe’s primary alter,”117 whose “alleged antagonism to Christians then becomes crucial to the formation of European identity.”118 Such a European narrative gives Islam a quasi-civilizational identity with further paradoxical consequences. It admits, on the one hand, that Islam as a “carrier civilization” brought many important elements to Europe; however, as these material and intellectual elements were “only contingently connected to Islam,” they could be “appropriated, cultivated and then lawfully passed (…) on to generations of

110 Cf. Berger, A Brief History, 30 f. 111 For a critique see Edward Said: Orientalism. New York 1979, and Aziz Al-Azmeh: Die Islamisierung des Islam: Imaginäre Welten einer politischen Theologie. Frankfurt am Main 1996. 112 See Berger, The Third Wave, and Meer, Miscrecognizing. 113 Berger, The Third Wave, 135. 114 Asad, Formations of the Secular, 159. 115 Ibid, 168. 116 Ibid, 167. 117 Ibid, 169. 118 Ibid.

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Europeans as their own inheritance.”119 On the other hand, this narrative not only attributes to Islam “an ingrained hostility to all non-Muslims,”120 but also makes clear that a “de-essentialization of Islam is paradigmatic for all thinking about the assimilation of non-European peoples to European civilization.”121 Thus, the narrative trajectory turns from essentializing Islam to de-essentializing it: “The belief that human beings can be separated from their histories and traditions makes it possible to urge a Europeanization of the Islamic world. And by the same logic, it underlies the belief that the assimilation (…) of Muslim immigrants who are (…) already in European states is necessary and desirable.”122 In this way, Asad explains, Trevor-Roper’s “‘European history’ (…) is the story of Europe’s active power to reconstruct the world (within Europe and beyond) in its own Faustian image.”123 The scholar of Islamic studies Reinhard Schulze also problematizes the absence of Islam from most parts of a European history of religions.124 He argues that a European identity had generally been constructed with reference to humanism and enlightenment and thus in contra-distinction to Islam as a religion. However, even within the field of religious studies, the position of Islam differs from European Christianity insofar as Protestant concepts of religion – individual inner faith, scripturalism, and historical criticism – were not only used to measure the deficits of Islam. They have also transformed Muslim self-understandings of their religion in the twentieth century. Even if Islam has been treated as part of Europe since the 1980s – after 500 years of discursive exclusion –, the problem of how to positively relate Islam to the basic elements of European identity construction, which rest on Greek heritage and modernity, lingers on. Therefore, the relation of Islam to Europe is often discussed according to three modes and with different effects: as an insurmountable contradiction, under the possibility of assimilation, or using the metaphor of a ‘bridge’ between Europe and Asia. Schulze further criticizes that a historicization of Islam in Europe, which would be the pre-requisite for embedding Islam into a European history of religions, is generally missing.125 The timeframe of most religious studies on 119 Ibid, 168. 120 Ibid, 169. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid, 169 f. 123 Ibid, 170. 124 Reinhard Schulze: Der Islam in der europäischen Religionsgeschichte, in: Friedrich Wilhelm Graf and Klaus Große Kracht (eds.): Religion und Gesellschaft. Europa im 20. Jahrhundert. Köln 2007, 151–171. 125 Ibid, 164 f.



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European Muslims does not exceed 30 or 40 years. Their focus is on present situations, conflicts, and public space, especially with regard to Islamic institutions and symbols. What is mostly missing is an awareness of the subjective worlds of faith and their changes. The epistemological interests that dominate the field of religious studies – religious change, history of institutions, religious topography, and history of theology – are difficult to apply to Muslims in Europe because these aspects are only rudimentarily known and researched with regard to Muslims.126 For these reasons, according to Schulze, the history of religions is no neutral field, but should itself more often be an object of study127 – especially since the concept of “Islam” was created mainly by Protestant theologians, scholars of religions, and Orientalists from Western Europe who shaped a “for the most part, consistently negative”128 idea of Islam in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.129 While they believed that Christianity in Europe had overcome its Semitic and non-European origins, they recast Islam as “a prototypically Arab – hence Semitic – religion.”130 While a majority understood Islam as an irrational and mystical religion, some also recognized Sufism as an alien element in Islam proper and saw in it the creative spirit of an “Aryan Islam.”131 This suggests a historical precedent for the isolation of spirituality from its Islamic contexts, similar to today’s “Rumi Renaissance”. Disengaging Christianity from its Judeo-Semitic origins also became a central argument for its universality because the idea was that European Christianity emerged from the “far richer soil of the late Hellenic world,”132 whereas Islam was supposedly a national religion that had merely transgressed its proper boundaries.133 I am not interested in discussing the details of these theoretizations of the “Othering” of Islam and the conceptual difficulties of representing “Islam” in the European history of religions. These criticisms connect historical problems with contemporary concerns and, at the same time, de-construct historical 126 Ibid, 161. 127 Ibid, 171. 128 Tomoko Masuzawa: The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago 2005, 121. 129 See also Cemil Aydin: The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History. Cambridge, Mass. 2017; Reinhard Schulze: Islamwissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft, in: Friedrich Wilhelm Graf and Friedemann Voigt (eds.): Religion(en) deuten: Transformation der Religionsforschung. Berlin 2010, 81–202. 130 Masuzawa, The Invention, 179. 131 Ibid, 197–204. 132 Ibid, 191. 133 Ibid, 186–206.

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image production by calling attention to the underlying political interests or intellectual biases. Yet the apodictic propositions in such critiques also have the potential to lead to an aporia comparable to the critique of processes of “Othering” in memory studies. When, for example, the figure of the “Turk” or “Muslim” in national and transnational memories is analyzed as the “Other”,134 the argument is by implication that present-day anxieties are not only the result of recent developments, but also of centuries-old images that have “little to do with reality but all the more with the perception of the Muslim as the embodiment of everything that the Westerner is not.”135 However, the binary of Europe-versusIslam, although retrospectively de-constructed, is implicitly treated as a powerful given in the historical arena. Deconstructing the figure of the “Muslim” does not lend itself to treating Muslims as political actors on an equal footing;136 rather it pre-supposes and thus runs the risk of re-affirming the binaries it wishes to de-construct, while it cannot show a way that leads to a new understanding beyond these binaries.

Writing the European History of Islam, Challenging the European Master Narrative In this final section, I will briefly sketch four different approaches to a better integration of Islam and Muslims into European history. A first necessary step is to fill gaps and “memory holes.” The second possibility is to write a history of the longue durée. The third option, especially in the field of religious studies, is to underline religious closeness and entanglement; and the fourth approach is trying to create a new master narrative. (1) Two volumes edited by French historian and anthropologist Jocelyne Dakhlia together with the historians Bernard Vincent (2011) and Wolfgang Kaiser

134 Felix Konrad: Von der „Türkengefahr“ zu Exotismus und Orientalismus: Der Islam als Antithese Europas (1453–1914)?, in: Europäische Geschichte Online (EGO) (2010). URL: http://www. ieg-ego/konradf-2010-de (08 Feb. 2017); Simon Hadler: Zugehörigkeit durch Abgrenzung – Der Türke als der Andere Europas, in: Gregor Feindt et al. (eds.): Europäische Erinnerung als verflochtene Erinnerung. Vielstimmige und vielschichtige Vergangenheitsdeutungen jenseits der Nation. Göttingen 2014, 93–118. 135 Berger, A Brief History, 15. 136 Vgl. Thomas Kaufmann: Kontinuitäten und Transformationen im okzidentalen Islambild des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, in: Lothar Gall and Dietmar Willoweit (eds.): Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the Course of History: Exchange and Conflicts. München 2011, 287–306.



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(2013)137 represent a breakthrough for the perception of Muslims in early modern European history. While the first volume mainly deals with the invisibility of Muslims in European historiography, the second one employs the idea of a third space, an “entre-deux,” claiming that transcultural encounters formed a “tiers espace de négociation et d’accomodation des cultures.”138 Like other earlier studies,139 the work challenges academic or nationalist narratives about the Mediterranean as an either homogeneous (Fernand Braudel) or divided space (Henri Pirenne). It, however, fills a gap extending from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century and draws on the idea that the Mediterranean allowed the circulation of slaves, mercenaries, merchants, diplomats, travellers, and scholars between its northern and southern shores. For example, Mediterranean ports like Livorno, Genoa, Naples, and Marseilles were key hubs for the slave trade and “had particularly significant Muslim slave populations.”140 While earlier scholarship has overemphasized the absence of merchants and travellers from Muslim states in this period, often ascribing it to an Arab or Turkish lack of interest in Europe, the articles in the volumes show quite the contrary. Further research has also shed light on the diplomatic practices and underscored “the number and ubiquity of envoys from Islamicate polities to various European states”.141 Accordingly, 180 envoys from the Ottoman Empire have been counted in Venice between 137 Jocelyne Dakhlia and Bernhard Vincent (eds.): Les musulmans dans l’histore de l’Europe. I. Une integration invisible. Paris 2011; Jocelyne Dakhlia and Wolfgang Kaiser (eds.): Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe. II. Passages et contacts en Méditerranée. Paris 2013. 138 See the review by Zrinka Stahuljak, Jocelyne Dakhlia et Wolfgang Kaiser (dir.), Les Musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe, t. II: Passages et contacts en Méditerranée, in: Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 44, 2 (2014). URL: http://mcv.revues.org/5896 (12 May 2017). 139 For example Gerhard Endreß: Der Islam und die Einheit des mediterranen Kulturraums im Mittelalter, in: Klaus Rosen (ed.): Das Mittelmeer – die Wiege der europäischen Kultur. Bonn 1990, 270–295; for a study on Crete as an intersection point of Islam, Greek Orthodoxy, and Latin Christianity see Molly Greene: A Shared World. Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Princeton 2000; for an investigation of the (legal) conflicts between Malta’s pirates and their Greek-Ottoman victims see idem: Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants: A Maritime History of the Early Modern Mediterranean. Princeton 2010. 140 Krstić, Islam and Muslims, 681. 141 Ibid, 685. See also Nabil Mattar: Europe through Arab Eyes, 1578–1727. New York 2009; the special issue on “Cross-Confessional Diplomacy in the Early Modern Mediterranean” in the Journal of Early Modern History 19, 2 (2015); Michael Talbot: Gifts of Time: Watches and Clocks in Ottoman-British Diplomacy, 1693–1803, in: Harriet Rudolph and Gregor M. Metzig (eds.): Material Culture in Modern Diplomacy from the 15th to the 20th Century, in Jahrbuch für Europäische Geschichte 17 (2016), 55–79. URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110463217-003 (14 Feb. 2017). For a new take on England’s relationship with the Islamic world see Jerry Brotton: This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World. London 2016; idem: The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam. London 2016.

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1384 and 1762, and at the French court, 40 to 60 embassies from Muslim rulers were received between 1581 and 1825. Similar estimates have also been made for England, the Netherlands, and Spain. In spite of the Ottoman-Habsburg enmity, Ottoman envoys were already occasionally present at the Habsburg court in the sixteenth century, followed by embassies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the most impressive Ottoman diplomatic mission with 395 delegates arrived in Vienna in 1665.142 Early modern historian Tijana Krstić (Budapest) has also challenged the “bifurcation” of historiography between a Western (Iberian) and a southeast/ central European (Ottoman) context.143 The bifurcated narrative holds that when Iberian Muslims were forcibly converted and then expelled, no Muslim community remained in Western Europe, leaving Muslims to become “a distant and scary ‘other’”144 who could only be found in the Balkans because of the Ottoman expansion. Not only does this narrative overlook the well-integrated community of Muslim Tatars living in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth since the fourteenth century,145 it is also not congruent with the perceptions, motivations, and actions of various actors on the two stages. Krstić holds that one should not overlook the dialogic aspects of the policies by the Habsburg, Spanish and Ottoman empires in spite of their different strategies to manage difference.146 For Charles V, the King of Spain (1516–1556) and Holy Roman Emperor (1519–1556), and his son Philip II, King of Spain (1556–1598), the struggle against the Ottomans was the continuation of the crusading idea, while other European rulers intensified their economic and political contacts with the Ottoman Empire and North African rulers, especially in the age of confessionalisation and conversion. While displaced Iberian Muslims and Jews were dispersed across the Mediterranean, a Spanish feudal lord, seeking to protect his Morisco tenants, argued against their forced conversion and expulsion because in the Ottoman lands Christians were allowed to live as Christians. Exiled Moriscos who reached Constantinople instead argued for reciprocity, demanding that the sultan stop his lenient treatment of non-Muslims. Likewise, turning Constantinople into the Ottoman capital provides a contrast to the roughly contemporary process of the Christianization of Granada, since Mehmed II aspired to present himself as the heir to the Roman emperors. Far from being second-class citizens like converts to Christianity in 142 For these figures see Krstić, Islam and Muslims, 685. 143 Ibid, 670f. passim. 144 Ibid, 670. 145 Ingvar Svanberg and David Westerlund (eds.): Muslim Tatar Minorities in the Baltic Sea Region. Leiden 2016. 146 Krstić, Islam and Muslims, 678.



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Spain, descendants of Christian families in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa could use opportunities for social mobility and acquire key positions in business and administration.147 Ottoman rule in Hungary also coincided with the spread of Protestantism of various denominations in the region because Ottoman rule provided relative safety from prosecution, “unlike in neighbouring Habsburg-controlled ‘Royal Hungary’”.148 Another until recently underestimated factor in Muslim-European relations is the contribution of Arabic, Turkish, and Persian speakers residing in Europe and interacting with scholars, missionaries, and diplomats.149 Protestants and Calvinists were particularly interested in Arabic and other sources to re-construct the history of early Christianity, which they thought had been corrupted by the Church. Captives or envoys in Leiden, Paris, and Vienna, whose names have come to light only in recent research, “were part of a larger network of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian intermediaries from the Middle East,”150 who made significant contributions to the work of European orientalists. (2) When specialists study the relationship between Europe and Islam, their interest is usually confined to a special region, period or phenomenon like religious cohabitation in European towns.151 In a common, path-breaking effort, three French historians have tried to cover the trajectory from the medieval (Tolan) over the early modern (Veinstein) to the modern (Laurens) era, focussing on earliest contacts, the Ottoman period, and modern political history respectively.152 In spite of a harsh critique because of some flaws and inconsistencies with regard to the historical or geographical framework,153 the volume offers an important attempt at synthesis. Maurits S. Berger, who holds the chair for Islam in the West at Leiden University, has now provided a first comprehensive, yet relatively concise overview (250 pages) of the thirteen-century history of Islam in Europe.154 The well-structured book – a result of six years teaching a BA class – is interesting because of its highly reflective approach to questions of 147 Ibid, 679. 148 Ibid, 681. 149 Ibid, 687f. 150 Ibid, 688. 151 See for example the book by medievalist Franco Cardini: Europe and Islam. London 2001; or Stéphan Boisellier and John Tollan (eds): La cohabitation religieuse dans les villes Européenes Xe–XVe siecles. Turnhout 2014. 152 Henry Laurens, John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein (eds.): L’Europe et l’Islam, quinze siècles d’histoire. Paris 2009; English translation Europe and the Islamic World. Princeton 2012. 153 Denise A. Spellberg: Europe and the Islamic World: A History by John Tolan et al., in: Journal of World History 26, 3 (2015), 647–650. 154 Berger, A Brief History.

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conceptualization and history writing. Berger analytically distinguishes between physical and virtual Islam, thus showing that material and immaterial forms of interaction often ran parallel and were only loosely intertwined. In other words, the ideas that fed the image of Islam often had little to do with what Muslims actually did on the ground. Berger’s rather conventional periodization divides history into five periods155 in which he discusses “religion”, “toleration”, and “othering”. In the sub-chapters about religion, he discusses under what circumstances religion played a role and whether events were treated as religious or not; the sub-chapters about toleration stand for physical interaction, while processes of othering stand for virtual interaction. In the course of this exercise, it becomes clear that the concept of “Europe” and the idea of common values and a shared identity changed over time and were not always concrete or existent. Rather, the idea of a Christian Commonwealth gradually transformed into a European Commonwealth and, finally, a superior civilization. For the concept of “Islam,” Berger offers a useful differentiation as he sub-divides it into four meanings, “its adherents, the Muslims; Islam as a culture and civilization; Islam as a religion; and Islam as an image.”156 Thus, Islam can be an identity marker that refers to persons, but also to architecture, customs, and food. It can be ascribed to the scientific and technical achievements of a civilization or restricted to religious doctrine, its texts, or a global religious community. Finally, it is an imaginary representation in the minds of Muslims and non-Muslims that can bind together different aspects in a positive or negative light. What is the result of such a tour de force through history? During thirteen centuries of interaction, the European image of Muslims and Islam has undergone “all kinds of metamorphoses.”157 The Muslim has acted “as a ruler and as a subject, as the antichrist and as an ally, corsair and tradesman, slave and master, terrorist and fellow citizen.”158 Accordingly, Islam “was feared as an enemy or embraced as a partner against heretic Christians, despised as an abomination or admired as a civilization, as a source of violence and of social civility, and studied for missionary, academic, colonial or security purposes.”159 In spite of these forms of interaction, however, “Europeans and Muslims did not feel that they were the same.”160 The virtual interaction with Islam was quite

155 Uncivilized Europe (700–1000), Crusading Europe (1000–1500), Divided Europe (1500–1700), Powerful Europe (1700–1950) and Struggling Europe (1950–). 156 Berger, A Brief History, 19. 157 Ibid, 24. 158 Ibid. 159 Ibid. 160 Ibid, 243.



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consistent and confrontational through the centuries because Europeans “have mostly – not always – maintained a position of antagonism towards Islam.”161 Against the background, “the explanation for the negative image of Islam must [...] be sought not in physical Islam, but in virtual Islam.”162 The supposedly intolerant, misogynistic, violent, anti-intellectual, un-democratic otherness of Islam was emphasized with remarkable tenacity. While these images could easily be justified by historical facts, historical facts that would back up the opposite argument are equally easily to find – “intellectualism as well as ignorance, benevolent rule and despotism, religious tolerance and oppression of religion.” (3) While these two approaches draw a broad picture of the various forms of entanglement between Islam and Europe, another possible approach is to focus on religious similarity and interaction, for example by c­ omparing “­theological themes”163 in disparate religious traditions. In his ground-­breaking work The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity, the ­historian Aziz Al-Azmeh has opposed the master narrative of an Islamic difference by locating the foundation of Islam in the time and space of Late Antiquity.164 Drawing long lines of ­interaction between East and West with regard to the conceptualization of God, he ­criticizes “the refusal – or reluctance – to subject matters Islamic to comparative ­perspectives in history at large, and in the history of religion in particular.”165 He ­attributes this refusal to a reluctance to apply comparative approaches to monotheistic religions, to a narrow understanding of contextualisation and to claims to u ­ niqueness in historical philology. Similarly, religious entanglement can be highlighted by the study of sacred places that are shared by Muslim, Christian and Jewish visitors. Shared practices at shrines, sanctuaries, and annual religious festivals have a long history, especially in religious, cultural, and political contact zones around the Mediterranean or in border regions like south-eastern Europe. These practices of “sharing the sacred” have been described as “more common in the Mediterranean world than elsewhere, in the home of all three major religions that have shaped the Western world.”166 They have recently attracted new attention by scholars of different 161 Ibid. 162 Ibid. 163 John Renard: Islam and Christianity. Theological Themes in Comparative Perspective. Berkeley 2011. 164 Aziz Al-Azmeh: The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity. Allāh and his People. Cambridge 2014. 165 Ibid, 45. He attributes this refusal to a reluctance to apply comparative approaches to monotheistic religions, to a narrow understanding of contextualisation and to claims to uniqueness in historical philology. 166 Maria Couroucli: Shared Sacred Places, in: Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita (eds.): A Companion to Mediterranean History. Chichester 2014, 378–391, here 386.

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disciplinary background,167 after ground-breaking work – like Hasluck’s study on “mixed shrines” in the Balkans and Anatolia in 1929 and Voinot’s inventory of almost 100 “double shrines” venerated by Jews and Muslims in Morocco in 1948168 – did not find a follow-up for quite some time. Sharing sacred places was not necessarily connected with blurring religious or cultural boundaries. Sometimes it was embedded in everyday experiences, in which the religious other was the neighbour, sometimes it followed from a topdown policy, with which rulers staged and exploited multi-religious practices in order to legitimatize their rule. Sometimes, rulers tried to purge places of the religious other, sometimes they were neutral or open to diversity, sometimes they supported or even imposed multi-religious practices. When political fortunes changed, multi-religious presentations could be discredited, fall into oblivion or be suppressed.169 Academic interest in these phenomena is not detached from contemporary debates about cultural clashes and has allowed for opposing interpretations. One group of scholars sees the sharing of holy places as a kind of mistake, exception or a truce between different groups who inevitably tend towards conflict and violence because their ultimate goal is purification and the exclusion of the religious other.170 The other group proceeds from a middle ground that directs the attention at the possible richness and diversity of examples and the paradoxical “interplay of sharing and competition, tolerance and antagonism, mixed worship and the destruction of other’s” symbols.171 The very notion of “sharing” hints at the fact 167 Bärbel Beinhauer-Köhler, Mirko Roth, and Bernadette Schwarz-Boenneke (eds.): Viele Religionen – ein Raum!? Analysen, Diskussionen und Konzepte. Berlin 2015; Elazar Barkan and Karen Barkey (eds.): Choreograhies of Shared Sacred Sites: Religion, Politics, and Conflict Resolution. New York 2014; Dionigi Albera and Maria Couroucli (eds.): Sharing Sacred Spaces in the Mediterranean: Christians, Muslims, and Jews at Shrines and Sanctuaries. Bloomington 2012; Glenn Bowman: Sharing the Sacra. The Politics and Pragmatics of Intercommunal Relations around Holy Places. New York 2012; Jonathan Harris, Catherine Holmes, and Eugenia Russell (eds.): Byzantines, Latins, and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World after 1150. Oxford 2012. 168 Frederick W. Hasluck: Christianity and Islam under the Sultans. Oxford 1929; Louis Voinot: Pèlerinages Judéo-Musulmans du Maroc. Paris 1948. 169 Dorothea Weltecke: Multireligiöse Loca Sancta und die mächtigen Heiligen der Christen, in: Der Islam 88 (2012), 73–95. 170 See for example Robert E. Hayden: Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive sharing or religious sites in South Asia and the Balkans, in: Current Anthropology 43 (2002), 205–231; idem (eds.): Antagonistic Tolerance. Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites and Spaces. London 2016; Ron Hassner: War on Sacred Grounds. Ithaca 2009. 171 See for example Dionigi Albera: “Why Are You Mixing what Cannot be Mixed?” Shared Devotions in the Monotheisms, in: History and Anthropology 19, 1 (2008), 37–59, here 40; Bowman, Sharing the Sacra, 1–8.



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that wherever people do something together or have something in common, there are also processes of distinction, demarcation or division, but no automatism, neither for conflict nor for coexistence. (4) Decentering Europe is certainly no new idea.172 The Oxford historian Peter Frankopan recently recounted world history from a different perspective by treating the Middle East and Central Asia as the center from which to begin writing a history of longue durée about vast and interconnected spaces, thus also challenging the idea of self-contained regions and cultures.173 In another attempt to replace the master narrative of Islamic difference, Richard Bulliet made a case for “Islamo-Christian civilization” in 2004.174 The Middle East historian argued that Islam and Christianity were not distinct civilizations at loggerheads, but rather fraternal twins with fundamental commonalities, similar historical trajectories, and similar challenges – an approach he created to challenge Bernard Lewis’s and Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilization” thesis. In a lecture in 2010, he explained that his idea to re-narrate history in this way was similar to the way in which history, which had generally been written without women, black slaves, Jews and other minorities, was re-written after the feminist movement, the Civil Rights movement, and the Holocaust changed things fundamentally.175 He also drew an analogy from the common sense, with which one speaks about a Greek-Roman culture in spite of conflicts and wars in history, to the commonalities that can be found between Arabs and Europeans, Muslims and Christians. Thus, he understood the 9/11 attacks as a wake-up call for Muslims and non-­ Muslims alike. Bulliet’s hope that his new take might change the way people see world history – “I will write something on Islamo-Christian civilization and then I will simply take the phrase and google it every few months and watch the exponential rise as my phrase takes over the world”176 – has so far been misplaced, maybe because he failed to consider the simple idea that fraternity does not rule out fratricide, as one reviewer put it.177 172 See for example Dipesh Chakrabarty: Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton 2000. 173 Peter Frankopan: The Silk Roads. A New History of the World. London 2015. 174 Richard Bulliet: The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization. New York 2004. 175 Richard Bulliet: Islamo-Christian Civilization (9 March 2010). URL: http://new.oberlin.edu/ office/friendship/documents/pdfs/TheIslamo-ChristianCivilizationbyRichardBulliet.pages.pdf (02 Feb. 2017). 176 Ibid. 177 Johannes J.G. Jansen: Richard W. Bulliet, The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, in: The International History Review 27, 4 (2005), 931–932. For a more friendly review see David Commins: Richard W. Bulliet, The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, in: International Journal of Middle East Studies 38, 4 (2006), 585–587.

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Maybe it is not necessary to invent a new master narrative for Europe’s shared history with Islam. It is possibly enough to take the European self-perception seriously, which understands Europe as a space of multi-religious and multi-cultural diversity. This might help to bring back Islam and Muslims into European historiography more consciously and make their continuous presence more visible, thus challenging the Western, Eurocentric manner in which European history has been written until recently. A focus on European Muslims opens up the doors for another way of conceiving a transnational and transcultural history of Europe, even a trans-religious one. Such a historiography aims not only at filling “memory holes,” it also has to treat questions of classifications and framing with greater caution. How Islamic was or is Europe? How European was or is Islam? Dealing with these questions can also add to our understanding of how a changing awareness of historical problems interferes with changing conceptualizations for these problems. The question, then, is whether the Europeanization of identity, history, and space – a process-cum-narrative that leads to an identity, a history and geography of Europe – can be thought of without a demarcation line that separates the Islamic “Other” against which the European “Self” is constituted. What we certainly need less are accounts that frame everything that has to do with Muslims as “Islamic” and thus as problematic. What is required are more accounts that reveal the diverse experiences and contradictory worldviews of Muslims in Europe. Since Muslim bodies, practices, and communities as well as spaces associated with them have come to mark a frontier of Europeanness inside Europe itself, “Islamic” terminology in public debates often merely camouflages otherwise open racism. It contributes to a racialization of Islam that finds its expression in anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic stereotypes. This racialized and culturalized knowledge about Islam, combined with historical ignorance, has been transmitted through institutional as well as informal channels in which the “Othering” of Muslims has survived in spite of decolonization, secularization, democratization, and postcolonial criticism and even reached the centres of European societies that share anti-Islamic prejudices to a certain degree. Facing a wave of growing Islamophobia all over Europe, scholars of history, religious and Middle Eastern studies should become aware that they have closed their eyes to their own discipline’s tradition for too long. The paradoxical presence-cum-absence of Muslims in European history is therefore not only a question of how much space we are willing to grant physical and virtual Islam or whether we judge it as an important contribution to the foundations of modern Europe. It is a question referring to the future. Writing the Islamic history of Europe or the European history of Islam is “a story about us, Europeans, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, of native or foreign origin and how we struggle with our past and our present (…), how we shape our



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identity and, particularly, the uneasy relationship between who we are and who we want to be.”178 Whoever tells this story – against the odds of Islamic framing, Othering, memory holes, isolated interests, wholesale ignorance, political violence, and the Europeanness of European history, identity, and space – might be well-­advised to take grand master Rumi’s instigation to heart: “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”179

178 Berger, A Brief History, 17. 179 Masnaví-i Maʿnaví, the Spiritual Couplets of Mauláná Jalálu’d-din Muhammad balkhi, translated and abridged by Edward H. Whinfield. London 1887, 1989; here: Book IV, Story II. URL: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Masnavi_I_Ma'navi/Book_IV#STORY_II._The_Building_of_the_ .22Most_Remote_Temple.22_at_Jerusalem (14 Feb. 2017).

List of Contributors Uta Bretschneider, Director of the Open-air Museum Kloster Veßra. Research interests: everyday culture in the GDR, biographical research, history of rural areas and industrial culture. Recent publications: “Vom Ich zum Wir”? Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene als Neubauern in der LPG. Leipzig 2016; Um-Deutungen – Zeitgenössische und aktuelle Darstellungsmodi von Bodenreform und Kollektivierung, in: Markus Gloe et  al. (eds.): Standortbestimmung Deutschlandforschung. Berlin 2016, 35–54. Simone Derix, Senior Lecturer (Privatdozentin), University of Munich, currently Senior Lecturer (Akademische Oberrätin), University of Duisburg-Essen. Research interests: modern and contemporary European and international history, history of wealth, history of family and kinship in transnational perspective. Recent publications: Die Thyssens. Familie und Vermögen. Paderborn 2016; Der Wert der Dinge (= Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, H. 3/2016), ed. with Benno Gammerl, Christiane Reinecke, Nina Verheyen. Alice Detjen, Member of the German Research Foundation (DFG) Research Training Group No. 1608 “Self-Making: Practices of Subjectivation in Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspective”, University of Oldenburg. Research interests: the house and artistic self-conceptions in Victorian England. Margareth Lanzinger, Professor of Economic and Social History, University of Vienna, current research project: “The Role of Wealth in Defining and Constituting Kinship Spaces” (FWF Austrian Research Fund). Research interests: kinship, marriage, property and the power of disposal, legal and administrative practice, relations between norms and practice, the construction of heroes. Recent publications: Verwaltete Verwandtschaft. Eheverbote, kirchliche und staatliche Dispenspraxis im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Wien 2015; (ed.) The Power of the Fathers. Historical Perspectives from Ancient Rome to the Nineteenth Century. London 2015. Janine Maegraith, Affiliated Lecturer and Director of Studies, Newnham College, University of Cambridge, currently Research Associate, “The Role of Wealth in Defining and Constituting Kinship Spaces” (FWF Austrian Research Fund), University of Vienna. Research interests: early modern history of Central Europe, with focus on social and legal history, consumption, and gender studies; the history and development of female religious orders. Recent publications: Konkurrenz um Vermögen im südlichen Tirol des 16. Jahrhunderts, in: L’Homme 27, no. 1 (2016), 15–31, with Margareth Lanzinger; Consumption and Material Life, in: Hamish Scott (ed.): Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History. Oxford 2015, vol. 1, 369–397, with Craig Muldrew. Julia A. Schmidt-Funke, Research Coordinator, University of Erfurt. Research interests: early modern material culture and consumption, urban history, gender history, history of science. Recent publications: Neue Stadtgeschichte(n). Die Reichsstadt Frankfurt im Vergleich. Bielefeld 2017; Haben und Sein. Materielle Kultur und Konsum im frühneuzeitlichen Frankfurt am Main. Köln 2018 (forthcoming). Monika Szczepaniak, Professor for German Studies, University of Bydgoszcz. Research interests: Austrian and German Literature of the 20th century (with special emphasis on Elfriede Jelinek),

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Gender Studies (constructions and deconstructions of masculinities in German, Austrian and Polish Literature and Culture), Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies. Recent publications: Militärische Männlichkeiten in Deutschland und Österreich im Umfeld des Großen Krieges. Konstruktionen und Dekonstruktionen. Würzburg 2011; Temperaturen des Begehrens. Sinnliche Präsenz und kulturelle Repräsentationen. (= Studia Germanica Posnaniensia 36/2015), ed. with Joanna Drynda; Jelineks Räume. Wien 2017, ed. with Agnieszka Jezierska, Pia Janke. Jonathan Voges, Research Associate, University of Hanover. Research interests: do-it-yourself and home improvement in Western Germany; intellectual cooperation under the roof of the League of nations in the 1920s and 1930s. Recent publications: ‘Selbst ist der Mann’. Do-it-yourself und Heimwerken in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Göttingen 2017; Die Axt im Haus. Die ‘Verbürgerlichung’ des Selbermachens in den 1960er Jahren, in: Nikola Langreiter and Klara Löffler (eds.):  Selber machen. Diskurse und Praktiken des “Do it yourself”. Essen 2017, 35–57. Manfred Sing, Senior Research Fellow at the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz. Research interests: The history of Islam, secularism, and Arab Marxism in a transnational and transcultural perspective. Recent publications: Pharaonische Hochkultur und islamischer Niedergang: Der Kampf um kulturelle Souveränität im Ägypten des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, in: Gregor Feindt, Bernhard Gißibl and Johannes Paulmann (eds.): Kulturelle Souveränität. Politische Deutungs- und Handlungsmacht jenseits des Staates im 20. Jahrhundert. Göttingen 2017, 133–164; Dis/Connecting Islam and Terror: The “Open Letter to Al-Baghdadi” and the Pitfalls of Condemning ISIS on Islamic Grounds, in: Journal of Religious and Political Practice 2, 3 (2016), 296–318.