27.06.2017 Regine Maritz, M.A. (DHI Paris)
Gender as a Resource of Power at the Early Modern Court of Württemberg: Reflections on Female Favourites and the Task Sharing of the Princely Couple.
18 Uhr c.t. in GABF 04/516

The subjects of concubinage and female favourites at the early modern court are even today neglected by political historiography. This paper argues that it is unsatisfactory to study influential women at court merely in terms of how they challenged the behavioural norms imposed on them by their gender, and that instead we also need to ask what the institutionalization of such norms meant for the court as a centre of dynastic power. I will focus on the duchy of Württemberg in the years immediately after the death of Duke Friedrich I. (1557-1608). During this time Friedrich’s son and the next duke Johann Friedrich prosecuted several people who had been favourites of his father’s. Most prominent among them were the cases of former privy councilor Mathäus Enzlin and of Magdalena Möringer, who had served as a procuress for the various affairs of Duke Friedrich I. The rise and fall of Enzlin has already attracted the attention of a number of historians, but Möringer’s fascinating case has so far hardly been analysed at all. This is surprising since the prosecution against her created an abundance of documents, including numerous supplications in her own hand, as well as interventions all the way from the Supreme Court of the Holy Roman Empire. I will argue that in order to understand why Möringer was prosecuted with the same vigour as Enzlin, it is crucial to consider the political dimensions of her role in relation to the late Duke of the previous administration. The paper will argue that the female favourite Magdalena Möringer took on functions of the local duchess and thus helped the duke to concentrate power in his person by breaking up the deeply rooted assumptions about the collaborative labour of ruling couples that were influential in early modern Germany at this time.

Poster