4 - Patterns of marital conflict

Summary

On Monday she scolded him rudely and then she looked him in the face, in response to which he of course defended himself.

- Johann Georg Rieth, explaining why he beat his wife (1839)

In discussing the idiomatic rendering of house and family so far, we have considered the villagers' use of the terms outside of the context of the dramatic situations in which they occurred. What we have at our disposal are re-creations before the pastor, Schultheiss, or village court of the original staging of some kind of conflict between husbands and wives. However, the action cannot be fully understood without on overview of the public airing of marital disputes, the frequency and kinds of complaint, changes in the nature of violence, and the symbolism behind the verbal abuse.

Family squabbles came before three different courts in the village, and, if serious, they would go on up to the various levels of higher instance, the next one beyond the locality being in the administrative town of Nürtingen, the level of the Oberamt. No records remain from any of the higher courts, except for a few cases heard in the ducal marriage court (Ehegericht). But none of these involve Neckarhausen residents. There are also several volumes “in causis fori mixti” and “in causis civilibus” from the Nürtingen Oberamtsgericht, covering the period 1806 to 1823. Most family quarrels were brought before the church consistory (Kirchenkonvent) from its inception in 1644 until 1840, when they were moved to the purely secular jurisdiction of the Schultheiβenamt.