Gender in Early Modern German History.

Ulinka Rublack, ed. Gender in Early Modern German History.

Past and Present Publications. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xvi + 308 pp. index. illus. map. $60. ISBN: 0-521-81398-0.

It is a pleasure and an honor to review this multifaceted anthology of solid scholarship, intriguing new historical approaches, and extensive historiography. The editor, together with her ten collaborators, has achieved a scholarly work of wide geographical and chronological scope.

The book is divided into four parts representing different themes related to gender issues: masculinities, transgressions, politics, and religion. After Ulinka Rublack's cogent introduction, Heide Wunder asks, "what made a man a man?" (21) She analyzes this query using autobiographical accounts of visible distinctions, especially the importance of wearing breeches, for, proverbially, clothes make the man. Eva Labouvie broadens the field of witchcraft trials by concentrating on male victims. She successfully elaborates on common character denominators of the accused and how they were targeted differently from women. Alison Rowlands's cogent assessment of a criminal case of "monstrous deception" (71) furnishes insights into contemporary beliefs in magic and how they could be manipulated for financial gains (provided one were not caught). Lyndal Roper's exceptional case study of children accused of witchcraft conveys the subtle connections between sexual fantasies and games, especially in familial stepparent settings. Mary Lindemann continues the underlying theme of sexuality with her insightful analysis of "the multiple identities of Maiden Heinrich" (131), a woman who openly admitted to transvestism. Sexual identity and the present historiographical controversy over its origins and/or chronology and its relation to social disciplining is presented by Merry E. Wiesner, who demonstrates an impressive command of the related works past and present. Renate Blickle pioneers a rarely assessed historical topic: women's participation in peasant revolts. She demonstrates, via a case study, the resolve of one peasant wife pleading successfully with the ruler for the return of her banished husband. (For comparative aspects on the impact of female intercessions in an urban setting see my "Women and the Penal System in Frankfurt am Main, 1562-1696" Criminal Justice History, [1992] 13:68-69). Ulinka Rublack continues the theme of turmoil by analyzing a case of infanticide which turned into a four-month local upheaval, cogently relating it to the wider historical concept of state formation and sexual morality. The theme of religion and gender is addressed first by Ulrike Strasser in "Cloistering women's past" (221), a fascinating double analysis of a contemporary account written by a nun who experienced enclosure, and the subsequent historical interpretation of the cloistering of nuns in general: a study in selective social and political memory and its consequences. The theme of memory in a religious context is then taken up by Ulrike Gleixner, who analyzes a unique set of Pietist biographies written by a woman with the aim of influencing future generations of Pietist women via the memory of their religious ancestors. From religious uniformity, Dagmar Freist's study leads to the highly debated topic of the time frame of the acceptance of religious diversity by analyzing confessionally mixed marriages in general and three cases in particular. While social and economic reasons seemed to have been the basis for tying such knots, the results were not always marital bliss.

Admittedly, this brief review does not do justice to the individual scholarly achievements of the contributors. Collectively, they more than accomplished their aim "to make accessible to English-speaking audiences some highly original German scholarship on gender history" (xiii). This anthology should not only be read by scholars and students of the early modern German period but by early modern Europeanists in general.

MARIA R. BOES

West Chester University