Gender in Early Modern German History [Hardcover]

A range of startling case-studies from German society between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.Why did parents prosecute their children as witches? Why did a sixteenth-century midwife entice a burgher woman to pretend she was giving birth to puppies? How did the life of a transsexual woman in early eighteenth-century Hamburg end? This volume presents a range of startling case-studies from German society between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment which make us think in new ways about the meanings of gender and identity in the past and which relates, above all, to the lived experiences of men and women, whose lives and choices mattered.Why did parents prosecute their children as witches? Why did a sixteenth-century midwife entice a burgher woman to pretend she was giving birth to puppies? How did the life of a transsexual woman in early eighteenth-century Hamburg end? This volume presents a range of startling case-studies from German society between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment which make us think in new ways about the meanings of gender and identity in the past and which relates, above all, to the lived experiences of men and women, whose lives and choices mattered.Why did parents prosecute their children as witches? Why did a sixteenth-century midwife entice a burgher woman to pretend she was giving birth to puppies? How did the life of a transsexual woman in early eighteenth-century Hamburg end? This volume presents a range of startling case-studies from German society between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The study reveals new meanings of gender and identity relating to the experiences of men and women in early modern German history.Preface; 1. Introduction Ulinka Rublack; Part I. Masculinities: 2. What made a man a man? Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century findings Heide Wunder; 3. Men in witchcraft trials: towards a social anthropology of 'male' understandings of magic and witchcraft Eva Labouvie; Part II. Transgressions: 4. Monstrous declƒ°