Bride price

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Traditional formal offering of the bridal offering at an engagement party in Thailand (2008)
Traditional bride price made of mussel shells, feathers and wickerwork ( Papua New Guinea , after 1900)

Bride price , bride money or bridal gift denotes an amount of money or property that is handed over by the groom or his family to the parents of the bride , usually to her father , on the occasion of a marriage . The term “bride gift” is preferred from an ethnosociological point of view , because the bride price includes the meaning “buy and sell a woman”, but in many cultures this does not correspond to the understanding of this custom . In contrast to the bridal gift, a “ morning gift ” goes from the groom to the bride, partly for her future security. In contrast, a “ dowry ” is brought into the marriage by the bride.

In Germany, the collection of bridal money is immoral because of the freedom of marriage ; only a symbolic amount is allowed in order to comply with a traditional custom. In contrast to the morning gift , it is not possible to claim the bride price . The institution of the bride price is already mentioned in the 3700 year old Babylonian collection of laws " Codex Hammurapi " and can also be found in the biblical book of 2 Moses and in the Jewish Talmud .

Function and amount of the bride price

The bride price can have the following tasks:

  • he seals the marriage contract in a festive way,
  • he contributes to the durability of the marriage,
  • it compensates the wife's group of origin for the loss of labor.

In some cultures, husbands understand the bride price as “buying the wife” and derive appropriate rights of disposal and property from it.

The bride price is determined in its amount or composition by wedding customs and usually depends on the social status of the contracting parties . It is often very high in relation to average income , which can lead to debt .

In 1973, the British ethnologist Jack Goody brought bride price and dowry into a broader context of property relationships. He found the bridal gift especially in matrilineal and patrilineal ( unilinear ) societies . He found socio-political equality ( egalitarian ) among African peoples with bridal gifts ; differences in status were insignificant at marriage. Bride gift can be found in unilinear groups of descent ( lineages ), which act as a central group and control property, and are also associated with polygamy . According to Goody, women are the subject of a transfer of ownership when paying a bridal gift, not their recipient as with the dowry.

The French neo-Marxist economic ethnologist Claude Meillassoux assumed in 1975 that the practice of the bride price had developed from an underlying system of coordinated exchange of women between descent groups, which was preceded by a system of bride robbery .

Forms of the bride price

Turkana men in Kenya have no cattle as bride price because of the persistent drought, wedding celebrations no longer take place (2011)
Knives can serve as a bride price for the Mangbetu in the Congo (2009)

In the past, the Uzbeks in Central Asia could exchange women as an alternative to a bride price ( Qarch Quda ).

In some societies can be substituted for the bride price the "value" of women as " bride service are" processed ( bride service ); in other cultures, this service is not understood as payment, but rather as proof of the bridegroom's ability to care for his wife. With the Hoopa and Yurok Indians in North America, a groom could only raise half the bride price, but he had to work off the other half with the bride's family in the form of a “ half marriage ”.

In southern Africa , the negotiated bride price ( lobola or lobolo ) is usually a certain number of cattle, which are gradually to be given to the bride's family of origin (example: the Bantu people of the Luvale ; Nelson Mandela should also pay a lobola). If the bride returns to her family after the wedding, the cattle must be returned or the equivalent must be paid. When the persistent drought leads to the loss of livestock, men can no longer afford the bride price - marriages and associated ceremonial celebrations do not materialize . For the Maasai in Kenya and Tanzania , the bride price is 25 cattle (23 cows and 2 bulls), five wives are not unusual for them, some men have 30.

With the Tolai in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea , a bride price in the form of the traditional taboo shell money is still paid to the bride's parents. In 2012, the "value" of a woman was an average of 400 shell necklaces 1.8 meters long, around 400 Euro. In the otherwise modern Tolai (around 120,000 members), land ownership basically lies with the women and their maternal descent groups ( lineages ), while men accumulate wealth mainly in the form of shell money. In the Indonesian Alor archipelago , a moko (bronze drum) has a long tradition as the bride price ( Aloresis belis ) .

See also

literature

  • Michel Panoff, Michel Perrin: bride price. In: Justin Stagl (ed.): Pocket dictionary of ethnology. Reimer, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-471-61615-2 , p. 56.
  • Jack Goody , Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah: Bridewealth and Dowry (= Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology. Volume 7). Cambridge University Press, London / New York 1973, ISBN 0-521-20169-1 (English; excerpt in the Google book search).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Helmut Lukas, Vera Schindler, Johann Stockinger: Brautgabe. In: Online Interactive Glossary: ​​Marriage, Marriage, and Family. Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, 1997, accessed on May 18, 2019 (the entry "Brautgabe = Brautpreis" contains in-depth comments with sources).
  2. ^ Higher Regional Court of Hamm : Judgment of January 13, 2011 - I – 18 U 88/10. In: Dejure.org. Retrieved May 18, 2019 .
  3. ↑ See the mention of a bride price in Exodus 22.15-16 EU , as well as in 2nd Book Samuel 3.14 EU and in Hosea 2.21-22 EU .
  4. ↑ a b Michel Panoff, Michel Perrin: bride price. In: Justin Stagl (ed.): Pocket dictionary of ethnology. Reimer, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-471-61615-2 , p. 56.
  5. ↑ a b Myria Böhmecke (in the interview): Brautgeld in Berlin: "It is clearly about human trafficking". In: Spiegel Online . April 23, 2010, accessed on May 18, 2019 : “The groom's family pays the money, among other things, as compensation for the labor that the bride's family loses when the wife leaves the house. […] Originally, the bridal allowance, the so-called »mahr«, was actually intended as security for the woman in Islamic marriages in the event of a divorce. The women often used the money to buy gold jewelry. Now, however, it often only benefits her family. [...] In addition, according to the reports of the "Bild" and the "BZ", the man's family openly claimed that they had bought the girl. So it is clearly human trafficking. "
  6. ^ New Political Literature: Reports on International Literature. University of California, 1982, p. 343.
  7. ^ Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek: Domestic Group / Domestic Group. (PDF: 747 kB, 43 pages) In: Introduction to the forms of social organization (part 4/5). Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, 2011, pp. 163–165, here p. 164 , archived from the original on October 5, 2013 ; Retrieved on May 18, 2019 (documents for her lecture in the summer semester 2011): “One of the outstanding theories of this kind is that of Jack GOODY (1976), who linked a whole cluster of factors with each other [...] GOODY contrasts bride price and dowry as Forms of marriage transaction and redistribution of property, and outlines a number of consequences for family relationships and domestic organization. For example, GOODY suggests a relationship between dowry systems, bilateral kinship and monogamy, and between bride price, unilinearity and polygyny. (SEYMOUR-SMITH 1986: p. 81) GOODY's thesis has sparked a considerable debate. "
  8. ↑ Bert G. Fragner, Birgitt Hoffmann (ed.): Bamberger Mittelasienstudien - Conference files, Bamberg June 15-16, 1990. In: Islamkunde. Volume 149.Black, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-87997-221-4 , p. 25.
  9. ↑ Johanna Kehler-Maqwazima: “It is not easy to be a woman!” - portraits of black women from South Africa. Edition Hipparchia, IKO, Frankfurt 1994, ISBN 3-88939-604-6 , p. 31 ( searchable in the Google book search).