Marriage policy

Emperor Maximilian and his family ( Bernhard Strigel 1516): The marriage of Emperor Maximilian I to Maria of Burgundy strengthened the rise of the Habsburgs and became the starting point for their planned marriage policy.

Marriage policy refers to the scheduled procedure many high nobles families and reigning monarchs who rule their person and family by deliberately marrying their offspring secure or expand and thus use the "existing human resources of the family" by possible effective links with other dynasties are received, to to alliances with mutual exchange of women . These connections are often arranged marriages and sometimes forced marriages , which can be initiated with an early child engagement .

In the broadest sense, marriage policy also includes the strategic selection of marriage partners in large families , groups of descent ( lineages , clans ) and other social groups (see also marriage rules , marriage circle ).

European history

Marriage policy was of particular political importance in pre-modern Europe (500 to 1000 AD), when the modern bureaucratic power state was not yet developed and rule could only be exercised through personal relationships. Marriage policy was therefore closely linked to the main form of rule of the hereditary monarchy and the ruling house ( dynasty ) that supported it. The German historian Heinz Duchhardt is of the opinion that the topic constitutes “an eminently important part of the signature of premodern Europe” and emphasized the continent from the others until the 19th century: “Dynasticism and the 'marriage policy' of the dynasties are aimed at the center of the European contemporaries and coexistence: in the international politics [...] in the cultural history of politics, in the history of mentality , in the Konfessionalisierungsgeschichte . "the historian Walter Demel makes in this practice" at least true at the level of the high aristocracy, european 'linkages' out. The historian Ronald Asch also emphasizes that such strategies were particularly important in the high nobility ; In the case of the rural nobility, the political impact was lower and the freedom of choice in marriage relationships was greater.

Marriages could establish or support alliances between ruling houses. Especially after wars, the marriage of descendants of the warring parties who had previously been fighting against each other served to ensure pacification, also personally through the dynastic alliance thus concluded. On the other hand a ruling house came by such a policy in a potential hazard because a previously competing dynasty thus part of the succession was - a conflict potential to wars of succession could lead, especially in the early modern dynastic princely state in the 17th and 18th century, as the German historian Johannes Kunisch pointed out.

The widely ramified and effective marriage policy of the Habsburgs , whose famous motto Bella gerant alii - tu, felix Austria, nube! ("May others wage wars - you happy Austria, get married!") Became a popular saying . The Habsburg-French conflict , which lasted over two centuries, was exemplified by the marriage of the son of Emperor Friedrich III. , of the later Emperor Maximilian I with Maria von Burgund .

Outside of Europe

Marriage policy in early Islamic Arabia shows that marriages were also subject to political plans in premodern societies outside of Europe, but also developed culturally specific - and mostly narrower - patterns there .

See also

• Marriage practice of the ancient Egyptian royal houses

literature

• Heinz Duchhardt (Hrsg.): Dynasticism and dynastic marriage policy as factors of European interdependence (= yearbook for European history. Volume 8). Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58205-5 .
• Alfred Kohler : "Tu felix Austria nube ...". From the cliché to the re-evaluation of dynastic politics in recent European history. In: Journal for Historical Research . Volume 21, 1994, pp. 461-482.
• Karl-Heinz Spieß : Europe is getting married. Communication and cultural transfer in the context of European royal marriages in the late Middle Ages. In: Rainer Christoph Schwinges , Christian Hesse , Peter Moraw (eds.): Europe in the late Middle Ages. Politics, society, culture (= historical magazine. Supplements, volume 40). Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-64440-1 , pp. 435-464.
• Hermann Weber : The importance of the dynasties for the European history of the early modern period. In: Journal for Bavarian State History . Volume 44, 1981, pp. 5-32 ( online ).
• Wolfgang EJ Weber : Securing dynasties and forming the state. The development of the modern princely state. In: the same (ed.): The Prince. Ideas and Realities in European History. Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 1998, ISBN 978-3-412-11996-6 , pp. 91-136.

Web links

Wiktionary: marriage policy  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ^ Jan Paul Niederkorn : The dynastic politics of the Habsburgs in the 16th and early 17th centuries. In: Yearbook for European History. Volume 8, 2007, pp. 29-50, here p. 31.
2. ↑ Compare, for example, to hunter-gatherer societies : Monika Oberhuber: Gender Equality Societies. Or: "Same same but different". Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Vienna 2009, pp. 159–160 and 170 (diploma thesis; online at univie.ac.at, with PDF download).
3. ↑ Heinz Duchhardt : Dynastizismus and dynastic marriage policy as factors of European integration. In: Yearbook for European History. Volume 8, 2007, p. 1.
4. ^ Walter Demel : The European nobility. From the Middle Ages to the present. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-406-50879-0 , p. 19.
5. ↑ Ronald G. Asch : European nobility in the early modern times. Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-3086-9 , p. 106.
6. ↑ Martin Peters : Can marriages bring about peace? European peace and marriage treaties of the premodern. In: Yearbook for European History. Volume 8, 2007, pp. 121-134, here p. 121.
7. ↑ Johannes Kunisch (ed.): The dynastic princely state. On the importance of succession orders for the emergence of the early modern state. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-05106-8 .
8. ^ Jan Paul Niederkorn: The dynastic politics of the Habsburgs in the 16th and early 17th centuries. In: Yearbook for European History. Volume 8, 2007, pp. 29–50, here p. 29.
9. ↑ Beatrix Bastl: Habsburg Marriage Policy - 1000 Years of Wedding? In: L'Homme. European Journal of Feminist History . Volume 7, 1996, pp. 75-89.
10. ↑ Gabriele vom Bruck: Marriage policy of the "prophetic descendants". In: Saeculum . Vol. 40, No. 3-4, 1989, pp. 272-295; Michael Mitterauer also briefly on the specific conventions : Why Europe? Medieval foundations of a special route. 4th edition. Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-50222-9 , Chapter 3: Spouse-centered family and bilateral kinship. Social flexibility through loosened parentage relationships. Pp. 70–108, here p. 102 ( side view in the Google book search).