misalliance

Mesalliance ( French mésalliance "missheirat") describes in the medieval and early modern class society a marriage between partners who belonged to different social classes . As a rule, the consequences particularly affected descendants from such connections, who legally followed the lower class from such a connection, and could lead to the loss of their class for members of the nobility .

In colloquial terms , mesalliance nowadays describes an unfortunate combination of partners who do not fit or do not seem to fit; In this meaning, the term is also transferred to political alliances and ideological systems , for example to the pairing " economy - moral concept " or " utilitarianism - ecology ".

Examples

• The union of the British King Edward VIII with the bourgeois and already twice divorced Wallis Simpson , which in 1936 resulted in a constitutional crisis and Edward's abdication .

Mesalliances in the arts

In literature , mesalliances have always been the starting point or topic. In the Song of the Nibelungs , Brünhild's suspected difference in class between Siegfried and Kriemhild forms the starting point of a fatal argument.

Mesalliances were also discussed in Molière's comedies or Theodor Fontane's Berlin novels, for example in Errungen, Wirrungen in 1888 . In Friedrich Schiller's civic tragedy Kabale und Liebe from 1784, for example, the noble president threatens disinheritance if his son marries the commoner Luise Miller. Also George Bernard Shaw's comedy Mesallianz or Wrongly connected (English Misalliance ) and Werner Schwab's play Mesalliance. But we fuck each other splendidly from 1992 included examples.

See also

• Morganatic marriage (left-hand marriage among the nobility)
• Hypergamy (marriage above one's own social class, contrast hypogamy , marriage below one's own social class)
• Anisogamy (marriage generally outside of social class)

literature

• Jürgen Beyer: Estonian from Kielkond on Oesel and Danish councilor in Visby on Gotland. A mesalliance around the middle of the 16th century? In: Marju Luts-Sootak, Sanita Osipova, Frank Ludwig Schäfer (eds.): Unity and diversity in legal history in the Baltic region. Sixth Legal History Day in the Baltic Sea Region, 3.-5. June 2010, Tartu (Estonia) / Riga (Latvia) (= legal history series. Volume 428). Lang, Frankfurt 2012, pp. 39–51.

Web links

Wiktionary: Mesalliance  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Eckart Conze: Holy Mésalliance: Monique de Saint Martin knows the French nobility. In: swiki.hfbk-hamburg.de. Sumpf Sonne - Lebensreform, May 3, 2003, accessed on April 6, 2014 (book review on Monique de Saint Martin: Der Adel. Sociology of a Stand. UVK, Konstanz 2003). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See for example Friedrich Wilhelm Korff : The philosopher and the woman. On the history of a mesalliance. Essays. Reclam, Leipzig 2000.
2. ↑ See for example Hans Albrecht Hartmann: Economy and Values. A mésalliance of human history. Lecture and speeches on the occasion of the celebration of the 65th birthday of Prof. Dr. Reinhard Blum on November 3, 1998. Augsburg 1998.
3. ↑ Nibelungenlied , Manuscript B, V. 636–638.