Making of a German Constitution : a Slow Revolution

170 • The Making of a German Constitutionon the national level in 1879. Actual social conditions, therefore, reflected far morevariety than historians have considered.Marital Property RelationsUnder the heading ‘women’, in the indexes of books on German history, the words‘and poverty’ are linked to women, but not ‘and property’. The underlying assumptionhas been that women, historically, did not independently own or control property.Women were not viewed as economic actors within the family or society atlarge. To support this narrative of female poverty, the law was cited often. 13 Beforethe dawn of the twentieth century in Germany, however, the rationalization of civillaw was a project, not a reality. With more pressing concerns about political legitimacyat the state level, the affairs of family property were left to families and individuals,particularly with regard to inheritance and marital property. Here, CentralEurope was characterized by the conspicuous absence of uniform regulations. AsNieberding bitterly complained before the Reichstag: ‘What are people supposed tothink of the authority and the higher aim of the laws, when inheritance in one place isabsolutely different in a neighboring place as the case is for us; in one place thewife inherits, while in another she does not, and in one place no distinction is madebetween full siblings and half siblings—in one place they inherit equally, in anotherthey do not’. 14Although legal particularism has not figured prominently, scholars have reconsideredthe traditional view of women’s economic position in the family and broadersociety. In Fertility, Wealth and Politics, Ernest Benz examined women’s propertyrights in the Baden villages of Grafenhausen bei Lahr, Kappel am Rhein and Rust.His study provides valuable insight on inheritance and how it changed the status ofwomen in German society. 15 In the region he examined, each surviving child, maleor female, received an equal share of their parents’ estate, and this custom of inheritancecontributed to a more egalitarian social structure, because each family memberhad a ‘concrete stake in the community’. 16 Individual inheritance and the wealth ofthe eligible parties became one of the most significant factors that determined thenature of marriage. 17 In the instance where the wife contributed more resources to amarriage, husbands found their economic and social position determined by her family,and the wife’s decision-making power increased accordingly. 18From the perspective of the public space, Heide Wunder has shown that womenin early modern Germany were by no means excluded from political authority. ‘Eventhough it was clearly expressed in the public and legal status of women’, she notes‘scholars failed to realize just how normal the regency of noblewomen was, andthat the running of a peasant household, an artisan’s workshop, or merchant businesswas possible only on the basis of the shared responsibility of wife and husband’.19 From a young age, merchants’ daughters were trained for the future field