Making of a German Constitution : a Slow Revolution

178 • The Making of a German ConstitutionThe PCR showed 8,292 marriages in a total population of 160,696 people. Therewere only 62 contracts, for a 5 percent marriage rate and .72 percent contract rate.In the Rhineland, however, where the Code civil introduced the administrative communityand rigorously disenfranchised women, the marriage rate dropped and thecontract rate was much higher than in Koblenz. The PCR showed a population of3.2 million with 140,000 marriages and a staggering 9,938 registered prenuptial agreements.The marriage rate was lower, only 4 percent, but the contract rate escalatedto 7.1 percent compared to the 5 percent and .72 percent in eastern Koblenz. 62 Of the9,938 contracts registered in the Rhineland, 5,221 were from couples classified in theHandel und Gewerbe category and 779 from the Grosshandel category. That was arate of 52.2 percent and 7.8 percent, respectively, and a combined rate of 60 percentof the total 9,938. Interestingly, the percentage of rural contracts also increased significantlycompared to other regions in Prussia. The report showed 3,889 couplesfrom the ländliche Bevölkerung category and 204 from the grosse Besitze category.The contract rate here was 39 percent and 2 percent, respectively, and a much highercombined rate of 41 percent, in contrast to Westphalia’s 15 percent. 63In the South, Bavaria’s report, Darstellung des im Königreiche Bayern bestehendenehelichen Güterrechts (1877), showed such great variation in the nature ofmarital property relations that it was impossible to draw a general assessment on thebasis of the report. The report indicated that the most common regime was separationof property in the form of Roman Dotalrecht and various, unidentified partikulareGütergemeinschaften. For the years 1851 to 1875, the overall contract rate stood at38 percent (821,027 marriages and 314,301 marital agreements). Yet, in Oberbayern,Niederbayern, Oberpfalz and Schwaben, the rate was much higher, 56 percent,62.5 percent, 57 percent and 54 percent, respectively. These were regions where therehad been some attempt to reintroduce an administrative community. In Oberfrankenand Mittelfranken the rate was comparable to Posen, Pomerania and Westphalia. Thereport showed rates of 13.3 percent in Oberfranken and 12 percent in Mittelfranken,respectively. Unterfranken had the lowest contract rate of 8.5 percent, and, not surprisinglyit was a region of varied local and city laws. 64Nowhere are historians offered a sharper image of couples’ resistance to the reintroductionof the administrative community than in Baden. In 1809, the Civil Code ofBaden attempted to void the particular laws and create legal uniformity. The Code’sfamily law mirrored the Code civil and tried to introduce a system of Verwaltungsgemeinschaft.However, the liberty to contract returned after the Freiheitskriege. Asa result, Baden’s report on marital property relations revealed a staggering rate ofmarital contracts. 65 For the years 1871 to 1874, only 52 percent of couples in Badenmaintained the statutory regime. According to the report, in 48 percent of all marriages,there were written contracts that outright abandoned the statutory regime of Baden’sCode. In 32 percent of marriages, the Errungenschaftsgemeinschaft was adoptedand, in 16 percent, the allgemeine Gütergemeinschaft was the basis of marital propertyrelations. An even stronger indication of the unpopularity of the administrative