Between dynastic raison and personal motivation: princely widowers and their scopes of action in the late medieval empire, 1250-1550

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Oliver Auge
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 402752165

In comparison to widowhood, research on princely widowers in the period from 1250 to 1550 has been a desideratum. In the first two and a half years of the DFG project approved in 2018 with a 0.65 TV-L 13 position for a research assistant in the category “PhD student and comparable” fundamental, innovative results were achieved through intensive research and could be contributed and communicated through numerous lectures and essays to the historical widower research. After the collection of a corpus of approx. 58 meaningful widowers with an unmarried state of at least ten years after the death of their wives and the data obtained using the European family tables, it was not only possible in a first step to make statistical evaluations of for example the average duration of widowhood, the age of the princes and the age difference of the spouses, but also to name the motives behind their long-term widowhoods. They spanned a multi-causal spectrum of i.a. political, economic, social, dynastic, personal, health and religious factors. Especially through an individualistic approach, based on till ex. wills, chronicles, documents and letters, personal aspects in the actions of the widower could be highlighted and named for the first time as important determinants for decision-making in the high nobility. In a concluding step, the research concept “room for maneuver” developed by the applicant was applied to the princes who remained long-term widowers. This involved balancing the possibilities and limits of widowers and their actions in between the five coordinates (1) space, (2) economy and finance, (3) dynasty and family, (4) constitutional position in the empire and (5) rank. With these cognitive goals, the project has so far followed the traditions of Peter Moraw, and Karl-Heinz Spiess, who presented fundamental research approaches to consider princely action and thus inspired numerous future projects. Due to the ongoing corona pandemic, the associated travel restrictions and in order to end the project appropriately, a six-month extension is required to make the last necessary archive trips to the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage in Berlin, the state archives of Hanover, Saxony-Anhalt, Meinigen and Weimar and the main state archive in Dresden, as these institutions could not provide digitized copies due to the size of the files. Furthermore, the extension is to be used to incorporate the results of the Kiel autumn conference on widowerhood, to finalize the half-finished manuscript and in this way to bring the analysis of the princely widowers, their motives and their room of maneuver to a successful and profitable end.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants