The Rise Of The Poor, Weak, And Wicked: Poor Care, Punishment, Religion, And Patriarchy In Leipzig, 1700-1730

Journal of Social History, Fall, 2000 by Tanya Kevorkian

Between 1700 and 1704 the city council of Leipzig, in central Germany, presided over the construction of a new, large combination poor house, orphanage, insane asylum, and penitentiary named St. George. The institution housed nearly one hundred inmates within a year and over two hundred by the 1720's, as well as over twenty employees. Several factors combined to bring about the construction of the house, and the wider prominence of the poor, weak, and wicked in official rhetoric. The number of poor and dislocated individuals was increasing dramatically. Not only need, but also the city council's ability and desire to address poverty and criminality were growing. Further, Pietism, a movement within Lutheranism, was reinvigorating the council's and the broader population's traditional religious interest in the poor, weak, and wicked.

Many details of the social and economic background of poverty and crime in Leipzig; of the city council's ideology regarding poor care and punishment; and of the construction, administration, and internal routine of St. George were typical of institutions around Europe and Anglo-America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. [1] This case study contributes to discussions about early modem poor care and punishment in two ways. First, I explore interactions among the various groups involved with the house, especially the city council, propertied citizens, and inmates of the house. In most literature, by contrast, the perspectives of these groups are separated out. In particular, emphasis continues to be placed on the authorities' norms and goals. Relating different perspectives not only illuminates the workings of poor care and punishment, but also allows for a broader exploration of the relative positions and authority of men and women from different social groups in Leipzig. Poor care and punishment len d themselves well to such treatment, since they were prominent issues throughout early modern Europe; in Leipzig, they were particularly so during the early eighteenth century. And St. George was the physical and ideological focal point for public demarcation and discussion of the poor and criminal, although it represented only one part of the punishment administered by the council, and of support administered by the council, guilds, and informal social networks. [2] The sources available on the house, unusually rich, provide a rare opportunity to compare pronouncements by councilors, burghers, (as property-owning citizens were known in German towns) and inmates on one subject. They show, as one historian of German cities recently wrote, that "[l]ines of authority which were clear in theory could easily be blurred in practice." [3] The sources include city council protocols, internal memos, correspondence, financial accounts recording the construction and maintenance of the house, investigations into corrupti on and abuse, and last but not least the letters of four inmates, three female and one male, to the city council requesting to be freed, which give rare voice to the objects of discipline.

Second, I explore how religion shaped the ideology and practice of poor care and punishment. This bears on the first issue, since religion structured many of the interactions among councilors, burghers, and inmates. The politics of Protestant German cities were shaped by a sacralization of gender and occupational hierarchies and by an assumption of broad powers by local authorities, including poor care and punishment. [4] While these dynamics have been well explored for the Reformation era, they have been less carefully traced into the eighteenth century, a time of great social and economic change. However, religion remained important in this period, fading only during the upheavals of the late eighteenth century. The council's legitimation of its construction and maintenance of St. George was deeply traditional, based on the patriarchal language of the Old Testament covenant and Ten Commandments. Further, burghers and inmates shared the same language of covenant and Commandments.

Along with traditional concepts and practices, an important new religious trend in Germany, Pietism, also informed the construction of St. George. [5] Leading Pietists, parallel to Puritans and Quakers in England and North America, developed new social and institutional means of realizing the Reformation agenda of caring for, disciplining, and indoctrinating the poor, orphaned, and criminal. In Frankfurt, Philipp Jacob Spener was instrumental in establishing an alms and workhouse in the 1670's that influenced developments around Germany. Appropriately, a new religious movement was aligned with a new institutional form then spreading around Europe, which stressed enclosure, discipline, and work. In Halle, Brandenburg-Prussia, just thirty miles from Leipzig, August Hermann Francke began to build up an extensive and similarly influential system of orphanages and schools in the 1690's. Francke's emphasis was on educating children, especially in religion. Leipzig city councilors, in one of numerous possible insti tutional variations, combined both workhouse and educational models in St. George. They consulted relevant reports and ordinances from Frankfurt, Weimar, and Berlin. [6] Links between Francke and Leipzig were closer: Francke had studied in Leipzig in the 1680's and led a movement of religious revival among students and burghers from 1688 to 1690. He had been forced him to leave Saxony, but retained followers among city councilors, clerics, and other inhabitants, who often visited Halle.