Teresa Schröder, M. A.

History Department

Curriculum vitae:

Ph. D. Project

Abbesses in the Holy Roman Empire – scope and limitations of political acting (working title)

In his “Six Livres de la République” published in 1576, Jean Bodin negated women’s rule explicitly, “because gynocracy is in clear contradiction to the laws of nature, which have bestowed the gifts of strength, of prudence, of fighting and of commanding on the male sex and not on women”. This attitude did not only meet with a lasting response in early modern political-philosophical discourse, but also in 19th and early 20th century historical research, which denied women the capability to rule, thus questioning the legitimacy of female exercise of power. The gender studies taking root in the middle of the 20th century take the primary credit for the fact that the accepted female preclusion from the public political sphere has been basically challenged. Bodin’s account is decidedly contradictory to the factual possibilities of the political acting of highly aristocratic women as rulers and also of female rulers on their own rights in the early modern period.

In this respect, one particularity of the Holy Roman Empire were the abbesses of the imperial free secular convents, who were at the same time princesses immediate to the empire with a seat and a vote in the Imperial Diet. These abbesses – the research of whom is a desideratum – unite in their office both clerical and secular powers of control. In addition to their role as abbesses of the convents, they also controlled – admittedly – small or smallest convent territories which they ruled as sovereign princesses.

This project asks to what extent these small estates of the empire could appear to be acting independently in their secular and clerical dominion and defend their status as estates of the empire in the territorial competition over the early modern period. In this, three aspects are in the focus of the analysis: firstly, the symbolic, procedural and discursive forms of stately representation, estate participation and territorial violence; secondly, the integration of the abbesses into the political and social networks of the estate society; and thirdly, the instrumentalisation of points one and two in order to preserve the membership of the estates of the empire and one’s own freedom of action. As a basic principle, the relevance of categories such as estate, status, gender and confession for the positioning of the abbesses in the public political space of the estate society is investigated.

These questions will be investigated comparatively by means of three convents: Herford (reformed), Essen (Catholic) and Quedlinburg (Lutheran). By choosing confessionally different convents, the confessional plurality of the Holy Roman Empire is taken into account at the same time. The investigation spans the period from the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which laid down as a basic principle the existence of the imperial free secular convents in the constitution, to their dissolution in the course of secularisation (1802/1803).

Research Interests:

• History of female religiousness
• Cultural history of politics
• Social history of the tripartite society
• Gender studies (early modern period)

Function within the Cluster/Membership in Projects and Groups:

• Member of the study group Conflicts in the Area of Religion and Politics

Publications:

Reviews

• Wieden, Helge Bei der, Elisabeth von der Pfalz. Äbtissin von Herford, 1618-1680. Eine Biographie in Einzeldarstellungen (Veröffentlichungen der historischen Kommission für Niedersachsen und Bremen, vol. 245; Herforder Forschungen, vol. 23), Hannover 2008. In: Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 37 (2010), issue 4, p. 725.
• Schödl, Andrea, Frauen und dynastische Politik: 1703-1723. Die Markgräfinnen Elisabeth von Brandenburg und Christiane Charlotte von Ansbach, in: Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 36 (2009), pp. 552-554.

Articles

• Integration stiftischer Lebensweise in lutherische Glaubenspraxis. Das Beispiel der Andachtsschrift Anna Sophias von Hessen-Darmstadt, in: Katholisch, lutherisch, calvinistisch. Frauenkonvente im Zeitalter der Konfessionalisierung (Essener Forschungen zum Frauenstift, Bd. 8), edited by Ute Küppers-Braun and Thomas Schilp, Essen 2010, pp. 87-110.
• "...man muss sie versauffen oder Nonnen daraus machen, menner kriegen sie nit alle." Die Reichsstifte Herford und Quedlinburg im Kontext dynastischer Politik, in: Genealogisches Bewusstsein als Legitimation. Inter- und intragenerationelle Auseinandersetzungen sowie die Bedeutung von Verwandtschaft bei Amtswechseln (Bamber Historische Studien, Bd. 4), edited by Hartwin Brandt / Katrin Köhler / Ulrike Siewert, Bamberg 2009, pp. 225-250.

Courses

• Winter term 2010/2011: Übung "Kinder, Küche, Kirche" - Fromme Frauen in der Frühen Neuzeit

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