The Burgermeister's Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth-Century German Town

Much of what Anna endured throughout the course of her life—from being legally kidnapped and locked in her father’s home for six months to her virtual disinheritance after her father’s death—would be all but unthinkable in a modern context. Anna, however, lived in 16th-century Germany, which restricted women’s rights in ways that exacerbated her struggles with her family. Nevertheless, throughout the course of the narrative, Steven Ozment downplays the severity of 16th-century sexism in anticipation of the reader’s likely preconceptions about the past.

Anna lived during a time when a simple outburst from a woman could signify more than just anger. She took a huge risk when she dared to be impolite in the presence of a delegation sent to dissuade her from litigation because “such arrogance, vulgarity, and anger in a public forum were associated at this time with witches, not with honorable women and loyal citizens” (155). Her “immodest” dress and flirtatious behavior also reflected poorly on her family—specifically, on her father—which became a point of resentment that triggered lifelong infighting.

While acknowledging that the 16th century was a more sexist time in Germany (and many other places) than the 20th, Ozment defends it against the stereotypes that he believes readers might hold about the past. He writes that Anna’s story is evidence that “women at this time were not powerless victims of male rule. They had both the ability and the opportunity […] to define themselves and their self-worth in fully satisfying ways through the spheres of life and work” (187-88). Pointing to the archive of surviving material on the subject, he writes that “the mainstream didactic literature and popular entertainments of these centuries were far more inclined to encourage a woman’s moral striving and inner talents than to dismiss or to demonize them” (189). Finally, the author concludes that “society's general attitude toward women at this time is more accurately described as condescending and protective than as hateful and dismissive” and reminds the reader that Anna’s father’s reputation suffered for his maltreatment of his daughter (189). Ozment would not deny that condescension toward women is a form of sexism, but he insists that conditions were not nearly as bad as the average contemporary observer might assume.

Although Ozment’s conclusions about the state of women’s rights in 16th-century Germany have attracted some skepticism—a 1996 Kirkus review called this element of his work “less persuasive[]” than others—historical scholarship on women (especially “ordinary” women) was less common in the 1990s than it has since become (“Book Review: The Burgermeister’s Daughter.” Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 1996. Accessed 11 June 2022). In the context of scholarship that tended to discuss women merely as an oppressed class, Ozment perhaps sought to remind readers that women of the past were also individuals who interacted with the constraints placed on them in unique and sometimes rebellious ways.