The paper starts from the assumption, that wealth is the fundamental medium for constituting and maintaining kinship relations, whereby kinship is thought of relationally and socially. Emotions as representations are referred to in these kinship constellations in various source contexts in order to create and maintain family cohesion. Particularly with ...
(Show more)The paper starts from the assumption, that wealth is the fundamental medium for constituting and maintaining kinship relations, whereby kinship is thought of relationally and socially. Emotions as representations are referred to in these kinship constellations in various source contexts in order to create and maintain family cohesion. Particularly with regard to sibling relationships, however, not only the much-invoked love and unity, affection and cohesion, become tangible in the sources, but also competition and conflicts.
This paper focuses on a sibling line of the Tyrolean nobility in the 16th and 17th centuries, which consisted of five marrying sons and two marrying daughters, as well as another ten siblings who died at a younger age. Of the five brothers, two were from first marriage, as were the marrying daughters, and three of the brothers were from second marriage. The five brothers lived on undivided estates for over 17 years after the death of their father in 1577, when the two youngest sons were still minors. The daughters renounced the family inheritance in return for receiving a marriage portion according to her rank.
In contracts, settlements, wills, but above all in letters, the complex interplay between property arrangements and emotions in this series of siblings is traced. Both the undivided inheritance between brothers and the gender-specific distribution of assets are reconstructed in detail with a special focus on the step constellation.
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