Legal restrictions on marriage

Abstract

Under the legal restrictions on marriage in the Tyrol and Vorarlberg region of Austria between 1820 and 1920, members of the lower classes could marry only with the prior consent of the village authorities. Local and provincial politicians justified the necessity of these laws on the basis of the overpopulation and widespread impoverishment, which, they alleged, had resulted from the rise in lower-class marriages since the onset of industrialization. An analysis of the background and objectives of these legal interventions into marital behavior, however, reveals a different picture in regard to their effect and their effectiveness. The limitations on marriage affected life most profoundly in precisely those areas where people already tended to marry less often and later in life. Where changes in marital behavior did occur, they did not conflict with traditional behavior but rather resulted from the adaptation of the latter to altered living and working conditions. Thus it was material considerations that led the group of new wage-earners to delay or even forego marriage. The analysis shows that the limitations on marriage were directed less against the supposed causes of impoverishment than towards the continuation of social inequality in marriage and the stabilization of the status quo.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Deborah Louise Cohen for her translation of the text.

Notes

1 This article is based on my dissertation, which was submitted to the University of Bielefeld in 1995 and published as Mantl (1997).

2 The reconstruction of these patterns of argumentation here and in what follows is based on the systematic evaluation of all the provincial parliamentary debates on the subject of marital consent that took place between 1830 and 1920. On this see: Tiroler Landesarchiv (hereafter abbreviated to TLA), Abschrift des tirolständischen Congressprotokolls, 20. Sitzung, 1.6.1835; Abschrift des ständischen Congressprotokolls, 13. Sitzung, 15.5.1838; Protokoll des Ständischen Kongresses, 12. Sitzung, 15.5.1839; Stenographische Berichte des Tiroler Landtages, 1870–1900, Stenographische Protokolle der Verhandlungen des Tiroler Landtages, 1860–1869. Also consulted were the justifications of the decisions made by the communal councils of Hall, Kitzbühel, and Brixen between 1830 and 1900 regarding questions of eligibility to marry. They are recorded in the council records. The systematic investigation of these sources yielded around 2,000 approved or rejected petitions (Stadtarchiv Hall [hereafter abbreviated to SAH]; Gemeinderatsprotokolle 1830–1900, Stadtarchiv Kitzbühel [hereafter abbreviated to SAK]; Gemeinderatsprotokolle 1850–1900 and Stadtarchiv Brixen [hereafter abbreviated to SAB]; Gemeinderatsprotokolle 1850–1900). Finally the analysis is based on the records of 1692 appeals against denial of consent to marry by communal and local authorities that were processed between 1860 and 1870 by the highest administrative authority in the region, the Office of the Governor (Statthalterei) of the Tyrol and Vorarlberg.

3 This consensus had grown steadily since the end of the eighteenth century. Until that time, the Church had refused to participate in the legal control of marriage, as canon law does not recognize poverty as grounds for exclusion from marriage.

4 The parallels between the contemporary representation and the historical interpretation that has developed over the last few years can be explained in terms of the ideological proximity of Tyrolean and Vorarlberg politics to Malthusianism, on the one hand (which, although it did not serve as the foundation of the marital consent policy, supported it at a crucial moment), and the reception of Malthus in historical-demographical research, on the other (Eversley 1959).

5 On the regulation of poor relief, see Mayerhofer 1901, pp. 222–223.

6 See note 2.

7 TLA, Provinzialgesetzsammlung, Vol. 7 (1825), p. 469.

8 TLA, Landesregierungsgesetzblatt 1849/50, Nr. 87, p. 151.

9 TLA, Statthalterei, Faszikel Ehe 1870; Nr. 5392 and 8354.

10 TLA, Stenographische Protokolle 1921, appendix 157.

11 This tendency was strengthened by the early theoretical foundation of historical demography, which interpreted marital behavior above all as the corner stone of a self-regulating demographic-economic system that functioned according to an internal logic and, as contemporaries also emphasized, kept population development and economic resources in a permanent balance. In an extension of the contemporary argument, legal restrictions on marriage were considered a necessary measure to counter the population explosion, on the one hand, and pauperism, the phenomenon of the century, on the other.

12 Almost half a century before Ogilivie, Chevalier (1946, p. 75) called upon his colleagues to consider the influence of political, social, and legal factors in the analysis of demographic modes of behavior.

13 The following sources formed the data base for this demographic analysis: Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum: Pest-Archiv X,47, Populationstabellen von Tirol ca. 1760; Dipauliana 1037/III, Populationstabellen von Tirol und Vorarlberg 1777, 1778, 1780, 1781, 1785–1788; Dipauliana 1194/III, Populationstabellen von Tirol und Vorarlberg 1760; Österreichische Statistik, Vol. 2/1 (1882), Vol. 5/1 (1884), Vol. 31/2,3 (1892), Vol. 33/7 (1894), Vol. 49/2 (1898), Vol. 64/1 (1902), Vol. 67/1 (1903), Vol. NS 1/2,3 (1912), Vol. 92/1 (1914), Vol. NS 3/7 (1915); Übersichtstafeln zur Statistik der Österreichischen Monarchie, Vol. 1/1, Vienna 1852. Übersichtstafeln zur Statistik der Österreichischen Monarchie für die Jahre 1861 und 1862, Vienna 1863; Statistische Übersicht über die Bevölkerung und den Viehstand von Österreich nach der Zählung vom 31. Oktober 1857, Vienna 1859; Statistisches Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Monarchie, Vienna 1865–1872; Tafeln zur Statistik der Österreichischen Monarchie, Vienna 1830–1848; Tafeln zur Statistik der Österreichischen Monarchie, Vol. NS 3, Vienna 1861; Tafeln zur Statistik der Österreichischen Monarchie, Vol. NS 5, Vienna 1871.

14 This is based on the evaluation of data from a random five-year sample of the approximately 1500 marriages recorded in the marriage register of the parish of Kitzbühel.

15 This statistic is based on an evaluation of the marriage registers of the communities of Hall and Kitzbühel. It concurs with earlier findings by Mitterauer and Viazzo for other alpine regions.

16 Bericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer in Innsbruck 1870, appendix.

17 Österreichische Statistik 1915, Vol. 3 NF, p. 96.

18 Against all previous expectations, people here married as late and as seldom as those in regions where inheritance by primogeniture was the rule. Until now, researchers in the tradition of Berkner and Mendels (1978) have equated systems of gavelkind inheritance with early marriage and general access to marriage.

19 Decisive among the concerns of the well-off were, on the one hand, the purposeful acquisition of property by parents during the phase of their economic establishment, that is, between their marriage and the bequeathing of their assets to their children, and on the other hand the strategic planning of marriages which would perpetuate their socially and economically privileged status for generations and extend the possibility of marriage to their descendants.

20 Following the example of Saalfeld 1991, p. 141, I proceed from the assumption that it is possible to estimate the average amount of money a family required to secure its material support by converting the family's income into an equivalent amount of grain. According to Saalfeld's calculations, a family of five would have required between eight and ten kilos of rye per day. At the prices charged at the weekly market in Innsbruck during the years 1860–1870, this would have been worth an average of 90–100 Kreuzer (Bericht der Handels- und Gewerbekammer in Innsbruck, 1863 ff).

21 Such views were expressed during a session of the Tyrolean provincial parliament (see TLA, Stenographische Protokolle 1864, p. 356).

22 This is based on data derived from the records of the Hall communal council.

23 This is based on a systematic evaluation of the Kitzbühel marriage register. Exceptionally, for decades the priests here kept a record of all the documents pertaining to a marriage, including awards of consent. Only where such documentation is available can the actual number of those who married with the consent of the communal council be determined. Due to the high degree of mobility, less than ten percent of individuals who married within the commune can also be found among the records of those seeking official permission to do so.

24 In cases where multiple attempts to gain consent were made, only the final decision was included in the analysis.

25 In the analysis of the grounds on which determinations were based, the judgments of the communal councils that had been transferred to the archives of the Office of the Governor of the Province were also taken into consideration. Communes were obliged to justify negative decisions to the Office of the Governor when appeals were to be heard.

26 SAH, Ratsprotokolle Hall 28.6.1854/764; 23.1.1857/979; 3.2.1874, o.Z; SAK, Ratsprotokolle Kitzbühel, 31.10.1886, o.Z; SAB; Ratsprotokolle Brixen 23.11.1886/6, 28.6.1894/3-1322, 25.4.1892/5-315, 15.6.1892/-1021.

27 In such cases, the men and women had to obtain a certificate of service from their employer swearing to the long-term nature of their employment.

28 The mental reservations against industrial and commercial employment were thereby reinforced among the lower-class population affected by them.