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

Anna’s father died in July 1543, and her husband died one month later in poverty. In his last will and testament, Herman Büschler “virtually disinherited [Anna]” by leaving her the bare minimum that he believed the law required (148). Disinheriting a child was abhorrent to German law, and Anna had a compelling moral claim to a greater share of her father’s inheritance. Anna’s siblings, Philip and Agatha, realized that drawn-out litigation with their sister would be disastrous, so they offered Anna a deal for a larger cut of their father’s estate.

Agatha and Philip agreed to increase Anna’s share on October 16, 1543. This agreement guaranteed Anna the use of a house “outside the old city wall,” payment “up to twelve hundred gulden” for the repayment of debts, regular food provisions, and an “eighty-gulden annuity for the rest of her life” (150). This share still constituted an unequal portion of approximately one-ninth of the inheritance. Philip’s share remained the most generous, as he already had 3,400 gulden out of the 16,000 gulden estate and could expect another third of the remaining 12,600. Hermann Büschler had “made it possible for [Philip] to buy out his siblings at a very deep discount” (151).

Anna signed the agreement under duress, she would later claim. She challenged the agreement within six months of signing it, beginning with a letter to Hall’s city council on January 23, 1544. During a heated March 1544 meeting in the town of Speyer with Hall’s city secretary (Maternus Wurzelmann), Anna’s lawyer, and a friend of Anna’s late husband, Anna coarsely denounced the agreement with her siblings and could not be dissuaded from pursuing legal action. The ultimate trigger for Anna’s litigation appears to have been Philip’s refusal to pay her new debts after he paid off the first round of debts. Another possible legal argument Anna could have utilized was that under German law, if a father made no good faith effort to secure a marriage for his daughter by the time she turned 25, he could not disinherit her if she exhibited unchaste behavior later in life.

Anna ignored three summonses from Hall’s city council to appear and defend herself against a defamation suit her siblings filed for Anna’s alleged slandering of them regarding the agreement. The council ordered her arrest “for disobedience and insubordination” and held her in a women’s prison (163). Anna’s lawyer petitioned the court in Rottweil for her release, but this was ultimately unnecessary, as she managed to escape to Neuenstein. This arrest would become the basis of “subsequent briefs against [Hall]” claiming the council “had broken imperial law when it took and held her captive” (164).