Nadine Amsler
Early childhood at German princely courts
Early childhood at German princely courts
The care for small children at princely courts was an important part of the work of dynastic reproduction. The space in which this work was carried out was the princely nursery, a social setting that, up to now, has received little systematic attention by historians. While many studies have looked at the ‘education’ of princes (usually with a special focus on curricula starting at the age of seven), a systematic study of practices of care for the most vulnerable – the youngest members of the dynasty – has not yet been undertaken. Following suit of recent innovations in dynastic and court history, which have highlighted women’s roles in dynastic politics and shed new light on social interaction at princely courts, subproject 1 aims at shedding light on the ways how infants and young children were cared for at European princely courts.
The project studies princely nurseries as social spaces where people of different social status, among them the princely parents, the governesses, physicians, wet nurses and domestic servants, interacted to serve the superior goal of ensuring the survival of dynastic offspring. Drawing on archival material from the nurseries of South German princely courts of different sizes, especially the electoral court of Munich, it investigates the organization of care work during the princes’ and princesses’ first years of life. It is the hypothesis of this sub-project that ruling families and court personnel, far from perceiving the survival of young dynastic offspring as a matter that was in the hands of God, saw the particularly vulnerable and therefore crucial years of early childhood as a phase of life that required active and creative intervention in order to promote the children’s physical and mental development and minimize health risks.