"Sparta et Martha": Pfarramt und Heirat in der Lebensplanung Hölderlins und in seinem Umfeld by Priscilla A. Hayden-Roy (review)

In this refreshingly readable and superbly researched book, Priscilla Hayden-Roy convincingly argues that the long-held understanding of "Sparta et Martha"—Latin shorthand for "with pastorate comes wife"—created potentially conflicting expectations around 1800 especially for a generation famously celebrating friendship and the ideal of marriage for love. The subgroup of German society examined here consists of Tübingen university seminarians trained to become (Protestant) pastors. Whether, however, such a graduate around 1790 really became a pastor and how successful he would be in this office largely hinged on marriage: on the candidate's attitude toward marriage generally and his personal choices of whether and whom he married, specifically. Those Tübingen seminarians understood that, whatever they thought about marriage for love, the reality was, in order to secure a pastorate, they had to marry. How this prospect impacted their life and career choices—that is the subject of this study.

Particularly interesting and convincing is the book's multifaceted methodology. Hayden-Roy first examines the lives, careers and marriage choices of 119 "Stiftler," beneficiaries of the seminary foundation Tübinger Stift, who graduated between 1788 and 1792. On this basis Hayden-Roy identifies typical clergy career patterns. Secondly, she presents one family as a case study of successful clergy marriage alliances that resulted in a Württemberg "clergy dynasty." Finally, Hayden-Roy presents four individual biographies of that Tübingen seminary cohort to illustrate and underscore her argument—how the double expectation of marriage and pastorate impacted life and career choices. Of these four biographies, the last one is devoted to Friedrich Hölderin (1770-1843) who, as is well known, never married and never became a pastor. Hölderlin gets more attention in this study than his friends, about a quarter of the book, but Hayden-Roy's argument would stand even if he were not included. Despite several chapters devoted to Hölderlin, he is not the book's sole focus, though his name in the subtitle offers readers a mental hook for the cultural and geographic context of the study and increases its appeal for a range of disciplines.

The typical clergy career pattern begins with a university graduate's lengthy period of poorly paid work before a first call to a pastorate. Those who waited for a call through the consistory, the regional church administrative body, would spend a decade in this holding pattern before landing their first pastorate around age 35. This also meant a celibate lifestyle at the very time in life when hormones would demand otherwise. (Based on firstborns' birth records, Hayden-Roy shows that as a group, clergy practiced celibacy quite reliably.) The wait for a pastorate could be shortened when a candidate took a pastorate directly subject to the authority of a noble patron. The drawback of such a job was that it often required marrying the widow or daughter of the predecessor, and usually paid less. In any case, assuming a pastorate and marrying usually took place within two months of each other. Resisting marriage effectively rendered a permanent pastorate elusive. Candidates who wanted to pursue a different career in the first place successfully avoided parish assignments by not marrying, but also had no economic security. These clergy career patterns are not unique to Württemberg, but rarely if ever have the details been documented so thoroughly and clearly.

Hayden-Roy's study of marriage patterns among the family of Nathanael Köstlin (1744-1826) corroborates findings of kinship studies, namely that in the course of the nineteenth century, marriage partners increasingly came from other clergy families, even cousins. This created a tight network of clergy relatives, including in high places, which in turn could prove lifesaving. For instance, in the Köstlin clan, the rare premarital pregnancy involving a...