Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern Germany [Hardcover]

Steven Ozment (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1999 | Age Level: 1 and up

An acclaimed historian chronicles the fascinating Reformation period in Germany through the vivid portrayal of five families.

As he did in his much praised and highly successful The Burgermeister's Daughter, Steven Ozment analyzes and weaves together primary sources to create a compelling account of German life in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. From private papers and archives--account books, letters, legal records, journals--emerge fascinating stories rescued from history: the complicated courtship dance of two politically prominent families; the joy of parenthood for a middle-aged couple when, after losing their first nine infants, a child survives; the difficulty a widowed mother has restraining her eldest son's expenses as he studies in Italy; the challenges faced by a Lutheran pastor negotiating the Church's bitter factionalism; and a Protestant teenager coping in Catholic Louvain.

As Flesh and Spirit follows each family, it masterfully re-creates the social and political world of this dramatic period in German history, aided by superb black-and-white illustrations throughout. Like the work of Simon Schama, Barbara Tuchman, and Natalie Zemon Davis (The Return of Martin Guerre), Ozment proves himself "scholarly impeccable yet at the same time perfectly accessible to general readers" (Booklist) in this captivating social history.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

According to Steven Ozment, "the more deeply the family life of the past is probed, the more 'modern' the pre-industrial family is discovered to have been and the more 'traditional' the modern family appears to be." In Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern Germany, Ozment illustrates this remarkably stable history by viewing both the 16th-century family and the larger world around it through the eyes of individual household members.

Ozment's five chapters illuminate the life cycle of the family from its origins in courtship and marriage to the sending forth of a new adult generation. Each of the five families--one clerical and four merchant--document the inner life of the urban family during at least one stage of the cycle. All of the featured families are well-to-do citizens of Nürnberg, one of Europe's great merchant and intellectual cities of the time.

A professor of history at Harvard University, Ozment firmly commands his subject matter and convincingly weaves familial history with the social, economic, political, religious, and cultural history of the times. Although his detailed historical excursions frequently interrupt the flow of the personal narrative, the context they provide enhances the reader's understanding of both personal and societal histories. For example, his discussion of courtship and marriage encompasses high-society gossip, the coronation of a new emperor, contemporary response to the Protestant Reformation, as well as attitudes toward chastity, inheritance, and arranged marriages. Flesh and Spirit provides a fascinating look at both 16th-century Nürnberg and the private lives of its citizens. --Bertina Loeffler Sedlack

From Publishers Weekly

Drawing directly on letters, diaries and related papers, Ozment (The Burgermeister's Daughter) gracefully and convincingly draws readers into the cycle of family life among N?rnberg's 16th- and early 17th-century elite. The five chapters are devoted to courtship and marriage, birth and early childhood, mothering, the private life of a teenager and, lastly, fathers and sons. Overall, the result is informative, and Ozment's profiles are almost novelistic in their specificity. Readers might question how representative these families are of early modern Germany as a whole, however: they exemplify a small, though prominent, portion of the populace. There is also a tension between the book's structure and Ozment's avowed intention to reveal family life: while family life is inherently relational, most chapters focus on the perspective of a single person. But if these stories cover only circumstantial sociological evidence to support Ozment's contention that "the family of the past was neither as wholesome as the romantics portray it, nor as cruel as the cynics suspect," they are always absorbing. Two subjectsAa Catholic city official during the Reformation and a prominent, liberal Lutheran churchman during a time of conservative activismAare particularly intriguing as embattled figures for whom family provided an especially significant haven. All Ozment's subjects appear more exceptional than representativeAand all the more interesting for it. Illustrations, map. BOMC selection. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 1 and up
  
• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (August 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670883921
• ISBN-13: 978-0670883929
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,757,182 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Historical research you can rely upon, August 3, 2000

By 

Hans Sebald - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern Germany (Hardcover)

On the basis of careful archival research, Ozment has achieved the type of insight that makes for reliable history. His work depicts the old imperial city of Nuremberg during the 16th century. He is using the correspondence between members of prominent patrician families, mostly between offspring and their parents, to show the tenor of family life and also sketch the conditions during a century that brought such momentous events as the Reformation, religious discord, and the plague. The reader gains a direct feeling how these upheavals affected family life. Unfortunately, scrutiny was limited to rich, upper-class families, and an alternative title of the book could be "Brats and Money," since one of the almost constant themes in the letters were demands by the young to get their parents to give them more money. There are interesting parallels with modern life. Ozment's limitations were set by the fact that letters by the simple and common people were rare and are virtually nonexitent in today's archives. As in his other works, mostly focusing on life in German cities during the early modern period, Ozment again has achieved excellence of research. Besides, the book is entertaining and can be enjoyed by readers who are not necessarily hisorians.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent, December 1, 2003

By 

K Scheffler (Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern Germany (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a truly magnificent book, a real pleasure to read--Ozment has maticulously pieced together the lives of various upper class citizens of the southern German city of Nuremburg during the sixteenth-century from letters and family chronicles in an effort to give us a better understanding of family-life during that period. Although the sources are not considerable, leaving Ozment to fill in the gaps with astute, yet conjectural interpretation, the reader still gets an excellent sense of what it must have been like to live during this era, and realizes that, yes, in some respects things haven't changed all that much. It's my understanding that Ozment's interpretation of family life during this period--that it is not as overtly authoritarian and patriarchal as we have been led to believe--is somewhat "controversial". In my opinion, our understanding of Germans and German history is unjustifiably tainted by the brief Hitler era, pre-Hitler anti-Germanic attitudes and current social ideologies, and that Ozment's work appears to be rectifying this problem to a certain degree. One hopes that much more of this sort of work is in the offing.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding people from another world, August 5, 2003

By 

C. Turner "operasinger212" (richardson, tx USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern Germany (Mass Market Paperback)

If you're trying to understand the thoughts & feelings & humanity of people from another time, or from this particular time and place, this does a great job of opening that door.