Poetry and Parental Bereavement in Early Modern Lutheran Germany

In early modern Europe it has been estimated that up to one in two children did not survive to the age of ten. In the light of this high mortality rate, some historians have argued that parents did not form close relationships with their children, especially the very young. This is clearlyrefuted by the testimony of bereaved parents such as Martin Luther, and by the volume of consolatory writings produced for grieving families in early modern Lutheran Germany. The authors, clergymen and lay people, regarded grief as a deep wound which required treatment, and they applied the balm ofconsolation through sermons, tracts and occasional poetry. This study analyses these writings, focusing particularly on the neglected genre of the epicedium (funeral poem). It asks how and why poetry was used to counter the affective impact of parental bereavement, and considers what makes it asuitable vehicle for consolation. The poems, which are analyzed against the contemporary theological, philosophical, and poetological background, are taken from Leichenpredigten (printed funeral booklets), as well as from collections by two contrasting poets, Paul Fleming (1609-40), an unmarried manwho wrote to console others, and Margarethe Susanna von Kuntsch (1651-1717), who lost thirteen of her fourteen children. The study seeks to rehabilitate a neglected genre and participates in discussions on the sociology of death, Lutheran teachings about death and mourning, literary presentations ofmortality and loss, and the depiction of children and parent-child relations in literature.

Anna Linton took her BA, M.St. and D.Phil. at the University of Oxford. After two years as a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, she took up a lectureship in German at King's College London, where she teaches a wide range of courses covering German language and literature from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. She has published articles on early modern topics, and her current research project charts the parallel reception in German culture of the biblical story of Jephthah sacrificing his daughter and the classical myth of Iphigenia at Aulis. She is a member of the Steering Committee for an AHRC-funded project, "Representations of Women and Death in German Art, Literature and Media from 1500".