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

Anna Büschler died suddenly in 1552. Before she died, the imperial court at Esslingen sided with Hall on the issue of whether or not Anna’s escape from prison voided “her charge that the city had willfully disobeyed the higher court’s order to release her” (186). After she died, the charge against her siblings regarding the forced agreement and the charge against the city council regarding her unlawful imprisonment were rendered moot. The author concludes that Anna would likely not have liked the outcome of her legal matters if she had survived, given that the opinions of the majority of witnesses did not support her.

Ozment draws several lessons from Anna’s story. First is that “self-destructive litigation is no novelty of the twentieth century” (186). In fact, given Anna’s 16th-century context—in which belligerent or otherwise nonconforming women risked accusations of witchcraft—her legal actions were all the more dangerous. The next lesson regards the importance of the separation of powers; thankfully for Anna, “[B]ecause the city council was not a legal island but subject to a network of imperial courts willing to prod and override it, she did not end up empty-handed” (187). Third, 16th-century German women were not “powerless victims of male rule” but could “define themselves and their self-worth in fully satisfying ways through the spheres of life and work then available to them both within and outside the home” despite the lack of equality as we understand it now (187-88).