10 - Generational transition

Summary

It was explained to Daniel Henzler, Schreiner …, [who thought] that the offence was not so great that his parents should have complained before the court, to his face, that the property originated from them.

- Schultheiss and Gemeinderat

The transition between generations in peasant society is thought to be an abrupt one. It is signaled by a set of public and private ceremonies, the most important of which is probably the marriage of the heir. Either the young couple has had to wait for the death of the parents, or the father or widowed mother has moved to the retirement cottage or west room of the farmhouse. Most discussions of European peasant social systems suggest that marriage is marked by patrilocality. It is, of course, possible for the young couple to set themselves up in a new location, leaving the old one with their house and reduced property. A great deal depends on the capital value of house and outbuildings, the legal, economic, and social interdependence of land and house, and the partibility of the holdings. Nonetheless, marriage appears to signal a change in authority relations between parents and children, in the distribution of resources in the family, and in the domestic division of labor.

In Neckarhausen, the transition between generations did not follow this model at all and was not characterized by a sharp break. In the first place, the marriage of one child did not have the same importance to the system that it might have had in an area of impartibility.