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

Anna married Johann von Sporland in 1546, and together they successfully petitioned the imperial court in Esslingen to conduct a grand review of their matter “in what promised to be a decisive resolution between the spring of 1550 and January 1552” (168); it would involve four commissions, witnesses, and the collection of testimonies. Anna made two major accusations in this legal matter: first, that she was coerced into signing an unfair agreement with her siblings, who subsequently “refused to honor its key provision, the payment of her debts” (169); and second, that the Hall city council illegally arrested her with the intention of permanently incarcerating her.

The court collected testimony from 39 witnesses who represented a cross-section of German society. Some witnesses, like Hermann Büschler’s servants, were predictably unfavorable to Anna, while others (even in the Hall city council) supported her claims of mistreatment. The consensus among the witnesses was that it was impossible for Anna not to have understood what she was signing up for, although some witnesses, like Johann Hornberger, had heard rumors that Anna was never happy with the agreement and always intended to fight it. Her council-appointed curator, Conrad Büschler Jr., agreed that Anna entered into the agreement with her siblings willingly, but he could not unequivocally state that there was no duress.