Disputes over pants and marital supremacy. A 91 / printing and publishing v. C. Burckardt's Nachf. in Weissenburg (Alsace)'.2012,7020.6 © The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
The marketplace
The market square was a central and public place in the early modern period. Parallel to the trade, diversion and entertainment, there were also discussions, arguments and - for all to see - punishment. Leaflets, pamphlets, newspapers and satirical prints allowed market visitors to take part in the disputes.
On the market
The dispute over the trousers
Since the 14th century, the time in which trousers became a piece of clothing associated with men, the so-called “dispute over trousers” has been a common narrative and visual motif, especially in Central Europe. Numerous surviving copperplate engravings, woodcuts and etchings bear witness to this today. Either a married couple fought over a pair of trousers or several women fought over them and questioned the man's dominance.
A woman as poet and scholar - the controversial case of Christiane Marianne von Ziegler (1695-1760)
Abusive poems and prints in books reached a wide audience beyond the marketplace in book collections and libraries. Both opposing sides knew how to use this medium in a targeted manner in the 18th century.
Christiane Marianne von Ziegler was a successful writer and was in the public eye as the founder of one of the first literary-musical salons in Leipzig. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), as Thomaskantor, set her cantata texts to music and Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700–1766) printed her articles in the moral weekly The Reasonable Tadlerinnen. She repeatedly had to publicly defend her work as a poet:
1733 verlieh ihr die Universität Wittenberg die kaiserlich privilegierte Dichterkrone einer »Poeta laureata«, die auf einen antiken Brauch zurückgeht. Die Verleihung des akademischen Grades erlaubte es ihr, an den Universitäten des Reiches zu lehren. Dies war ein Aspekt, den einige Studenten einer Frau nicht zugestehen wollten. In Schmähgedichten würdigten sie ihre schriftstellerische Arbeit herab und machten sie lächerlich.