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HOHENZOLLERN WIVES AND A DAUGHTER: DEFINITIONS OF FEMININE DYNASTIC IDENTITY
Author(s) -
Smart Sara
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/glal.12057
Subject(s) - wife , identity (music) , art , piety , daughter , depiction , art history , humanities , philosophy , theology , literature , political science , law , aesthetics
ABSTRACT The article is concerned with the norms that determine the presentation of dynastic women in the second half of the seventeenth century. It focuses on two wives and a daughter of the electors of Brandenburg, Dorothea (1636–89), second wife of Friedrich Wilhelm, Elisabeth Henriette (1661–83) first wife of Friedrich III, and their daughter Luise Dorothea Sophie (1680–1705). It examines their depiction in occasional writing and seeks to establish whether it is possible to identify a distinctive female Hohenzollern identity and the extent to which conventions, particularly the traditional association of the ‘Landesmutter’ with piety, determine their presentation as feminine ideals. The article concludes with an assessment of the impact of the establishment of the Hohenzollern kingship in Prussia on the presentation of Friedrich's second wife, Sophie Charlotte (1668–1705).