Did people in the family use first names in the past?
Hello everyone. I've read that using the formal "Sie" form of address has only existed in German since the early modern period, whereas "Ihr" did exist in Middle High German, but was only used in aristocratic circles and with people of absolute respect, such as a bishop or the king. I've also read that children in the Middle Ages and ancient times were raised in a less authoritarian manner than was often the case in the 19th and 20th centuries, and that parents did exist in earlier times. So, can we assume that in medieval and ancient families, parents and grandparents were usually addressed informally by their children, and that the norm for parents, and especially grandparents, to address their children formally was, to some extent, a phase in the 18th, 19th, and partly 20th centuries?
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I guess it was only in higher circles. Why should a peasant or working child address his parents with “you”. In the 20th century, for example, I remember talking to old people who were not related to “Euch”. “How are you, have you already bought” etc. As a child, I always had to make laughter when only one person was addressed.
The Duzen is the normal case, the Siezen is a modern development and imitation from the French (which is also there after the 15th). century).
The fruitful parents were more loving than today, but I doubt that. The children were more likely to be a means of production or acquiring. They made children to have cheap labour forces for the farm, or they sent them a craft to learn and the parents took the reward for themselves.
Thank you for your answer. : I mean that parents in the Middle Ages and Antiquity were often more loving than 100 years ago. In the Middle Ages, even poor children often had toys, and the church often complained that their parents were tinglingling their children. In any case, I read it in a reputable history book.
Well, if one of four children survives on average, that’s not really surprising…
I don’t want to say more about this “theory” without any facts.
L.G and nice evening.
The Siezen is the latest address.
In the older days there was the “Your” and the “He”. They spoke like you. Persons of the aristocracy spoke to each other as you and read to each other from the lower people.
When they spoke to the common people, then in the third person: “He can move away now”. Heine made fun of it several times.
In the 19th century, people in the bourgeoisie developed the new ideas of freedom and equality and wanted to free the language from this division into “Adel and Pöbel”.
To express respect and appreciation, they now wanted to have a new form that did not remember Adel and Pöbel. So the “you” came up and the “you” and the “he” disappeared quite quickly and without trace.
The wave of reform, which in some other languages, such as English or Swedish, has not prevailed, has eliminated any form of respect and only that you survive. Even liberal Germans did not want to do so 🙂
Whether parents and children have “loved” a thousand years ago, no one can know historically. Not only the sources are missing. Because so much private was not written.
Secondly, it is not possible to look “in the hearts”. Because if there is love, you do not see certain behaviors. They are tied to their time and change very much in the evaluation. “Love” does not focus on a concrete behavior, but on motivation from the emotional life behind it.
No one can look into this even today, unless he experiences the other and has the opportunity to recognize it, for example, by his body language. But all sources are missing for this. Because so that I could start with it, I need precise, purely factual descriptions of the seen. So for example: “his face shows a runner at this or that place” etc.
But hardly anyone describes experiences so objectively. Instead, people usually prefer to go directly to their own reviews: “his face is full of love for (…)”.
What does not help other people understand. You understand?
I therefore rather remain in the assumption of my life experiences that the emotional life of people in all places is the same, because we all have the same biological facilities. And I don’t know why it was just a few generations different. The few centuries or millennia of cultural history are a fly shoot at the timeline of evolution, which dates in several hundred thousand (!) years.
In the Middle Ages and into the modern age, authoritarian education of children (including plentiful deception) was the normal case.
Children were treated before Pestalozzi’s educational considerations such as “small adults” and still in the 17th. A 12-year-old boy was hanged for stealing an apple.
To the early 19. Yep, kids still have their parents.
As it looked in ancient times, we do not really know because there are no records.