The Masculinity of Christian Friedrich Oldekop, Mayor of Lüneburg

Abstract

The author examines the newspaper, “Lüneburgischer Relations Courier,” created by Christian Friedrich Oldekop for his sons. She does so in order to “inspect masculinities around 1800 in the context of a city, which was influenced by historical figures of varying social origins, and thus to interpret these in relation to the societal changes of the Sattelzeit (‘saddle period’)” (p. 9). For this reason she situates her study in the field of newer women’s and gender history (see p. 10), defines gender thus as a relational category, and wishes to understand the “processes of the performative construction of masculinities in their separation from and in the creation of similarities to other men” (p. 11). The dissertation approaches the material with diligence, which however would have deserved a better-founded analysis with more depth.