Was ist eine Witwe mehr als ein aufgewarmtes Essen?
According to politician and statesman Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel (1741-1796), widows were superfluous beings and second-hand goods, but they were also perceived by theologians and moralists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a threat due to their sexual experience and supposedly ungovernable lust.
This book analyses the overwhelmingly negative portrayal of the widow in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German fiction. Male writers in the works discussed repeat the theory that, once deprived of their husbands,...