The Burgermeister's Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth-Century German Town

The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century religious movement kicked off by Martin Luther that challenged the authority of the Catholic priesthood and spread alternative theological principles. This conflict between Protestants and Catholics became a defining moment in European history, involving prolonged wars and political upheavals throughout the 16th century and beyond. Anna’s story takes place in the context of the Reformation; Protestantism gains ground throughout Anna’s life, and the book discusses how Hermann and Philip Büschler managed competing Catholic and Protestant obligations during their careers.

The Limpurg Schenks were a minor royal family whose influence was declining just as Hermann Büschler’s influence was climbing—a microcosm of the broader rise of the middle class at the expense of the aristocracy. Technically, the Schenks still enjoyed more prestigious social standing than any Büschler. The family held a castle just outside the Hall city walls and engaged in a longstanding territorial dispute with the city until the castle was demolished. Anna Büschler carried on a doomed love affair with Schenk Erasmus, which has been preserved in the form of their letters back and forth.

The city of Hall, or Schwäbisch Hall, is a southern German city that was home to the Büschler family. Hermann Büschler served as the bürgermeister of Hall, and a large portion of Anna’s legal action targeted Hall’s city council (for example when they failed to guarantee safe passage for her when she returned to the city after being kicked out by her father). Hall serves as a crucial backdrop to much of the drama in Ozment’s narrative; it functions as a character in the book, and the opinions of the Büschler family’s contemporaries in Hall were crucial to their family struggles.