Flourished 16OO
Bavarian Beggars

Marginal People. There are few records of the people living on the bottom margins of society because most could not read or write, and they were too unimportant for anyone to want to read or write about them. The only time the lives of such marginal people were recorded was when they got in trouble and were jailed and brought to trial. Under sad circumstances the hard lives of the Gamperl family, known as the Pappenheimers, were brought to light.

Background. At the time of their trial in 1600 in Munich, in the duchy of Bavaria, the family consisted of Paulus, aged 57, Anna, aged 59, and their three sons, Gumprecht (22), Michel (20), and Hansel (10). Anna was the daughter of a gravedigger in the Franconian town of Ansbach, an occupation which, though necessary, was deemed dishonorable. More respectable residents spoke to her father only when...