Opportunity or Constraint? Partible Inheritance, Family-property and Household Structure in Southwest Germany - Evidence from the Inventories

The dominant inheritance system in the southwest German Duchy of Wurttemberg was partible inheritance.Partible inheritance is defined as an inheritance system in which real estate and movables are divided up equally between all heirs, male and female.In Wurttemberg historiography partible inheritance is often viewed critically and made responsible for unlimited division of land and farms.But did this inheritance system always have negative consequenoes?Or did equal property transmission create opportunities for the heirs?Studying personal inventories of Wildberg und Auingen from the 17th to the early 19th century brought to light numerous individual strategies in which people found ways to circumvent the economic"irrationalities" of inheritance divisions.Especially when looking at land and buildings the question of increased fragmentation and its consequences has to be readdressed.This paper therefore adopts a more contextualized approach, in order to ask whether this apparent constraint did not als contain opportunities.