The first chapter introduces Anna Büschler’s (1496/98-1552) dispute with her family and contextualizes her story within the social, political, and religious history of Germany broadly, as well as within the local politics of the town of Hall. Historians have an impressive record of Anna’s life, in part because her brother and father kept a stock of Anna’s primary documents (including love letters that she wrote and received) as part of Anna’s legal troubles with Hall and with her own family.

The Black Death in Europe peaked in 1349; its devastation increased the power of the urban bourgeois class at the expense of the nobility. Peasants fled to the cities to fill the need for skilled work. The 200 years between 1300 and 1500 saw the number of universities in Europe triple and the invention of the printing press. The power of the Catholic Church waned in the 16th century when the Protestant Reformation swept Germany, which spurred bloody peasant revolts that were subdued by nobility representing both Catholic and Protestant factions. This was a dark age for Germany.

Anna’s father, Hermann Büschler (1470-1543), was a five-time town

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