Database

The menu item DATABASE is the heart of the web portal. Here you will find an integrated database for the presentation of the matrimonial proceedings examined. The database generated especially for the web portal was created throughout the course of three research projects funded between 2011 and 2018 by the Austrian Science Fund, from 2019 to 2020 by the Anniversary Fund of the Austrian National Bank. All three projects are or were led by Andrea Griesebner (Menu item Project).

The web database is based on two extensive databases of the mentioned research projects, which registers the data of the litigations and the personal data via a specially adapted web interface (based on PHP and MySQL). For the Web database the records 4,675 records of the database of litigations and 2,290 records of the database of persons were exported from the web interface into a CSV-file. The data verification, the generation of statistics and the consolidation of the raw data for the web database was carried out using Excel algorithms. The results were imported into a MySQL-database and integrated into the web portal which was created using WordPress.

The web database currently includes material on 2,213 married couples who carried out their marital conflict at court within the studied time segments between the mid 16th and the mid 19th centuries. For every single proceeding the source signature(s) and its date, the interest of the plaintiff, the type of proceedings and the verdict respectively notification are provided.
Cumulated presented are keywords of the arguments brought forth by the spouses – divided into topic areas such as physical, verbal and sexual violence, sexuality, economy, living together, emotions, illnesses, religion, criminal conviction, status of marriage and conflict settlement out of court.

Concerning biographical data the web database lists civil status data – as far as it could be reconstructed – for both spouses (place of birth, life data, last name at birth, assumed last names in previous marriages) and information on their religious affiliation. In relation to the couple, the date of marriage, the common place of residence, the number of possible children together as well as the marital status and age of the spouse at the time of the marriage are indicated.

Andrea Griesebner / Beate Pamperl, 2017, translation Jennifer Blaak
Letztes Update Andrea Griesebner, August 2020