Peasants against the State in the Body of Anna Maria Wagner An Infanticide in Rural Austria in 1832

Abstract

Abstract Infanticide, as a historical issue, has been embedded in analytical contexts that marginalize the phenomenon in ways that resonate with the ‘original’ marginalizations at the moment of historical occurrence. By building on the 'social reproduction’ model of demographic behaviour ‐ following Viazzo and others ‐ and by examining archival evidence from household inventories, court files and gynaecological hospital records to focus on a particularly revealing Austrian infanticide case, we can argue that householders in post‐1750 Austria, losing control over inheritance to an interventionist state, resorted to extreme measures, including infanticide, to balance their 'social reproduction’ accounts and protect their patrimonies. In the process there emerged both private and public languages that suppressed a conscious awareness of these dire but ‘necessary’ acts.