69

Concerning the service of maids in the early modern period, there are two main paths in the historiography to be considered: it is either regarded as a lower classes' phenomenon, or as a usual phase in the life of women in general, with similar functions such as apprenticeship in boys' lives. The death registers in Schwäbisch Hall, a small free city in the south of Germany, permit the reassessment of these two interpretations, because since 1635, the church ministers wrote up a short summary of the lives of the dying in this city–poor or rich, man or woman, young or old. The analysis of the information given in this paper shows that none of these interpretations adequately explains the historical reality. It shows in fact that on the one hand, women of all social backgrounds could become maids; but on the other hand, it demonstrates that the service–especially of maids from an upper-class family–in general meant a lasting disruption in a woman's life. So if domestic service was neither a lower classes' phenomenon nor an apprenticeship for eventual maid service, then how could it be interpreted? Here, the author suggests interpreting it from the coeval point of view, as a ( Stand) "state" of the house because the classification into social status resulted from the need for order, and the house was seen as the basis of social order in this society. Therefore, to hire out as a maidservant meant to change one's personal state and to come into the lowest state of the house. For the maids of upper-class families, this especially seemed to be extremely hard, and often they rejected this view of their personal appreciation. So if the classification into states answered the society's need for order, did it produce new conflicts in the houses and thus disorder? This is because it did not–or no more fitted into the self-disclosure of an important part of the servants. That's why the house, which should have been the base of social order, played a significant role in the decomposition of the "old order."