Note 843 — Chapter VI · OLD ENGLISH WIFE-PURCHASE YIELDS TO FREE MARRIAGE

That the betrothal is a contract relative to the mund is stoutly maintained by Dahn, Das Weib in altgerm. Recht und Leben, 4 ff., who absolutely rejects wife-purchase, declaring such an idea to be "abominable and impossible" ("abscheulich und unmöglich"). This theory is also held by Kraut, Vormundschaft I, 171; Schroeder, Güterrecht, I, 27 ff., 38, 79; yet Schroeder, Rechtsgeschichte, 68, 291 ff., regards the German marriage as in form a purchase of the bride. Rive, Vormundschaft, I, 258 ff., passim, denies that the betrothal has any relation to the mund, and rejects entirely the view that the sale-marriage ever existed among the Germans. Habicht, Altdeutsche Verlobung, 8 ff., 12, admits that originally the mund was a "property right" and the wife a "thing," though in the earliest written sources she appears as Rechtssubject. Sohm, Eheschliessung, 22, regards the Witthum as the price of the mund; but in his Trauung und Verlobung, 15, 16, he drops this view and declares the betrothal to be a contract to "give the bride in marriage," or, more directly, a "Kauf der Jungfrau." Friedberg, Eheschliessung, 17, 18, appears to hold that it was the mund which was conveyed; but elsewhere he seems to favor the opposite view for the early period. See his Verlobung und Trauung, 7 ff.; Lehrbuch, 339; and Zur Geschichte, 362 ff. Pollock and Maitland, Hist. of Eng. Law, II, 362, declare that "whatever guesses we may make about a remoter age, the 'bride-sale,' of which Tacitus had heard, was evidently no sale of a chattel. It was very different from the sale of a slave girl; it was a sale of the mund, the protectorship over the woman." Gide, Étude sur la cond. privée de la femme, 196-215, 335 ff.; and Henry Adams, Historical Essays, 31, are decidedly of the same opinion. Buckstaff, in Annals of Am. Acad., IV, 234, doubts whether the German woman was ever looked upon as a chattel; and Opet, "Die erbrechtliche Stellung der Weiber in der Zeit des Volksrechts," in Gierke's Untersuchungen, XXV, takes a very favorable view of woman's right of inheritance.

On the other hand, the betrothal is regarded as originally an actual sale of the bride by Glasson, Hist. du droit et des inst. de l'Angleterre, I, 116, 117; Grosse, Die Formen der Familie, 223, 234; Siegel, Rechtsgeschichte, 450-52; Weinhold, Deutsche Frauen, I, 320; Heusler, Institutionen279 ff.; Loening, Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenrechts, II, 578; Hofmann, Ueber den Verlobungs- und Trauring, 849, 850; Leber, Des coutumes, 22 ff.; Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte, I, 104, 105; Sehling, Unterscheidung der Verlöbnisse, 32, 33; Grimm, Rechtsalterthümer, 420 ff.; Davoud-Oghlou, Législation des anciens Germains, I, xl-xli; Hellwald, Die mensch. Familie (apparently), 315-18; Dargun, Mutterrecht und Raubehe, 24 ff.; and especially Brunner, Rechtsgeschichte, I, 74 ff. Lehmann, Verlobung und Hochzeit, 7 ff., 78, 79, finds fainter traces of the sale-marriage among the Scandinavians than among the North Germans. Kohler, "Die Ehe mit und ohne Mundium," ZVR., VI, 321 ff., holds that marriage without mund on the part of the husband is the marriage of mother-right as opposed to the later Paternitätsrecht. See also Kohler, in ZVR., III, 354; and Waitz, "Ueber die Bedeutung des Mundium im deutschen Recht," Sitzungsberichte der preuss. Akad., 1886, 375 ff., for a discussion of the meaning and content of mund. In general, cf. Königswarter, Hist. de l'organisation de la famille, 121 ff.; Laboulaye, Condition des femmes, 112 ff.; Strack, Aus dem deutschen Familienleben, I, 17 ff.; Beauchet, Mariage dans le droit islandais, 3 ff., 12 ff.