A Wedding with no Approval for Settlement
It must have been a remarkable event for the small town of Stavenhagen when Pastor Niederhöffer married three sisters at the same time in the baroque stone church on 30 March 1864, because soon after the weddings, all three of them had left Mecklenburg.
The father of the three brides - at one time a guard at the town gate and a tax officer - did not live to see his daughters’ triple wedding - neither did his wife.
But for the rest of the family it was probably a quite important celebration, because the three sisters all left their home region after their weddings. The eldest - Amalie Rutenick - followed her husband to Berlin. This was considered to be the same as going abroad at that time.
Caroline Rutenick was the middle sister. She married Carl Kammann, a journeyman carpenter and emigrated to Mascoutah, federal state of Illinois, with her husband and son. The youngest of the sisters - Friederike Rutenick - married an American citizen, Joachim Kohfeldt and followed her husband to America.
While her two sisters were looking forward to their wedding and quietly preparing for their departure to Berlin and Mascoutah, Caroline Rutenick had to cope with several problems, before the wedding bells could ring for her, too.
This could be, what had happened beforehand: - Sometime the journeyman carpenter, Carl Kammann from Kavelstorf and the middle class girl, Caroline Rutenick from Stavenhagen got to know each other. Both were still living with their parents then. The young man was trying in vain to get a so-called “approval for settlement” in his home village, which would have ensured for him the right for settlement there and enabled him to marry his betrothed and to legalize their common son. But the local authorities refused to grant that right to him as they used to do for many other cases of young couples. So Carl and his betrothed decided to join Caroline’s sister, who wanted to follow a former emigrant to Mascoutah / Illinois.
The biggest hindrance for Caroline Rutenick was the birth of her illegitimate son. This was not anything special in Mecklenburg. Just under half all the emigrants were not married and had illegitimate children. This was because the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin did not allow the free settlement and marriages of its subjects. A decree of 3 May 1856, which was also valid in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, specified the “penalty for simple fornication …”, which included the birth of illegitimate children. If such a “state of affairs” was reported, the mother of the child had to pay a fine of three to twenty Thalers. The guardians of law then considered her to be a “Stuprata”(=dishonoured woman). The blame was put on her for “being dishonoured” and for “extramarital sexual intercourse”(=Stuprum). She had to stand trial and to pay the fine. Some parts of that decree were repealed on 22 December 1870, but up to then those imposed fines had been taken as planned sources of income in many places of Mecklenburg.
As requested by law, Caroline Rutenick declared her intention to emigrate together with her little son at a summons by the town council of Stavenhagen. While doing so, she did not try to hide the illegitimate birth of her child and the fine already imposed on her by the office in Schwaan. She was assured by the council, that her application for consent to emigrate would be filed immediately, if the information she had given proved true. But the information, the council got from the Schwaan office, unfortunately, did not exonerate the defendant. Allegedly she had not been punished yet. Therefore the Stavenhagen town council imposed another fine and added to this the costs of the inquiry against her and she had to pay for these, too. She did not have time to protest these decisions, because she did not want to endanger her departure, due on 16 April. Maybe in that case two authorities consciously stood to benefit from one “crime and from the fact that the applicant was under pressure from time. The officials in Stavenhagen also knew, that Caroline Rutenick was not without means, because she had stated that at the earlier hearing. However, the further processing of her application did not show any signs of prejudice against the applicant. The officials even asked for a “well-disposed acceleration of the resolution”.
We know that Caroline Rutenick and Carl Kammannn married just before their emigration. At that time every settled citizen of a town or village, who was planning to get married, had to contact the pastor of his local parish for that purpose. But our couple did not have that possibility. Carl Kammann did not have approval for settlement in his home village of Kavelstorf and therefore no pastor was allowed to marry him. So he asked his pastor to get him a “dispensation from the need to submit an approval for settlement” from the interior ministry department in Schwerin to enable the wedding before his emigration. But for some reasons his plan could not be realised. Then Caroline Rutenick asked her pastor, a W. Niederhöffer from Stavenhagen to help them with the same problem and he finally made the application for the required dispensation in Schwerin.
First the ministry refused that application, because the Stavenhagen town council had not sent Caroline Rutenick’s application for consent to emigrate to Schwerin yet. So the applicant’s intention to emigrate had not be seen. In addition the couple had to prove, that they had made a contract for the journey with a domestic agent and paid for it or rather had the necessary amount for it at their disposal. As a rule the authorities wanted to be sure, that the persons, who were planning to get married, really emigrated after the wedding and would not entail any further financial burden upon the local authorities. If there were any doubts about one of the applicants, the officials stuck strictly to the law, as they did in our couple’s case.
Only on the second time attempt did they get the dispensation and thus the permission to marry before their emigration.
Caroline Rutenick was 29 years old, when she gave birth to her illegitimate son, Carl. The child’s father was of the same age and he admitted responsibility for his betrothed and his child. Five years later both finally saw the possibility of marrying on the grounds of their emigration.
Some few days before their wedding both the consents for migration and the dispensation arrived. Only then could Caroline Rutenick really look forward to the big wedding with her two sisters. She must have been really lucky to have got the possibility to leave the country, that did not want her to allow to live a normal life and had thrown so many obstacles into her path like the embarassing hearings, the doble punishment because of the birth of her illegitimate child and the bureaucratic application procedure for her wedding and emigration.
We do not know, whether she made her fortune in America. However, it seems as if she lived there only for a short time. While her husband apparently started running a sucessful carpentry business, she gave birth to her daughter, Sophie in 1866. Probably she died soon after this. At Christmas, 1870 Carl Kammann and his two children visited their relatives in Kavelstorf. Before his departure to America in the middle of April 1871 he confidentially informed an official of the Rostock police office, that he had married a Friederike Hobe from Thulendorf during his stay in Mecklenburg and that he was going to return to Mascoutah with her and his children of the first marriage.
It was not unusual, that fathers of young families, whose wifes had died and who were eager to marry again, preferred looking for new wifes in their old home region, because they were familiar with the mentality and way of thinking of the people there. Perhaps Carl Kammann’s sister Catharina Witt, nee Kammann, had arranged that acquaintance before her own emigration in 1868 or sent her brother to Europe to look there for a new wife.
You will find the documents on their emigration in a table.
