Page 187 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Innkeepers in Tyrol

of innkeepers in Rodeneck at the entrance to the Puster Valley near Brixen,
who had owned a coat of arms from 1609. His grandfather, Jakob Peintner,
ran the local Deer Inn, Zum Hirschen, until the middle of the seventeenth
century. He was married to Susanna Dinslin (Tinzlin), a daughter of the
innkeeper Georg Dinsl in Innichen. In 1660, they bought the Bär Inn (tla,
vbi 1660, 23), which was ‘considered one of the most distinguished in the
Puster Valley,’ from Susanna’s brother Michael Dinsl for 5,500 gulden. Af-
ter the death of his first wife, Jakob Peintner married Susanna Steirerin
from Bruneck. Shewas thedaughterof‘MathiasSteirer, a Bruneckcoun-
cillor, Lion innkeeper and first postmaster of the prince-bishopric.’ She was
the mother of the aforementioned Franz Anton Peintner. The grandfather,
Jakob Peintner, married a third time, again to an innkeeper’s daughter:
Maria Papprianin. Her father, Bernhard Papprian, was the owner of the
already mentioned inn of the same name (Tschaikner 1998; Rogger 1986).
The succession of generations from father to son, the pattern of profes-
sional endogamy and the consequent formation and consolidation of kin-
ship networks among innkeepers can, according to initial findings, be re-
garded as quite typical of innkeeper families in this period.
At the same time, the sums of money also illustrate the socio-economic
status of the innkeeper families: both those spent on the marriage por-
tion that the women brought into the marriage and those spent on the
purchase of an inn at the time. For example, the estate of the widow Maria
Felizitas Clammerin, the second wife of Franz Anton Peintner, a merchant
and owner of the Golden Eagle Inn, most of which was based on her mar-
riage portion (Heiratsgut), totalled 3,000 gulden.¹⁰ By comparison, Anna
Ladurners brought in ‘only’ 500 gulden when she married Andreas Hofer
in 1789 (Oberhofer 2009, 145). The butcher André Kopfsguter paid 3,900
gulden to buy the Bär Inn in 1745 (tla, vbi 1745, 2). Johann Kühebach-
er bought the Weißes Rössl Inn for 5,588 gulden in early 1759 (tla, vbi
1759, 581). As mentioned above, Jakob Peintner paid the same amount for
the Bär Inn one hundred years earlier. These transactions and the sums
involved indicate that the inn was a thriving business and offered oppor-
tunities for social advancement.
Using the innkeeper families in Innichen as a starting point, the follow-
ing section examines the social and economic dynamics specific to the pe-
riod. Professional endogamy was usually also social endogamy. Women’s

¹⁰ The amount of the contribution is specified in the widow’s contract she concluded with her
son (tla, vbi 1784, 1021–1023).

185