Johann Jakob Bachofen, the author of “Mother Right (Das Mutterrecht): A Study of the Religious and Juridical Aspects of Gynecocracy in the Ancient World”, was without doubt one of the greats of Swiss literature. But few have heard of him now.
The theory that family and the state have not always been ruled by patriarchy and that men emancipated themselves from matriarchy around 2,500 years ago has long been repudiated. Yet Bachofen’s 1861 treatise, which referred to ancient manuscripts and gravestone carvings in an attempt to document the previous existence of a matriarchy, had a surprisingly long echo.
Violation of “mother right”
The term “mother right” requires explanation. “[It] means... maternal rights, birth rights, justice, laws, interests, authority, and privileges,” wrote the author of the book’s English translation. According to Bachofen, marriage is a violation of mother right: “Nature did not endow a woman with sensuous beauty only for her to wilt away in the arms of one man.” Bachofen not only deprives the monogamous patriarchal family of the mystique of its one conceivable God-given institution, but also makes the case for female emancipation. He also explores new and wider possibilities for dealing with the past.
Yet Bachofen’s work, which at times seems to venerate women, also reduces the female role to that of mother. Readers today would be aghast. And for Bachofen himself, this theory has less of a rationale and more of an emotional and possibly even biographical basis.
“The beehive shows us a gynecocracy in its clearest and purest form. Each hive has its queen. She is the mother of the entire stock. She is served by numerous male drones, whose entire purpose is to inseminate her. The drones do not work and the female worker bees kill them once they have fulfilled their mating function. Thus, the hive comes from a single mother yet from many fathers. The fathers do not earn love or devotion from the hive. Once they have inseminated the queen bee, they are doomed to die.”
Excerpt from J.J. Bachofen, “Das Mutterrecht”, volume 135 of the Suhrkamp Taschenbuch series
Born on 22 December 1815 into one of the wealthiest families in Basel, Bachofen was a slightly eccentric, very well-read and incredibly hardworking independent scholar, jurist, and professor of law at the University of Basel, who was long overshadowed by his mother Valeria, a strong, dominant women from the Merian dynasty. Valeria’s influence continued when, at the age of 50, Bachofen married 19-year-old Elisabeth Burckhardt in 1865 and proceeded to run a household “according to imperialistic principles”, as he himself put it.
“Mother Right”, which Bachofen dedicated “to the memory of [his] mother, Mrs Valeria Bachofen-Merian”, went on to have a colourful afterlife. Ignored or dismissed as hocus-pocus by Bachofen’s contemporaries, it was brought to worldwide attention by Ludwig Klages and Carl Albrecht Bernoulli in around 1920 before ethnologists debunked its main hypotheses.
Bachofen played down his theories
The complete edition of Bachofen’s work, published between 1943 and 1967, nevertheless had a surprise in store. Ten years after finishing the book, the author himself had begun to reassess and play down his theories, using all the ethnological findings that were now available to him. But after publishing two modestly titled volumes called “Antiquarian Letters”, Bachofen finally gave up. The deafening silence in his home town and from academic colleagues was too much to take.
When Bachofen died on 25 November 1887 at the age of 72, just one academic obituary appeared. It was published in a Russian-language magazine for Paris-based exiles.
Bibliography: Jakob Bachofen's “Das Mutterrecht” (in German) is available as volume 135 of the Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Series.
Charles Linsmayer is a literary scholar and journalist based in Zurich
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