Irrational or Just Immoral? Spendthrifts in 19-20th Century Law and Medicine in Southern Germany

This paper draws on premodern history to investigate the perplexing longevity of spendthrift laws into the late twentieth century. Despite major shifts in governing policy, cultural norms, and medicalization, German states continued to intervene in the financial decisions of their subjects until the final abolition of spendthrift guardianships in 1992. 2 Using court trials from central Württemberg between 1880 and 1920, legal commentaries, and international debates in the emerging field of psychiatry, I argue that legal and medical scholars gradually redefined financial recklessness from a moral failing into a neurological defect and symptom of mental disability. A deep historical view of the spendthrift figure reveals that norms of acceptable financial management are culturally constructed. As attitudes towards spendthrifts shifted, so too did attendant notions of mental capacity, disability, individual property rights, and legal personhood.