Christmas Trilogy Part 3: Choosing a wife.

Johannes Kepler was an incredibly prolific writer. He wrote and published more that eighty books and pamphlets on a very wide range of topics from astronomy to optics, from astrology to Bible chronology, from stereometry (that’s 3-D geometry) to the determination of the volumes of wine barrels and much, much more. A well as all of these publications he was also a very prolific letter writer. Many of his letters were in effect scientific papers, the exchange of letters between researchers taking the place of scientific journals in the Early Modern Period. For example his extensive correspondence with the Frisian astronomer David Fabricius gives us an important historical view of his struggles to derive and establish his second law of planetary motion. However not all of his letters were of a scientific nature. A letter he wrote on 23^rd October 1613 to an unknown recipient goes into great detail concerning his attempts over the preceding two years to find a wife.

Kepler had married for the first time in 1595, at the age of 24, a wealthy young widow with daughter, Barbara Müller then aged 23, whilst he was serving as schoolteacher and district mathematicus in Graz. It seems to have been a love match and should have been a happy marriage, however Barbara, who suffered many trials and tribulations with Kepler’s expulsion from Catholic Austria and his subsequent more than rocky time as first assistant to Tycho and then Imperial Mathematicus in Prague, appears to have suffered from clinical depression making their marriage to a time of great stress to Johannes. Worse was to come. In 1611 Kepler’s three children contracted small pox and his son Felix died at the age of six. Barbara fell ill shortly after and passed away on July 3^rd. All of this took place whilst Rudolph the German Emperor, and Kepler’s employer, was being deposed by his brother and Kepler was desperately trying to find a new position anywhere but Prague.

In those times it was perfectly normal for a widow with small children to look for and marry a new wife to run his household and look after his children. It was also perfectly normal for marriages, at least at Kepler’s social level, not to be love matches but rather arranged or brokered. Suitable partners being brought together in what more resembled a business deal than a personal relationship. Kepler was no exception to these norms and immediately following Barbara’s death he set about looking for a new wife to care for his children. In the end the whole process would take more than two years and involve negotiations with a total of eleven different women. In the letter mention above, and which I’m going to précis in the following, Kepler himself provides us with all the gory details.

Potential wife number one was a widow in Prague who was a mutual friend of Kepler and his wife. Barbara had recommended her, as her successor on her deathbed. Kepler opened negotiations and the widow seemed to be interested at the beginning but then withdrew, turning down the offer. Kepler was now offered a young maiden by her mother, as Kepler expressed it from widow to virgin. Kepler described to girl as having a pretty face and beening well educated but too young to bear the responsibilities of a household. In the end the mother withdrew the offer on the grounds that her daughter was too young.

At the commencement of this second negotiation Kepler had stated that he would either marry or leave Prague. The marriage having fallen through he now left the city on his way to Linz. In Moravia he met a girl who warmed his soul; a well brought up girl who took over his children with enthusiasm. Leaving his children in the care of their future mother he continued his journey. However when he returned the girl was engaged to another. Onward to Linz.

In Linz Kepler turned his attention to number four, apparently a bit of a stunner, tall, beautiful and athletic. Kepler was proceeding to tying the knot when his attention was distracted by number five, and here we get the longest description. She impressed through her love, her humble fidelity, her economy, her zeal and her affection for his children. It also appealed to Kepler that she was a solitary orphan.

Having almost accepted number five Kepler was urged by the wife of Helmhard Jörger (?) to decide on number four. Caught in a quandary, Kepler’s stepdaughter and her husband recommended a sixth candidate, an attractive, wealthy, but rather too young aristocrat. Kepler who suffered from a serious inferiority complex was worried she would look down on him. Lack of money being a permanent problem in his life he also feared the high costs of an eventual wedding so she too was rejected.

His thoughts returning to number five he now ran into number seven. His friends praised her nobility and her economy. As Kepler pressed his suit with her relatives he was warned off and in the end he was rejected. Enter number eight, by Kepler’s own account not attractive but with an honest mother. Kepler’s nervous and uncertain approach was met with an equally uncertain and nervous response, the whole project collapsed. Kepler now turned his attention to a ninth who simply turned him down. Kepler regarded number ten as unsuitable, describing himself as thin as a stick and his potential partner as short and fat, on to number eleven.

This time everything seemed to be in order the new potential Mrs Kepler was noble, wealthy, and economic, if somewhat young. However after four months of serious negotiations Kepler’s suit was once again rejected on the grounds that the lady was too young.

Kepler finally did the sensible thing, returned to number five, asked her to marry him and was accepted. The lady in question was Susanna Reuttinger twenty-four years old at the time to Kepler’s forty-one. They were married in Eferding on 30 October 1613. Despite Kepler’s vacillations in the two years leading up to the marriage it was a happy and loving union blessed by the birth of six children although, as was not unusual in the seventeenth century, three of them died in childbirth. Kepler took a long time and travelled a circuitous route to find his Susanna but in the end find her he did and she proved a good catch.