Trees of relationships.
Text: Reto Caluori
At its base stands the ancestral couple. From there, the tree rises upward, gradually branching out over successive generations and presenting the picture of a thriving lineage. The family tree is a genealogical diagram that was popular in bourgeois families during the 18th and 19th centuries – and retains its appeal up to the present day.
Family trees, whether they be naturalistic, tree-like or abstract in form, suggest that a family can be depicted as a clearly structured web of relationships. Yet since every family tree shows only one of many possible family constellations, it does more than just portray relatedness – it actively produces it.
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The Merian family tree traces the family’s ancestry back as far as the 15th century. It grows on a hill overlooking the city of Basel, illustrating the family’s strong roots in the region. (Photo: Christian Flierl)link.zoom -
This diagram showing around 1,000 members of the Burckhardt family almost resembles a database. Darkblue tips on the leaves denote “pastors and professors”, while red ones denote “councilors and magistrates”. (Photo: Christian Flierl)link.zoom -
For this family tree, the silk ribbon manufacturer Lukas Sarasin carried out exhaustive genealogical research, which also extended to his family’s connections in France. However, by no means all of his potential relatives were ultimately included in this large-scale chart. (Photo: Christian Flierl)link.zoom -
When dealing with large amounts of data, genealogists devised new ways of structuring relationships between many different people. Johann Rudolf Burckhardt used numbers and symbols to organize the more than 600 people, over 18 generations, recorded in his “Stammtafeln”, diagrams that show ancestral lines. (Photo: Christian Flierl)link.zoom -
Were family trees displayed within the home or brought out only on certain occasions? Little is known about how these representative diagrams were used. (Photo: Christian Flierl)link.zoom
For the viewer, the time-consuming genealogical spadework involved and the large amounts of data that have to be collated before a detailed diagram can be drawn up remain invisible. So, too, do the decisions about which possible family members ultimately to include in the family tree.
Sources held at the Basel public records office can shed light on these aspects of genealogical practice, however. The historian Fiona Vicent is investigating how local bourgeois families collected and organized genealogical data during the 18th and 19th centuries, what theories and techniques informed this activity, and how the family trees were used.
Fiona Vicent is a doctoral student at the Department of History and a research assistant for the Sinergia project In the Shadow of the Tree: The Diagrammatics of Relatedness as Scientific, Scholarly, and Popular Practice. This project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, is investigating the wide range of diagrams that have been used since the Middle Ages to conceptualize kinship and descent.
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