German marriage dispensation - 3 degrees - relationship by marriage - what could the relationship have been?

+4 votes
434 views

My 6th-great-grandfather Hermann Lindlohr married Anna Maria Claßen on 31 May 1746 in Erpel, Germany. According to the Erpel Familienbuch, a dispensation had to be given: Dispens wegen Schwägerschaft 3°. From what I can tell, this means they were related by marriage within three degrees. Anna Maria had previously been married to Vinzenz Feith. What possible relationships could they have had to each other? I don't know when or where any of them were born. Anna Maria died in 1755. She and Hermann apparently had no children. Hermann married my 6th-great-grandmother Anna Margarete Brandenburg on 1 May 1758, and died in 1760. I'm hoping to find out where Hermann lived before he came to Erpel and to identify his parents and siblings. I'm hoping the note about the dispensation could provide a clue.

WikiTree profile: Hermann Lindlohr
in Genealogy Help by E. Gatlin G2G6 Mach 1 (15.2k points)
edited by E. Gatlin
It should mean either Hermann had previously been married to a cousin of Anna Maria, or Anna Maria had previously been married to a cousin of Hermann.
Thank you!

2 Answers

+3 votes
1st degree are siblings

2nd degree are 1st cousins

3rd degree are 2nd cousins
by George Fulton G2G6 Pilot (627k points)
In that time "Germany" it was forbidden to marry a second cousin. Nowadays it isn't anymore. It's still forbidden to marry a first cousin though. In Serbia those "second cousin-marriages" are still forbidden

That begs the question: How many degrees is it if adding on, say, once or twice removed. Educate me, George! laugh

In the dispensations from the Diocese of Guadalajara, which are online at FamilySearch, if one person was a grandson (2 generations) of the common ancestor and the other was a great-granddaughter (3 generations) this would be described a 2nd with 3rd degree consanguinity. If they were both great-grandchildren, then it would be described as simply a 3rd degree consanguinity.

The diocesan records would frequently show the relationship in a chart, sometimes including all the spouses. Some of the charts were very ornately drawn and were quite attractive.
If you want to have a little fun with this, go to You Tube and search for “I’m my own grandpa.”
Thank you, George. I knew you’d have an answer for me.
Thank you!
+5 votes
Degrees of kinship can be counted two ways.  The Roman civil law method, usually used by churches, counts 1 for each link up to the common ancestor plus one for each link down to the other partner.  

The other method used in some legal systems counts up to the common ancestor and stops.

Since this is a church record, 3 degrees would usually be for a first cousin once removed.

Dispensations were frequently granted by the church especially among the nobility to keep property within the family.
by Mary Jensen G2G6 Pilot (128k points)
Thank you! They were Roman Catholic, so I would think the Roman civil law method would have been used.
What I have seen in the Diocese of Guadalajara, which is of course Catholic, if the couple the same number of generations from the common ancestor, the consanguinity would be described as 2nd degree or 3rd degree and the two would be full cousins. If one was two generations and the other three generations, the consanguinity would be 2nd with 3rd degree, or 3rd  with 4th degree. The relationship would be 1st cousins once removed, or in the other case 2nd cousins once removed.

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