ABSTRACT
For a long time, it has been an uncontested assumption that the emergence of a genuinely new family type resulted from the privatization of family life. With the closure of private family life towards its social environments, the co-presence of other actors disappeared. The construct of the private/public-dichotomy has been criticized as being all too simplistic. This chapter relies on three diaries from Switzerland and Germany. The first source is the diary of Henriette Stettler-Herport, a woman from the patrician elite of the city republic of Bern. The second source is the diary of Ursula Bruckner-Eglinger. The third source is the voluminous diary of the Hamburg lawyer Ferdinand Beneke. Several influential philosophers and sociologists – with otherwise diverse approaches – appraise demarcation in the sense of privacy, or rather intimacy, as the crucial aspect of the emerging modern family.
