This study examines how marriages are characterized, interpreted, and legitimized in contemporary German civil and church wedding speeches. It draws on nearly 400 wedding speeches, legal texts, administrative regulations, and guidebooks, as well as dogmatic, liturgical, and pastoral-theological writings.

Combining approaches from intertextuality, topos, and systems theory, the author identifies shared rhetorical patterns, images, and stereotypes in religious and non-religious speeches that convey norms, ideals, and conventions associated with weddings. The descriptive comparison is followed by a contextualization and analysis of the findings, examining especially the adaptation of the state and the churches to the autonomy of private-sphere system that has emerged in the course of secularization processes.

The book concludes with a critical examination of the discourse surrounding the sacralization of civil marriages in light of what civil and church wedding ceremonies can respectively offer. [Language: German]

Winner of the "Dissertationspreis" of the "Deutsche Vereinigung für Religionswissenschaft" 2025