Wohlgeboren

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Wohlgeboren is a form of address for the lowest classes of German nobility and claimed by the bourgeois notables. It can be translated into Well-Born.

German usage

The actual address is (Euer) Wohlgeboren,[1] it is the proper form of address for a Vogt or Büttel and it was claimed by the Bourgeois notables.

Higher form of address

The title should not be confused with:

- (Euer) Hochwohlgeboren (High Well-Born), which ranks higher than Wohlgeboren, and is the correct form of address for German barons (Freiherren) and knights (Ritter) ;
- (Euer) Hochgeboren (High Born or of High Birth), which ranks higher than (Euer) Hochwohlgeboren, and is the proper form of address for the titled members of the higher German nobility, ranking just below the sovereign and mediatised dynasties;
- Erlaucht (Illustrious Highness) is the correct term for those German immediate counts (Reichsgräfen) that are heirs to mediatised families of the Holy Roman Empire;
- Durchlaucht (Serene Highness) is the correct term for German princes (Fürsten) and dukes (Herzog).

References

  1. ↑ addressed strictly according to their social status from Euer Hochgeboren (literally 'high-born') for scions of high aristocracy, down to Eur Wolgeboren (well-born) for mere bourgeois J. Jahoda, A History of Social Psychology: From the Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment to the Second World War, Cambridge Press, 2007


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