ABSTRACT
129Ordinary people, rather than extraordinary leaders and event makers, may sometimes provide a useful tool for understanding a society or culture. But how can historians study ordinary people? Who is ordinary? How do ordinary people reflect their society and their times? What sources exist to tell us about ordinary people? History today, especially social history, certainly involves the study of ordinary people, as well as “great” individuals. While we still enjoy our biographies of princesses and film stars, presidents and generals, we are equally fascinated by the lives and stories of so-called ordinary people. Most people, after all, do not so much affect history as reflect their society and their times. The problem is that ordinary people largely go unnoticed and rarely leave traces. One may read with delight, then, one account of an ordinary person who turns out to be quite extraordinary—Anna Buschler, a sixteenth-century German woman who conducted a lifelong struggle for justice within a court system run by and for men.
