Why did parents prosecute their children as witches? Why did a sixteenth-century midwife entice a burgher woman to pretend she was giving birth to puppies? How did the life of a transsexual woman in early eighteenth-century Hamburg end? This volume presents a range of startling case-studies from German society between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The study reveals new meanings of gender and identity relating to the experiences of men and women in early modern German history.