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This article introduces a special issue on “family, memory, and identity.” Beginning with a survey of previous research in this area, especially exploring family as a site for collective memory, and the ways that family memory work shapes national histories, it introduces the contribution made by this special issue to our understanding of how family memory and national memory intertwine in the production of individual identity. Highlighting the key findings of the special issue, it particularly notes how family history research has the potential to challenge and reform national memory, and in doing so allows for rich and complex rethinkings of the past for both historians and members of the public.

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Early modern tugt workhouses are often seen as chaotic, multi-purposed institutions, mixing hardened criminals with marginal people like beggars and troublesome family members. In this article, I focus on the negotiation of family memory and identity between family and authority in cases when disobedient children were committed to these institutions for education and improvement. I argue that these negotiations provided an opportunity to restore parental authority by adjusting private family memory to the state’s expectations of good Christian households and responsible parents. Thereby, the private parental memory of disobedient children and the actions taken to deal with them also contributed to legitimizing the tugt institution by confirming its stated purpose in society, to provide improvement, and education.

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During the 18 th century, a series of new institutions appeared in the provinces of Denmark. Their purpose was to discipline beggars and vagrants and to teach them not only to work, but also the Word of God. These tugt workhouses also became institutions for the reform of disobedient children behaving in an "un-Christian" manner. Children were often placed here at the initiative of their parents. The article argues that the trust placed by parents in the state authorities in this way can be understood within the framework of Luther's social teaching, especially his doctrine of the three estates and the understanding of the nature of authority and of mutual obligation that is represented there. 1 | INTRODUCTION In 1745, Mads Hansen Black, a citizen of Odense, wrote to the local authority, the estate owner and county governor Count Christian Rantzau. Black presented himself as an old man compelled with "great sorrow and pain" to witness the trouble caused by his son Jacob. The father described how the "several evil vices" of his son, who was seventeen years old, were getting worse and worse in spite of all admonitions and punishment from himself and from others. Black was worried that Jacob might end up in even worse trouble unless he was taken into detention "with strong force." To this end, he appealed to Count Rantzau for help. In his letter, he asks the count to: out of particular gentleness, [… ] show such mercy to help me [the father] to bring him as a disobedient child to the tugt house at Møn either for some years, if improvement (if God grants it) was to be expected, or if not, for life (RA, LA, Møn, Indkomne Breve 1745_21). 1 He goes on to assure the count that the boy is capable of work, and he expresses the hope that he might be taken into training for a profession (Ibid. 1745_21). Here a father who is unable to make his son behave is

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