Who wants to be a godparent? Baptisms in a Lutheran Church in Paris, 1755–1804

On 26 January 1793, five days after the execution of King Louis XVI, a small group of people entered the Swedish Embassy Chapel in Paris to witness a baptismal ceremony. A child had been born the day before, a boy, who would be baptised Charles François Médard Frédéric. The parents were the wholesaler Charles Louis Waltz and his wife Élisabeth Petersohn, both immigrants of German origin. Waltz was born in Lörrach in the southern part of Baden-Württemberg on the Swiss border.¹ The mother was also born in Baden-Württemberg, but in the city of Karlsruhe. Five further individuals were present, including two of the child’s godfathers. One of the godfathers was the wholesaler Jean François Pillot, who lived at 20 rue de l’Echiquier in Paris. The other godfather was Médard Deprez and lived at the same address in Paris as Pillot. A third godfather is also mentioned in the baptismal records, Jean Frédéric Eschenauer, a wholesaler living in Strasbourg, but as he was not present, he was replaced by the child’s father (or as it says in the source ‘remplacé par le père’). The godmothers, Marie Salomé Koenig and Caroline Guillemine Petersohn, were also present. Koenig was married to a jeweller, Jean Daniel Fries, and lived at 17 rue Dauphine in Paris. Petersohn was married to a wholesaler, Pierre Guillard, and lived at 44 rue des Bons Enfants in Paris. She was the child’s aunt on the mother’s side (Driancourt-Girod, 2002: 55).