Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries, Vol. I.
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Title: Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries, Vol. I.
Author: Gustav Freytag
Translator: Mrs. Malcolm
Release date: September 29, 2010 [eBook #33818]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33818
Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE IN THE XVIIITH AND XIXTH CENTURIES, VOL. I. ***
Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
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2. Diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE
IN THE
EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES.
SECOND SERIES.
* * * * *
VOL. I.
PICTURES
OF
GERMAN LIFE
In the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries.
Second Series.
BY
GUSTAV FREYTAG.
Translated from the Original by
MRS. MALCOLM.
_COPYRIGHT EDITION.--IN TWO VOLUMES_.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY.
1863.
LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
CONTENTS.
SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.
Introduction.--The nation and the individual--Aim of the
book--Peculiarities in the development of the German people since
the Thirty Years' War
CHAPTER I.
Life of the German Peasant (1240-1790).--The duration of modern
nations--German agriculture in the time of the Romans, the
Carlovingians, and the Hohenstauffen--Description of the peasants by
Neidhart von Reuenthal--Narrative of young Helmbrecht, by Wernher
the Gardener--The fifteenth century--The Peasant War--Eberlin von
Guenzburg--Condition of the peasants after the war; their service and
burdens; their different condition according to districts, and
deterioration by oppression--First signs of improvement--Description of
the German peasant by Christian Garve--Insurrection of the peasantry in
1790, and their present position
CHAPTER II.
The Life of the Lower Nobility (1500-1800).--The country nobles
in the sixteenth century--The court nobles--The detrimental effects
of the Great War--Description of a wealthy nobleman from
1650-1700--Patents of nobility--Description of the life of the
newly-ennobled merchants from 1650-1700--The country nobles and
Krippenreiters from 1660-1700--Description of the same from "The
Nobleman," by Paul Winckler--Better condition after 1700--Privileges of
the nobles--Introduction of a new culture--Gellert--Union of the nobles
with the citizens
CHAPTER III.
The German Citizen and his Shooting Festivals (1300-1800).-Gradual
development of the citizen class--Decline after the Thirty Years'
War--The prize shooting as an example of their former wealth and
importance--May feasts of the old citizens--Prize shooting before
1400--Preparations for the festival--The Pritschmeister and
procession--Prizes and fortune's urn--Hospitality, and conclusion of
the festival--Zurich and Strasbourg--Differences of the festivals
according to districts--Their decline--Description of the Breslau
"Koenigschiessens" of 1738, by Kundmann
CHAPTER IV.
The State Policy and the Individual (1600-1700).--The dissolution of
the German Empire--The Prince's parties--The despotic official
administration--The statesmen after the war--The insecurity of the
subject; its influence on the character--Characteristics of the State
system in a flying sheet of 1678--Tendencies up to 1740
CHAPTER V.
The "Stillen im Lande," or Pietists (1600-1700).--Tendencies
of Protestantism till 1618--Consequences of the war--The older
Pietism--Spener--Hatred of worldly pleasures--The
women--Self-contemplation and social intercourse--Good effects on
morals--The revival--Characters of Petersen and his wife--Narrative
of Johanna Eleonora Petersen--Narrative of Dr. Johann Wilhelm
Petersen--Fate of this couple, and their revelations--The later Pietism
and its aberrations--Opposition--Lamentations of the student, Ernst
Johann Semler--Progress of the people through Pietism
CHAPTER VI.
The Dawning of Light (1750).--Changes in the human mind from
the invention of printing--Mathematical discipline and natural
science--Law--Philosophy and its position with respect to theology--The
leaders--Change of literature by Wolf and his disciples--Description
of a German city about 1760, its police and artisans--The
gentry--Merchants and their commerce--Ecclesiastics, teachers, and
schools--Post and travelling--Dress and manners--Sentimentality, tears,
and self-contemplation--Marriage a business matter--Women and house
duties--Narrative of Johann Salomo Semler--Letter from a bride to her
bridegroom in the year 1750
PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE.
Second Series.
INTRODUCTION.
The Man and the Nation! The course of life of a nation consists in the
ceaseless working of the individual on the collective people, and the
people on the individual. The greater the vigour, diversity, and
originality with which individuals develop their human power, the more
capable they are of conducing to the benefit of the whole body; and the
more powerful the influence which the life of the nation exercises on
the individual, the more secure is the basis for the free development
of the man. The productive power of man expresses itself in endless
directions, but the perfection of all powers is the political
development of the individual, and of the nation through the State. The
mind, the spirit, and the character are influenced and directed by the
political life of the State, and the share which the individual has in
the State is to him the highest source of honour and manly happiness.
If in the time of our fathers and grandfathers the German contemplated
his own position among other men, he might well question whether his
life was poor or rich, whether hope or sorrow predominated; for his
earthly position was in every way peculiar. Whilst he felt with
pleasure that he was in the enjoyment of a free and refined
cultivation, he was daily oppressed by the harsh despotism, or the weak
insignificance of his State, in which he lived as a stranger without
the protection of the law; he looked with pride on the gigantic
workings of German science, but he perceived, with bitter sorrow, that
millions of his countrymen were separated by a deep chasm from the
highest results of scientific labour. He found himself amidst the
working of a popular energy, which ventured with heroic courage on the
boldest conclusions in the realm of mind; and, on the other hand, saw
around him narrow-hearted obstinacy, where simple and close results
ought to have been the aim. He felt with thousands an eager desire for
an object of life which would exalt and animate him, and again he found
himself surrounded and shackled by narrow-mindedness and by provincial
and local exclusiveness. Whoever should thus feel, may well inquire
whether we Germans are old or young, whether it is destined by fate
that the German nature should only find expression in the individual
virtuosoship of art and science, or whether an harmonious development
of the nation in its practical and ideal tendencies, in labour and
enjoyment. State, church, science, art, and industry, lies before us in
the future: whether we shall ever again, as members of a great State,
play the part of masters in Europe, which old records inform us our
ancestors, in remote ages, won by their swords and the energy of their
natures. There is still a time in our memory when hope was so faint,
that one may be excused for giving a doubtful answer to such questions.
After the War of Freedom, the decay of the old method of culture became
the characteristic of the time; but we now approach, with youthful
vigour, new ideas and an energetic will, to a new and higher climax. In
the characters of that past time we find, only too frequently,
isolation, hopelessness, and deficiency in political morality; in the
new time we have a sharper vision, a higher interest for the nation as
a whole, and a power of viewing things in a practical light which makes
us feel the need of close union between all of like mind. The realism,
which is called, either in praise or blame, the stamp of the present
time, is in art, science, and faith, as in the State, nothing but the
first step in the cultivation of the rising generation, which
endeavours to spiritualise the details of present life in all
directions, in order to give a new tendency to the spirit.
But, though it may be no longer necessary to cheer the soul with hope,
yet it is a pleasing task to demonstrate the point to which we have
attained in comparison with the past, and in comparison with other
civilised nations; why we were obliged to remain behind in many things
which our neighbours possess in abundance, and why we have made other
acquisitions in advance of them. It is instructive for us to make such
inquiries, and the answer that we shall find may be instructive to
other nations. No individual can give a satisfactory solution to each
single question; even the strongest mind can but imperfectly comprehend
the great life of his nation: the clearest eye and the most ingenuous
judgment is contracted in comparison with the great unity of the
people. But, however imperfect may be the portrait given by individuals
of the life of their nation, yet each contemporary will discover some
main features of the picture lying in his own soul, more especially he
who stands in the same grade of cultivation with the delineator.
This kind of delineation of the period of the Reformation and the
Thirty Years' War, was the object of the former series of pictures of
the past life of Germany; the following will be a sketch of some of the
phases of development of German character during the last century up to
the present day. Again shall the narratives of those who are gone, as
well as the living, portray the times in which they figure; but the
nearer we approach the present, the less do the records of individuals
give an impression of the nature of the general community. First,
because from the greater proximity we are able more accurately to
distinguish the individual from the community, and also, because the
diversity of character and the difference of culture become ever
greater the further the German mind advances in profound investigation;
therefore these examples will probably lose for the reader some of the
charm afforded by those of former centuries. And in addition to this,
the records of these latter times are far more known and realised by
our popular writers. Lastly, the political history, as well as the
development of the German mind, since the time of Frederick the Great,
has, through copious works, become the property of the nation. It is
not therefore intended here to enter upon a representation of the
scientific mind, or of the political condition of the nation; but only
to represent those phases of the spirit and social circumstances, which
more especially define the character of a people. By these the
continuity and many peculiarities of our present cultivation will be
illustrated.
The new time began in Germany, after the invention of printing, by a
struggle in which Germans broke the fetters of the Papal Church of the
Middle Ages, and passed from submissive belief in authority, to an
energetic, independent search after truth. But they did not at the same
time succeed in building up a compact monarchy out of the unsymmetrical
feudalism of the Middle Ages. The Imperial House of Hapsburg became the
zealous opponent of the national development. Owing to this opposition
arose the power of separate territorial princes, and the political
weakness of Germany became the more perceptible, the more the rising
vigour of the nation demanded an answering development of political
energy. From this the German character suffered much. Ecclesiastical
disputes were for a long period the only national interest; there was
but too great a deficiency in Germans of that pride and pleasure in a
fatherland, and of that whole circle of moral feelings, to which
political independence gives life, even in the most obscure individual.
After the Reformation it became the fate of the German nation to
develope its character under conditions which were materially different
from those of the other civilised people of Europe. In France, the
Protestant party was struck down with bloody zeal by the crown under
the despotic government of Louis XIV.; and the Revolution was the
growth of this victory. In England, the Protestant party gained the
dominion under the Tudors; the struggle against the Stuarts and the
completion of the English constitution was the result. In Germany, the
opposition of parties was not followed either by victory or
conciliation; the result was the Thirty Years' War, and the political
paralysis of Germany, from which it is only now beginning to recover.
This Thirty Years' War, the worst desolation of a populous nation since
the national exodus, is the second period of German history which gave
a peculiar tendency to the character of the people. The war shattered
into ruins the popular strength, but it also certainly removed the
dangers which threatened German cultivation, by the alliance of the
Imperial House with the Roman Hierarchy. It also separated the Imperial
State, politically, from the rest of Germany; what was lost to France
in the west by the Hapsburgers, was gradually regained to Germany in
the east by another Royal House. The great destruction caused by the
war, changed the State life of Germany to a hollow form; it threw the
Germans almost two centuries back, in comparison with their English
kinsmen, in wealth, population, and political condition. It must again
be repeated that it destroyed at least two thirds, probably three
fourths of the population, and a still greater portion of their goods
and cattle, and deteriorated the morals, arts, education, and energies
of the survivors. Out of these remains of German life, the modern
character of Germans was slowly and feebly developed--individual life
under despotic government.
It is this period, in which our popular strength was slowly raised from
the deepest degradation, which will be here portrayed by the narratives
of contemporaries. Again a great time, but a period of German
development of which the last and highest results have not yet become
history.
The way in which the people raised themselves from this abyss is
peculiar to the Germans. Marvellous as was the destruction, so also was
the revival. More than one nation has been overpowered by outward
enemies or cast down under political oppression, each of which has had
to undergo special trials which have given them from time to time a
hopeless aspect, but through the whole course of history a renovation
has been effected, so that the strengthening of the State has gone
hand-in-hand with intellectual progress. When the Greeks during the
Persian war felt their own political worth, their science and art
blossomed almost simultaneously; when Augustus had given a new support
and constitution to the declining Roman republic, there began forthwith
a new Imperial culture in enjoyment-seeking Rome: the intellectual
life, from Horace and Virgil to Tacitus, followed the destiny of the
State; the increased expansive power of the Empire ever gave a wider
stretch and stronger independence to individual minds. And again in
England,--when the war of the Red and White Roses was ended, when the
people peacefully danced round the maypole, and a brilliant court life
enforced courtly manners upon the wild Barons, when daring merchants
and adventurers waylaid the Spanish galleons, and conveyed the spices
of India up the Thames,--then the popular energies found expression in
the greatest poetic soul of modern nations. Even in France the splendid
despotism of Louis XIV., after the wars of the Huguenots and the
Fronde, gave suddenly to the tranquillised country a brilliant courtly
bloom of art and literature. It was quite otherwise in Germany. Whilst
everywhere else the State might be compared to the body whose abundant
energy calls forth the creative development of the nation, in Germany,
since the Thirty Years' War, owing to the awakening popular energy, a
new national civilisation has gradually arisen in a shattered, decaying
government, under corrupting and humiliating political influences of
every kind,--first dependent upon strangers; then independent and free;
finally, a shining pattern for other people, producing blossoms of
poetry, and blossoms of science of the greatest beauty, of the highest
nobility, and the greatest inward freedom: it was developed by
individuals who were deficient in just that discipline of the mind and
character, which is only given to them when they are members of a great
State. The German culture of the eighteenth century was indeed the
wonderful creation of a soul with out a body.
It is still more remarkable that this new national cultivation helped,
in an indirect way, to turn the Germans into political men. From it the
enthusiasm and struggle for an endangered German State, passions,
parties, and at last political institutions were developed. Never did
literature play such a part or solve such great problems, as the
German, from 1750 to the present day. For it is thoroughly unlike the
modern endeavours of other nations, who from patriotism, that is to
say, from the need of political progress, mature an objective
literature. In these cases art and poetry serve, from the beginning, as
handmaids to politics; they are perhaps artificially fostered, and the
artistic and scientific worth is probably less than the patriotic aim.
In Germany, science, literature, and art only existed for their own
sake: the highest creative power and the warmest interests of the
educated classes were engrossed with them alone; they were always
German and patriotic, in opposition to the overpowering French taste;
but, with the exception of a few outbreaks of political anger or
popular enthusiasm, they had no other aim than to serve truth and
beauty. Nay, the greatest poets and scholars considered the political
condition under which they lived, as a common reality out of which art
alone could elevate mankind.
As therefore in Germany art and science desired nothing but honourable
exertion within their own sphere, their pure flames refined the
sensitive disposition of Germans till it was hardened for a great
political struggle.
Before giving pictures of the German character during the last two
centuries, we will endeavour to portray the peculiarities which are
developed in the family relations of the different classes of ancient
Germany, both the peasantry, the nobility, and the citizens. But the
aim of the book is to show how, by means of the Hohenzollern State,
Germans changed gradually from private to public men; how dramatic
power and interest entered into lyrical individual life; how the
Burgher class was strengthened by increasing education, and the
nobility and peasantry submitted to its influence; finally, how it cast
aside the specialities of classes, and began to form characters
according to its own needs and points of view.
CHAPTER I.
THE LIFE OF THE GERMAN PEASANT.
(1240-1790.)
In seven hundred years the independent life of the Greeks terminated;
about a thousand embraces the growth, dominion, and decline of the
Roman power; but the German Empire had lasted fifteen hundred years
from the fight in the Teutoburg Forest,[1] before it began to emerge
from its epic time. So entirely different was the duration of the life
of the ancient world to that of the modern; so slow and artificial are
our transformations. How rich were the blossoms which Greek life had
matured in the five centuries from Homer to Aristotle! How powerful
were the changes which the Roman State had undergone, from the rise of
the free peasantry on the hills of the Tiber to the subjection of the
Italian husbandmen under German landlords! But the Germans worked for
fifteen centuries with an intellectual inheritance from the Romans and
the East, and are now only in the beginning of a development which we
consider as peculiar to the German mind, in contradistinction to the
Roman, of the new time, to the ancient. It is indeed no longer an
isolated people which has to emerge from barbarism by its own
creations; it is a family of nations more painstaking and more
enduring, which has risen, at long and laborious intervals, from the
ruins of the Roman Empire, and from the intellectual treasures of
antiquity: one nation reciprocally acting on the other, under the law
of the same faith.
The Romans from free peasants had become farmers, and they were ruined
because they could not overcome the social evil of slavery. The German
warriors also, in the time of Tacitus, took little pleasure in
cultivating their own fields, and were glad to make use of dependents.
It was only shortly before the year 1500, that the German cities
arrived at the conviction that the labour of freemen is the foundation
of prosperity, opulence, and civilisation. But in the country, even
after the Thirty Years' War, the mass of the labourers--more than half
of the whole German nation--were in a state of servitude, which in many
provinces differed little from slavery. It is only in the time of our
fathers that the peasant has become an independent man, a free citizen
of the State: so slowly has the groundwork of German civilisation and
of the modern State been developed.
All earthly progress does not take the straight course which men expect
when improvement begins; thus the position of the German husbandman in
1700 was worse in many respects than a hundred years before; nay, even
in our time it is not comparatively so good as it was 600 years
earlier, in the time of the Hohenstaufen.
The German peasant for centuries lost much that was valuable in order
to attain a higher condition; his freedom and elevation to citizenship
in our State was effected in an apparently indirect way. At the time of
the Carlovingians more than half the peasants were free and armed, and
the pith of the popular strength; at the time of Frederick the Great,
almost all the country people were under strict bondage,--the beasts of
burden of the new State, weak and languishing, without political object
or interest in the State. Somewhat of the old weakness still clings to
them.
We shall therefore first take a short review of an earlier period,
comparing it with the peasant life of the last two centuries.
What the Romans mention of the condition of the German agricultural
districts, is only sufficient to give us a glimpse of ancient peasant
life. According to their accounts, the Germans were long considered to
be a wild warrior race, who lived in transition from a wandering life
to an uncertain settlement, and it was seldom inquired how it was
possible that such hordes should for centuries carry on a victorious
resistance to the disciplined armies of the greatest power on earth.
When Cheruskers, Chattens, Bructerers, Batavers, and other people of
less geographical note, occasioned terror, not only to single legions,
but to large Roman armies, not once, but in continual wars for more
than one generation,--when a Markomannen chief disciplined 70,000
infantry and 4000 cavalry after the fashion of legions; when a Roman,
after a century of devastating wars between the Rhine and the Elbe,
puts before us with great emphasis the powerful masses of the
Germans,--we may conclude that single tribes which, with their allies,
could sometimes bring into the field more than 100,000 warriors, must
have counted a population of hundreds of thousands. And we equally
approach to a second conclusion, that such a multitude in a narrowly
limited space, surrounded by warlike neighbours, could only exist by
means of a simple, perhaps, but regular and extensive cultivation of
field products. That the agriculture of the Germans should appear
meagre to the Romans, after the garden cultivation of Italy and Gaul,
is comprehensible; nevertheless they found corn, millet, wheat, and
barley; but the common corn of the country was oats, the meal of which
they despised, and rye, which Pliny calls an unpalatable growth of the
Alpine country, productive of colic. But in the year 301, the corn
which made the German black bread, was introduced as the third article
of commerce in the corn bourse of Greece and Asia Minor. And from
barley the German brewed his home drink, beer; he also brewed from
wheat.
Now we know that in the time of the Romans, most of the German races
lived in a condition similar to that in which it appears from records
they lived shortly after their great exodus, in the early centuries of
the Christian era: sometimes on single farms, but generally in enclosed
villages, with boundaries marked out by posts. They had a peculiar
method of laying out new village districts, and the Romans found it
difficult to understand the mode of farming customary to the country.
Probably the dwellers in the marshes near the North Sea had, as Pliny
writes, made the first simple dykes against the encroachments of the
water; already were their dwellings built on small hillocks, which, in
high tides, raised them above the water, and their sheep pastured in
the summer on the grass of the new alluvial soil;[2] but further from
the coast the peasant dwelt in his blockhouse, or within mud walls,
which he then loved to whitewash. Herds of swine lay in the shadows of
the woods,[3] horses and cattle grazed on the village meadows, and
long-woolled sheep on the dry declivities of the hills. Large flocks of
geese furnished down for soft pillows; the women wove linen on a simple
loom, and dyed it with native plants, the madder and the blue woad; and
made coats and mantles of skins, which had already borders of finer fur
introduced from foreign parts. Well-trod commercial roads crossed the
territory from the Rhine to the Vistula in every direction. The foreign
trader, who brought articles of luxury and the gold coins of Rome in
his wagon to the house of the countryman, exchanged them with him for
the highly-prized feathers of the goose, smoked hams, and sausages, the
horns of the ure ox and antlers of the stag, fur skins, and even
articles of toilet, such as the blonde hair of slaves, and a fine
pomade to colour the hair. He bought German carrots, which had been
ordered as a delicacy by his Emperor Tiberius; he beheld with
astonishment in the garden of his German host, gigantic radishes, and
related to his country-people that a German had shown him honeycombs
eight feet long.
The warlike householder, it is true, held his weapons in higher esteem
than his plough, not because agriculture was unimportant or despised,
but because in the free classes there was already an aristocratic
development. For, although the warrior did not employ himself in any
field labour, he insisted upon his household cultivating his ground,
and his bondmen had to pay a tribute in corn and cattle. The bondman
dwelt with his wife and child near his master in special huts, which
were erected on the land that was allotted to him for cultivation.
Freemen were not only associated in communities, but several races were
joined in one confederacy, being by the old constitution knit together
by religious memories and public worship. The boundaries of the
province were marked out, like those of the village, by casts of the
holy hammer, and consecrated by processions of divine cars.
Notwithstanding the numerous feuds of individual tribes, there
were many points of union which served to reconcile and keep them
together,--blood relationship and marriage alliances, similitude in
customs and privileges, and, above all, the feeling of the same origin,
the same language, and those pious rites which keep alive the memory of
ancient communion.
Although the German of Tacitus appears to us as a fierce warrior, who,
clothed in skins, watched with spear and wooden shield over the abatis
which guarded his village against the assaults of enemies; yet this
same German is shown, by the results of new researches, to have been a
householder and landlord. He looked with satisfaction on the great
brewer's copper which had been wrought by his neighbour, the skilful
smith; or he stood in coloured linen smock-frock before the laden
harvest wagon, on which his boy was throwing the last sheaf of rye, and
his daughter placing the harvest wreath with pious ejaculations.
The German is incomprehensible to us, when, according to the Roman, he
worshipped Mercury as the highest god; but we can realise the figure of
the Asengott Woden, when we see the connection, of the wild hunter of
our traditions and the sleeping Emperor of Kyffhaeuser, with German
antiquity. Now, we know how lovingly and actively the gods and spirits
hovered round the hearths, farms, fields, rivers, and woods of our
forefathers. From this tendency also the old Chatte or Hermundure has
been transformed into a Hessian or Thuringian householder, who in the
twilight looks wistfully up to his rooftree, on which the little
household spirit loves to sit, and who, when the storm rages, carefully
covers the window-openings, in order that a spectral horse's head from
the train of the wild god who rides on the blast may not look into his
hall.
Even from the productions of the Germans in that century that were most
full of heart and soul, their songs, which no careful hand transcribed
on parchment, we may draw some conclusions. Their oldest kind of
poetry is not entirely unknown to us,--the native epic verse, with its
alliterations--and in some of the popular songs and proverbs which have
been preserved, we still find the ancient love of contests of wit and
of enigmas, with which a troubadour delighted his hearers by the hearth
of the Saxon chief.
After the great national exodus, written records begin slowly to appear
in Germany. They came, together with that irresistible power which
changed so much of the whole spirit of the German people,--with
Christianity. However energetically religion turned the mind into new
paths, and however fearful was the destruction occasioned by popular
tumults at that period of immigration, the changes in the Germans
arising from both sources were not sufficient to shatter everything
ancient into ruins. We are too apt to consider the national exodus as a
chaotic process of destruction. It is true that it drove from their
homes many of the most powerful German nationalities that were located
in and beyond East Germany, and the depopulated domiciles were filled
with the Sclavonians who followed. The Bavarians migrated from Bohemia
to the Danube; the Suevi, Allemanni, and Burgundians, southwards to
their present localities. The names of old nationalities have
disappeared, and new ones have spread themselves far across the Rhine.
But nearly half the Germany which was known to the Romans--the wide
territory from the North Sea to the Thuringian woods and the Rhone,
from the Saal to near the Rhine--retains, on the whole, its old
inhabitants; for the Thuringians, the Chattens, and indeed most of the
races of Lower Saxony, only came in partial swarms; they probably
greatly diminished in marching through foreign lands, and by
emigrations of their kinsmen; they were also, as for example the
Thuringians, frequently intermingled with foreign hordes, who settled
among them. But the nucleus of the old inhabitants remained through all
fluctuations, and maintained their own old home traditions,
peculiarities of speech, customs, and laws.
About the year 600 the oldest law books and records in the new
Franconia, afford us the richest insight into the life of the German
countryman. Each had a right to a holding, generally of 30 morgans, on
the common land, the morgan being decided according to the nature of
the soil. On each holding there was a yard fenced round, closed by a
gate, within which was the dwelling-house with stables and barn, and by
the side of it a garden; and in the southwest of Germany frequently a
vineyard. These homesteads formed villages divided by lanes; it was
only in part of Lower Saxony that the inhabitants of the marsh and
hilly country lived in separate farms, in the midst of their holdings.
But amongst most Germans the holding is not a connected tract of land.
The collective arable land of the village was divided into three
portions--winter, summer, and fallow fields; each of these fields,
according to soil and situation, again into small parcels; and in each
of these parcels in every field each holder had his share. Thus the
arable land of every holding consisted of a number of square acres
which, lying dispersed through the three principal divisions of the
village district, gave, as far as possible, an equal measure of land in
each. Besides this, a share of the pastures, meadows, and wood of the
community belonged to the holding; for round the arable land lay the
meadow land of the community, and its woods, in which were the
treasured acorns. Already the boundaries were carefully marked, and on
the boundary hills boys received blows on their cheeks and had their
ears pulled, and already was it called an old custom to set up a small
bundle of straw as a warning on a forbidden footway. Already we find
the property not unfrequently divided, where the vassals dwell in the
house and farm, the grades of their vassalage and their burdens being
various. The households of freemen also contained bondservants, who
differed little from Roman slaves; only in the service of God could
they be equal with the free; they shared in all the holy usages of the
Church; they could become priests and perform marriages with the
permission of their masters, but the master had a right over their
life.
Among the farms of freemen and vassals might be found the farm of a
larger landed proprietor, who had a manor house with a hall, and a
great number of huts for domestics and labourers. For as yet, artisans,
wheelwrights, potters, armourers, and goldsmiths were most of them
bondmen; as the number of markets and cities were small, their
influence in the country was still unimportant. All kinds of grain were
cultivated in the fields, which are now used in our succession of
crops, and in the gardens, almost all the vegetables of our markets,
also gherkins, pumpkins, and melons; the laws were vigilant for the
protection of the orchards. The clergy brought from Italy costly
grafts, and peaches and apricots were to be found in the gardens of the
wealthy. Already the old Bavarian house began to appear, formed of
beams, with galleries outside, and its flat projecting roof; and it may
be assumed also, that the old Saxon house with its heathen horses'
heads on the gable ends, its thatched roof over the porch, its hearth,
sleeping cells, and cattle stalls, spread widely over the country, and
that the Thuringians, even then, as in a century later, lived in the
unfloored hall, in the background of which a raised dais--the most
distinguished part of the house--separated from the hall the women's
apartments and the sleeping-rooms. Dwellings were seldom without a
bathhouse; for their winter work the women descended into their
underground chamber, which had already astonished the Romans, where
stood the loom; the places for the mistresses and servants were
separated. In the court-yard fluttered numerous poultry, amongst them
swans and even cranes, which, up to the Thirty Years' War, were
treasured as masters of the German poultry yard. The greatest pleasure
of the countryman was the training of his horse, and the steeds which
were used in war were of great value. They pastured with their feet
hobbled; any one was severely punished who stole them from their
pasture; the impositions of horse dealers also were well known, and the
laws endeavoured to afford protection against them. All the South
Germans fastened bells round the necks of their cattle, and the
Franconians round the swine in the woods.
Every means of ascertaining the relative number of bond and freemen in
the time of Charles V. is deficient, even in that part of the country
which had for a long time been won over to Christianity; yet we see
distinctly that the whole strength of the nation lay in the masses of
free yeomen. But even in his time, larger landed proprietors,
tyrannical officials, and the not less domineering Church, eagerly
endeavoured to diminish the number of the free by obtruding upon them
their protection, and thus placing them under a gentle servitude. The
position of the free peasant must have been frequently insupportable;
the burdens laid upon him by the monarchy were very great, such as the
tithes, the military service, and the supply of horses and vehicles for
the journeys of the king and his officials. There was no law to protect
him against the powerful, and he was especially tormented by robber
hordes and the violence of his neighbours. Therefore he found safety by
giving up his freedom, surrendering his house and farm into the hands
of a powerful noble, and receiving it back again from him. Then he
delivered to his new master as a symbol of his service, a fowl from his
farm yard, and a portion of the produce of his field or of his labour
as a yearly tax. In return for this, his new master undertook to defend
him, and to perform his military service for him by means of his own
followers.
Thus began the diminution of the national strength of Germany, the
oppression of the peasants, the deterioration of the infantry, and the
origin of the feudal lords, and of their vassal-followers, from which
arose in the next century the higher and lower German nobility. Every
internal war, every invasion of foreign enemies,--of Normans, of
Hungarians, or of Sclaves,--drove numerous freemen into servitude, and
without ceasing did the Church work to recommend itself or its saints
as feudal lords to repentant sinners.[4]
Yet about the year 1000, under the great Saxon emperors, the free
peasant had still some consciousness of strength. The bondman, indeed,
was still under severe oppression; he was slightly esteemed, and
obliged to give outward proof of the difference between himself and the
freeman, by bad dress and short hair. The free peasant then wore the
long linen or cloth dress of a similar cut to the Emperor himself; with
his sword by his side he went to the assembly under the tree, or to the
judgment stone of his village. And if he descended from four free
ancestors, and possessed three free hides, he was, according to Saxon
law, higher in rank than some of the noble courtiers who had serf blood
in their veins, and whoever injured him had to make atonement as to one
of princely blood. It was then he began to cultivate his fields more
carefully; it appears to have been about this time that the practice
arose of ploughing a second time before sowing the summer seed. In the
neighbourhood of rich cloisters, fine garden-culture progressed,
vineyards were carefully cultivated, and in the low countries of the
Rhine, in Holland and Flanders, there was a husbandry of moor and marsh
grounds, which in the next century was carried by numerous colonists of
these races, into the Elbe country, and far into the east.
The peasant in the time of Otto the Great, had become a good Christian,
but the old customs of the heathen faith still surrounded him in his
house and fields, his phantasy filled nature, beasts, and plants with
warm life. Whatever flew or bounded over his fields, whether hare,
wolf, fox, or raven, were to him familiar forms, to whose character and
fate he gave a human turn, and of whom with cheerful spirit he used to
sing in heroic terms, or tell beautiful tales. In his house were
numerous trained birds; and those were valued the highest which could
comport themselves most like men. The starling repeated in a comic way
the paternoster; the jackdaw welcomed him on his return home; and he
rejoiced in the dance of the trained bear. He loved his cattle with all
his heart, he honoured his horses, oxen, cows, and dogs with the names
of the ancient gods, to whom he still continued to attach ideas of
dignity and sanctity. This craving for familiar intercourse with all
that surrounded him was the peculiar characteristic of the German
peasant in the olden time. This great love of beasts, tame birds, dogs
and horses continued long, as late as Luther's time, a few years before
the great peasant war. A true-hearted peasant having in the fullness of
his joy kissed his decorated foal upon the neck, a lurking monk who
happened to see it, cited him before the ecclesiastical court, and
inflicted a heavy fine upon him, because it was unseemly. On this
account Karsthans clenched his fists at the priests.[5] In the eleventh
century, the countryman still sang by his hearth the stirring heroic
songs, the subject-matter of which is in part older than the great
exodus,--those of Siegfried and the Virgin of Battle Brunhild, of the
treachery of the Burgundian King, Gunthar; of the struggle of the
strong Walthar with Hagen, and of the downfall of the Nibelungen.
Though his language was clumsy in writing, it flowed from his lips
solemn and sonorous, with full terminations and rich in alternations of
the vowels. Still had the solemnly spoken word in prayer, in forms of
law, and in invocations, a mysterious power of magic effect: not only
is the meaning of the speech, but also its sound full of significance.
A wise saw was the source of great good fortune to him who possessed
it; it could be bought and sold, and the buyer could return it again if
it was useless to him.
About the beginning of the twelfth century there was a change in the
life and position of the peasant. The disquiets and passions of the
Crusades reached him also by degrees. To the serf, who lived in an
insecure possession of his hut, from which the landed proprietor could
eject him and his children, it was very attractive to obtain, by a sign
affixed to his shoulder by the hand of a priest, freedom for himself,
exemption from rent and other burdens, and the protection of the Church
for his family left at home. From this the Lord of the Manor was
himself in danger of losing his husbandmen, and becoming a beggar by
the departure of his serfs; in order therefore to avert this danger
bondmen had often the inheritance of their possessions given to them,
and greater personal freedom, thus the position of serfs became more
favourable. Besides this, the distinction between the old freemen and
bondmen, both in the agricultural districts and the cities, was
obliterated by the new societies of citizens and officials. In the
cities bond and free-men were under the same law; in the palaces of
princes, freemen claimed the same privileges which were originally for
the advantage of the vassal retinue of territorial lords, and both bond
and free-men bore, as serving men, the knightly shield.
We can obtain an insight into the spirit of the country-people of this
period, and many details of their life. Since the middle of the twelfth
century, the manuscripts of the Hohenstaufen time have handed down to
us many invaluable features of the life of the lower orders. We
discover, with astonishment, from these sources, that the countryman of
that time formed a portion of the national strength, very different
from what he did some centuries later. The thriving peasant lived on
his farm; the young people gambolled about, blythesome and fond of
enjoyment, on the village green and in the lanes; the countryman passed
through life in the calm consciousness of strength, the preserver of
old customs, in contradistinction to the nobleman, with his new-fangled
modes, who adorned himself with foreign discourse and language, and
with great pretentions set up distinguished court usages in opposition
to country manners. Great was the pleasure of the country people in the
awakening of nature: impatiently did the maidens await the breaking
forth of the first catkins on the willow and hazel; they look for the
leaves that burst from the buds, and search the ground for the first
flowers. The earliest summer game is with the ball, in the village
streets or on the tender grass of the green,--it is thrown by old and
young, men and women. Whoever has a coloured feather ball to throw
sends it with a greeting to her he loves. The agile movements, the
powerful throw, the short cheer to friends and opponents, are the
pleasures both of players and spectators. When sunny May comes, then
the maidens get their holiday attire from the press, and twine wreaths
for their own hair and that of their friends. Thus they go, crowned
with garlands and adorned with ribbons, the hand-glass as an ornament
by their sides, with their playfellows to the green; full a hundred
maidens and women are there assembled for the dance. Thither also
hasten the men, smart also is their dress, the waistcoat trimmed with
coloured buttons, perhaps even with bells, which for a long time had
been the most choice attire of persons of distinction; there is no want
of silk, nor in winter of fur trimmings. The belt is well inlaid with
shining metal, the coat of mail is quilted in the dress, and the point
of the sword, in walking, clinks against the heel. The proud youths are
defiant, take great pleasure in fight, and are jealous of their own
importance. Vehement is the energy displayed in the great dances, they
are venturesome in their springs, jubilant in their joy; everywhere
there is the poetry of enjoyment of the senses. The chorus of
bystanders sing loudly to the dance, and the maidens join softly in the
melody. Still greater becomes our astonishment when we examine closer
the rhythm and words of these old national dances, there is a grace not
only in the language but in its social relation, which reminds us much
more of the ancient world than of the feelings of our country people.
Introductory strophes, which extol in countless variations the advent
of spring, are followed by others which have little coherence, and are,
as it were, improvised, like the _schnader huepflen_, which is still
retained in Upper Germany among the popular dances. The subject is
often a dispute between mother and daughter, the daughter dressing
herself for the festivity, the mother wishing to keep her back from the
dance; or it is the praise of a beautiful maiden, or droll enumerations
of dancing couples; often the text conveys attacks upon opposite
parties amongst the dancers, who are depicted and turned into ridicule.
Parties are easily formed amongst the dancers, the opponents are
challenged in caustic verses; the glory of the young lad is not to put
up with any slight, and to be the most vigorous dancer, cheeriest
singer, and the best fighter. The dances are followed by feasting, with
loud and boisterous merriment. The winter brings new pleasures; the men
amuse themselves with dice, and with sledging on the ice, and the
people assemble in a large room for the dance. Then stools and tables
are carried out; the music consists of two violins; the conductor
begins the melody, and the head dancer leads off. The rondes and other
dances are various in character; more antique and popular is the
measure and text of the chain dance in the old national style of two
parallel rows; the winter dances are more artistic and modish. For in
the song dances, which we may consider as the beautified copy of the
old rhythm and text, the courtly law of triplets in the strophes is
everywhere followed; one perceives in them the imitation of Romanesque
knightly customs. Among the different kinds of dances may be mentioned
the Sclave Reidawac. The noble dances and drinks with the peasants in
these village diversions, though with the pride of more refined
manners; but however much he may be inclined to ridicule those around
him, he fears them, not only their fists and weapons, but also the
strokes of their tongues. The long-haired and curly peasant offers the
goblet to the _Junker_, and snatches it back as he attempts to grasp
it, places it then according to court custom before drinking, on his
head, and dances through the room, then the knight rejoices if the
goblet falls from the lout's head and is spilt over him; but the knight
has no scruple in making use of contemptuous oaths, when the indignant
village youths call him to account for having shown too much attention
to their wives and sweethearts.
Such is the aspect of village life given us in the songs of Neidhart
von Reuenthal, the most witty and humorous songster of the thirteenth
century. All his poetry dwells on the joys and sufferings of the
peasantry, and the greater part of his life was spent amongst them. He
has the complete self-dependence of a refined and cultivated man, but
in spite of that, he had not always the advantage over the country
people. A peasant youth, Engelhard, occasioned him the greatest sorrow
of his life. It appears that he had made his love Friderun, a peasant
girl, unfaithful to him; the thorn remained in the heart of the knight
as long as he lived; but afterwards, also, in his courtship of the
village maidens, the nobleman had much to fear from the wooing of the
young peasants, and was frequently tormented by bitter jealousy.
This connection of the knight, Neidhart, and the peasantry was no
exception in the beginning of the thirteenth century; for though in the
period that immediately followed, the pride of the nobles, with respect
to the citizen and peasant, quickly hardened into an exclusive class
feeling, yet in 1300, when knightly dignity was in great request, and
pride in noble quarterings had risen high, at least in Swabia, Bavaria,
and Upper Austria, still the knight married the daughter of the rich
peasant, and gave him his daughter in marriage; and the rich peasant's
son became vassal and knight, with one knightly shield.[6] Even in the
sixteenth century this state of things continued in some provinces--for
example, in the Isle of Ruegen. After the Reformation also, the wealthy
peasants put themselves on an equality with the nobles. They lived, as
a nobleman of that time relates, arrogantly and contentiously, and
these lamentable marriages were not unfrequent.
Some score of years after Neidhart, in the same districts of Germany,
the idealism of knighthood, its courtly manners and refined form, were
lost; a large portion of the nobles had become robbers and highwaymen.
The ceaseless and sorrowful complaints of the better sort of the
nobility testify how bad were the doings of the greater part. In
comparison with such fellows, in spite of their privileges, the peasant
might well regard his own life with pride. It was still with a sense of
wealth and power that he entered on the beginning of a hard period. At
this time a travelling singer, Wernher, the Gardener, gave a
portraiture of the life of the peasantry, particularly rich in
characteristic features--a picture of the times of the highest value,
and a poem of great beauty. Unfortunately only an abstract of the
contents can be given here; but even in extracts, his narrative gives a
surprising insight into the life of the country people in 1240. The
poem, "Helmbrecht," is edited by Moriz Haupt, according to the
manuscripts in volume iv. of the Zeit periodical on German antiquity.
"The old former, Helmbrecht--in Bavaria, not far from the Austrian
frontier--had a son. The blonde locks of the young Helmbrecht hung upon
his shoulder; he confined them in a beautiful silk cap, embroidered
with doves, parrots, and many figures. This cap had been embroidered by
a nun who had run away from her cell on account of an amour, as happens
to so many. From her, Helmbrecht's sister, Gotelind, learned to
embroider and sew; the maiden and her mother deserved well of the nun,
for they gave her a cow, much cheese, and eggs. The mother and sister
attired the boy in fine linen, a doublet of mail and a sword, with a
pouch and mantle, and a beautiful surcoat of blue cloth, adorned with
gold, silver, and crystal buttons, which shone bright when he went to
the dances; the seams were trimmed with bells, and whenever he bounded
about in the dance, they tinkled in the ears of the women.
"When the proud youth was thus attired he said to his father, 'Now I
will go to court; I pray you, dear father, give me somewhat to help
thereto.' The father answered, 'I could easily buy you a swift steed
that would leap hedge and ditch; but, dear son, desist from your
journey to court. Its usages are difficult for him who has not been
accustomed to it from his youth. Take the plough and cultivate the farm
with me, thus will you live and die in honour. See how I live--true,
honourable and upright. I give my tenths every year, and have never
experienced hatred or envy throughout my life. Farmer Ruprecht will
give you his daughter in marriage, and with her many sheep and pigs,
and ten cows. At court you will have a hard life, and be deprived of
all affection; there you will be the scorn of the real courtiers,--in
vain will you endeavour to be like them; and, on the other hand, you
will incur the hatred of the peasants, who will delight in revenging on
you what they have lost by the noble robbers.' But the son replied,
'Silence, dear father. Never shall your sacks graze my shoulders; never
will I load your waggon with dung; that would ill suit my beautiful
coat and embroidered cap; and I will not be encumbered with a wife.
Shall I drag on three years with a foal or an ox, when I may every day
have my booty? I will help myself to strangers' cattle and drag the
peasants by their hair through the hedges. Hasten, father, I will not
remain with you any longer.' Then the father bought a steed, and said,
'Alas, how this is thrown away!' But the youth shook his head, looked
at himself and exclaimed, 'I could bite through a stone so wild is my
courage; I could even eat iron. I will gallop over the fields, without
care for my life, in defiance of all the world.' On parting from him
his father said, 'I cannot keep you--I give you up; but once more I
warn you, beautiful youth, take care of your cap with the silken birds,
and guard your long locks. You go amongst those whom men curse, and who
live upon the wrongs of the people. I dreamt I saw you groping about on
a staff, with your eyes out; and again I dreamt I saw you standing on a
tree, your feet fall a fathom and a half from the grass. A raven and a
crow sat on a branch over your head, your curly hair was entangled; on
the right hand the raven combed it, and on the left the crow parted it.
I repent me that I have reared you.' But the son exclaimed, 'Never will
I give up my will as long as I live. God protect you, father, mother
and children.'
"So he trotted off and rode up to a castle, whose lord lived by
fighting, and was glad to retain any who would serve him as a trooper.
There the lad became one of the retainers, and soon was the most nimble
of robbers. No plunder was too small for him, and none too great; he
took horses and cattle, he took mantles and coats, what others left he
crammed into his sack. The first year everything went according to his
wishes; his little vessel sailed with favourable winds. Then he began
to think of home; he got leave of absence from the court, and rode to
his father's house. All flocked together--man and maid-servant did not
say, 'Welcome, Helmbrecht;' they were advised not to do so. But they
said, 'Young gentleman, God give you welcome!' He answered, '_Kindeken,
ik yunsch uech ein gud leven_'[7] (Children, I wish you a good life).
His sister ran and embraced him; then he spoke to her, '_Gratia
vestra!_' The old people followed, and oft embraced him; then he called
to his father, '_Dieu vous salut!_' and to his mother he spoke in
Bohemian, '_Dobraybra!_' The father and mother looked at one another,
and the latter said to her husband, 'Goodman, are we not out of our
senses? it is not our child; it is a Bohemian or a Wend.' The father
exclaimed, 'It is a foreigner; he is not my son whom I commended to
God, however like he may appear to him.' And his sister Gotelind said,
'He is not your son, he spoke Latin to me; he must truly be a priest.'
And the servant, 'From what I have seen of him he must belong to Saxony
or Brabant; he said _ik_ and _Kindeken_; he must, undoubtedly, be a
Saxon.'
"Then the master of the house spoke in homely phrase, 'Are you my son
Helmbrecht? Show your respect for your mother and me by speaking a word
of German, and I myself will rub down your horse--I, and not my
servant.' '_Ei wat segget ihr Gebureken? min parit_,[8] _minen klaren
Lif soll kein bureumaun nimmer angripen_' (What are you boors saying?
my steed and my fine body shall be touched by no boors). Then the
master of the house, quite horrified, replied, 'Are you Helmbrecht, my
son? In that case I will this very night boil one hen and roast
another; but if you are a stranger--a Bohemian or a Wend--you may go to
the winds. If you are of Saxony or Brabant, you must take your repast
with you; from me you will receive nothing, though the night should
last a whole year. For a Junker, such as you, I have no meal or wine;
you must seek that from the nobles.'
"Now it had waxed late, and there was no host in the neighbourhood who
would have received the youth, so, having weighed the matter, he said,
'Truly I am your son, I am Helmbrecht; once I was your son and
servant.' The father answered 'You are not him.' 'But I am so.' 'Tell
me the four names of my oxen.' Then the son mentioned the four names,
'_Auer_, _Raeme_, _Erke_, _Sonne_. I have often flourished my switch
over them; they are the best oxen in the world; will you recognise me
now? Let the door be opened to me.' The father cried out, 'Gate and
door, chamber and cupboard, shall all be opened to you now.'
"Thus the son was well received, and had a soft bed prepared for him by
his sister and mother, and the latter called out to her daughter, 'Run,
fetch a bolster and a soft cushion.' That was put under his arm and
laid near the warm stove, and he waited in comfort till the meal was
prepared. It was a supper for a lord; finely minced vegetables with
good meat, a fat goose as large as a bustard, roasted on the spit,
roasted and boiled fowls. And the father said, 'If I had wine it should
be drunk to-day; but drink, dear son, of the best spring that ever
flowed out of the earth.'
"The young Helmbrecht then unpacked his presents for his father, a
whetstone, a scythe, and an axe, the best peasant-treasures in the
world; for his mother, a fur cloak, which he had stolen from a priest;
to his sister, Gotelind, a silk sash and gold lace, which would have
better suited a lady of distinction,--he had taken it from a pedlar.
Then he said, 'I must sleep, I have ridden far, and rest is needful for
me to night.' He slept till late the next day in the bed over which his
sister Gotelind had spread a newly washed shirt, for a sheet was
unknown there.
"So the son abode with his father.
"After a time the father inquired of his son what were the court
customs where he had been living. 'I also,' he said, 'went once when I
was a boy, with cheese and eggs to court. The knights were then very
different from now, courteous, and with good manners; they occupied
themselves with knightly games, they danced and sang with the ladies;
when the musician came with his fiddle, the ladies stood up, the
knights advanced to them, took them elegantly by the hand, and danced
featly; when that was over, one of them read out of a book about one
_Ernst_;[9] all was carried on then with cheerful familiarity. Some
shot at a mark with bow and arrows, others went out hunting and deer
shooting; the worst of them would now be the best. For now those are
esteemed who are liars and eaves-droppers, and truth and honour are
changed for falsehood; the old tournaments are no longer the custom,
others are in vogue instead of them. Formerly one heard them call out
in the knightly games "Hurrah, knight, be joyful!" There now only
resounds through the air, "Hunt knight, hunt; stab, strike, and
mutilate this one, cut off this man's foot for me, and the hands of
that one, and hang the other for me, or catch this rich man who will
pay us a hundred pounds." I think, therefore, things were better
formerly than now. Relate to me, my son, more of the new manners.'
"'That I will. Drinking is now the court fashion. Gentlemen exclaim
"Drink, drink; if you drink this, I will drink that." They no longer
sit with the ladies, but at their wine. Believe me, the old mode of
life which is lived by such as you, is now abjured both by man and
woman. Excommunication and outlawry are now held in derision.'
"'Son,' said the father, 'have nothing to do with court usages, they
are bitter and sour. I had much rather be a peasant than a poor
courtling, who must always ride for his living, and take care that his
enemies do not catch, mutilate, and hang him.'
"'Father,' said the young man, 'I thank you, but it is more than a week
that I have drank no wine; since then I have taken in my girdle by
three holes. I must capture some cattle before my buckle will return to
its former place. A rich man has done me a great injury. I saw him once
riding over the standing crops of my godfather the knight; he shall pay
dear for it. I shall trot off his cattle, sheep, and swine, because he
has trampled over the fields of my dear godfather. I know another rich
man who has also grievously injured me; he eat bread with his tartlets;
by my life I will revenge that. I know yet another rich man who has
occasioned me more annoyance than almost any other; I will not forgive
it him, even if a bishop should intercede for him, for once when he was
sitting at table he most improperly dropped his girdle. If I can seize
what is called his, it shall help me to a Christmas dress. There is yet
another simple fool who was unseemly enough to blow the froth of his
beer into a goblet. If I do not revenge that, I will never gird sword
to my side, nor be worthy of a wife. You shall soon hear of
Helmbrecht.'
"The father answered 'Alack! Tell me who are the companions who taught
you to rob a rich man if he eats pastry and bread together.' Then the
son named his ten companions; 'Laemmerschling (lamb devourer),
Schluckdenwidder (ram swallower), Hoellensack (hell sack), Ruttelshrein
(shake press), Kuehfrass (cow destroyer), Knickekelch (goblet jerker),
Wolfsgaumen (wolf's jaw), Wolfsruessel (wolf's snout), and Wolfsdarm
(wolf's gut)[10]--the last name was given by the noble Duchess of
Nonarra Narreia--these are my schoolmasters.'
"The father said, 'And how do they name you?'
"I am called Schlingdengau. I am not the delight of the peasants; their
children are obliged to eat porridge made with water; what the peasants
have is mine; I gouge the eyes of one, I hack the back of another, I
tie this one down on an ant-hill, and another I hang by his legs to a
willow.'
"The father broke forth. 'Son, however violent those may be whom you
have named and extolled, yet I hope, if there is a righteous God, the
day will come when the hangman may seize them, and throw them off from
his ladder.'
"'Father, I have often defended your geese and fowls, your cattle and
fodder, from my associates, I will do it no more. You speak too much
against the honour of my excellent companions. I had wished to make
your daughter Gotelind the wife of my friend Laemmerschling; she would
have led a pleasant life with him; but that is over now, you have
spoken too coarsely against us.' He took his sister Gotelind aside, and
said to her secretly, 'When my companion, Laemmerschling, first asked me
about you, I said to him; you will get on well with her; if you take
her do not fear that you will hang long upon the tree, she will
take you down with her own hands and carry you to the grave on the
cross-road, and she will fumigate your bones with frankincense and
myrrh for a whole year. And if you have the good fortune to be only
blinded, she will lead you by the hand along the highways and roads
through all countries; if your foot is cut off, she will carry your
crutches every morning to your bed; and if you lose your hand, she will
cut your bread and meat as long as you live. Then said Laemmerschling to
me, "I have three sacks, heavy as lead, full of fine linen, dresses,
kirtles, and costly jewels, with scarlet cloth and furs. I have
concealed them in a neighbouring cave, and will give them to her for a
dowry." All this, Gotelind, you have lost, owing to your father; now
give your hand to a peasant, with whom you may dig turnips, and at
night lie on the heart of an ignoble boor. Go to your father, for mine
he is not; I am sure that a courtier has been my father, from him I
have my high spirit.'
"The foolish sister answered, 'Dear brother Schlingdengau, persuade
your companion to marry me, I will leave father, mother, and
relations.' The parents were unaware of the conversation held secretly
by the brother and sister. The brother said, 'I will send a messenger
to you, whom you are to follow; hold yourself in readiness. God protect
you, I go from hence; the host here is as little to me as I to him.
Mother, God bless you.' So he went on his old way, and told his
companion his sister's wish. He kissed his hands for joy, and made
obeisance to the wind that blew from Gotelind.
"Many widows and orphans were robbed of their property when the hero
Laemmerschling and his wife Gotelind sat at their marriage feast. Young
men actively conveyed in waggons and on horses stolen food and drink to
the house of Laemmerschling's father. When Gotelind came, the bridegroom
met her, and received her with, 'Welcome, dame Gotelind.' 'God reward
you, Herr Laemmerschling.' So they gave each other a friendly greeting.
And an old man, wise of speech, rose, and placing both in the circle,
asked three times of the man and the maiden, 'Will you take each other
in marriage, yea or nay?' So they were united. All sang the bridal
song, and the bridegroom trod on the foot of the bride.[11] Then was
the marriage feast prepared. It was wonderful how the food disappeared
before the youths, as if a wind blew it from the table; they eat
incessantly of everything that was brought from the kitchen by the
servants, and there remained nothing but bare bones for the dogs. It is
said that any one who eats so immoderately approaches his end.[12]
Gotelind began to shudder and to exclaim, 'Woe to us! Some misfortune
approaches; my heart is so heavy! Woe is me that I have abandoned my
father and mother; whoever desires too much, will gain little; this
greediness leads to the abyss of hell.'
"They had sat awhile after their meal, and the musicians had received
their gifts from the bride and bridegroom, when a magistrate appeared
with five men. The struggle was short; the magistrate with his five,
was victorious over the ten; for a real thief, however bold he may be,
and willing to confront a whole army, is defenceless against the
hangman. The robbers slipped into the stove and under the benches, and
he who would not have fled before four, was now by the hangman's
servant alone dragged out by the hair. Gotelind lost her bridal dress,
and was found behind a hedge terrified, stripped, and degraded. The
skins of the cattle which the thieves had stolen were bound round their
necks, as the perquisite of the magistrate. The bridegroom, in honour
of the day carried only two, the others more. The magistrate could
sooner have been bribed to spare a wild wolf than these robbers. Nine
were hung by the hangman; the life of the tenth was allowed to the
hangman as his right, and this tenth was Schlingdengau Helmbrecht; the
hangman revenged the father, by putting out his eyes, and the mother,
by cutting off a hand and a foot. Thus the blind Helmbrecht was led
with the help of a staff, by a servant, home to his father's house.
"Hear how his father greeted him: 'Dieu salue, monsieur Blindman, go
from hence, monsieur Blindman; if you delay, I will have you driven
away by my servant; away with you from the door!'
"'Sir, I am your child.'
"'Is the boy become blind, who called himself Schlingdengau? Now do you
not fear the threats of the hangman or all the magistrates in the
world! Heigh! how you 'ate iron' when you rode off on the steed for
which I gave my cattle. Begone, and never return again!'
"Again the blind man spoke. 'If you will not recognise me as your
child, at least allow a miserable man to crawl into your house, as you
do the poor sick; the country people hate me; I cannot save myself if
you are ungracious to me.'
"The heart of the host was shaken, for the blind man who stood before
him was his own flesh and blood--his son; yet he exclaimed with a
scornful laugh, 'You went out daringly into the world; you have caused
many a heart to sigh, and robbed many a peasant of his possessions.
Think of my dream. Servant, close the door and draw the bolt; I will
betake me to my rest. As long as I live, I had rather take in a
stranger whom my eyes never beheld, than share my loaf with you.' Thus
saying, he struck the servant of the blind man. 'I would do so to your
master, if I were not ashamed to strike a blind man; take him, whom the
sun hates, from before me!' Thus did the father exclaim, but the mother
put a loaf in his hand as to a child. So the blind man went away, the
peasants hooting and scoffing at him.
"For a whole year he endured great hardships. Early one morning when he
was going through the forest to beg bread, some peasants who were
gathering wood saw him, and one of them from whom he had taken a cow
called to the others to help him. All of them had been injured by him,
he had broken into the hut of one and stripped it; he had dishonoured
the daughter of another; and a fourth, trembling like a reed with
passion, said, 'I will wring his neck; he thrust my sleeping child into
a sack, and when it awoke and cried, he tossed it out into the snow, so
that it died.' Thus they all turned against Helmbrecht. 'Now take care
of your hood.' The embroidery which the hangman had left untouched was
now torn, and scattered on the road with his hair. They allowed the
miserable wretch to make his confession, and one of them broke a
fragment from the ground and gave it to the worthless man as gate money
for hell fire. Then they hung him to a tree.
"If there be still any children living with their father and mother who
feel disposed to be jovial knights, let them take warning from the fate
of Helmbrecht."
Thus ends the story of young Helmbrecht, who was desirous of becoming a
knight. And such on the whole we may consider was the condition and
disposition of the free peasantry at the beginning of the long period
of decline, which loosened the connection of the German Empire, founded
the power of the great princely houses, made the burgher communities of
fortified cities rich and powerful, and which was also the beginning of
that wild time of self-help and free fraternization of cities, as of
nobles. But the details of the changes which the German peasant
underwent from 1250 to 1500, can no longer be accurately discerned by
us. The wild deeds of violence and oppression of the robber-nobles,
drove the helpless into the cities, and the enterprising into foreign
countries. There were always opportunities of fighting under the sign
of the cross against Sclavonians, Wends, and Poles, and on the east of
the Elbe, broad countries were opened for the weapons and the plough of
the German countryman. There was agitation also in the minds of men.
The new despotism of the Roman papacy and of the fanatical Mendicant
friars, drove the Katharers on the Rhine, and the Stedingers in Lower
Saxony, to apostacy from the church. Where the free peasants were
thickly located and favoured by the nature of their country, they rose
in arms against the oppression of feudal lords. In the valleys of
Switzerland and in the marsh lands on the German ocean, the associated
country people gained victories over the mailed knights, which still
belong to the glorious reminiscences of the people. But in the interior
of Germany, the peasantry under the increasing oppression of the nobles
and a degenerate church, became weaker, more incapable, and coarser;
ever more powerfully did the barons lord it over them. Even the
resident free peasant of Lower Saxony was cast down from the place of
honour, which he once maintained above the knightly serving man. The
consciousness of a higher civilisation and more refined manners caused
the citizen also to despise the countryman,--his love of eating, his
rough simplicity, and his crafty shrewdness were treated with endless
derision.
And yet the countryman in the fifteenth century still retained much of
his good old habits and somewhat of his old energy. He still continued
to extol his own calling in his songs, and was inclined to view with
ridicule the unstable life of others. In a well-known popular song,
three sisters married--one a nobleman, another a musician, and the
third a peasant. Both brothers-in-law came with their wives to pay a
visit at the peasant's farm. "There the gay musician played, the hungry
nobleman danced, and the peasant sat and laughed." At the end of the
fifteenth century a dancing scene in a Hessian village is described in
a city poem, the same customs as in the time of Neidhart, only wilder
and coarser. The proud labourers come from different villages, armed
with halberds and pikes, to dance under the Linden tree; the parties
are divided by distinctive marks, willow and birch twigs and hop
leaves on the shoulder and on the cap. From one village the whole
four-and-twenty labourers are clothed in red plush, with yellow
waistcoat and breeches. A gaily-attired maiden, a favourite dancer,
will only dance with one party, sharp words follow, and weapons are
drawn, the citizen, being a clerk, is persecuted with such forcible,
pungent words, that he is obliged to withdraw himself by ignominious
flight from the wild company.[13]
The life of the countryman within the village gates was still rich in
festivals and poetical usages, his privileges--so far as they were not
interfered with by deeds of violence--were valuable, and interwoven
with his life; and all his occupations were established by customs and
etiquette, by ceremonies and dramatic co-operation with his village
association.
But the oppression under which he lived became insupportable. After the
end of the fifteenth century he began to make a powerful resistance to
his masters.
It is probable that the great agitation in the European money-market
contributed to the excitement of the countryman. The sinking of the
value of metal since the discovery of America, was considered by
producers at first as a lasting rise in the price of corn. To the
peasant every sheffel of corn, and his labour also, became of higher
value; and, in the same measure, both were of higher importance to the
landed proprietor. It was natural, therefore, that the peasant should
take a proportionate view of his freedom, and here and there think of
relief from his burdens, whilst it became the interest of the landed
proprietor to maintain his servitude--nay, even to increase it. Yet,
one need not ascribe the great movement to such reasons. The pride of
victory of the Swiss who had prostrated the Knights of Burgundy, the
self-dependence of the new Landsknechts, and, above all, the religious
movement, and the social turn which it took in South Germany, made a
deep impression on the mind of the peasant. For the first time his
condition was viewed by the educated with sympathy. The countryman was
almost suddenly introduced into the literature as a judge and
associate. His grievances against the priesthood, and also against the
landed proprietors, were ever brought forward in popular language with
great skill. A few years before, he had played the standing _role_ of a
clown in the shrove-tide games of the Nuerembergers, but now even Hans
Sachs[14] wrote dialogues full of hearty sympathy with his condition,
and the portraiture of the simple, intelligent, and industrious
peasant, called Karsthans,[15] was repeatedly assumed, in order to show
the sound judgment and wit of the people against the priests.
But, dangerous as the great peasant insurrection appeared for many
weeks, and manifold as were the characters and passions which blazed
forth in it, the peasants themselves were little more than an
undulating mass; the greater part of their demagogues and leaders
belonged to another class; on the whole, it appears to us that the
intelligence and capacity of the leaders, whether peasants or others,
was but small, and equally small the warlike capacity of the masses.
Therefore here where the peasant for the first time is powerfully
influenced by the literary men of the period, more pleasure is
experienced in the contemplation of the minds that roused up his soul.
It was the case here, as it always is in popular insurrections, that
the masses were first excited by those who were more influential and
far-sighted, nobler and more refined; then they lost the mastery, which
was seized by vain, coarse demagogues, like Andreas Karlstadt and
Thomas Muenzer. But the way in which, in this case, the more rational
lost their control is specially characteristic of that time.
Next to Luther, no individual before the war exercised so powerful an
influence on the dispositions of the country people of Southern
Germany, as a barefooted Franciscan, who came among the people at Ulm
from the cloisters of the Franciscan monastery, Johann Eberlin von
Guenzburg. He had many of the qualities of a great agitator, and was one
of the most amiable among those that figure in the early period of the
Reformation. More than any other, he took up the social side of the
movement. In the year 1521, he published, anonymously, in the national
form of a small popular flying sheet, his ideal of a new state and a
new social life. The old claims which were subsequently drawn up by a
preacher, in twelve articles, for the peasantry, are to be found, with
many others, collectively in the fifteen "_Bundesgenossen_."[16] The
eloquence of Eberlin irresistibly influenced the listening multitudes;
a flow of language, a poetical strain, a genial warmth, and at the same
time a vein of good humour and of dramatic power, made him a favourite
wherever he appeared. To that was added a harmless self-complacency,
and just sufficient enjoyment of the present moment, as was necessary
to make his success valuable and the persecutions of his opponents
bearable. And yet he was only a dexterous demagogue. When he left his
order from honourable convictions, with a heart passionately excited by
the corruption of the church and the distress of the people, he could
hardly pass, even according to the standard of the time, for an
educated man; it was only by degrees that he became clear on certain
social questions; then he conscientiously endeavoured to recal his
former assertions; with whatever complacency he may speak of himself,
there is always a holy earnestness in him concerning the truth. He had,
withal, a quiet, aristocratic bias; he was the child of a citizen; his
connections were people of consideration, and even of noble origin;
coarse violence was contrary to his nature, in which a strong common
sense was incessantly at work to control the ebullition of his
feelings. He clung with great devotion to all his predecessors who had
advanced his education, especially to the Wittemberg reformers. After
he had restlessly roamed about the South of Germany for many years, he
went to Wittemberg; there Melancthon powerfully influenced the fiery
southern German; he became quieter, more moderate, and better
instructed. But later he belonged--like his monastic companion,
Heinrich von Kettenbach--to the preachers who collected round Hutten
and Sickengen. This personal union, which lasted up to Sickengen's
catastrophe, kept the national movement in a direction which could not
last. For a short time it appeared as if the religious and social
movement of South Germany, even if not led, could be made use of, by
the noble landed proprietors; it was an error into which both the
knights and their better friends fell; neither Hutten nor Sickengen had
sufficient strength or insight to win the country people really to
them. This came to light when Sickengen was overpowered by the
neighbouring princes. The peasants became the most zealous assistants
of the princes in persecuting the junkers of the Sickengen party and
burning their castles; this warfare may, indeed, be considered as the
prelude to the present war. It had unshackled the country people in the
neighbouring provinces, and accustomed them to the pulling down of
castles. A dialogue of the year 1524 has been preserved to us, in which
the fury of the country people against the nobles already breaks
forth.[17]
From that period the decided demagogues gained the ear of the peasants,
and the moderate amongst the popular leaders lost their supremacy.
Eberlin had once more, at Erfurt, an opportunity of showing, as a
mediator, the power of his eloquence over the revolted peasant hosts;
under its influence the assembled populace fell on their knees, pious
and penitent; but the weakness of his advice made this last endeavour
fruitless. He died the following year, and with him passed away most of
the poetry of the Reformation.
Cruelly was the revolt against the terrified princes punished, and the
smaller tyrants were the most eager to bring the conquered again under
their yoke. Yet in South Germany and Thuringia there was a real
improvement in the condition of the country people; for it happened at
a period in which a learned class of jurists spread over the country,
and the working of Roman law in Germany became everywhere perceptible.
The point of view taken by the jurists of the Roman school, of the
relations between the landed proprietors and their villeins, was indeed
not always favourable to the latter; for the lawyers were inclined to
fix every kind of subjection upon the peasant from the deficiency in
his right of property in his holding; but they were equally ready to
recognise his personal freedom. Thus, in the first half of the
sixteenth century, the old serfdom which still existed in a very harsh
form in many provinces was mitigated, and villeinage substituted.
Besides this, a more patriarchal feeling began to prevail among the
higher German Sovereigns, and in the new ordinances which they
projected in conjunction with their clergy, the welfare of the
peasantry was taken into consideration. This was the case above all
with the Wettiner princes in Franconia, Thuringia, and Meissen; and,
lastly, with Elector August. The authority, also, of the Saxon
chancery, which had been established in Germany since the fifteenth
century, contributed essentially to this, by making the Saxon laws a
pattern for the rest of Germany.
But some ten years before the Thirty Years' War, an advance in the
pretensions of the nobles became apparent, at least in the provinces
beyond the Elbe; for example, in Pommerania and Silesia. Under weak
rulers the courtly influence of the nobility increased, the constant
money embarrassments of the princes raised the independence of the
States, which granted the taxes; and the peasants had no
representatives in the States, except in the Tyrol, East Friesland, the
old Bailiwick of Swabia, and a few small territories. The landed
proprietors indemnified themselves for the concessions made to the
princes by double exactions on the peasantry. Serfdom was formally
re-established in Pommerania in 1617.
It was just at this period of reaction that the Thirty Years' War broke
out. It devastated alike the houses of the nobles and the huts of the
peasants. It brought destruction on man and beast, and corrupted those
that were left.[18]
After the great war--in the period which will be here portrayed--a
struggle began on the part of the landed proprietors and the newly
established Government against the wild practices of the war time. The
countryman had learned to prefer the rusty gun to handling the plough.
He had become accustomed to perform court service, and his mind was not
rendered more docile by disbanded soldiers having settled themselves on
the ruins of the old village huts. The peasant lads and servants bore
themselves like knights, wearing jack-boots, caps faced with marten's
fur, hats with double bands, and coats of fine cloth; they carried
rifles and long-handled axes when they came together in the cities, or
assembled on Sundays. At one time perhaps these had been useful against
robbers and wild beasts; but it had become far more dangerous to the
nobles and their bailiffs, and still more insupportable to their
villeins,--it was always rigorously forbidden.[19] The settlement of
disbanded soldiers, who brought their prize money into the village, was
welcome; but whoever had once worn a soldier's dress revolted against
the heavy burdens of the bondsman. It was, therefore, established that
whoever had served under a banner became free from personal servitude;
only those who had been camp-followers continued as bondsmen. The
inhabitants of the different States had been interspersed during the
war; subjects had wilfully changed their dwellings, and established
themselves on other territories, with or without the permission of the
new lords of the manor. This was insupportable, and a right was given
to the landed proprietor to fetch them back; and if the new lord of the
manor thought it his interest to protect them, and refused to give them
up, force might be used to recover them. Thus the noblemen rode with
their attendants into a district to catch such of their villeins as had
escaped without pass-tickets.[20]--The opposition of the people must
have been violent, for the ordinances even in the provinces, where
villeinage was most strict--as, for example, in Silesia--were obliged
to recognise that the villeins were free people, and not slaves. But
this remained a theoretical proposition, and was seldom attended to in
the following century. The depopulation of the country, and the
deficiency in servants and labourers, was very injurious to the
landowner. All the villagers were forbidden to let rooms to single men
or women; all such lodgers were to be taken before the magistracy, and
put into prison in case they should refuse domestic service, even if
they maintained themselves by any other occupation--such as labouring
for the peasant for daily hire, or carrying on business with money or
corn.[21] Through a whole generation we find, in the ordinances of the
territorial lords, bitter complaints against the malicious and wilful
menials who would not yield to their hard conditions, nor be content
with the pay assigned by law. It was forbidden to individual
proprietors to give more than the tax established by the provincial
States. Nevertheless, the conditions of service shortly after the war
are sometimes better than they were a hundred years later; in 1652
menials in Silesia had meat twice in the week; but in our century there
are provinces where they get it only three times in the year.[22] The
daily pay also was higher immediately after the war than in the
following century.
Thus was an iron yoke again bound slowly round the necks of the
undisciplined country people, closer and harder than before the war.
During the war small villages, and still more the single farms, which
had been so favorable to the independence of the peasants, had vanished
from the face of the earth; in the Palatinate, for example, and on the
hills of Franconia, they had been numerous, and even in the present day
their names cling to the soil. The village huts concentrated themselves
in the neighbourhood of the manor house, and control over the weak
community was easier when under the eye of the lord or his bailiff.
What was the course of their life in the time of our fathers will be
distinctly seen when one examines more closely the nature of their
service. A cursory glance at it will appear to the youth of the present
generation like a peep into a strange and fearful world. The conditions
under which the German country people suffered were undoubtedly
various. Special customs existed, not only in the provinces, but in
almost every community. If the names by which the different services
and imposts were designated were arranged they would form an unpleasant
vocabulary.[23] But, notwithstanding the difference in the names and
extent of these burdens, there was an unanimity throughout the whole of
Europe on the main points, which is, perhaps, more difficult to explain
than the deviations.
The tenths were the oldest tax upon the countryman--the tenth sheaf,
the tenth portion of slaughtered beasts, and even a tenth of wine,
vegetables and fruit. It was probably older in Western Germany than
Christianity, but the early church of the middle ages cunningly claimed
it on the authority of scripture. It did not, however, succeed in
retaining it only for itself; it was obliged to share it with the
rulers, and often with the noble landed proprietors. At last it was
paid by the agricultural peasant, either as a tax to the ruler or to
his landlord, and besides as the priest's tithe to his church. However
low his harvest yield might be valued, the tenth sheaf was far more
than the tenth share of his clear produce.
But the countryman had, in the first place, to render service to the
landed proprietor, both with his hands and with his team; in the
greatest part of Germany, in the middle ages, three days a week,--thus
he gave half of the working time of his life. Whoever was bound to keep
beasts of burden on his property was obliged to perform soccage, in the
working hours, with the agricultural implements and tools till sunset;
the poorer people had to do the same with hand labour--nay, according
to the obligations of their tenure, with two, four, or more hands, and
even the days were appointed by the landlords: they were well off if
during such labour they received food. These obligations of ancient
times were, in many cases, increased after the war by the encroachments
of the masters--chiefly in Eastern Germany. These soccage days were
arbitrarily divided into half or even quarter days, and thereby the
hindrance to the countryman and the disorder to his own farm were
considerably increased. The number of the days was also increased. Such
was the case even in the century which we, with just feelings of pride,
call the humane. In the year 1790, just when Goethe's "Torquato Tasso"
made its first appearance in the refined court of Saxony, the peasants
of Meissen rose against the landowners, because they had so
immoderately increased the service that their villeins seldom had a day
free for their own work.[24] Again in 1799, when Schiller's
"Wallenstein" was exciting the enthusiasm of the warlike nobility of
Berlin, Frederick William III. was obliged to issue a cabinet order,
enjoining on his nobility not to lay claim to the soccage of the
peasants more than three days in the week, and to treat their people
with equity.
The second burden on the villeins was the tax on change of property by
death or transfer; the heriot and fine on alienation. The best horse
and the best ox were once the price which the heir of a property had to
pay to the landowner for his fief. This tax was long ago changed into
money. But though in the sixteenth century, even in countries where the
peasant was heavily oppressed, the provincial ordinances allowed that
peasant's property might be bought and sold, and that the lord of the
peasant who sold could take no deduction upon it,[25] yet in the same
province in 1617, before the Thirty Years' War, it was established that
landlords might compel their villeins against their will to sell their
property, and that in case no purchaser should be found they themselves
might buy it at two-thirds of the tax. It was under Frederick the Great
that the inheritance and rights of property of villeins were first
secured to them in most of the provinces of the kingdom of Prussia.
This ordinance helped to put an end to a burden on the country people
which threatened to depopulate the country. For in the former century,
after the landowners had resolved to increase the revenue of their
estates, they found it advantageous to rid themselves of some of their
villeins, whose holdings they attached to their own property. The poor
people, thus driven from their homes, fell into misery; and the burdens
became quite unbearable to the remaining villeins, for they were
expected by the landed proprietor to cultivate those former holdings,
whose possessors had hitherto by their labour assisted in the
cultivation of the whole estate. This system of ejection had become
particularly bad in the east of Germany. When Frederick II. conquered
Silesia there were many thousand farms without occupiers; the huts lay
in ruins, and the fields were in the hands of the landed proprietors.
All the separate homesteads had to be reformed and reoccupied,
furnished with cattle and implements, and given up to the farmer as his
own heritable property. In Ruegen this grievance occasioned a rising of
the peasantry, in the youth of Ernst Moritz Arndt; soldiers were sent
thither, and the rioters were put in prison; the peasants endeavoured
to revenge themselves for this by laying in wait for and slaying
individual noblemen. In the same way in Electoral Saxony as late as
1790 this grievance occasioned a revolt.
The children also of villeins were subject to compulsory service. If
they were capable of work they were brought before the authorities,
and, if these demanded it, had to serve some time, frequently three
years, on the farm. To serve in other places it was necessary to have a
permit, which must be bought. Even those who had already served
elsewhere had once a year--frequently about Christmas--to present
themselves to the lord of the manor for choice. If the child of a
villein entered into a trade or any other occupation, a sum had to be
paid to the authorities for a letter of permission. It was considered a
mitigation of the old remains of feudalism, when it was decided that
the daughters of peasants might marry on to other properties without
indemnifying their lord. But then the new lord had to greet the other
in a friendly letter in acknowledgment of this emancipation.[26] The
price which the villein had to give for the emancipation of himself and
his family varied extremely, according to the period and the district.
Under Frederick II. it was reduced in Silesia to one ducat per head.
But this was an unusually favourable rate for the villein. In Ruegen, at
a still later date, the emancipation was left to the valuation of the
proprietor; it could even be refused: a fine-looking youth had there to
pay full a hundred and fifty, and a pretty girl fifty or sixty,
thalers.
But the peasant was employed in other ways by the landed proprietor. He
was bound to aid, with his hands and teams, in the cultivation of the
estate; he was also bound to act as messenger. Whoever wished to go to
the town had first to ask the bailiff and lord of the manor whether
they had any orders. No householder could, except in special cases,
remain a night out of the village without the previous sanction of the
magistrate of the place. He was obliged to furnish a night watch of two
men for the nobleman's mansion. He had, when a child of the lord of the
manor was to be married, to bring a contribution of corn, small cattle,
honey, wax, and linen to the castle; finally, he had almost everywhere
to carry to his lord his rent-hens and eggs, the old symbol of his
dependence for house and farm.
But what was still more repugnant to the German peasant than many
greater burdens, was the landlord's right of chase over his fields. The
fearful tyranny with which the right of chase was practised by the
German princes in the middle ages, was renewed after the Thirty Years'
War. The peasant was forbidden to carry a gun, and poachers were shot
down. Where the cultivated ground bordered on the larger woods, or
where the lord of the manor held the supreme right of chase, a secret
and often bloody war was carried on for centuries betwixt the foresters
and poachers. As long as wolves continued to prowl about the villages,
the irritated peasant dug holes round the margin of the wood which he
covered with branches, and the bottom of them was studded with pointed
stakes. He called them wolf-pits, but they were well known to the law
as game-traps, and were forbidden under severe penalties. He ventured
to let such portions of ground as were most exposed to be injured by
game, to soldiers or cities, but that also was forbidden him; he
endeavoured to defend his fields by hedges, and his hedges were broken
down. In the Erzgebirge of Saxony the peasants, in the former century,
had watched by their ripening corn; then huts were built on the fields,
fires were lighted in the night, the watchers called out and beat the
drum, and their dogs barked; but the game at last became accustomed to
these alarms, and feared neither peasant nor dog. In Electoral Saxony,
at the end of a former century, under a mild government, where a
moderate tax might be paid as indemnity for damage to game, it was
forbidden to erect fences for fields above a certain height, or to
employ pointed stakes, that the game might not be injured, nor
prevented seeking its support on the fields, till at last fourteen
communities in the Hohnstein bailiwick in a state of exasperation
combined for a general hunt, and frightened the game over the frontier.
The logs which the sheep dogs wore round their necks were not
sufficient to hinder them from hurting the hares, so they were held by
cords on the fields. But the countrymen were bound, when the lord of
the manor went to the chase, to go behind the nets and, as beaters, to
swing the rattles. The coursing, moreover, spoilt his fields, as the
riders with their greyhounds uprooted and trampled on the seed.
To these burdens, which were common to all, were added numerous local
restrictions, of which only some of the more widely diffused will be
here mentioned. The number of cattle that villeins were permitted to
keep was frequently prescribed to them according to the extent of their
holdings. A portion of the pasture land upon his holding before seed
time, and of the produce after the harvest, belonged to the landowner.
This right, to which pretensions had been already made in the middle
ages, became a severe plague in the last century, when the noblemen
began increasing their flocks of sheep. For they made demands on the
peasants' fields generally, when fodder for cattle was failing: how,
then, could the peasants maintain their own animals?
As early as 1617 it was held as a maxim in Silesia, that peasants must
not keep sheep unless they possessed an old authorisation for it. The
keeping of goats was altogether forbidden in many places. This old
prohibition is one of the reasons why the poor in wide districts of
Eastern Germany are deprived of these useful animals. Elector August of
Saxony in 1560 denounced in his ordinances the pigeons of the peasants,
and since that time they have been prohibited in other provincial
ordinances. Other tyrannies were devised by the love of game. Shortly
after the war it was held to be the duty of peasants to offer
everything saleable, in the first instance, to the lord of the
manor,--dung, wool, honey, and even eggs and poultry: if the
authorities would not take his goods, he was bound to expose them for a
fixed period in the nearest town; it was only then that the sale became
free. But it was truly monstrous, when the authorities compelled their
subjects to buy goods from the manorial property which they did not
need. These barbarisms were quite common, at least in the East of
Germany, after 1650, especially in Moravia, Bohemia, and Silesia. When
the great proprietors drew their ponds and could not sell the fish, the
villeins were obliged to take them, in proportion to their means, at a
fixed rate. The same was the case with butter, cheese, corn, and
cattle. This was the cause of so many of the country people in Bohemia
becoming small traders, as they had to convey these goods into
neighbouring countries, often to their own great loss.[27] In vain did
the magistrates in Silesia in 1716 endeavour to check this abuse.[28]
We will only mention here the worst tyranny of all. The nobleman had
seigneurial rights: he decreed through the justices, who were dependent
on him, the punishments of police offences: fines, imprisonment, and
corporal punishment. He was also in the habit of using the stick to the
villeins when they were at work. Undoubtedly there was already in the
sixteenth century, in the provincial ordinances, a humane provision,
which prohibited the nobles from striking their villeins; but in the
two following centuries this prohibition was little attended to. When
Frederick the Great re-organized Silesia, he gave the peasants the
right of making complaint to the government against severe bodily
punishment! And this was considered a progress!
But other burdens also weighed upon the life of the peasant. For,
beside the landowner, the territorial ruler also demanded his impost or
contribution, a land-tax or poll-tax; he could impress the son of the
peasant under his banner, and demand waggons and gear for relays in
time of war. And again, above the territorial ruler, was the Holy Roman
Empire of the German nation, which claimed in those parts of Germany
where the constitution of the circles was still in force, a quota for
their exchequers.
The peasants, however, were not everywhere under the curse of bondage.
In the old domain of the Ripuarian Franks, the provinces on the other
side of the Rhine from Cleves to the Moselle, and the Grafschaft of
Mark, Essen, Werden, and Berg, had already in the middle ages freed
themselves from bondage: those who had not property as landowners were
freemen with leases for life. In the rest of Germany, freedom had taken
refuge in the southern and northern frontiers, on the coasts of the
North Sea and among the Alps. East Friesland, the marsh lands on the
coasts of the Weser and the Elbe up to Ditmarschen,--those almost
unconquerable settlements of sturdy peasant communities,--have remained
free from the most ancient times. In the south, the Tyrol and the
neighbouring Alps, at least the greatest portion of them, were occupied
by free country-people; in Upper Austria also the free peasantry were
numerous; and in Steiermark the tenths, which was the chief tax paid to
the landed proprietors, was less oppressive than soccage was elsewhere.
Wherever the arable land was scarce, and the mountain pastures afforded
sustenance to the inhabitants, the legal condition of the lower orders
was better. On the other hand, in the countries of old Saxony from the
time of the Carlovingians, with the exception of a few free peasant
holdings, a severe state of bondage had been developed. The
Brunswickers, the dwellers on the Church lands of Bremen and Verden,
were in the most favourable condition, those of Hildesheim and the
Grafschaft of Hoya in the worst. In the bishopric of Muenster the
soccage service of villeins was generally changed into a moderate money
payment; the only thing that pressed heavily on them was the compulsory
leading, and the necessity of buying exemption from their burdens. On
the other hand, the right of the landed proprietor over the inheritance
of villeins existed to the greatest extent. As late as the year 1800
the country-people, who--exceptionally--desired to save money,
endeavoured to preserve their property to their heirs, by fictitious
transactions with the citizens; consequently more than a fourth portion
of the Muenster land remained uncultivated. A similar condition, in a
somewhat milder form, existed in the bishopric of Osnabruck. Among the
races of the interior, Hessians, Thuringians, Bavarians, Suabians, and
Allemanni, the number of free peasants was continually decreasing
during the whole of the middle ages: it was only in Upper Bavaria that
they still formed a powerful part of the population. In Thuringia also
the number of freemen was not inconsiderable. There the rule of the
princes over the serf peasantry was lenient.
Far worse, except in a large part of Holstein, was the condition of all
the countries east of the Elbe,--in fact wherever Germans colonized
Sclave countries, that is almost half present Germany; but worst of all
was the life of the villeins in Bohemia and Moravia, in Pomerania and
Mecklenberg: in the last province villeinage is not yet abolished. It
was in these countries that villeinage became more oppressive after the
Thirty Years' War; only the free peasants, and the "_Erb-und
Gerichtsscholtiseien_," as they were still called in memory of the
circumstances of the old Germanization, formed themselves into a pauper
aristocracy.
In the last century it might easily be perceived, from the agriculture
and the prosperity of the villagers, whether they were freemen or
serfs; and even now we may sometimes still discover, from the
intelligence and personal appearance of the present race, what was the
condition of their fathers. The peasants on the Lower Rhine, the
Westphalian inhabitants of the marshes, the East Frieslanders, the
Upper Austrians and Upper Bavarians, attained a certain degree of
prosperity soon after the war; on the other hand, the remaining
Bavarians, about the year 1700, complained that the third portion of
their fields lay waste, and we learn of Bohemia in 1730 that the fourth
part of the ground which had been under culture before the Thirty
Years' War was overgrown with wood. The value of land there was lower
by one half than in the other provinces.
Undoubtedly those freemen were to be envied who felt the advantage of
their better position, but only a small portion were so fortunate.
Generally, even in the eighteenth century, freemen with little or no
land of their own, preferred being received as villeins on some great
landed property. When Frederick I. of Prussia, shortly after 1700,
wished to free the serfs in Pomerania, they refused it, because they
considered the new duties imposed upon them more severe than what they
had hitherto borne. And in fact the free peasants were scarcely less
burdened with new service than those who had been the villeins of the
old time.
It is difficult to judge impartially of the human condition which
developed itself under this oppression. For such a life looks very
different in daily intercourse, to what it does in the statute-book.
Much that appears insupportable to us was made bearable by ancient
custom. Undoubtedly the kind-hearted benevolence of the nobles, of old
families who had grown up with their country-people through many
generations, mitigated the severity of servitude, and a cordial
connexion existed between master and serfs. Still more frequently the
brutal selfishness of the masters was softened and kept within bounds
by that prudence which now influences the American slaveholders. The
landed proprietor and his family passed their lives among the peasants,
and if he endeavoured to instil fear, he also had cause for fear.
Easily on a stormy night might the flames be kindled among his wooden
farm buildings, and no province was without its dismal stories of harsh
landlords or bailiffs who had been slain by unknown hands in field or
wood. However much we may admit the goodness or prudence of masters,
the position of the peasants still remains the darkest feature of the
past time. For we find everywhere in the scanty records of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an unhealthy antagonism of
classes. _And it was the larger portion of the German people which was
ruined by this oppression._[29]
Men even of uncommon strength and intelligence seldom succeeded in
extricating themselves from the proscribed boundaries by which their
life was fenced in. Ever greater became the chasm which separated them
from the smaller portion of the nation, who, by their perukes, bagwigs,
and pigtails, showed from afar that they belonged to a privileged
class. Up to the end of the seventeenth century these polished classes
seldom entertained a friendly feeling towards the peasant; on all sides
were to be heard complaints of his obduracy, dishonesty, and
coarseness. At no period was the suffering portion of the people so
harshly judged as in that, in which a spiritless orthodoxy embittered
the souls of those who had to preach the gospel of love. None were more
eager than the theologians in complaining of the worthlessness of
the country people, among whom they had to live; they always heard
hell-hounds howling round the huts of the villeins; their whole
conception of life was, indeed, dark, pedantic, and joyless. A
well-known little book, from the native district of Christopher von
Grimmelshausen, is especially characteristic. This book, entitled "Des
Bauerstands Lasterprob"--the exposure of the vices of the peasant
class[30]--never ceased to point out from the deeds of the villagers,
that the lives of the peasantry, from the village justice to the
goose-herd, were worthless and godless; that they were in the habit of
representing themselves as poor and miserable, and of complaining on
all occasions; that they were rude and overbearing to those whom they
did not fear; that they considered none as their friends, and
ungratefully deceived their benefactors. This book is much more
cruel than "The Lexicon of Deceit," by the hypochondriacal Coburger
Hoenn, which some centuries later analysed the impositions of all
classes,--and amongst others, those of the peasants,--alphabetically,
morosely, and with apt references.
To such defects, which are peculiar to the oppressed, others must,
indeed, be added, the consequences of the long war and its
demoralization. In the rooms of the village inns, about 1700, neither
candlesticks nor snuffers were to be seen, for everything had been
pilfered by the wayfarers; even the prayer-book had been stolen from
the host; a small looking-glass was a thing not to be thought of,
though 500 years earlier the village maiden, when she adorned herself
for the dance, took her little hand-glass with her as an ornament; and
if a householder lodged carriers, he was obliged to conceal all
portable goods, and to lock up all barns and hay-lofts. It was even
dangerous sometimes for a traveller to set foot in an inn. The desolate
room was filled, not only with tobacco-smoke, but also with the fumes
of powder; for it was a holiday amusement of the country people to play
with powder, and to molest unlucky strangers by throwing squibs or
small rockets before their feet or on their perukes; this was
accompanied by railery and abuse.[31] We are frequently disposed to
observe with astonishment, in these and similar complaints of
contemporaries, how the German nature maintained, amidst the deepest
degradation, a vital energy which, more than a hundred years after,
made the beginning of a better condition possible; and we may sometimes
doubt whether to admire the patience, or to lament the weakness, which
so long endured such misery; for, in spite of all that party zeal has
ever said in excuse of these servile relations, they were an endless
source of immorality both to the masters, their officials, and to the
people themselves. The sensuality of landed proprietors, and the
self-interest of magistrates and stewards, were exposed to daily
temptation at a period when a feeling of duty was weak in all classes.
More than once did the sluggish provincial governments exert themselves
to prevent bailiffs from compelling the peasant to feed cattle, sow
linseed, and spin for them; and foresters were in ill repute who
carried on traffic with the peasants, and winked at their proceedings
when the stems of the lordly wood were felled.[32] What was the feeling
of the country people against the landed proprietors, may be concluded
from the wicked proverb which became current about 1700, and fell from
the mouth of the rich Mansfeld peasant--"The young sparrows and young
nobles should have their heads broken betimes."[33]
Slowly did the dawn of a new day come to the German peasant. If we
would seek from whence arose the first rays of the new light, we shall
find them, together with the renovation of the people, in the studies
of the learned, who proclaimed the science, which was the most strange
and most incomprehensible to the country-people, then called
philosophy. After the teaching of Leibnitz and Wolff had found scholars
in a larger circle of the learned, there was a sudden change in the
views held about the peasant and his state. Everywhere began a more
human conception of earthly things, the struggle against the orthodox
errors. We find, again, in the scholars and proclaimers of the new
philosophy, somewhat of the zeal of an apostle to teach, to improve,
and to free. Soon after 1700 a hearty interest in the life of the
peasant appears again in the small literature. The soundness of his
calling, the utility and blessings of his labour, were extolled, and
his good qualities carefully sought out; his old songs, in which a
manly self-consciousness finds graceful expression, and which had once
been polished by the single-minded theologians of the sixteenth
century, were again spread in cheap publications. In these the poor
countryman modestly boasts that agriculture was founded by Adam; he
rejoices in "his falconry"; the larks in the field, the swallows in the
straw of his roof, and the cocks in the farm-yard; and amidst his hard
labour again seeks comfort in the "heavenly husbandman, Jesus."[34]
On the other hand, there was even help in the severity of a despotic
State. The oppressed peasant gave, through his sons, to the ruler the
greater part of his soldiers, and, through his taxes, the means of
keeping up the new State. By degrees it was discovered that such
material ought to be taken care of. About 1700 this may everywhere be
perceived in the provincial laws. The Imperial Court, also, was
influenced in its way by this awakening philanthropy. In 1704 it even
gave a grand privilege to the shepherds, wherein it declared them and
their lads honourable, and graciously advised the German nation to give
up the prejudice against this useful class of men, and no longer to
exclude their children from being artisans, on account of magic and
plying the knacker's trade. A few years afterwards it gave armorial
bearings; it also granted them the rights of a corporate body, with
seal, chest, and banner, on which a pious picture was painted.[35] More
stringent was the interference of the Hohenzollerns, who were
themselves, during four generations, the princely colonists of Eastern
Germany. Frederick II. made the most fundamental reforms in the
conquered provinces; many examples are cited of the blessings resulting
from them. When he took possession of Silesia, the village huts were
block-houses, formed from the stems of trees, and roofed with straw or
shingles, without brick chimneys; the baking ovens, joined on to the
houses, exposed them to the danger of fires; the husbandry was in a
pitiful plight; great commons and pastures covered with mole-hills and
thistles, small weak horses, and lean cows; and the landed proprietors
were for the most part harsh despots, against whom the clumsy Imperial
and magisterial administration could scarcely enforce any law. The King
carried on three severe wars in Silesia, during which his own soldiers,
the Austrians, and the Russians, consumed and ravaged the province.
Yet, only a few years after the Seven Years' War, 250 new villages and
2000 new cottages were erected, and frequently stone houses and tiled
roofs were to be seen. All the wooden chimneys and all the clay ovens
had been pulled down by the conqueror, and the people were compelled to
build anew; horses were brought from Prussia, and the sheep shorn once
in the year; peat cutters from Westphalia, and silkworm-breeders from
France, were introduced into the country. Oaks and mulberries were
planted, and premiums were given for the laying out of vineyards. At
his command the new potato was introduced; at the beginning of the
Seven Years' War, by the celebrated patent of the Minister of Justice,
von Carmer, commons and general pastures were abolished, and divided
among separate holders. With far-sighted forethought, a state of things
was introduced which has only recently been carried out. The
inheritance of property, also, was secured by law to the villeins. The
peasant obtained the right of complaint to the royal government, and
this right became for him a quick and vigorous law, for, however much
the King favoured the nobility when it was serviceable to the State,
yet he was constantly occupied, together with his officials, in
elevating the mass of tax-payers. The most insignificant might present
his petition, and the whole people knew, from numerous examples, that
the King read them. Many of this great Prince's attempts at
civilization did not succeed; but on all sides the pressure of a system
was felt which so assiduously raised the strength of the people, in
order to utilise them to the utmost in the State. Nowhere is the work
of this mighty ruler so thankfully acknowledged by contemporaries as by
the peasantry of the conquered province. When, on his numerous journeys
through Silesia, the country-people thronged round his carriage with
respectful awe, every look, every fleeting word that he addressed to a
village magistrate was treasured as a dear remembrance, handed down
carefully from generation to generation, and still lives in all hearts.
Ever greater became the sympathy of the literary classes. It is true
that poetry and art did not yet find in the life of the peasant,
material which could foster a creative spirit. When Goethe wrote
"Hermann and Dorothea," it was a new discovery for the nation that the
petty citizen was worthy of artistic notice; it was long, however,
before any one ventured lower among the people; but the honourable
philanthropists, the popular promulgators of enlightenment in the
burgher classes, preached and wrote with hearty zeal upon the singular,
uncouth, and yet numerous fellow-creature, the peasant, whose character
frequently only appeared to consist of an aggregate of unamiable
qualities, but who, nevertheless, was undeniably the indispensable
foundation of the other classes of human society.
One of the most influential writings of this kind was by Christian
Garve, "Upon the Character of the Peasants, Breslau, 1786," taken from
lectures given shortly before the outbreak of the French revolution.
The author was a clear-sighted, upright man, who was anxious for the
public weal, and was listened to with respect throughout the whole of
Germany, whenever he spoke upon social questions. His little book has a
thoroughly philanthropic tendency; the life of the peasant was
accurately known by him as it was by many others who were then occupied
with the improvement of the country people. The propositions which he
makes for the elevation of the class are sensible, but unsatisfactory;
as indeed are almost all theories with respect to social evils. Yet,
when we scan the contents of this well-meaning book, we are seized with
alarm; not at what he relates concerning the oppression of the peasant,
but at the way in which he himself seems necessitated to speak of
two-thirds of the German people. They are strangers to him and his
contemporaries: it is something new and attractive to their
philanthropy to realize the condition of these peculiar men. There is
an especial charm to a conscientious and feeling mind in ascertaining
clearly, what is the exact nature and cause of the stupidity,
coarseness, and evil qualities of the country people. The author even
compares their position with that of the Jews; he discusses their
condition of mind much in the same way that our philanthropists do
those of gaol prisoners; he sincerely wishes that the light of humanity
may fall on their huts; he compares their sloth and indolence with the
energetic working power which, as was even then known, the colonists
developed in the ancient woods of the new world. He gives this
well-meaning explanation of the contrast, that in our old and as it
were already becoming antiquated state, the many work for the one, and
a multitude of the industrious go without remuneration, therefore zeal
and desire are extinguished in a great portion of them. Almost all that
he says is true and right, but this calm kindliness, with which
enlightened men of the period of Immanuel Kant and the poetic court of
Weimar regarded the people, was unaccompanied by the slightest
suspicion, that the pith of the German national strength must be sought
in this despised and ruined class; that the condition of things under
which he himself, the author, lived, was hollow, barbarous, and
insecure; that the governments of his time possessed no guarantee of
stability, and that a political state--the great source of every manly
feeling, and of the noble consciousness of independence--was
impossible, even for the educated, so long as the peasant lived as a
beast of burden; and little did he think that all these convictions
would be forced upon the very next generation, after bitter sufferings
in a hard school, by the conquest of an external enemy. His work,
therefore, deserves well to be remembered by the present generation.
The following pages depict not only the condition of the peasantry, but
the literary class. Garve speaks as follows:--
"One circumstance has great influence on the character of the
peasantry: they hang much together. They live far more sociably one
with another than do the common burghers in the cities. They see each
other every day at their farm work; in the summer in the fields, in the
winter in the barns and spinning-rooms. They associate like soldiers,
and thus get an _esprit de corps_; many results arise from this: first,
they become polished after their fashion, and more acute through this
association. They are more fit for intercourse with their equals; and
they have better notions than the common artisan of many of the
relations of social life; that is to say, of all those which occur in
their class and in their own mode of life. This constant intercourse,
this continual companionship, is with them, as with soldiers, what
lightens their condition. It is a happy thing to hare much and constant
companionship with others, if they are your equals; it gives rise to an
intimate acquaintance and a reciprocal confidence, at least in outward
appearance, without which no intercourse can be agreeable. The noble
enjoys this advantage; he associates for the most part only with his
equals, being separated by his pride from those below him, and he and
his equals live much together, as leisure and wealth enable him to do
so. The peasant enjoys singular advantages from opposite reasons. His
insignificance is so great that it prevents his having the wish, still
more the opportunity, of associating with those above him; he hardly
ever sees anything but peasants, and his servitude and his work bring
him frequently in companionship with these his equals.
"But this very circumstance causes the peasants to act in a body; thus
the inconveniences of a democratic constitution are introduced, so that
a single unquiet head from their own body exercises great power over
them, and often influences the whole community. It is, moreover, the
reason why persons of another class have so little influence over them,
and can only sway them by authority and compulsion. They seldom see or
hear the judgments, conceptions, and examples of the higher orders, and
only for a brief space.
"I have long studied the special signification of the word _tueckisch_,
which I have never heard so frequently as when the talk has been of
peasants. It denotes, without doubt, a mixture of childish character,
of simplicity, and weakness, with spite and cunning.
"Every one, without doubt, remembers having seen faces of peasant boys,
in which one or both eyes leer out, as if by stealth, from under the
half-closed eyelids, with the mouth open and drawn into a jeering yet
somewhat vacant laugh, with the head bent down, as if they would
conceal themselves; in a word, faces which depict a mixture of fear,
shamefacedness, and simplicity, with derision and aversion. Such boys,
when one speaks to or requires anything of them, stand dumb and
motionless as a log; they answer no questions put to them by the
passersby, and their muscles seem stiff and immovable. But as soon as
the stranger is a little way off, they run to their comrades, and burst
out laughing.
"The low condition of the peasant, his servitude, and his poverty
produce in him a certain fear of the higher orders; his rearing and
mode of life make him on the one hand unyielding and insolent, and on
the other, in many respects, simple and ignorant; the frequent
antagonism of his own will and advantage, to the will and the commands
of those above him, implants in his mind the germs of animosity. Thus,
if the failings of his class are not counteracted by his personal
qualities, he becomes such as the boy described, especially in his
demeanour to his superiors. It is these superiors and lords of the
peasants who are to blame for his _tueckischen_ character. He will use
dissimulation in place of open resistance; he will be humble and
yielding, nay, even appear devoted in their presence; but when he
thinks he can act secretly, he will do everything against their will
and interest. He will think of tricks and intrigues, which,
nevertheless, are not so finely woven but that they may be easily seen
through.
"One may discover two main differences, both in the fate and the
character of the peasantry. He who is entirely under subjection, who
sighs under the yoke of a complete slavery, will, under usual
circumstances, submit to everything with apathy, without attempting the
least resistance, and even without a wish to lighten his own lot; he
will throw himself at the feet of any one who will tread on him. But if
he is roused from this torpor by special circumstances, by agitators,
by a cunning and bold leader, then he will become like a raging tiger,
and will lose at once, with the humility of the slave, all the feelings
of humanity.
"The half-serf who has property, and enjoys the protection of the laws,
but under more or less burdensome conditions, is bound to the glebe,
and at the same time to the service of the proprietor, to whose
jurisdiction he is amenable; this peasant does not usually bear his
burdens without wincing. There is no fear that he will endeavour to
throw them off his neck by open violence as a rebel; but he will carry
on a continual secret war with his master. To diminish his profit, and
to increase his own, is a wish that he has always at heart, and an
object which covertly, and as often as is practicable, he endeavours to
pursue. He practises crafty and small thefts on the property of his
master, and does not consider them so disgraceful as if he did the same
by his equal. He is not the entirely humble slave, nor yet the dreaded
enemy of his master, but he is not an obedient dependent, from free
will and a good heart; he is that which probably has been intended to
be expressed in some sort by the word _tueckisch_.
"One may add, as an ingredient or as a consequence of the
'_tueckischen_' nature, a certain amount of stubbornness which
distinguishes the peasant when his mind is agitated, or when a
prejudice is once rooted in him. His soul in this case appears to
become stiff, like his body and his limbs. He is then deaf to all
representations, however obvious they may be, or however capable he
might be, in an impartial state of mind, of seeing their justice. The
lawyers employed in the lawsuits of peasants will sometimes have known
such individuals, in whom it is doubtful whether the obstinacy with
which they cling to an obviously absurd idea, arises from their
blindness or from determined malice. Sometimes whole communities become
thus addle-headed. They then resemble certain crazy people, who, as it
is expressed, have a fixed idea, that is, a conception which their mind
takes up incessantly or returns to on the slightest occasion, and
which, however false it may be, can neither be removed by the evidence
of the senses nor by the representations of reason, because it is not
really in the mind, but has its foundation in the tenor of their
organization."
Thus speaks Christian Garve. His final counsel was: "Better village
schools." Some among the landed proprietors acted with a similar
philanthropic feeling. We would gladly say that their number was great;
but the frequent complaints to the contrary, and the zeal with which
benevolent commentators bring forward individual examples--like one
Rochow, of Rekahn, who established village schools at his own
cost--justify the conclusion that such benevolence would have been less
striking had it been more frequent. In fact it required individuals to
be very prudent in showing their good feeling for the peasants in
deeds, as it was often observed that they gave their service far more
willingly to strict nobles than to citizen proprietors; and that when
these, with a warmer feeling for the peasant, wished to show him
kindness, their goodwill sometimes met with a bad return. Thus a
citizen proprietor, taking possession of his property, gave each of his
peasants a present in money, and showed consideration for them in many
ways; the not unnatural consequence was, that they renounced all
service to him, and broke out into open resistance.
Whilst the German philanthropists were anxiously thinking and writing
for the countryman, a storm was already brewing on the other side of
the Rhine which in a few years was to destroy in Germany also, the
servitude of the peasants, together with the old form of government.
About 1790 the peasants began to occupy themselves eagerly with
politics. The schoolmaster read and explained the newspapers to them;
the hearers sat motionless, amidst thick tobacco smoke, all ears. In
Electoral Saxony some already made use of the new circulating library
in the neighbouring city.[36] In the Palatinate, and in the Upper
Rhine, the country people became disturbed, and refused service. In the
same year, in the richest part of Electoral Saxony, in the Lommatzscher
district, and on the property of the Graf von Schoenburg, a peasant
revolt once more broke out. Once more did the insurgents seize the
weapon of the slave, the wooden club with iron hoops. The peasants, by
a deputation, renounced all villein service to the landholders; they
sent to the neighbouring communities; from village to village hastened
the secret messengers; the magistrates, in the service of noblemen,
were expelled or beaten with sticks; the quiet parishes were threatened
with fire and sword; in every village saddled horses were standing to
send information to the neighbours of the march of the military. There
were the same secret conspiracy, the same outbreak, spreading with the
speed of lightning, the same union of measureless hate, with a natural
feeling of their rights, as in the peasant war of the sixteenth
century. Reciprocal agreements were laid before the landed proprietors,
which most of them subscribed amicably; and severe nobles were
threatened with the worst. Their demands quickly increased; soon they
required, not only exemption from tenths and soccage service, but also
the reimbursement of fines that had been paid. The peasants collected
in troops of more than a thousand men; they threatened the town of
Meissen, and attacked small detachments. But they never withstood
larger divisions of military. The most daring bands threw their caps
and clubs away, as soon as the cavalry were ordered to charge through
them. One of the chief leaders, a stubborn, daring old man of seventy
years of age, while still in chains, complained of the faintheartedness
of his bands. The movement was suppressed without much bloodshed. It
was characteristic of the time, that the landowners, from fear, did
everything in their power to bring about a mutual forgiveness and
forgetfulness, and that the condemned, during their penal labour, were
separated from other criminals and treated with leniency; they were
also excused the prison dress. From records of that period it may
clearly be seen how general was the feeling among the higher
magistrates, that the position of the peasant did not come up to the
requirements of the times.
Two years later, also, the German peasants in the Palatinate and in the
Electorate of Mainz danced round the red cap on the tree of freedom.
Incessantly did French influence overspread Germany. The State of the
Great Frederick was shattered; Germany became French up to the Elbe. In
the new French possessions, villeinage and servitude were abolished,
with a haste and recklessness which was intended to win the people to
the new dominion. The Princes of the Rhine Confederation followed this
example, with greater consideration for those whom they patronised; but
still under the strong influence of French ideas. In Prussia the
Governments and people saw, with alarm, how insecure was the
constitution of a State which employed so much the bodies and working
powers of the peasants, and took so little account of their souls. In
the year 1807 the great change in the relations of the country people
began in Prussia; the definition of the rights of the landowners and
peasants has lasted there, with many fluctuations and interruptions,
for half a century, and has not yet arrived at a full conclusion.
At this period the position of the countryman throughout Germany has so
improved, that no other progress of civilization can be compared to it.
The villein of the landowner has--with the exception of Mecklenburg,
where the condition of the middle ages still exists--become the free
citizen of his State; the law protects and punishes him and the
landowner alike; he sends representatives, not of his class only, but
of the nation, in union with the other classes of voters, to the
capital; he has legally ceased everywhere to be a separate order in the
State--in many provinces he has laid aside, with his present dress, his
old frowardness; he begins to dress himself _a la mode_, and--sometimes
in a clumsy, unpleasing form--to take his share in the inventions and
enjoyments of modern civilization. But, however great these changes may
be, they are not yet great enough generally, in Germany, to give the
countryman that position which, as a member of the State, a citizen,
and an agriculturist, he must attain, if the life of the people is to
give an impression in all respects of perfect soundness and power. His
interest in, and comprehension of, that highest earthly concern of
man--the State--is much too little developed; his craving for
instruction and cultivation, considered on the whole, is too small; and
in the larger portion of the Fatherland his soul is still encumbered by
some of the qualities which are nurtured by long oppression, hard
egotism, distrust of men differently moulded, litigiousness,
awkwardness, and a deficient understanding of his rights and position
as a citizen. The minds which have shaken off the old spell are still
in the form of transition which gives them a specially unfinished and
unpleasing aspect.
The agriculture of the German peasantry may still be considered as not
having, on the whole, reached that point which is necessary for an
energetic development of our national strength; nevertheless, we have
reason to rejoice in having made great progress in this direction.
Intellect is everywhere incessantly occupied in introducing to the
simple countryman new discoveries--machines, seeds, and a new method of
cultivation. In some favoured districts the agriculture of the small
farmer can scarcely be distinguished from the well-studied system of
the larger model farms. Nor has the German peasant, in the times of the
deepest depression, like the oppressed Slavonian, ever lost the
instinct of self-acquisition. For the very qualities which are his
characteristics, enduring systematic industry and strict parsimony, are
the groundwork of the highest earthly prosperity. There still subsists,
however, in wide districts, the old thraldom of the three-course system
with rights of common, and all the pressure which this system entails
on individuals. Even well-tested improvements are therefore difficult
to the countryman; because, with all his perseverance, he is yet
wanting in enterprising activity, and because the great scantiness of
his youthful instruction and technical education makes it difficult for
him to comprehend anything new. Thus the development of the German
peasant to greater inward freedom and capacity is steady, but slow. The
noble landed proprietor also, from entirely different reasons,
frequently neglects to raise the culture of the soil by energy,
technical knowledge, and the utmost exertion of his power; and, in like
manner, we find in other branches of production--in manufactures,
trade, commerce, and political life--a corresponding slowness of
progress. It places us still at a disadvantage in comparison with the
better-situated countries of Europe. For the position of Germany among
the States of Europe is such, that all other progress depends on the
development of its own agriculture, that is, on the degree of
intelligence and productive power which is perceptible in this primeval
manly occupation. We have no command of the sea; we have no colonies,
and no subjected countries, to which we can export the produce of our
industry. If this circumstance is perhaps a surety for our stability,
on the other hand it raises the vital importance which the German
countryman and the system of his agriculture exercise on the other
classes of the German people.
If therefore it is allowable to compare two very different phases of
human development, one may well say that the peasant of 1861 has not
yet gained, comparatively with the other classes of the people, the
independence and the conscious power which existed six centuries ago in
the provinces of Reithart von Reuenthal and Farmer Helmbrecht. And
whoever would teach us from the life of the past, how it has happened
that the strength of the nation has passed from the rural districts
into cities, and that the nobleman has raised himself so much above his
neighbour the peasant, must beware of asserting, that this depression
of the country-people is the natural consequence of the establishment
of a higher culture and more artistic forms of life by the side of the
simple agriculture of the lower class. He who follows his plough will
seldom be a member of a company which extend their speculations to the
distant corners of the earth; he will not read Homer in the original,
he will hardly read the work of a German philosopher upon logic, and
the easy intercourse of a modern _salon_ will scarcely be enlivened by
his wit. But the results of the collective culture, of that which the
learned find, which the artist forms, which manufacturers create, must,
at a period when the nation is vigorous and sound, when accessible to
the simple countryman of sound judgment, be comprehended and valued by
him.
Is it necessary that our neighbour the countryman should so seldom read
a good book, and still less often buy one? Is it necessary that he
should, as a rule, take in no other newspaper than the small sheet of
his own district? Is it necessary that it should be unknown to him, and
unfortunately sometimes also to his schoolmaster, how an angle is
determined, a parallelogram measured, and an ellipse drawn? Whoever
would now place a poem of Goethe's in the hand of a peasant woman,
would probably do a useless thing, and raise a dignified smile in a
"well-educated spectator." Must all that we possess of most beautiful
be incomprehensible to half our nation? Six hundred years ago, the poem
of Farmer Helmbrecht was understood in the village parlour, and the
charm of his sonorous verse, the poetry and the warm eloquence of his
language, were appreciated; and the rhythm and measure of those old
songs that accompanied the dances of the thirteenth century are just as
elegant and artistic as the finest verses now in the poems of the
greatest modern poets. There was a time when the German peasant had the
same lively susceptibility for noble poetry which we now assume as the
privilege of the highly educated. Is it necessary that the peasant of
the present day should be deficient in it? The Bohemian village
musician still plays with heartfelt delight the harmonious tones
produced by the genius of Haydn and Mozart; is it necessary that few
other musical sounds should be permitted to the German peasant than the
stale measures of spiritless dances? All this is not necessary;
something of the same barbarism benumbs our life which we perceive with
astonishment in the time of Christian Garve.
What, however, we consider at first as one of the still remaining
weaknesses of the peasants, is also the characteristic weakness of our
whole culture, which has become too artificial, because it has bloomed
in comparatively small and isolated circles of society, without the
regulation and ever-increasing invigoration which the collective
popular mind would have afforded it by cordial reciprocity and warm
sympathy. The peasant's having for so many centuries been a stranger to
social culture has, in the first place, made him weak, and also made
the culture of the other classes too unstable, over-refined, and
sometimes unmanly and impracticable.
CHAPTER II.
THE LIFE OF THE LOWER NOBILITY.
(1500-1800.)
The lot of the German peasant and of the German noble are closely bound
together; the sufferings of the one become the disease of the other:
the one has been lowered by servitude; the capacity, cultivation, and
worth of the other to the State have been impaired by the privileges of
a favoured position. Now both appear to be convalescent.
The lower German noble, before the beginning of the Thirty Years' War,
was experiencing an important transition; he was about to forget the
traditions of the middle ages, and on the point of gaining a new
importance at court. The predatory Junkers of the saddle had become
quarrelsome, drink-loving landed proprietors.
At the end of the sixteenth century it was still difficult for the sons
of the old robber associates to keep the peace. Whilst they were
fighting with the pen, and intriguing at the Kammergericht,[37] they
were frequently tempted to take forcible revenge; not only the
turbulent knights of the Empire in Franconia, Suabia, and on the Rhine,
but also the vassals of the powerful princes of the Empire who were
under the strong law of the land. Even where they were in the exercise
of their rights, they preferred doing it by violence, from pride in
their own power. Thus George Behr, of Duevelsdorf, in Pomerania, shortly
before the storm of the Thirty Years' War broke upon his province,
hired an armed band in order to obtain club law in a private quarrel;
he also claimed supreme jurisdiction on his property, in 1628 he caused
a former secretary of his family who had forged the seal of his master
and drawn a false bond, to be hung on a gallows without any further
ado, and at his leisure gave a laconic account of it to his duke.[38]
Much of the old roistering remained in the daily life of the country
noblemen; they were still prone, as once in the middle ages, to excite
quarrels in the inns and under the village lindens. The young wore
embroidered clothes with concealed weapons, an iron ring in the hat,
and low morions; besides this, very long rapiers and stilettoes, and in
the eastern frontier countries, also Hungarian axes. Thus they went in
crowds to the popular festivals and marriages, especially when these
took place in the households of the hated citizens. There they began
quarrels with the populace and invited guests; they behaved with
offensive petulance, and sometimes committed grievous outrages; they
burst open the doors of the houses, broke into the women's rooms when
they had gone to rest, and into the cellars of the householders. It was
not always easy to obtain justice against the offenders, but in some
provinces the complaints were so loud and general that, as for example
in the Imperial hereditary lands, numerous ordinances appeared
enforcing the duty of giving information of such villanies. Those most
complained of were the rovers who settled here and there in the
country. They were, in the worst cases, compelled to serve at their own
cost against the hereditary enemy,[39] so difficult is it to eradicate
old evil habits. The quarrels also of the country nobles among
themselves were endless. In vain were they denounced by the ordinances
of the rulers, in vain did they declare that it was not necessary for
the person challenged to come forward.[40] The language of the Junker
was rich in strong expressions, and custom had stamped some of these as
unpardonable offences. At this period, after the termination of
tournaments, armorial bearings and ancestors became of great
importance; marriages with ladies not of noble birth became less
frequent; they were eager to blazon coats of arms and genealogies, and
endeavoured to show a pure descent through many generations of
ancestors, in which there was frequently great difficulty, not only
from the want of church books and records, but from other causes.
Whoever endeavoured, therefore, to force a quarrel with another, found
fault with his pedigree, his knightly position, name, and armorial
bearings, and questioned his four descents. Such an offence could only
be appeased by blood. To diminish these brawls, shortly before the
Thirty Years' War, courts of honour were here and there introduced. The
ruler of the country or feudal lord was president; the assessors,
noblemen of distinction, formed the court of honour. The parties chose
three companions, through whom letters of challenge and apologies were
transmitted; and in order to make these subtle formalities easy to
those who had little practice in writing, a form was accurately
prescribed for such letters of summons.
Whilst thus the poorer nobles of the country struggled at home against
the new _regime_, the more enterprising were led by the old German love
of travelling into foreign parts. The noble youths willingly followed
the drum, and even before 1618 it was a frequent complaint that the
Junkers of the nobility had everywhere promotion in the army, whilst it
was difficult for a man of worth and capacity, from the people, to rise
from the ranks. Even before 1618 the heirs of rich families of
pretension, travelled to France, there to learn the language and the
art of war, and to cultivate their minds. Not only in Paris, but in
other great cities of France, they congregated in such numbers, as do
now the idle Russians and English; they only too often endeavoured to
resemble the French in immorality and duels, and were even then
notorious as awkward imitators of foreign customs. Even before 1618
most of the western German courts were so devoted to French manners,
that French was considered the elegant language for conversation and
writing. Thus it was in the court of Frederick the Palatine, the winter
king of Bohemia.
The cleverest of the nobility, however, sought for fine manners,
pleasures, and office in the courts of the numerous German princes.
After the abdication of Charles V. a jovial life prevailed not only at
the Imperial court, but also in those of the greater princes of the
Empire, above all in Electoral Saxony, Bavaria, Wuertemberg, and the
Palatinate. Besides great hunting parties and drinking bouts, there
were also great court festivals; masquerades, knightly exercises, and
prize-shooting had become the fashion, especially at coronations,
marriages, christenings, and visits of ceremony. The old tournaments
were sham fights, fine scenic representations, in which the costume and
the dramatic show were of more importance than the passage of arms
itself. As early as 1570 they were arranged according to the Spanish
custom, when the new fashion of running at the ring was introduced.
Great stages, with mythological and allegorical figures, were drawn in
procession on these occasions. The contending parties appeared in
wonderful attire; they strove together for prizes, as challengers and
knight-errants--_manuten adoren_ and _avantureros_--or married men
against bachelors, man against man and troop against troop, not
only on horse but on foot But the weapons were blunt, the spears so
prepared that they must break at the weakest shock, and the number
of thrusts and passes which one could make against another was
accurately prescribed. The whole was announced to the spectators by a
cartel--written invitation or challenge: it was printed and posted up,
and explained to the public. Some of these specimens of the composition
of educated people of the court have been preserved to us; for example,
a cartel of 1570, when the Emperor Maximilian II. had assembled a large
circle of nobles around him, in which a necromancer, Zirfeo, announced
that he knew of three worthy heroes enchanted in a mountain,--King
Arthur and his companions, Sigestab the Strong, and Ameylot the
Happy,--whom he would disenchant, and arouse to a struggle against
adventurers. At the festival itself a great wooden structure was
presented to view, which represented a rock with an infernal opening,
ravens flew out of it, devils danced busily round its summit, and
scattered fire about them; at last the magician himself appeared, made
his incantations, the hill opened, the knights sprang up into daylight
in ancient armour, and awaited the foreign combatants, who in equally
strange costume encountered them. Even before 1600, gala days,
including pastoral _fetes_, were announced with a flourish by similar
cartels, sometimes in verse, as, after the great war, were the common
village weddings and fairs. These were especially welcome to the
authorities and nobles, because in them etiquette was suspended, and
many opportunities given for free pleasantry and confidential
familiarity.
In some courts, as at that of the Anhaltiners, the Landgrave of Hesse,
and the Duke Philip of Pomerania, the nobles had opportunities of
turning their attention to education, and the acquisition of knowledge;
at these courts they began already to take pleasure in the possession
of objects of art. The Emperor Rudolph collected the pictures of Albert
Duerer, and the princes and some of the wealthy nobles around them
collected rare coins, weapons, drinking-cups, and the works of the
goldsmiths of Nueremberg and the cabinet makers of Augsburg. The
patricians of the great Imperial cities, superior in education to the
court nobility, as political agents and managers of the Imperial
princes, were the purveyors of these novelties of art to the German
courts and their cavaliers. It was not an unheard-of thing to find a
courtier who avoided long drinking bouts, and knew how to value a
conversation upon the course of the world; nay, could even compose a
Latin distich, and leave to his heirs a collection of books; and it was
even considered honourable among the better sort to concern themselves
about their households, and to increase, as far as possible, the
revenues of their property.
On the whole, the importance of the nobility at court had increased
even before the war, as well as the oppression which they exercised
over their dependent country-people; yet, in an equal degree--nay,
indeed, beyond them--the free strength of the nation irresistibly
developed itself. The new culture of the Reformation period, introduced
by burgher theologians and professors, brought into contempt the
coarseness of the country Junkers. The business affairs of the princes
and their territories, the places in the _Kammergericht_, the _Spruch
Collegien_, or (consultative legal boards) of the Universities; indeed
almost the whole administration of justice and government ceased to be
in the hands of the nobles; the greatest opulence and comfort were
introduced into the cities by trade and commerce. Thus, up to the year
1618, the nation was in a fair way to overcome the egotistical
Junkerdom of the Middle Ages, and of putting down pretensions which had
become incompatible with the new life.
It was one of the ruinous consequences of the great war, that all this
was changed. It broke the strength of the burgher class, and the
weakness of the nobility was fostered, under the protection which was
secured to it in most of the provinces by the new military discipline
of the princes and, above all, of the Imperial court, to the prejudice
of the masses. As the income of the landed proprietor was diminished,
he drew his chief advantage from the labour of the working peasant. The
families of the country nobility being decimated, the Imperial court
was very ready to procure a new nobility for money. In the course of
the war the captain or colonel had willingly bought with his booty a
letter of nobility and some devastated property. After the peace, these
nobles by patent became a hateful extension of the order. A childish
offensive tuft-hunting, a worship of rank, servility and a greed for
titles and outward distinctions, were now general in the cities. The
commercial cities on the North Sea were those that suffered least, and
those countries most which were immediately dependent on the Imperial
court. It was customary then in Vienna to accost as noblemen all those
who appeared to have a right to social pretensions.
Among the mass of privileged persons who now considered themselves as a
peculiar ruling class, in contradistinction to the people, there was
undoubtedly the greatest difference in culture and capacity; but no
injustice is done to many honourable, and some distinguished men, when
the fact is brought forward, that the period from 1650 to 1750, in
which the nobility ruled, and were of most importance, was the worst in
the whole of the long history of Germany.
Undoubtedly, in the time of weakness since 1648, a most comfortable
life was led by the wealthy scion of an old family, who possessed large
property, and was protected by old alliances with influential persons
and rulers. His sons gained profitable court appointments, or high
military places; and his daughters, who were well dowered, increased
the circle of his influential "friends." The landed proprietor himself
had served in the army, had travelled to France or Holland, and brought
with him from thence a number of curiosities; arms and painted articles
from the Eastern nations, a hollow ostrich-egg, polished shells,
artistically carved cherry-stones, and painted pottery, or marble limbs
that had been dug up in Italy. He had, perhaps, somewhere favoured a
learned man with his acquaintance, and received from time to time a
ponderous legal treatise, or a volume of poems, with a respectful
letter. He might have visited in his travels the courts of Anhalt or
Weimar, and been created, by letters patent, a poet or author; he was
member of the _Frucht-bringende Gesellschaft_[41] (the Fruit-Producing
Society), had a beautiful medal attached to a silk ribbon, on which his
herb, sage or, mint--or, if he had been sarcastic at court--a radish,
was represented; he bore the surname of "Scarifier," and comforted
himself with the motto--"Sharp and Nutritious;"[42] and he sometimes
wrote letters on the improvement of the German mother tongue,
unfortunately with many French phrases. For his own information he,
with other cavaliers of education, took in, at considerable cost, a
written newspaper, which a well-instructed man in the capital secretly
sent to good customers; for it was revolting to him to read the common,
superficial scribbling of the printed newspapers. He spoke some French,
perhaps also Italian; and if he had been at a University, which did not
frequently happen, he might be able to recite a Latin lucubration. In
this case he was probably commissary of the ruler of the country, a
dignitary of his province; then he had business journeys, and
occasionally negotiations, and he managed, to the best of his power,
what was intrusted to him, with the help of his secretaries. He was
courteous, even to those who were beneath him, and was on good terms
with the citizens. He looked down upon the people with confident
self-complacency; he was, in fact, high bred, and knew right well that
his nobility did not rest on many titles, nor on the knightly ensigns
on his escutcheon; and he smiled at the Lions, Bears, Turks'-heads, and
Wild men, which were painted on the coats of arms, and bestowed by the
heralds' office at Vienna. He regarded with contempt the French
nobility, among whom, through Paris merchants and Italian adventurers,
too much foreign blood had been intermingled; on the Hungarians, who
complacently allowed their nobility to be conferred for a bow and a
chancery fee by the Palatine; on the Danes, whose noblemen had a
monopoly of the cattle trade; and on the Italians, who made unceasing
_mesalliances_. The fine-gentleman airs, also, of the greater part of
his German equals annoyed him: for even at the meeting of his States he
had frequent contentions for precedence, especially with the prince's
councillors, who were not of the nobility, but wished to assert the
privileges of their rank. If there were citizens and noble councillors
in the same board, to these in the sittings, a higher position and
seniority in office, gave the priority; but at banquets and all
representations, according to Imperial decision, the nobleman, as he
well knew, had the precedence. It was his usual complaint, that the
nobles themselves assumed their titles, armorial bearings, and
dignities, or sought them in foreign countries; also that, whoever had
received the diploma of count or baron from the Imperial chancery,
expected to be called _Reichsgraefliche_ or _Reichsfreiherrliche
Gnaden_, literally Countly or Baronial Grace, and speaks of himself in
the royal plural.[43] The worthy gentleman still retained some of the
traditions of knighthood; a valiant officer was treated by him with
respect, and he valued arms and horses much. The best adornment of the
walls of his well-built house, besides the great family pictures, were
beautiful weapons, pistols, _couteaux-de-chasse_, and every kind of
hunting implement. By the side of the flower-garden, kitchen-garden,
and orchard, lay a riding-ground, where were to be found apparatus for
riding at the ring, or for breaking light wooden lances at the
_faquin_, or _quintin_, a wooden figure. His horses had still Italian
or French names,--Furioso, Bellarina, &c., for as yet the English blood
had not been introduced; they had been bred from Neapolitan and
Hungarian horses. Turkish nags, as now the pony, were much sought
after; thoroughbred horses bore a comparatively higher price than now,
for the long war had shamefully lowered the breed of horses throughout
Europe. His dog-kennel was well furnished, for, besides bulldogs, he
required hounds, pointers, and terriers; to these influential
companions of his life he also gave high sounding names--Favour,
Rumour, &c. It is true, the chase of the higher game was the right of
his sovereign; but the hateful custom of _baiting_ the game had been
long ago introduced into the country from France. Thus he rode eagerly
with his hounds after hares and foxes, or, by invitation, he
accompanied[44] some great lord deer-hunting, and received visits from
some friendly court official, who had the command of some falcons,
which were flown at crows. In October he was not ashamed of going after
larks, and inspecting the sprynges. He began the day decorously, and
ended it with pleasure; he regularly took an aperient, was bled, and
went to church; he held every week his magisterial or justice days.
After the morning greetings with his family, on leisure days he had his
horses exercised; in the harvest week he rode to the fields, and looked
after the reapers and the inspector. A great portion of his time was
passed in visits which he received or made in the neighbourhood. At his
repast, which took place soon after twelve, game played the principal
part; if he had guests, seven or eight dishes were served generally at
the same time. If conversation took a high flight, politics were
cautiously touched upon, matters of faith very unwillingly; many fine
sentences and maxims were still in vogue with people of the world; it
was considered refined to quote writers of antiquity or elegant French
authors without pedantry; the peculiarities of foreign nations, and
also the curiosities of natural history, as known from reading and
observation, were gladly discussed. It was considered good taste to
inquire the opinions of individuals by turns. Such conversation, even
among cavaliers of the highest quality, would appear to us more formal
and pedantic than what we should meet with now in the society of poor
schoolmasters; but even from this conversation, of which some
accidental specimens remain to us, we may discover, in spite of a
narrow point of view and numerous prejudices, the striving of the time
for enlightenment and understanding of the world. Usually, indeed, the
conversation runs on family stories, compliments, doubtful anecdotes,
and coarse jokes. There was much deep drinking, and only the most
refined withdrew from drinking bouts.
Sometimes a social meeting with ladies was arranged in another place,
at an hotel or inn; then each lady provided some dishes, the gentlemen
wine and music. If there was a bath in the neighbourhood, a journey to
it was seldom neglected. Shooting matches were arranged, with appointed
prizes, "the first was, then, an ox or a ram;" the gentlemen shot
either together or with the populace. The dress, also, of the landed
proprietor was splendid; his rank might be recognised from afar, for
the old ordinances respecting dress were still maintained, and a value
was placed upon their wardrobe, both by men and women, which we can now
scarcely comprehend. Before the war no insignificant portion of the
property was vested in velvet and gold embroidery, in rings and jewels;
the greater portion of this was lost, but pleasure in such possessions
remained, and the jewels of the daughter long continued an essential
part of her dowry.
Numerous were the members of the household, amongst whom there were
frequently some original characters. Perhaps, besides the tutor, there
might be an old soldier of the great war, addicted to drinking, who
knew how to relate many stories about Torstenson, or Jean de Worth; he
taught the nobleman's son to fence, and "to play with the Banner."[45]
There seldom failed to be a poor relation of the family, who ruled over
the kennel by the title of "Master of the Chase;" the preserver of
mysterious hunting customs, he knew how to charm the gun, and had
greater acquaintance with the infernal night-hunter than the pastor of
the place thought right; he was considered as a trusty piece of old
household furniture, and would assuredly have sacrificed his life
without hesitation for his cousin; but he did not scruple to procure
more wood for the peasant, with whom he drank at the inn, than was
right; and if the old Junker had his _couteau-de-chasse_ ornamented
with silver, the origin of which was doubtful, the landed proprietor
was obliged to wink at it.[46]
Thus passed the life of a wealthy landowner between 1650 and 1700. It
was perhaps not quite so worthy as it might have been, but it may have
transmitted to the next generation family feeling and kindliness of
heart. Yet it must be observed that it was only a very small minority
of the German nobility who were in so favoured a position in the
seventeenth century.
Those who wished to make their fortunes in foreign lands far from their
families, were threatened with other dangers, from which only the most
energetic could escape. The wars in Hungary and Poland, the shameful
struggle against France, and a long residence in Paris, were not
calculated to preserve good morals. The vices of the East, and of the
corrupt court of France were brought by them into Germany. The old love
of quarrelling was not improved by the new cavalier cartel, the
profligate intercourse with peasant women and noble ladies of easy
virtue, became worse by the nightly orgies of fashionable cavaliers, at
which they represented festive processions with mythological
characters, and draped themselves as Dryads, and their ladies as
Venuses and nymphs.[47] The old Landsknecht game of dice was not worse
than the new game of hazard, which became prevalent at the baths and
courts, and which foreign adventurers now added to those of the
country.
But there are two more classes of nobles of that period who appear to
us still more strange and grotesque, both numerous, and both in strong
contrast to one another. They were designated as city nobles and
country nobles, and expressed their mutual antipathy by the use of the
ignominious terms _Pfeffersaecke_ and _Krippenreiter_.[48]
Vain and restless citizens strove to exalt themselves by acquiring the
Emperor's patent of nobility. These patents had of old been a favourite
source of income to needy German emperors. Wenzel and Sigismund had
unsparingly ennobled traders and persons of equivocal character: in
short, every one who was ready to pay a certain amount of florins. On
the other hand, in 1416, at the Council of Constance, the princes and
nobles of the Rhine, Saxony, Suabia, and Bavaria, had set up their
backs, made a revision of their own circle, and cashiered the
intruders. But the Emperor's patents did not cease on that account.
Charles V. himself, who sometimes looked down on the German lords with
galling irony, and willingly gave to his chancellor and secretaries the
chance of perquisites, had the sad repute "of audaciously raising, for
a few ducats, every salt-boiler to the order of nobility." Still more
business-like were these proceedings under Ferdinand II. and his
successor. For after the Thirty Years' War, not only the living, but
the bones in the graves of their ancestors were ennobled, nay, the dead
ancestors were even declared worthy of being admitted into noble
foundations and to tournaments. At last, after 1648, this traffic of
the Imperial court was carried on to such an extent that the princes
and states at the breaking up of the Imperial Diet of 1654, and a
hundred years later at the election of Charles VII., protested against
the detriment which accrued to their own rights of sovereignty and
revenues from such a privilege. The newly ennobled in the cities were
therefore not to be exempt from the burdens of citizens, and the
possessor of a property by villein tenure was not to be invested with
the privileges attached to a noble estate. In vain did the Imperial
court threaten those with punishment who would not concede the
purchased privileges to its patents of nobility. Those also who were
declared fit for tournaments and noble benefices, were not on that
account received into any knightly order, or noble endowment, nor in
any old noble provincial unions. The noble benefices generally did not
take patents of nobility, as proofs of noble extraction; it was only
the members of old noble families possessing no such patents who were
admissible into these endowments. It was only exceptionally that these
corporations gave way to a high recommendation. Even the court offices,
those of chamberlain, groom of the bed-chamber, equerry, hunting and
other noble pages, were privileges of the old nobility. The patents of
nobility never forgot to celebrate the virtues and the services
rendered both to the prince and commonwealth by the newly ennobled and
his ancestors; but, as a zealous defender of the old nobility
complains, it was too well-known that, in general, it was only for the
"_Macherlohn_" (pay, for the making) that nobility was given.
In the larger cities, which were not the residence of princes, the
position of the nobility was very different. In Hamburg, Luebeck, and
Bremen, the nobles had no political weight; on the other hand, at
Nueremberg, Frankfort-on-the-Maine, Augsburg, and Ulm, the old race of
nobility lived in proud isolation from the rest of the citizens. Worst
of all were the Nuerembergers, who considered it even degrading to carry
on commerce. Of two noble societies of Frankfort-on-the-Maine, one, the
house of Alten-Limpurg, required of every member who presented himself
for admission, eight ancestors, and that he should keep out of trade;
the other society, of the house of Frauenstein, consisted mostly of
newly-ennobled merchants "of distinction." In Augsburg, the old
patricians were more indulgent to merchants: he who had married the
child of a patrician family, could be received into the noble society.
The remaining commercial cities of note, Prague and Breslau, were most
amply supplied with newly ennobled merchants. There was bitter
complaint that, under the Emperor Leopold, even a chimney-sweeper,
whose trade was then in particularly low esteem, could for a little
money procure nobility, and that frequently tradesmen, with patents of
nobility in their pockets, might be found packing up herrings for their
customers in old paper.
After the Thirty Years' War, officers also sought for patents of
nobility, and they were often granted to them for their services, as
also to the higher officials and members of the city administration in
the larger cities.
It was through families who had taken part in the literary and poetical
culture of the time, that patents of nobility in this and the following
century entered into our literary class. Many poets of the Silesian
school, nay, Leibnitz, Wolf, and Haller, were placed among the
privileged of their time by patents of nobility, which they themselves
or their fathers had acquired.
Wholesale traders were never esteemed in Germany, nor held in that
consideration by the privileged classes of the people, which the great
interest they frequently represented deserved. They had of old been
mistrusted and disliked; this originated, perhaps, in the time when the
astute Romans exchanged, among the simple children of Tuisko, the
foreign silver coin, for the early products of the country. The feudal
system of the Middle Ages required this disregard of wealth, and not
less so Christianity, which commanded men to despise the riches of this
world, and granted to the wealthy so little prospect of the Kingdom of
Heaven. Since the time of the Hohenstaufen, after the nobles were
constituted as a privileged order, the antagonism between the rich
money-makers of the city and the needy warriors of the country, was
more and more strongly developed. In the Hanse Towns of the north
undoubtedly the warlike merchant obtained dominion and respect by his
armed vessels, even in distant countries. But the rich and highly
cultivated gentlemen of Nueremberg and Augsburg, were scarcely less
distasteful to the people than to the princes and nobles who dwelt in
predatory habits on the frontiers of their domain; it was not the
Fuggers alone who were accused by the Reformers of usury and un-German
feeling. After the Thirty Years' War, this enmity bore new fruit, and
one can easily believe that the great merchants gave no little occasion
to keep alive such antipathy. No human occupation requires such free
competition and such unfettered intercourse as trade. But the whole
tendency of the olden time was to fence in from the outer world, and to
protect individuals by privileges; such a tendency of the time could
not fail to make the merchant hard and reckless; his endeavours to
obtain a monopoly, and to evade senseless laws with respect to the
interest of money, gave the people, frequently with justice, the
feeling that the gains of the merchant were produced by the pressure
they exercised on the consumer. This feeling became particularly
vigorous after the Thirty Years' War. Whilst in Holland and in England
the modern middle classes were pre-eminently strengthened by widely
extended commerce, German commerce--except in the larger sea-port
towns--was prevented from attaining a sound development by the
subdivision of territory, the arbitrary dues, the varying standard of
money, and, not least, by the poverty of the people; on the other hand,
there was constant temptation to every kind of usurious traffic. The
diversity of German coinage, and the unscrupulousness of the rulers,
favoured an endless _kipperei_: to buy up good coin at an advantage, to
clip gold of full weight, and to bring light money into circulation,
became the most profitable occupation. As now, multifarious
stockjobbing, so then, illegal traffic in coined metal, was to a great
extent the plague of commercial towns. It was not to be exterminated.
If sometimes the scandal became too great, then indeed the governments
tried a blundering interference: but their courts were hoodwinked.
Thus, in Frankfort-on-the-Maine, the clipping of ducats was carried on
to such an extent, that a special commission was sent from Vienna to
the free Imperial city; Jews had been the _colporteurs_ of Christian
commercial houses, among which many great firms, whose names are still
in existence, were the great culprits. The only result was that the
Imperial commissaries pocketed the larger portion of the illicit gains.
Such wealth, acquired rapidly, and contrary to law, had, as now, all
the characteristics of an unstable acquisition: it seldom lasted to the
third generation. It turned the culprits into spendthrifts and
pleasure-seekers; their arrogance and deficiency of culture, and their
ostentation, became especially offensive to their own fellow-citizens.
It was more particularly such individuals who bought patents of
nobility; and it was assuredly no accident that, of the numerous noble
families of this kind, many in proportion have become extinct.
One of the newly ennobled of such a circle kept his real name in the
firm, but among his fellow-citizens he adhered jealously to the
privileges of his new order. He liked to have his coat of arms carved
in stone and richly gilt on the outside of his large house, but the
stone did not guarantee long duration to its possessor. It was
striking, for example, to observe in Breslau, how quickly the houses on
the great crescent, which then belonged almost exclusively to the new
patent nobles, changed their possessors. In the interior of the house
ostentatious luxury was displayed, which in this period of misery was
doubly grating to the people. The rooms were decorated with costly
carpets, with Venetian mirrors of immense size, with silk hangings and
tapestry, which on festive occasions were fixed on the walls or on a
special framework, and afterwards removed. The women sewed diamond
buckles on their shoes, and it was a subject of complaint that they
would wear no lace that was not brought from Venice or Paris, and did
not cost at least twenty thalers the ell; nay, it was reported of them
that their night utensils were of silver. Great was the number of their
lackeys; their carriages were richly gilt, the coachmen drove from a
high box four horses, which were then harnessed abreast; but when the
splendid equipage rattled through the streets, the people called out
deridingly, "That the pot always tasted of the first soup." The rich
man could well keep fine horses, as he at the same time traded in them;
and the workmen in the business, the porter, carpenter, and apprentice,
were put into the costume of lackeys, but the page who went behind the
lady was generally a child from the poor school. In such houses there
was also the most luxurious living. The invited guest was received with
a formality that was then characteristic of the highly educated; the
host met him on the staircase, and to one of the highest distinction
went even to the house door; verbose were the compliments on receiving
precedence or the higher place at table, and yet the greatest value was
attached to not humbling themselves too much. As soon as they were
seated at table, the buffet was opened, in which was a mass of costly
plate. The dishes were large and the viands in keeping, but out of all
proportion to the number of guests; the most expensive things were
procured, with a refinement that still astonishes us; great pies,
filled with various game, black game, pike liver, and Italian salad.
The pheasants and partridges were caponed and fed, a brace cost as much
as a ducat; it was thought horrible that these spendthrifts gave a
gulden for a fresh herring, and from eight to ten thalers for a hundred
oysters. To these were added the costly wines of the seventeenth
century, Tokay, Canary, Marzenin, Frontignac, Muscat, and finally wine
of Lebanon; at dessert there was no longer marchpane, but candied
citron, the fashionable delicacy. The ladies sat adorned and silent. It
was complained that their principal anxiety in the choice of a husband
was, that their intended should be of rank, that they might follow near
to the corpse at funerals, and have a high place at weddings. On such
occasions they went little short of boxing each other's ears for
precedence. So far was the eagerness for rank carried, that he
considered himself materially better whose new patent of nobility dated
ten years earlier than that of another; and these city nobles
considered fresh creations in nowise their equals. Whoever had been
lately ennobled was only called "Wohledel" (just ennobled), but he who
had for some time been in possession of his patent, was called,
"Hoch-and-edelgeborne Gestrengigkeit" (high and noble-born worship).
Every effort was made to obtain a title in addition to their city
dignity.
The military dignities also of the city were often occupied by the
greenhorns of such families; a poor wight who had never been on a
battle-field, with a staff thickly set with silver, with armed jaeger
behind him, might be seen passing daily from city gate to city gate, in
order to parade before the people, and to receive the salute of the
guard.
Only one thing was required of him, he must know how to handle his
sword, for duels were part of the existence of the nobleman. It was
desirable for him to have been at least once called out by cartel. He
then rode with his second to the nearest village; behind a hedge he
pulled off his riding-boots, put on light fencing shoes, fastened his
long curly hair under his cap,[49] took off his upper garments, and had
to choose one of the rapiers which were presented to him. They fought
in rounds, by cut and thrust, and a well-settled duel never failed to
be followed by a reconciliatory drinking bout. They liked to boast of
such heroic deeds.
Such were the "_Pfeffersaecke_," who were called also by the country
nobles, "_Heringsnasen_" (flatnoses). This country nobility was of
quite another stamp.
They were more numerous two centuries ago than at present. Besides the
family seat, they possessed village-houses, and small farms. Sometimes
a family had increased so much, that in the neighbourhood of an old
estate, many villages were occupied by relatives; and still more
frequently did branches of different families dwell indiscriminately in
a village, in every grade of authority. Even in our century there have
been middle-sized villages, enclosing ten, twelve, and more gentlemen's
seats. In such districts, each little despot exercised dominion over a
few miserable villagers, and had a seigneurial right to a portion of
the village district; but the poorest had no real property, and
sometimes only rented their dwellings. Thus it was in almost all the
provinces of Germany, more especially east of the Elbe, in the
colonised Sclavonian countries; also in Franconia, Thuringia, and
Swabia. Many of the _Junkers_ only differed from the other country
people in their pretensions, and their contempt for field labour. Even
before the war, most of them had been impoverished, and when peace came
at last, they were in still worse plight. War and pestilence had made
havoc among them, and the survivors had not become better. The more
powerful had tried their luck as soldiers and partisans, differing
little sometimes from highway robbers. During the war they had laid
out their booty in the purchase of some small estate, on which they
dwelt, restless and discontented. These fortunate individuals received
frequent visits from old comrades, and then ventured to make raids from
their property on their own account, which seldom ended without
bloodshed. After the war they ceased plundering; but the lawlessness,
the craving for excitement, the restless roving, and the inclination
for wild revelry and quarrels remained in the next generation. They
united themselves into a large company, which, in spite of endless
brawls, continued to hold together, like entangled water-plants on a
marsh. This family connection became a ceaseless plague to the better
disposed, and a misfortune for the whole class; and more than any other
evil retarded, during the following century, the culture, civilisation,
and prosperity of the landed nobility.
The sons of these poor landowners learnt to ride, dance, and fence, and
perhaps the first rudiments of Latin from a poor candidate; then, if
the father had connections, they served as pages at some small court,
or to a distinguished nobleman. There they learnt, to a certain extent,
good manners; and, more certainly, the weaknesses and vices of the
higher orders. If they remained some years in noble service they were,
according to old usage, declared capable of bearing arms, and released
as Junkers with a gracious box on the ear. Then they returned to the
parental estate, or the parents sold what they could spare to procure
them an outfit befitting a gentleman, and sent them as aspirants for
subaltern places in the Imperial army. Few of them prospered in the
inglorious wars of that period; most returned home, after some
campaigns, corrupted and poor both in honour and booty, to share with
their sisters the paternal inheritance. Soon they differed little from
the relations who had remained at home.
These landowners dwelt in buildings of clay and wood, roofed with straw
or shingles,--a sufficient number of casual descriptions and drawings
have been preserved to us; across the roof lay the great fire-ladders;
the front and back doors of the hall were provided with crossbars for
closing them at night. On the ground-floor was the large sitting-room;
near it the spacious kitchen, which was a warm abode for the servants;
next the sitting-room there was a walled vault, with iron gratings to
the window, and if possible with iron doors, as a protection against
thieves and fire,--whatever valuables a landowner possessed were kept
there, and if a sum of money was deposited there, a special watchman
was placed before the house. Above this vault, in the upper floor, was
the bedroom of the master of the house; there was the marriage-bed, and
there also was a concealed safe, either in the wall or floor, wherein
some plate and the jewellery of the women were kept. The children, the
tutor, and the housekeeper slept in small closets, which could not be
warmed, divided by trellis-work. Sometimes a wooden gallery was
attached to the upper floor, the "little pleasure walk;" there the
linen was dried, the farmyard inspected, and the work of the women
done. The house was under the special care of some old trooper, or poor
cousin, who slept within as watcher. Wild dogs roamed about the
farmyard and round the house during the night; these were specially
intended to guard against beggars and vagrants. But all these measures
of precaution could not entirely hinder the inroads of armed bands.
Even a good-sized estate was an unsatisfactory possession. Most of the
landowners were deeply in debt; ruinous lawsuits, which had begun
during the war, were pending over hearth and hill. The farm was carried
on wretchedly under the superintendence of a poor relation or
untrustworthy bailiff; the farm-buildings were bad and falling into
ruins, and there was no money, and frequently no good wood wherewith to
renew them. For the woods had suffered much from the war; where there
was an opportunity of sale, the foreign commanders had caused large
forests to be felled and sold. In the neighbourhood of fortified places
the stems were employed for fortifications, which then required large
quantities of wood; and after the peace much was felled for the
necessary erection of villages and suburbs. The farm also bore little
produce. Not only teams, but hands, were wanting for the tillage; and
the average price of corn, after the war, was so low that the product
hardly paid for the carriage, and in consequence they kept few horses.
New capital was difficult to acquire; money was dear, and mortgages on
the properties of nobles were not considered an advantageous
investment. They, undoubtedly, gave a certain amount of security; but
the interest was too often irregularly payed, and the capital could not
easily be recovered. The acquisition of mortgaged goods, also, by the
creditor, was possible only in certain cases, and by tedious
proceedings; it was sometimes even dangerous, for the friends and
neighbours of the debtor would threaten the new possessor with their
hatred. In the eastern frontier countries the dissatisfied creditors
endeavoured to indemnify themselves by selling their bonds to Polish
nobles. These procured the money by making reprisals on travellers from
the district of the debtor, and taking the sum from the first comers.
This had, indeed, happened before the great war; and repeated
prohibitions show how much commerce suffered from those deeds of
violence.[50] By such evils even a sensible landed proprietor was soon
easily thrown into a desperate position. A bad harvest, or a mortality
among the cattle, would probably ruin him. But the chief evil was that
a great number had not sense enough to occupy themselves perseveringly
with their farming, and to limit their expenses within the certain
income of the property. Thus few were prosperous. Most of them passed
their lives amidst embarrassments, lawsuits, and endless debts; even
those who had entered on the possession of their property with better
hopes, became at last, like the greater number of those of their own
class, members of the great association which the people nicknamed
"Krippenreiter."
These impoverished gentlemen rode in bands from farm to farm; they
invaded the neighbourhood like troublesome parasites whenever a feast
was celebrated, whenever they scented the provisions in the kitchen and
cellar. Woe to the new acquaintance whom they picked up at the houses
of others; they immediately volunteered to accompany him home for a day
or week. Where they had once quartered themselves it was very difficult
to get rid of them. Not select in their intercourse, they drank and
brawled with the peasants at the tavern; when drunk, they would do a
citizen, with a full purse, the honour of receiving him into their
brotherhood. Then kneeling amid broken glasses and flasks, the
brotherhood was sealed, eternal fidelity sworn, and generally, he, was
denounced as the worst scoundrel, who did not preserve unbroken
friendship. Such brotherhood did not, however, prevent a great fight
the very next hour. But, common as they made themselves on these
occasions, they never forgot that they were "wild noblemen of ancient
family." Citizens, and those who had patents of nobility from the
Emperor might, indeed, become brothers. This kind of familiarity was
after the way of the world, but he could not obtain the acknowledgment
of family association conveyed by the terms "uncle" and "cousin;" and
even if allied to them by marriage, he was not admitted to their
relationship unless he were of noble race. Their children went about in
tatters; their wives sometimes collected provisions from relations, and
they themselves trotted over the stubble on shaggy horses, in old
greatcoats, with a bit of carved wood instead of a second pistol in the
old holster. Their usual place of rest was at the village tavern, or,
if they came to a town, in the worst inn. Their language was coarse,
full of stable expressions and oaths. They had adopted many of the
usages of the rogues, both in language and habits; they smelt of
"_finckeljochen_" (a bad kind of spirit) more than was agreeable to
others. They were, indeed, ragamuffins; and, with all their pugnacity,
without real courage. They were considered the pest of the country, and
those who had anything to lose compared them to bluebottle-flies; more
than once sharp decrees[51] were issued against them by the different
rulers, and even from the Imperial court, but they were,
notwithstanding, haughty and thoroughly aristocratic-minded fellows.
Their genealogy, their escutcheons, and their family connection were to
them the highest things upon earth. Unbounded was the hate and contempt
with which they regarded the rich citizens; they were always ready to
begin a quarrel with the newly ennobled, if they did not give them
their full titles, or presumed to bear a coat of arms similar to their
own.
The following account will make us better acquainted with these
fellows, and their mode of intercourse. It carries us to the right bank
of the Oder in Silesia, a corner of Germany where "_Krippenreiterei_"
was particularly bad. There, according to an old popular jest, the
devil burst the sack when he endeavoured to carry off in the air a
number of "_Krippenreiters_," and thus emptied out the whole rubbish on
this district.
The following description is taken from the narrative entitled "The
Nobleman," written a few years before his death, by Paul Winckler, a
Silesian, political agent and councillor at Breslau of the great
Elector; he died 1686. The narrative was first published after his
death in two editions, and finally at Nueremberg, 1697-8. There is no
great skill or invention in it, but it is the more useful here on that
account. Winckler was a well-educated man of the world, and an eminent
jurist, and his numerous travels and alliances, and accurate knowledge
of the condition of the German landed proprietors, made him
particularly capable of forming a sound judgment. He possessed also
qualities which are not rarely found in a Silesian; he knew how to
accommodate himself easily to the world, was a cheerful companion,
impartial in judgment, and a lively narrator. His being a member of the
"_Fruchtbringende_," or literary society, probably contributed to keep
alive his interest in German literature, and encouraged him to modest
attempts at authorship. But he was too sensible a man not to regard
with contempt the purist pedantry with which the associates of his
society endeavoured to raise the German poetry. "They sit behind the
kitchen of Parnassus, and satisfy themselves with the odour of the
roast." He was about fifty when he wrote his narrative, confined to his
room by the gout. His object was to point out by a portraiture, what a
right sort of nobleman ought to be; for it had been his fate,
throughout his whole life, to live in business relations and personal
intercourse with the nobles of different provinces. His wife was a
descendant of the poet Von Logau, and he himself was nephew of Andreas
Gryphius. His own experience undoubtedly gave him a peculiarly sharp
eye for the absurdities of the privileged classes, but he was the true
son of his time, and preserved at heart a deep respect for genuine
nobility. His narrative, therefore, is not by any means a satire,
though it has indeed been called so, and the delineations here imparted
give a peculiar impression of being accurate portraits. That which has
been a hindrance to modern narrators who have a moral tendency, has
indeed been the case with him. He has clearly depicted what the nobles
ought not to be; but his good characters fail in sharp outline and
colouring, nay, they become tedious, because he brings forward their
education and principles in lengthy conversations. His narratives may
be compared with the tale Simplicissimus, but in creative power, fancy,
and fulness of detail the Silesian is incomparably inferior.
Grimmelshausen, however, though possessing greater poetic talent, has
an inclination for the strange and fantastic, which reminds one of the
style of the romance writers, and leaves an impression that what is
there represented is not a thoroughly true picture of the time. From
this defect the Silesian is entirely free; he narrates, in a lively and
frank style, what he has himself seen, not much, nothing particular,
but plainly and precisely.
The events of the narrative are very simple. The Dutch then held in
German society about the same position in the German courts that was
accorded to Englishmen not long ago, the importance of their nation
being almost equal to a letter of nobility. A rich young Dutchman comes
to Breslau, becomes witness of a duel between one of the new nobles and
a country Junker, hears from his landlord a description of country
life, visits the house of an extravagant "_Pfeffersack_," is invited by
a young Herr von K., an acquaintance of former times, to a country
seat, gains thereby much knowledge of the "_Krippenreiters_" from
personal observation, hears an account of an adventure of a Silesian
with an English officer, and passes the rest of the time of his country
visit, in grave but very prosy conversation (in which the author
introduces much of his own views and learning), upon the education of
the soldier, upon the nobles by birth and those risen from trade, upon
the state of politics, and upon the culture of the ancients in
comparison with that of the present day, &c. On his return to Breslau,
the Dutchman learns that the rich merchant who had before invited him
to dinner, had become bankrupt and secretly absconded; his life is then
related, and the hero leaves Breslau. Thus the whole long narrative
contains only five descriptions which would be interesting: two of them
will be given. Some coarse expressions are softened; they are a little
shortened, and the language, only where it appears indispensable,
modernised. First the landlord relates how he studied as the son of a
tailor, then married a wealthy "Kretschmerin" (or landlady), and after
her death, from an unfortunate striving to become great, bought a
patent of nobility in order to settle in the country. He then continues
thus:--
"A not very trusty friend advised me to settle in a part of the country
where certainly the noble estate was at a low price, but of which the
income also was small; another friend, it is true, advised me against
this, and pointed out to me what vexations and crosses I should be
exposed to from the '_Krippenreiters_;' but this did not disturb me, as
I knew I was a match for them with the sword, so I dismissed the useful
warning from my mind. In short, I bought an estate for 6000 thalers,
but soon discovered that I had exposed myself to the lightning, in
avoiding the thunder, and that my good friend with his prophecy had
shot very near the mark. For when I had scarcely half settled myself, a
certain _Junker_, Vogelbach, with a couple of his associates, were the
first to victimise me, as they call it. He lived about half a mile off;
not that he had any property of his own, for he only rented a peasant's
farm worth about 100 Imperial thalers, and spent his life, like others
of the same sort, in '_Krippenreiterei_.' How he maintained his wife
and child I know not, but only that I frequently saw his wife with a
cart and two ragged children on the estate of opulent nobles,
collecting corn, bread, cheese, butter, and the like. They generally
came once a month to beg all such articles of me. This Vogelbach was,
as has been mentioned, the first who, with two of his associates, came
to have a 'housewarming.' The first and second time they behaved
themselves with some degree of discretion, wherefore I put before them
what was best in the house. But this, in their opinion, was abundantly
balanced by the honour of the noble brotherhood into which they had
admitted me, and at last they could no longer refrain from their shabby
tricks. 'It would become you, brother _Kretschmer_,' he began one day
that he had filled himself with beer and brandy up to the eyes. But I
made him remember these words by an unexpected box on the ear in such a
sort that the good fellow was tumbled over into the middle of the room
with his stool. My groom, a robust man who had been a soldier, and whom
I had taken chiefly as a guardian spirit for the like cases of need,
when he saw this, seized the other Junker W. by the collar, so that he
could not stir. 'What,' said he, 'you villain, is it not enough for you
to come here so constantly, to fill your hungry body and to fatten your
meagre carcass? Do you choose to give my master this _Deo gratias_? The
devil take me if one of you stir; I will so trim his Junker jacket,
that there shall be a blue fringe on his bare back for six weeks.' 'We
have nothing to do with these quarrels,' answered the two; 'if brother
Vogelbach has begun one, he will know how to carry it out like a true
cavalier.' The latter had meanwhile picked himself up, and was about to
seize his sword. 'Keep your miserable blood-drawer in its scabbard,' I
said, 'or I will assuredly stick the broken leg of this stool into you
if you are not satisfied yet.' Thereupon he held his tongue, and went
away with a black eye, accompanied by his noble companions. They
mounted their horses and rode out of the gate. But as soon as they
considered themselves safe, then they began to rail; they nicknamed me
a hundred times a trade-fallen ostler. One of them tried to fire his
pistol, but could not succ
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