The Pictures of German Life Throughout History. Gustav Freytag

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 régime, 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, Würtemberg, 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 fêtes, 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 Dürer, and the princes and some of the wealthy nobles around them collected rare coins, weapons, drinking-cups, and the works of the goldsmiths of Nüremberg 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