It was in those same years that a stout young fellow, Conrad by name,
far off in the southern parts of Germany, set out from the old Castle
of Hohenzollern, where he was but junior, and had small outlooks, upon
a very great errand in the world. From Hohenzollern; bound now towards
Gelnhausen, Kaiserslautern, or whatever temporary lodging the great
Kaiser Barbarossa might be known to have, who was a wandering man, his
business lying everywhere over half the world, and needing the master's
eye. Conrad's purpose is to find Barbarossa, and seek fortune under him.
This is a very indisputable event of those same years. The exact
date, the figure, circumstances of it were, most likely, never written
anywhere but on Conrad's own brain, and are now rubbed out forevermore;
but the event itself is certain; and of the highest concernment to this
Narrative. Somewhere about the year 1170, likeliest a few years before
that, [Rentsch, _Brandenburgischer Ceder-Hein_ (Baireuth, 1682), pp.
273-276.--See also Johann Ulrich Pregitzern, _Teutscher Regierungs-und
Ehren-Spiegel, vorbildend &c. des Hauses Hohenzollern_ (Berlin, 1703),
pp. 90-93. A learned and painful Book: by a Tubingen Professor, who
is deeply read in the old Histories, and gives Portraits and other
Engravings of some value.] this Conrad, riding down from Hohenzoliern,
probably with no great stock of luggage about, him,--little dreams of
being connected with Brandenburg on the other side of the world; but IS
unconsciously more so than any other of the then sons of Adam. He is
the lineal ancestor, twentieth in direct ascent, of the little Boy
now sleeping in his cradle at Berlin; let him wait till nineteen
generations, valiantly like Conrad, have done their part, and gone out,
Conrad will find he is come to this! A man's destiny is strange always;
and never wants for miracles, or will want, though it sometimes may for
eyes to discern them.
Hohenzollern lies far south in SCHWABEN (Suabia), on the sunward slope
of the Rauhe-Alp Country; no great way north from Constance and its
Lake; but well aloft, near the springs of the Danube; its back leaning
on the Black Forest; it is perhaps definable as the southern summit of
that same huge old Hercynian Wood, which is still called the SCHWARZWALD
(Black Forest), though now comparatively bare of trees. ["There are
still considerable spottings of wood (pine mainly, and 'black' enough);
HOLZ-HANDEL (timber-trade) still a considerable branch of business
there;--and on the streams of the country are cunning contrivances
noticeable, for floating down the article into the Neckar river, and
thence into the Rhine and to Holland." (_Tourist's Note._)] Fanciful
Dryasdust, doing a little etymology, will tell you the name ZOLLERN is
equivalent to TOLLERY or Place of Tolls. Whereby HOHENZOLLERN comes to
mean the HIGH or Upper TOLLERY;--and gives one the notion of antique
pedlers climbing painfully, out of Italy and the Swiss valleys, thus
far; unstrapping their pack-horses here, and chaffering in unknown
dialect about TOLL. Poor souls;--it may be so, but we do not know, nor
shall it concern us. This only is known: That a human kindred, probably
of some talent for coercing anarchy and guiding mankind, had, centuries
ago, built its BURG there, and done that function in a small but
creditable way ever since;--kindred possibly enough derivable from
"Thassilo," Charlemagne, King Dagobert, and other Kings, but certainly
from Adam and the Almighty Maker, who had given it those qualities;--and
that Conrad, a junior member of the same, now goes forth from it in the
way we see. "Why should a young fellow that has capabilities," thought
Conrad, "stay at home in hungry idleness, with no estate but his javelin
and buff jerkin, and no employment but his hawks, when there is a wide
opulent world waiting only to be conquered?" This was Conrad's thought;
and it proved to be a very just one.
It was now the flower-time of the Romish Kaisership of Germany; about
the middle or noon of Barbarossa himself, second of the Hohenstauffens,
and greatest of all the Kaisers of that or any other house. Kaiser
fallen unintelligible to most modern readers, and wholly unknown, which
is a pity. No King so furnished out with apparatus and arena, with
personal faculty to rule and scene to do it in, has appeared elsewhere.
A magnificent magnanimous man; holding the reins of the world, not quite
in the imaginary sense; scourging anarchy down, and urging noble effort
up, really on a grand Scale. A terror to evil-doers and a praise to
well-doers in this world, probably beyond what was ever seen since. Whom
also we salute across the centuries, as a choice Beneficence of Heaven.
Encamped on the Plain of Roncaglia [when he entered Italy, as he too
often had occasion to do], his shield was hung out on a high mast over
his tent; and it meant in those old days, "Ho, every one that has
suffered wrong; here is a Kaiser come to judge you, as he shall answer
it to HIS Master." And men gathered round him; and actually found some
justice,--if they could discern it when found. Which they could not
always do; neither was the justice capable of being perfect always.
A fearfully difficult function, that of Friedrich Redbeard. But an
inexorably indispensable one in this world;--though sometimes dispensed
with (to the huge joy of Anarchy, which sings Hallelujah through all its
Newspapers) for a season!
Kaiser Friedrich had immense difficulties with his Popes, with his
Milanese, and the like;--besieged Milan six times over, among other
anarchies;--had indeed a heavy-laden hard time of it, his task being
great and the greatest. He made Gebhardus, the anarchic Governor of
Milan, "lie chained under his table, like a dog, for three days." For
the man was in earnest, in that earnest time:--and let us say, they are
but paltry sham-men who are not so, in any time; paltry, and far worse
than paltry, however high their plumes may be. Of whom the sick world
(Anarchy, both vocal and silent, having now swoln rather high) is
everywhere getting weary.--Gebhardus, the anarchic Governor, lay three
days under the Kaiser's table; as it would be well if every anarchic
Governor, of the soft type and of the hard, were made to do on occasion;
asking himself, in terrible earnest, "Am I a dog, then; alas, am not I a
dog?" Those were serious old times.
On the other hand, Kaiser Friedrich had his Tourneys, his gleams of
bright joyances now and then; one great gathering of all the chivalries
at Mainz, which lasted for three weeks long, the grandest Tourney
ever seen in this world. Gelnhausen, in the Wetterau (ruin still worth
seeing, on its Island in the Kinzig river), is understood to have been
one of his Houses; Kaiserslautern (Kaiser's LIMPID, from its clear
spring-water) in the Pfalz (what we call PALATINATE), another. He went
on the Crusade in his seventieth year; [1189, A.D.; Saladin having, to
the universal sorrow, taken Jerusalem.] thinking to himself, "Let us
end with one clear act of piety:"--he cut his way through the dangerous
Greek attorneyisms, through the hungry mountain passes, furious Turk
fanaticisms, like a gray old hero: "Woe is me, my son has perished,
then?" said he once, tears wetting the beard now white enough; "My son
is slain!--But Christ still lives; let us on, my men!" And gained great
victories, and even found his son; but never returned home;--died, some
unknown sudden death, "in the river Cydnus," say the most. [Kohler (p.
188), and the Authorities cited by him. Bunau's _Deutsche Kaiser-und
Reichs-Historie_ (Leipzig, 1728-1743), i., is the express Book of
Barbarossa: an elaborate, instructive Volume.] Nay German Tradition
thinks he is not yet dead; but only sleeping, till the bad world reach
its worst, when he will reappear. He sits within the Hill near Salzburg
yonder,--says German Tradition, its fancy kindled by the strange noises
in that Hill (limestone Hill) from hidden waters, and by the grand rocky
look of the place:--A peasant once, stumbling into the interior, saw the
Kaiser in his stone cavern; Kaiser sat at a marble table, leaning on his
elbow; winking, only half asleep; beard had grown through the table, and
streamed out on the floor; he looked at the peasant one moment; asked
him something about the time it was; then dropped his eyelids again: Not
yet time, but will be soon! [Riesebeck's _Travels_ (English Translation,
London, 1787), i. 140, Busching, _Volks-Sagen,_ &c. (Leipzig, 1820), i.
333, &c. &x.] He is winking as if to awake. To awake, and set his
shield aloft by the Roncalic Fields again, with: Ho, every one that is
suffering wrong;--or that has strayed guideless, devil-ward, and done
wrong, which is far fataler!
CONRAD HAS BECOME BURGGRAF OF NURNBERG (A.D. 1170).
This was the Kaiser to whom Conrad addressed himself; and he did it with
success; which may be taken as a kind of testimonial to the worth of the
young man. Details we have absolutely none: but there is no doubt that
Conrad recommended himself to Kaiser Redbeard, nor any that the
Kaiser was a judge of men. Very earnest to discern men's worth and
capabilities; having unspeakable need of worth, instead of unworth, in
those under him! We may conclude he had found capabilities in Conrad;
found that the young fellow did effective services as the occasion rose,
and knew how to work, in a swift, resolute, judicious and exact manner.
Promotion was not likely on other terms; still less, high promotion.
One thing farther is known, significant for his successes: Conrad found
favor with "the Heiress of the Vohburg Family," desirable young heiress,
and got her to wife. The Vohburg Family, now much forgotten everywhere,
and never heard of in England before, had long been of supreme
importance, of immense possessions, and opulent in territories, and
we need not add, in honors and offices, in those Franconian Nurnberg
regions; and was now gone to this one girl. I know not that she had much
inheritance after all; the vast Vohburg properties lapsing all to the
Kaiser, when the male heirs were out. But she had pretensions, tacit
claims; in particular, the Vohburgs had long been habitual or in effect
hereditary Burggrafs of Nurnberg; and if Conrad had the talent for that
office; he now, in preference to others, might have a chance for it.
Sure enough, he got it; took root in it, he and his; and, in the course
of centuries, branched up from it, high and wide, over the adjoining
countries; waxing towards still higher destinies. That is the epitome of
Conrad's history; history now become very great, but then no bigger
than its neighbors, and very meagrely recorded; of which the reflective
reader is to make what he can.
There is nothing clearly known of Conrad more than these three facts:
That he was a cadet of Hohenzollern (whose father's name, and some
forefathers' names are definitely known in the family archives, but
do not concern us); that he married the Heiress of the Vohburgs, whose
history is on record in like manner; and that he was appointed Burggraf
of Nurnberg, year not precisely known,--but before 1170, as would seem.
"In a REICHSTAG (Diet of the Empire) held at Regensburg in or about
1170," he formally complains, he and certain others, all stanch Kaiser's
friends (for in fact it was with the Kaiser's knowledge, or at his
instigation), of Henry the Lion's high procedures and malpractices; of
Henry's League with the Pope, League with the King of Denmark, and
so forth; the said Henry having indeed fallen into opposition, to a
dangerous degree;--and signs himself BURGGRAF OF NURNBERG, say the old
Chronicles. [Rentsch, p. 276 (who cites _Aventinus, Trittheim,_ &c.).]
The old Document itself has long since perished, I conclude: but the
Chronicles may be accepted as reporters of so conspicuous a thing; which
was the beginning of long strife in Germany, and proved the ruin of
Henry the Lion, supreme Welf grown over-big,--and cost our English Henry
II., whose daughter he had married, a world of trouble and expense, we
may remark withal. Conrad therefore is already Burggraf of Nurnberg,
and a man of mark, in 1170: and his marriage, still more his first sally
from the paternal Castle to seek his fortune, must all be dated earlier.
More is not known of Conrad: except indeed that he did not perish in
Barbarossa's grand final Crusade. For the antiquaries have again found
him signed to some contract, or otherwise insignificant document, A.D.
1200. Which is proof positive that he did not die in the Crusade;
and proof probable that he was not of it,--few, hardly any, of those
stalwart 150,000 champions of the Cross having ever got home again.
Conrad, by this time, might have sons come to age; fitter for arms and
fatigues than he: and indeed at Nurnberg, in Deutschland generally, as
Official Prince of the Empire, and man of weight and judgment, Conrad's
services might be still more useful, and the Kaiser's interests might
require him rather to stay at home in that juncture. Burggraf of
Nurnberg he continued to be; he and his descendants, first in a
selective, then at length in a directly hereditary way, century after
century; and so long as that office lasted in Nurnberg (which it did
there much longer than in other Imperial Free-Cities), a COMES DE ZOLRE
of Conrad's producing was always the man thenceforth.
Their acts, in that station and capacity, as Burggraves and Princes of
the Empire, were once conspicuous enough in German History; and indeed
are only so dim now, because the History itself is, and was always, dim
to us on this side of the sea. They did strenuous work in their day;
and occasionally towered up (though little driven by the poor wish of
"towering," or "shining" without need) into the high places of Public
History. They rest now from their labors, Conrad and his successors, in
long series, in the old Monastery of Heilsbronn (between Nurnberg and
Anspach), with Tombs to many of them, which were very legible for slight
Biographic purposes in my poor friend Rentsch's time, a hundred
and fifty years ago; and may perhaps still have some quasi-use, as
"sepulchral brasses," to another class of persons. One or two of those
old buried Figures, more peculiarly important for our little Friend
now sleeping in his cradle yonder, we must endeavor, as the Narrative
proceeds, to resuscitate a little and render visible for moments.
OF THE HOHENZOLLERN BURGGRAVES GENERALLY.
As to the Office, it was more important than perhaps the reader
imagines. We already saw Conrad first Burggraf, among the magnates of
the country, denouncing Henry the Lion. Every Burggraf of Nurnberg is,
in virtue of his office, "Prince of the Empire:" if a man happened to
have talent of his own, and solid resources of his own (which are always
on the growing hand with this family), here is a basis from which he
may go far enough. Burggraf of Nurnberg: that means again GRAF (judge,
defender, manager, G'REEVE) of the Kaiser's BURG or Castle,--in a word
Kaiser's Representative and ALTER EGO,--in the old Imperial Free-Town of
Nurnberg; with much adjacent very complex territory, also, to administer
for the Kaiser. A flourishing extensive City, this old Nurnberg, with
valuable adjacent territory, civic and imperial, intricately intermixed;
full of commercial industries, opulences, not without democratic
tendencies. Nay it is almost, in some senses, the LONDON AND MIDDLESEX
of the Germany that then was, if we will consider it!
This is a place to give a man chances, and try what stuff is in him. The
office involves a talent for governing, as well as for judging; talent
for fighting also, in cases of extremity, and what is still better, a
talent for avoiding to fight. None but a man of competent superior parts
can do that function; I suppose, no imbecile could have existed many
months in it, in the old earnest times. Conrad and his succeeding
Hohenzollerns proved very capable to do it, as would seem; and grew and
spread in it, waxing bigger and bigger, from their first planting there
by Kaiser Barbarossa, a successful judge of men. And ever since that
time, from "about the year 1170," down to the year 1815,--when so much
was changed, owing to another (temporary) "Kaiser" of new type, Napoleon
his name,--the Hohenzollerns have had a footing in Frankenland; and done
sovereignty in and round Nurnberg, with an enlarging Territory in that
region. Territory at last of large compass; which, under the names
MARGRAFDOM OF ANSPACH, and of BAIREUTH, or in general MARGRAFDOM OF
CULMBACH, which includes both, has become familiar in History.
For the House went on steadily increasing, as it were, from the first
day; the Hohenzollerns being always of a growing, gaining nature;--as
men are that live conformably to the laws of this Universe, and of
their place therein; which, as will appear from good study of their old
records, though idle rumor, grounded on no study, sometimes says the
contrary, these Hohenzollerns eminently were. A thrifty, steadfast,
diligent, clear-sighted, stout-hearted line of men; of loyal nature
withal, and even to be called just and pious, sometimes to a notable
degree. Men not given to fighting, where it could be avoided; yet with
a good swift stroke in them, where it could not: princely people after
their sort, with a high, not an ostentatious turn of mind. They, for
most part, go upon solid prudence; if possible, are anxious to reach the
goal without treading on any one; are peaceable, as I often say, and by
no means quarrelsome, in aspect and demeanor; yet there is generally in
the Hohenzollerns a very fierce flash of anger, capable of blazing
out in cases of urgency: this latter also is one of the most constant
features I have noted in the long series of them. That they grew in
Frankenland, year after year, and century after century, while it was
their fortune to last, alive and active there, is no miracle, on such
terms.
Their old big Castle of Plassenburg (now a Penitentiary, with treadmill
and the other furnishings) still stands on its Height, near Culmbach,
looking down over the pleasant meeting of the Red and White Mayn Rivers
and of their fruitful valleys; awakening many thoughts in the traveller.
Anspach Schloss, and still more Baireuth Schloss (Mansion, one day, of
our little Wilhelmina of Berlin, Fritzkin's sister, now prattling there
in so old a way; where notabilities have been, one and another;
which Jean Paul, too, saw daily in his walks, while alive and looking
skyward): these, and many other castles and things, belonging now wholly
to Bavaria, will continue memorable for Hohenzollern history.
The Family did its due share, sometimes an excessive one, in religious
beneficences and foundations; which was not quite left off in recent
times, though much altering its figure. Erlangen University, for
example, was of Wilhelmina's doing. Erlangen University;--and also an
Opera-House of excessive size in Baireuth. Such was poor Wilhelmina's
sad figure of "religion." In the old days, their largest bequest that
I recollect was to the TEUTSCHE RITTER, Order of Teutonic Knights, very
celebrated in those days. Junior branches from Hohenzollern, as from
other families, sought a career in that chivalrous devout Brotherhood
now and then; one pious Burggraf had three sons at once in it; he, a
very bequeathing Herr otherwise, settled one of his mansions,
Virnsperg, with rents and incomings, on the Order. Which accordingly
had thenceforth a COMTHUREI (Commandery) in that country; Comthurei of
Virnsperg the name of it: the date of donation is A.D. 1294; and two
of the old Herr's three RITTER sons, we can remark, were successively
COMTHURS (Commanders, steward-prefects) of Virnsperg, the first two it
had. [Rentsch, p.288.]
This was in 1294; the palmy period, or culmination time of the TEUTSCHES
RITTERTHUM. Concerning which, on wider accounts, we must now say a word.