THE COMING OF THE MASTERSINGERS
After the lofty house of Hohenstaufen had been overwhelmed with
destruction, the _interregnum_, the time of anarchy, "_the emperorless,
the terrible time_," in Schiller's words, (1250-1273), and the reign of
Rudolf of the house of Habsburg mark the beginning of the era of the
decline in German culture. Princes and nobles had long ago ceased to
sing, for between arms the Muses are silent. Tenderness and refinement
of feeling gradually drifted into the commonplace if not into downright
coarseness. We are obliged to record a cheerless period of mediocrity
and degradation lasting almost four centuries, though, of course,
interwoven here and there with illuminating stars that shoot up to the
heavens from this dreary waste, and continuing until about the middle of
the eighteenth century, when the second classical bloom came into
florescence and intensified strongly the classical era of the Middle
Ages.
The decline that found its perigee in the period of the Mastersingers
went on gradually. It was the result of various political and social
causes. The aesthetic ideals, because of which in the time of the
Hohenstaufens women were revered, vanished. With the decadence of
culture superstition asserted itself more strongly. Women were burned as
witches; and the general references to them in the literature of the
period of decline are usually vulgar, and not infrequently obscene.
Refined deportment toward women ceased. Saint Ruffian (_Sanct
Grobianus_) became the idol of the era of decadence, and the vulgarities
of _Till Eulenspiegel_ furnished amusement. "Shamelessness celebrated a
boisterous carnival." The classics alone, though diluted by pitiful
scholasticism until rescued and raised to a higher plane by the
Humanists of the Renaissance, became the only oasis in the dreary waste
of the decadence.
In most of the cities that were centres of intellectual life, the
plebeians arose and replaced the formerly highly cultured patricians.
The burghers began to tune the melodies of a new music: a banausic
artisan song. The comic anecdote and the dramatic farce pleased the
people best and, therefore, prevailed. There was a general delight in
comical, farcical roles, and such elements were even introduced into
religious plays. For example, Saint Mary complains that she has no
diapers to protect the Holy Child from frost. Saint Joseph gets into a
quarrel with two maids; there is a free fight; vulgar reproaches and
blows are exchanged. Darkness begins to spread over Germany. The devil,
stupid or otherwise, introduces his spook; sorceresses and hags
professing magic skill are everywhere. The defamation of the grand
institutions of the Papacy, owing to several unworthy successors of
Saint Peter, promotes contempt and ludicrous treatment. The ridiculous
fiction of the alleged "Papess" Joanna becomes a farcical subject, but
is, nevertheless, jokingly rescued from the claws of the devil. Her
story goes thus: a maiden elopes with a priest, her lover, to Rome, dons
man's dress, becomes a doctor, a cardinal, and at last a Pope. She is
finally ignominiously unmasked, received by the devils in hell, but
saved by the intercession of Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas. Dietrich
Schernberg treated this strange subject at Muhlhausen, in Thuringia, in
his play of _Frau Jutla_. All these morality plays, mysteries, farces,
sottises, sacred or profane, are scarcely ever edifying, and this
whether they treat of court sessions regarding love troubles, marriage
calamities, allegorical figures, fools of love, women, wicked monks, or
quacks. Here, a maiden leads her lovers by the nose; there, lovers
present themselves before Lady Venus. An immoderate coarseness and
indecency in manner and action is part of the game; even in the presence
of women the utmost vulgarity was permitted. Women joined in the most
obscene conversation, and it is astonishing to what depths of immodesty
their speech descended. Nuernberg was the centre of carnival plays. Hans
Rosenblut and Hans Folz, authors of incredibly obscene, though very
clever, farces, were the forerunners of the great and lovable Hans
Sachs,
"Who was a shoe-
maker and a poet, too."
But it is incumbent upon us to return to the beginning of the period of
decadence and consider the decline in its sequence. During the era of
chivalry the follies of the nobles were imitated by the peasants and
burghers. Inter-marriages between poor nobles and rich peasants occurred
now and then, liaisons and amours between them were much more frequent;
the caricature of the _bourgeois gentilhomme_, whom Moliere satirized in
his immortal comedy, was ever present. Neidhart's and Strieker's poems
and Werner's _Meier Helmbrecht_ furnish delightful figures and
caricatures of the upstart class which was so scorned, ridiculed, and
snubbed by the "smart set" of the time.
Yet, on the whole, it may be said that the boys and girls of the
peasants and bourgeois led natural lives, courting and dancing and
wooing, as long as they were kept from the influence of the chivalric
craze. Instead of knight-errantry there were among these young people
simple though not always platonic relations. The lords still exercised
their harmful influence upon the freedom of the peasantry, but it
gradually diminished. At springtide there was love and marriage, not
always voluntarily, but in deference to the right of lords and princes
to command their dependants to marry. In some localities a system of
pairing prevailed, and maids were assigned as companions by lot, and
mated couples danced together during an entire summer. Such play, very
naturally, and not infrequently, became earnest.
The nobles were mostly landed proprietors, but when the cities began to
grow, urban patricians, proud and self-satisfied, arose. The common
people, however, because of their number and increasing wealth, gained a
share in the government. They formed themselves, for strength and
self-defence, into "corporations and guilds." They won city rights. In
the course of time, instead of the rule of the "families," or
patricians, there came the rule of the guilds. The democracy gained
control, though not until after hard and frequently very bloody fights
of the factions at the polls for municipal supremacy. With the victory
of democracy begins the industrial, commercial, and political vigor of
the common people. This is manifested in the great and important city
leagues: especially the _Hansa_, but also the League of Rhenish and of
Suabian Cities unions that were at times more powerful than kings and
emperors.
Socially, nevertheless, the picture is reversed: the castes remain
separated even in the church, as they were separated in dancing halls
and other places of pleasure and drinking. Yet the free artisans, their
wives and daughters, led a joyful life at their weddings, dances, and
carnivals, though they dwelt in narrow lanes and alleys, in houses of
wood, straw-covered and with a few windows, and these frequently with
panes of paper or none at all. Goethe in Faust describes these abodes:
"Out of the hollow, gloomy gate,
The motley throngs came forth elate:
Each will the joy of the sunshine hoard,
To honor the day of the Risen Lord!
They feel themselves their resurrection:
From the low, dark rooms, scarce habitable;
From the bonds of Work, from Trade's restriction;
From the pressing weight of roof and gable;
From the narrow crushing streets and alleys;
From the churches' solemn and reverend night,
Ah come forth to the cheerful light."
On the other hand, especially later during the Renaissance period when
the wealth of the burghers excited the jealousy of the mighty country
nobility, the houses of the wealthy burghers were often genuine palaces,
with rich antique and Italian or French furnishings. Nuernberg, Augsburg,
Strassburg, etc., were real treasure cities with their mediaeval
architecture; so were Ulm, Frankfort, Mainz, Cologne, with their
mansions filled with fine tapestry, rich furniture, colored carpets,
precious art objects, painted windows, silver and gold trappings.
When the _interregnum_ was over, with its political anarchy, with its
plague (black death) that swept away hundreds of thousands, with its
flagellants and other crazy penitents, the natural concomitants of the
plague; when the gloomy religious fanaticism which vented its horrible
"hatred of races and classes and masses" on heretics, Jews, and infidels
in terrible Jew slaughters and witch burnings began to melt away under
the radiant sun of the incipient Renaissance, there arose in western and
southern Germany a wondrously rich and luxurious life among the city
aristocracy. A caricature of chivalrous customs sprang up. It is
characteristic that "a light miss" was the prize of a tournament in
Magdeburg in 1229.
In the cities, life was more refined than on the estates of the nobles
in the country. There were sleigh riding, dances, carnivals, and
serenades before the windows of the fair ones. Even the churches, as
stated before, offered for entertainment "mysteries and passion plays
that verged on blasphemy." We hear of practical jokes which the ladies
played with illustrious guests, like Emperor Sigismund and, later,
Maximilian I., which genial lord the ladies took from his bed half
naked, threw a wrapper over him, and danced with him through the streets
of the city, which pleased the debonnaire emperor immensely.
Many German patrician women were already given over to the pleasures of
society and became ladies of fashion rather than mothers, housekeepers,
and helpers to their husbands. The nouveau-riche artisans soon began to
imitate the luxuries of the patricians: we hear of gold bracelets, silk
garments, gold girdles studded with diamonds; of shoes with silver
buckles, garters embroidered with gold brocade. A chronicler relates the
immense amount of wealth squandered at the wedding of a rich baker, Veit
Gundlinger, in 1493. There were then consumed twenty oxen, thirty stags,
forty-six calves, ninety-five swine, twenty-five peacocks (turkeys?),
etc., etc.
Patricians were, however, more elegant: bridegroom and bride adorned
with rings and bracelets of gold, walked to the Cathedral surrounded by
bridesmaids, while fiddles, lutes, pipes, trumpets made music. At the
dancing hall, however spacious, not more than five couples could dance
at the same time on account of the ladies' long trains which, according
to a preacher of the time, "served the devil as a dancing place." With
torches the newly wed couple were at last led home to the bridal
chamber, where the maidens undressed the bride, the cavaliers took off
her shoes, and "when one cover covered the couple" as the technical term
ran the companions discreetly retired.
But the unfree peasants, alas! continued to live in debasement; as also
their wives and daughters. There is even documentary evidence from A. D.
1333 that women could be sold into slavery and at a very low price,
moreover, "with all their descendants." The free and rich peasants, on
the other hand, sometimes lived in an unbecoming state of luxury. We
glean the most interesting types of peasant life from the poets who
arose among the Bavarian-Austrian race. Neidhart von Reuenthal, who
lived till about 1240 at the Bavarian and Austrian courts, though a
noble himself, is a rugged, old German type who neutralizes the
sentimental minnesong. He contrasts strikingly the bizarre life of the
lower people with the unnaturalness of the "chivalric courtoisie." All
is depicted in strong relief, though it appears to our taste extremely
coarse. Yet if any poet ever understood the life and actions of the
lower classes, it was Von Reuenthal. He describes South German peasant
life as it is, their dances and carousals; he compares satirically the
breaking of lances at tournaments, as practised by knights, with the
peasants' festivals that are turned into bouts of gluttony and free
fights. His types of rustic women, however, are "courteously" dressed,
with wreaths in their prettily arranged hair, fashionable hand mirrors
in their girdles; they appear at the village linden tree on a Sunday,
courting and flirting with the rustics (_Toerper_) who carry swords and
spurs in truly knightly fashion. Nevertheless, the peasant girls prefer
their liaisons with the genuine article, and the poet reveals no idyls,
no abstinence, no innocent play, but downright immorality. As they could
not have the knights for husbands, they chose them for lovers.
Frivolity is general also among the lower strata of society. Drastic
pictures are drawn and overdrawn. There are dialogues in spring songs.
Sometimes two maidens converse and open their hearts. Then mother and
daughter commune; the mother desires to participate in the dance, the
daughter tries in vain to dissuade her; or the daughter wishes to go and
the mother dissuades; the daughter desires to join Neidhart, but the
mother has a peasant ready for her to whom she is, however, indifferent;
the mother keeps her clothing from her; the daughter takes it by force;
the mother whips her daughter with a rake or a spindle; the other
resists, and there are blows on both sides. In all these songs the girl
is longing and passionate; the knight is a successful lover.
In the winter songs the case is reversed. Here the knight is sighing,
complaining, rejected. The peasant girl for whom he pines makes him
languish. The peasants prove superior to the knight, who avenges himself
by mocking, satirizing, caricaturing the brutalities of the peasant
dances, their fights, their gluttony, tawdry luxury of dress, and
drunkenness.
However painful it may be to the historian of culture to record the
mournful facts of degeneracy and demoralization of entire periods in the
life of great and noble nations, yet he owes it to historical truth to
conceal nothing. It is unfortunately true that entire classes of the
German people, entire periods, entire regions, were sunk in the mire of
immorality due to outer and inner conditions over which neither the
nation nor its leaders had any control. Yet, such periods of moral
depression are perhaps as necessary for a vigorous convalescence as the
glorious periods of the moral purity, honor, and chastity of women.
As there can be no life without death, no joy without pain, no good
without evil, as no religion was ever conceived in which the principle
of God, of immortality, and of infinite goodness remained unassailed by
the evil forces, be it devil, demon, Loki, or Ormuz, so the history of
the German nation is filled with evil forces, against which generation
after generation, so far as our records go, struggled, yet finally
conquered _per aspera ad astral_.
Every German historian of culture, especially Scherr, who sought the
truth and stated it fearlessly, has been attacked, reviled by captious
critics, but strong is the truth and it will prevail! _veritas
prevalebit_!
In this period of German decadence the moral sense seems indeed
frequently to have entirely vanished. In a mutual confession by a
peasant and his wife of their moral shortcomings, which are treated
jestingly, the demoralization appears plainly, without any apparent
conception of its impropriety. At a peasant wedding, we hear of brutish
drinking and gluttony, coarse speeches and actions, consummation of
marriage before church consecration, brutal and deadly fights.
The character of the peasantry of the time appears most distinctly from
Werner's _Meier Helmbrecht_, a Bavarian village story, which depicts the
ambitions, sorrows, and joys, and the dissatisfaction of that class.
Young Helmbrecht, an ambitious peasant boy, who had been spoiled by
mother and sister, proud as a peacock in knightly raiment, desires to
play a role at the court. In spite of his father's warnings, he joins a
robber knight. After one year of debauch and degradation, he returns
home as a braggart, and the old and the new generation of peasants are
contrasted. The father, who in his youth had known court life, when he
went to the castle to sell his products, tells of knightly noble games,
chaste dances with beautiful song and music, and the reading of the
ancient heroic lays. The son reports heavy drinking, impure speeches,
lies, quarrels, frauds. He replies to the exhortations of his father
with vile threats. He induces his sister to follow him secretly, to be
married to his comrade Lamsling; but the crisis comes at the wedding.
The judge and sheriffs come and capture the robbers. Helmbrecht is
blinded, driven away from home, and hanged by the peasants.
In the cities the state of affairs is even worse. Pandering is a common
and thriving business, though the laws against it are of barbaric
severity. In Brunswick, those convicted of the heinous crime of
fostering prostitution were buried alive. But when did laws and police
measures ever do away with crime when moral putrefaction once
impregnated a social structure? The clerics and monks play a prominent
role in the literature of the sexual excesses of that time, although, or
perhaps because, celibacy as such has now become an enforced
institution. It is true, however, that the literature of a decaying
time, catering to corrupt tastes, furnishes to us sensational and
extraordinary cases of impurity, while it fails to record the numerous
instances of virtue, self-abnegation, and nobility.
An authority of first rank, AEnea Silvio Piccolomoni, later Pope Pius
II., transmits to us a glaring picture, with little light and much lurid
shadow, of Vienna as he saw it. We find there society of all ranks sadly
demoralized. The burghers invite to their houses vile carousers and
"light misses;" the common people are represented as steeped in
immorality and drink. Wives are rarely satisfied with one husband, and
the husbands knowing their shame are not specially pained by it. Gallant
nobles call on married burgher women, their husbands offer wine and then
leave them to themselves. Widows do not wait, even for decency's sake,
the expiration of the year of mourning before they remarry; rich old men
marry young girls, who then carry on adultery with their husband's
valets as they did before marriage. It happens not infrequently that
fathers or husbands who dare to disturb their daughters or wives in
their iniquities with the nobles are killed or poisoned. Such is AEneas
Silvio's account of Viennese society.
Similar stupefying pictures of social life in many other cities may be
gleaned from chronicles, history, and sermons. Debauch is constant and
appalling. In the thriving Hanseatic city of Luebeck we hear of
illustrious ladies masked by thick veils holding bestial orgies with
common sailors in the vilest drinking resorts. Again we read of the
great severity of the penal laws, and again we note their practical
inefficiency. The punishment for the crime of rape was death, usually by
decapitation, but in Suabia and Hessen the criminal was buried alive or
transfixed. The injured woman, however, to give legal force to her
accusation was required to announce her disgrace immediately by loud
screams and by the exhibition of dishevelled hair and torn garments. The
statutes vary, but all are harsh. Adulterers belonging to the lower
classes,--in the upper classes adultery was too common to be
punished,--when seized _in flagranti delicto_, were liable to be
decapitated or to be buried alive together. Incest was punishable by
confiscation of property; bigamy, by death. The penalty for infanticide
also was death, either by decapitation or by drowning; sometimes a
snake, a cat, or a dog was put into the sack with the victim to render
her punishment more terrible. Shrews and evil-tongued women were
sometimes punished by being placed backward on asses and driven through
the streets in disgrace.
Even the pleasures considered legitimate during the late Middle Ages and
the beginning of the modern era, were decidedly equivocal or immoral.
Public bathing which was so general that even in the country every
well-arranged house had its own bathroom, might be considered rather a
redeeming feature of the unclean life recorded. But excesses soon make
it doubtful whether public baths should not be regarded as baudy houses
of the worst kind. The city of Basle in the thirteenth century had not
fewer than fifteen bathhouses. As in ancient Rome, the bathhouses were
public places of amusement somewhat like the clubs of to-day. There men
were shaved and had their toilette perfected and the ladies had their
hair dressed. Massage was in fashion. Amusements of all kinds, gambling,
drinking, flirting, and love intrigues made public bathing a rather
costly pastime. At most places there was common bathing of men and
women. The most famous water resorts were the Wildbad in the Black
Forest, Baden in the Breisgau, and Baden in Aargau. There is gathered
all the wealth of the surrounding country. Princes and knights, highborn
ladies, rich merchants, prelates, and abbesses bathed, jested, and led a
gay life.
We have an intensely interesting account from the pen of the scholarly
Francis Poggio of Florence (1380-1459) of the bathing customs of Baden.
He had accompanied Pope John XXIII. to the Council of Constance, and had
then gone to Baden to cure the "chiragra" from which he suffered. From a
Latin letter written to his friend Niccolo Niccoli, in the summer of
1417, and translated by Gustav Freytag, in his famous Pictures from
German Life, we glean the following facts:
"Baden itself affords for the mind little or no diversion; but has in
all other respects such extraordinary charm that Venus seems to have
come from Cyprus, for whatever the world contains of beauty has
assembled here, and so much do they uphold the customs of this goddess,
so fully do you find again her manners and dissoluteness, that, though
they may not have read the speech of Heliogabalus, they appear to be
perfectly instructed by Nature herself....
"Two special baths, open on all sides, are prepared for the lowest
classes of the people; and the common crowd, men, women, boys, and
unmarried maidens, and the dregs of all that collect together here, make
use of them. In these baths there is a partition wall, dividing the two
sexes, but this is only put up for the sake of peace; and it is amusing
to see how, at the same time, decrepit old beldames and young maidens
descend into it naked, before all eyes, and expose their charms to the
gaze of the men. More than once I have laughed at this splendid
spectacle; it has brought to my mind the games of Flora at Rome, and I
have much admired their simplicity who do not in the least see or think
anything wrong in it....
"The special baths at the inns are beautifully adorned, and common to
both sexes. It is true they are divided by a wainscot, but divers open
windows have been introduced, through which they can drink with, speak
to, see, and touch each other, as frequently happens. Besides this,
there are galleries above, where the men meet and chatter together, for
every one is free to enter the bath of another, and to tarry there, in
order to look about, and joke and enliven his spirits, by seeing
beautiful women nude when they go in and come out. In many baths both
sexes have access to the bath by the same entrance, and it not
unfrequently comes to pass that a man meets a naked woman, and the
reverse. Nevertheless, the men bind a cloth around their loins, and the
women have a linen dress on, but this is open either in the middle or on
the side, so that neither neck, nor breast, nor shoulders are
covered....
"It is wonderful to see in what innocence they live, and with what frank
confidence they regard the men; the liberties which foreigners presume
to take with their ladies do not attract their attention; they interpret
everything well. In Plato's Republic, according to whose rules
everything was to be in common, they would have behaved themselves
excellently, as they already, without knowing his teaching, are so
inclined to belong to his sect....
"There can be nothing more charming than to see budding maidens, or
those in full bloom, with pretty, kindly faces, in figure and deportment
like goddesses, strike the lute; then they throw their flowing dress a
little back in the water, and each appears like a Venus. It is the
custom of the women to beg for alms jestingly from the men who view them
from above; one throws to them, especially to the pretty ones, small
coins, which they catch with their hands or with the outspread dresses,
whilst one pushes away the other, and in this game their charms were
frequently unveiled....
"But the most striking thing is the countless multitude of nobles and
plebeians, who gather here from the most distant parts, not so much for
health as for pleasure. All lovers and spendthrifts, all pleasure
seekers, stream together here, for the satisfaction of their desires.
Many women feign bodily ailments, whilst it is really their hearts that
are affected; therefore, one sees numberless pretty women, without
husbands or relations, with two maidservants and a man, or with some old
beldame of the family who is more easily deceived than bribed.... There
are here also virgins of Vesta, or rather of Flora; besides, abbots,
monks, lay-brothers, and ecclesiastics, and these live more dissolutely
than the others; some of them also live with the women, adorn their hair
with wreaths, and forget all religion.... And it is remarkable that
among the great number, almost thousands of men of different manners and
such a drunken set, no discord arises, no tumults, no partisanship, no
conspiracies, and no swearing. The men allow their wives to be toyed
with, and see them pairing off with entire strangers, but it does not
discompose or surprise them; they think it is all in an honest and
housewifely way." Poggio, with truly Rabelaisian irony, adds: "No baths
in the world are more apt for the fecundity of women."
But whether the Italian classicist is willing to excuse the luxury and
debauch, refined or otherwise, which he found at Baden, or which he
might have found anywhere in the social circles of the rich German
cities, the truth is that the intercourse between the sexes had become
loose, and that the prelates and their ladies, the cavaliers and their
mistresses, the rich burghers and the "light misses," the monks and
roving women were swarming everywhere; and that those abuses became one
of the foremost grievances which helped to swell the ranks of those
German patriots so that a reform in head and limbs of the social
structure became a necessity.
Indeed, "the good old time of pious memory" had reduced prostitution to
the standard of a science; there is an ostentatious freedom in the
treatment of the question which is quite offensive to modern ears. The
fantastic romanticism described in the preceding chapter had really
contributed very little to genuine morality: the theory of the
veneration of women and the practice of unrestrained lust were
absolutely opposed. The history of prostitution during this period is
divided into two chapters: one treats of the women who remain stationary
in their cities; the other of the migratory women who travel to fairs,
church councils, tournaments, imperial diets, coronations. Scherr gives
some statistics of the high prices paid for lust; he mentions the gain
by one woman of eight hundred gilders on such an excursion, a sum which
at that time represented a fortune. The armies, too, were accompanied by
hosts of women who, with the other baggage, were under the control of
the general provost (_Hurenweibel_). This stage of corruption, however,
belongs more immediately to the abominations of the Thirty Years' War.
The settled prostitutes lived in public houses (_Frauenhduser_) of
which, in large cities, there were several, usually under communal
administration. We read that entertainment in these houses was then part
of the hospitality offered to honored guests, just as at present the
privileges of our clubs are extended as a courtesy. The houses were
built and maintained avowedly for "a better protection of womanly and
virgin honor" of the burgher wives and daughters. Emperor Sigismund and
his suite were entertained without expense in the bawdy houses of Bern
and Ulm, in 1413 and 1434 respectively, as is proved by historical
evidence. Such houses, under the directorship of a landlord, called
"ruffian," were the property of the communities, nay, they sometimes
belonged to the "regalia" of secular or spiritual princes. The inmates
must be strangers and unmarried. Married men, clerics, and Jews were to
be excluded, but this was only a paper law. According to the spirit of
accurate definition prevalent at the time, everything was strictly
regulated: payment, food for the inmates, etc. The houses were closed on
Sundays and holidays and on the eves before these festivals. The inmates
were treated harshly in some cities, were under the surveillance of the
hangman, and when dead they were buried in the potter's field; in other
cities they were privileged; in Leipzig they had even the freedom of the
city to pass yearly in solemn procession at the beginning of the fasting
period. A certain professional or guild pride existed among them; they
rigidly persecuted the unlicensed, unprivileged prostitutes. Some cities
gave them citizenship for "their sacrifice for the common good"; in some
places donations were given to those who married, a generous way indeed
to rescue many unfortunates from shame. To make them noticeable, their
garments, usually green in color, were prescribed for them. Augsburg
ordered the hood of their veil to be green and two inches wide; Leipzig
prescribed a short yellow mantle; Bern and Zurich a red cap. Sometimes
luxurious fashions adopted by distinguished ladies were permitted to
prostitutes in order to bring luxury into disrepute.
At the end of the fifteenth century, prostitution had assumed enormous
proportions and carried in its train the terrible, loathsome, venereal
disease. The Renaissance and the Reformation, it is true, had at first
beneficent effects; disreputable houses were closed; a higher spirit
swept over the land, but everything soon returned to its former
condition, as we read in Erasmus's dialogues or Luther's writings. The
brave and patriotic knight and humanist Ulrich von Hutton himself died,
young and abandoned, of the loathsome disease; it is unknown whether he
contracted it through his own fault, or by contagion.
Catholicism performed a noble work by opening many cloisters and asylums
to penitent fallen women, and thus saved many victims. The church
certainly strove, on the whole, to improve the moral conditions of the
country. The monasteries were in most cases resorts for the daughters of
the poorer nobility, and for the pious maidens, whether highborn or
lowly, when marriage was impossible or other motives urged them to
retire from the world. This statement must be made and emphasized for
the honor of the millions of pure and noble women, who lived and worked
and suffered and sacrificed themselves for humanity in the Church and in
the cloisters which were the female academies of the time. Women lived
there a happy and quiet life with intellectual and spiritual
occupations. Reading, writing, religion, sewing, weaving, and embroidery
were taught.
But it is only natural that among the thousands of women in religious
life many failed in their mission, having mistaken their vocation. They
became unhappy in their solitude without love, especially such as had
been forced into the nunnery against their will and inclination. In such
cases their conduct sometimes stands in glaring contrast with their vows
of chastity.
The centuries leading up to the Reformation are full of complaints of
priestly debauchery, which naturally reflected also upon the nuns. The
cloister of Gnadenzell is reported to have been a pleasure resort for
the neighboring nobility, who there celebrated nightly orgies and
infamous dances; Count Hans von Lupfen, A. D. 1428, chided the prioress,
in a document of historical interest, for having failed to remove in
time the nuns who had become pregnant, and for having thus given cause
to the neighbors to complain that "the cloister walls were resounding
with the cries of babies." Bishop Gaimbus, of Castell, reports to the
Pope (June 20, 1484) of the nunnery of Loflingen, near Ulm, that, at an
investigation for reforms, the majority of the nuns were found "in an
advanced state of motherhood" (_in gesegneten Leibesumstanderi_).
Sebastian Brant's _Ship of Fools_ (1494) gives a terrible picture of the
sins and follies of the era; never has there been such a heavy freight
of perverse and wicked fools from all ranks and walks of life.
Thomas Murner's _Conjuration of Fools_ (Narrenbeschworung), fourteen
years later, shows the mediaeval ideals in the caricature to which they
had degenerated. The old conditions that had produced lofty and genuine
ideals had died away, nothing remained but the shell, the mere form and
outline. The satire against the dissolute world, the chastisement of it
by stinging words and sarcastic writings, proves simply the righteous
anger which the good and patriotic men of the time felt regarding the
national degradation; a total reform became a dire necessity. This was a
Titanic task indeed, for during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
intellectual barrenness, spiritual corruption, and luxuriant debauchery
prevailed. The worst feature was the chain of vice which, through apish
imitation, was transmitted from the debased women of the upper classes
to the women of the bourgeoisie, and from the latter to the peasants.
The new fashions were not only hideous, but became even obscene: "What
nature wants to be concealed, that do they expose and prostitute. Shame
upon the German nation!" are Brant's harsh words. The famous preacher
Geiler von Kaisersberg thunders from the pulpit words hardly expressible
in modern language: "Women's dresses are so short that they conceal
nothing in front or behind, the upper garments are so cut down that the
bosom is visible. Then again the trains are as long as tails. Women
imitate man's foolish garb: the ridiculous high pointed shoes and
tinkling bells on their garments." The pictures of the time and the
attempts of cities and princes to regulate these monstrosities prove to
us that the portraits of the satirists and the preachers are not
overdrawn.
In order to illuminate a cultural epoch in the history of any nation it
is, however, always safest to recur to the sources themselves, for they
spring, knowingly or unknowingly, from the social soil upon which they
thrive.
One of the most characteristic, though not edifying, "human documents"
is the collection of contemporary poetry by a female author, Klara
Hatzlerin, who was, according to her editor, Karl Haltaus, undoubtedly a
nun from Augsburg, and who filled her leisure hours as was customary in
the nunneries of her time in copying songs and poems. Evidently, though
a cultured woman, she was not a pietist. This is apparent from the
erotic and obscene matter found in her work, which even recalls Roswitha
of Gandersheim's plays written more than five hundred years earlier. The
work is undoubtedly genuine. It is signed: "_A. 0.1471. Augsburg. Clara
Hatzlerin._" The manuscript contains two hundred and nineteen poems,
besides ditties and sententious sayings. It marks the transition from
the Middle Ages to modern times, and is therefore of very great cultural
value. The poems do not yet bear the scholastic, not to say pedantic,
character of the best mastersingers; their type is, on the contrary,
strictly popular, and frequently vulgar. The subjects of Klara
Hatzlerin's collection of lyric poetry coincide with those of the minne:
there are night songs and watch songs, songs of the love of the fair
one, songs describing her virtues and her beauty, songs telling of fears
of the light and the spies, rhythmical entreaties for slight favors of
love, a glance, an embrace to appease the lover's sorrow or to give him
strength to be constant.
Very characteristic of the time, especially as selections by a nun,
betraying her interests and occupations, are the rustic caricatures and
exaggerations of the coarseness of the peasant classes.
It must not be forgotten that as to material wealth the burghers and the
peasant classes were never better off in Germany than during the two
centuries preceding the Thirty Years' War, while the nobility had sunk
into poverty, ruffianism, brigandage. What shall be said of a time when
a prince of the highest rank, Duke Ernst of Bavaria, A. D. 1436,
brutally murdered fair Agnes Bernauerin, the lawful wife of his son. To
this very day the martyred woman is sung in German romance and poetry.
She was the daughter of a barber and surgeon of Augsburg, where prince
Albert, son of Duke Ernst, learned to know and to love her because of
her almost unearthly beauty and charm. He made her in due form his
lawful wife; but the old duke would not recognize the marriage. In the
absence of her husband, Agnes was seized in the castle of Straubing,
dragged upon the bridge of the Danube, and hurled into the stream. She
drifted toward the bank, where one of the hangmen seized her with his
hooked pole by her gold-colored hair, plunged her into deep water, and
held her beneath its surface until she was drowned.
But let us return to Klara Hatzlerin, the nun, who so frequently chooses
scenes from the most licentious poets. _The Song of the Seven Greatest
Pleasures_ is original, but extremely coarse. Eating, drinking, minne
play of the most bestial kind, the natural functions of stomach and
kidneys, sleeping, bathing (as described by Poggio), are the ideals of
fifteenth century materialism.
The most loathsome poem, however, in the collection so foul with obscene
pictures, is the one in which a mother teaches her daughter in
undisguised terms the arduous, though lucrative, art of prostitution. It
is scarcely possible that any other literature should contain a poem so
degraded.
Again, a poem by Hans Rosenpliit is given entirely in the manner of
Boccaccio. The servant of a rich man seeks the favor of his mistress and
finds acceptance. She takes him to her chamber and hides him under the
bed. When the husband retires to his couch, she tells him that the
servant sought her love and that she had invited him for the night to
the garden to have him chastised. She advises her husband to put on her
clothing, to go into the garden, and to chastise the scoundrel with a
heavy club. The husband does as he is bidden. Meanwhile, the wife
bestows her favors upon the man-servant. Thereupon she gives him a stick
with which he belabors his master unmercifully, saying he only wished to
test the fidelity of his mistress toward his beloved master. The latter
barely escapes from the heavy volley of blows, tells his wife the
adventure, and finally thanks God for such a faithful servant. The poet,
Hans Rosenpliit, composed many carnival plays which are filled with
obscene jests, and deal mostly with the lowest peasant elements.
In the same collection, Klara Hatzlerin presents rather barren encomiums
on Saint Mary, all of which were composed by Muscatbluet. Feebly, the
Maria-cult arose once more with a narrow and superstitious treatment,
painfully different from the beautiful conceptions of the older periods.
Here everything is Philistine. The statutes of the Rosenkrantz order and
the brotherhood of Saint Ursula decree eleven thousand prayers in honor
of the eleven thousand virgins who are still adored as saints, with
their seat at Cologne. Spiritual songs exalt Saint Mary as equal in
strength to Christ, nay, in the estimation of the lowly masses, superior
to Him. There is a bombastic praise of all her material and spiritual
perfections. The songs are scholastic in their exaggeration, artificial
in form, and barbarous in language; in pompous terms church
controversies are treated there: the Trinity, original sin, the last
judgment, and other orthodox and mystic broodings, similes, allegories,
etc. A type of the treatment is the description Muscatbluet gives of the
Blessed Virgin when he calls her "a chest in which God himself dwells,
the rod of Aaron, a well illuminated torch, a chaste Arc of Noah, a deep
pond, a cask of myrrh, a reed of grace in God's field, her body a coffin
or a castle the decadence is marked everywhere. We look back with
longing eyes to the pure, the beautiful, the lofty, all-merciful Mother
of God of the rich, uncontaminated past, the Holy Virgin who has
enriched, ennobled, purified the German nation, German literature,
German music, and, above all, the German arts of painting, sculpture,
and architecture."
Next to those bombastic, pseudo-pious songs we find hideous drinking
songs, poems of gluttony and licentiousness, all of which are,
nevertheless, highly valuable to the historian of culture. There are
authentic documents revealing the tremendous downfall of national ideals
from the pedestal of the glorious past, and the immense recuperative
power of the nation in struggling upward again after two centuries and a
half to the Second Period of Bloom, crowned by Lessing, Schiller,
Goethe!
A poem in the compilation of Klara Hatzlerin, _On the Nature of the
Child_, is intensely interesting, first, as regards the popular
physiological knowledge of the time on the mystery of gestation;
secondly, as a cultural document on the character of Klara, the nun's,
occupation during her leisure hours. She appeals first to her patroness:
"Virgin Mary, I call to thee at all times for thy grace. May thy help
point out to me thy way that I may walk on thy path, and may also begin
anon to consider how the nature of man's strength mingles in the female
womb," etc., and then by an extraordinary medley of truth, error, and
fiction she describes the entire process of gestation.
There are stories of shrews and of scolding, nagging women, concluding
with: "Whoever has a nagging wife, shall rid himself of her as soon as
possible, buy a good rope, hang her on a bough, take three big wolves
and hang them beside her. Whoever saw gallows with worse skins? There
the song has an end, God evil women to Hades send!"
We cheerfully leave the foul atmosphere of a poetry which could not have
sunk lower in form and spirit, and which, nevertheless, could not have
existed but for its direct connection with the social sphere of which it
treated and in which its roots were imbedded. And indeed we know also
from incontestable historical evidence that while the privileges of the
other three estates grew, a heavy slavery lay upon the fourth, the
peasantry. When oppression lays its leaden hand too heavily upon a race
or a class, it crushes out, gradually but surely, the divine instincts
of the human soul. Munster, in his _Kosmography_, which appeared in
1545, speaks of "the low and wretched life of the peasants." Their
houses are miserable hovels of dirt and wood, placed directly on the
ground, and thatched with straw. Their food is black rye bread, oats or
boiled lentils and peas. A coarse upper coat, two wooden shoes, and a
cheap felt hat are their only clothing. These people have never peace or
rest. Their masters they must serve through the whole year; there is
nothing that the poor people must not do. The picture is completed by
another author, who says: "The toilsome people of the peasantry are
everybody's footrag, heavily laden and burdened with tasks of slavery,
hard labor, interests, taxes, duties, etc." We will not unroll here the
endless lists of personal and property dues which were imposed upon the
unfortunate peasants of that period. The saddest aspect of that physical
oppression is that the unfortunate people were not even conscious of
their frightful moral subjugation. We have already mentioned that even
the marriage of the serfs of both sexes depended upon the consent of
their masters, the landed proprietor or, in most cases, of his steward,
that the marital tax (_maritagium_) had to be paid for this consent, and
that the body of the unfortunate peasant girl belonged to her oppressor,
at least for the first night (_jus primce noctis_). The existence of
this infamous right has been contested by German historians, but as
proofs Scherr adduces two authentic documents of the years 1538 and
1543. All these facts are sufficient proof that the above literary
remnants do not greatly exaggerate the moral and intellectual condition
of that class, which is the basic element of every civilization.
We now proceed with more satisfaction to an estimate of the bourgeoisie.
They became more and more cultured, and took upon themselves the task of
raising the standards of education and morality, of upholding the sacred
flame of German spiritual and intellectual life. They began to spin
again the thread of poetry that had broken in the brutalized hands of a
degraded nobility. This thread was now the "_Mastersong_." Mastersong,
though of a prosaic, mechanical style, was nevertheless an ennobling,
purifying element of culture in the frivolous and impure life of late
mediaeval German cities. Mastersong formed the bridge between the world
of everyday realism and the world of ideals. Mastersong alone prevented
an entire break of the continuity of German civilization between the two
great periods of bloom, the thirteenth and the eighteenth centuries. As
the bourgeoisie acquired a social position and a personal worth of their
own, as the German peasantry, in the extreme North at the mouth of the
Elbe between marshes and sea, the Ditmarschen and Stedingers, and again
in the South between the Alpine passes, the Swiss, heroically defended
their manhood and liberties, there began among those lowly born, but
high-minded, vigorous, and comparatively pure classes an intellectual
and a moral life of a higher order. The folk song of love, of warlike
honor, of victory over the brutal squirearchy, of invigorating
patriotism, of a national union embracing all classes, begins to ring
through the German "poetic forest," as Uhland calls it. The loving maid
speaks of the falcen, and means the lover; the rose garden signifies
love's favor; flowers are maidens, like the rose on the heath that is
plucked by the boy in spite of its thorns; the forget-me-not designates
modesty, humility, chastity. There are little love songs describing the
sorrow of parting, the joy of the dance, the dream of love under the
tree from which a rain of blossoms bedews the sleeping beauty.
Emperor Maximilian (1493-1519), "the last knight," the best-beloved son
of the house of Habsburg, reigns now in Germany. It is a time of
transition, of universal change. The world has doubled its size by the
discovery of America, and the horizon has been enlarged accordingly. The
printing press has revolutionized the arts. Yet poetry is dry,
allegorical, wooden. Maximilian, aided by his secretaries, relates in a
rimed allegorical romance, Teuerdank, his wooing of Mary of Burgundy,
or, as he calls her in his poem, the beautiful and illustrious virgin
Ehrenreich, only daughter of the powerful king "Glorious" (_Ruhmreich_).
He recounts the mighty deeds which he must accomplish before he can
possess her.
The barrenness of the time, in spite of a great and varied literary
activity which, however, bears the stamp of mediocrity, appears also in
the translations made by several highborn ladies: Elizabeth of Lorraine,
and Eleanor of Scotland, consort of Duke Sigmund of Austria. Princess
Mathilda, of the illustrious Wittelsbach-Palatine house, the "Lady of
Austria," as she is called in the folk song, fostered the first advent
of humanism into Suabia and Bavaria, and entertained sympathetic
relations with all those who worked in the direction of humanism and
literary reform. Niclas von Wyle, an early Humanist, had already in
1474, in opposition to the popular farces which contained offensive,
coarse, and frequently obscene treatment of woman, composed an encomium
or eulogy in her honor, in which he enumerated the manifold blessings
which woman had brought to the world. Yet the ribald farces still
abound, and are even stimulated by the incipient religious reform.
_Joseph in Egypt_ is the typical subject for poems expressing the
criminal and passionate love of woman; the monologue of Potiphar's wife
expressing her sinful feelings for Joseph is nothing less than edifying.
The play of _Fair Susanna_ presented wicked passion in aged men, and
innocence persecuted, but finally saved; _Judith and Holofernes_
characterized the clash between conflicting religions.
In South Germany, Nuernberg, Luther's "eye and ear of Germany," is the
centre of the culture of the transition period, and is the mirror in
which the life of the time is reflected. The aesthetic culture and the
lack of it, the status of woman in society, appear nowhere more plainly
than in the plays of Hans Sachs, the greatest exponent of the life of
his time. He is not stimulated by the passions of a Hutten, of a Luther,
or of the latter's bitter foe, Thomas Murner. His soul overflows with
peace and equanimity even where he censures and chides. His censure is
always amiable and gentle. He even describes passions meekly. He
touchingly represents the driving from Paradise of Adam and Eve, who
become more closely attached to each other in misfortune; he delicately
depicts Eve's naive anxiety concerning God, whose visit she apparently
fears. He writes decorously of the priest and his fair housekeeper who
has not yet attained the canonic age of safety: of the old hag who acts
as a procuress and panderer, who is quarrelsome and hideous, and of whom
even the devil is afraid; the faithless, cunning, amorous wife who makes
sport of her deceived, foolish husband; the jealous and the credulous
husband, etc.
In formulating a theory of love, Hans Sachs, who, in his own long life,
had felt love's grief and unrest, decided to employ the examples which
he gathered from his own experience as well as from history and poetry,
especially the Italians Petrarca, Boccaccio, and others. In his carnival
plays, however, he avoids, from the very first, the coarseness and
obscenity of Rosenplut and Hans Folz; but though he no doubt considered
that he had excluded all indecency from his works, they still are, here
and there, grievous to our modern ears.
In his carnival play Vom Venusberg, the goddess speaks: "I am Venus,
protectress of love, many a realm was destroyed through me; I have great
power on earth over rich, poor, young, and old; whom I wound with the
arrow mine, he must forever my servant be. I now draw my bow; he who
will flee shall flee at once." Too late: the knight is struck, so are
all the others, maids and gentlewomen.
In 1518 Sachs wrote the _Complaint of the Exiled Lady Chastity_, a very
bold allegory: Virgin Chastity, daughter of Lady Honor, dwelt with many
virgins in the realm of Virginitas. In the neighborhood lived the
frivolous Queen Venus, who frequently invaded the former's kingdom and
tried to conquer it. In the repeated wars, Queen Venus succeeded in
capturing almost all the virgins, and took them over to the kingdom of
Lady Shame. Only Chastity herself, with her royal retinue, the
allegorized twelve womanly virtues, had been saved from capture; they
fled and wandered long from one country to the other without finding a
hospitable reception. At last they arrived at a distant wilderness,
where Chastity was again suddenly attacked by Queen Venus and her allied
princesses: Pride, Frivolity, Intemperance, Idleness, Faithlessness,
etc. The poet then warns maidens of the dangers threatening them on the
part of Venus and her suite. After explaining the twelve virtues which
aid Chastity, he concludes: "Beware of love, be steady, spare your love
until you come to marriage." Sachs himself had at an early age married,
in 1519, Kunigunde Kreuzer, an orphan of good family.
The biographer of Hans Sachs described the marriage of Dr. Christoph
Scheuerl, a famous jurist of Nuernberg, "the oracle of the Republic." The
description of this marriage is interesting as a picture of the life of
the high patrician families and their ceremonies and festivities. All
the families (Geschlechter) of the city were present. The festivities
lasted a whole week, and the ceremonies were elaborate and splendid.
Marriage feasts of the city aristocracy took place either in the house
of the parents of the bridal couple, or in the city hall, or even in the
cloister. This last practice was, however, forbidden in Nuernberg in
1485, "because the carousals and dances had become unbefitting the holy
place." The patrician bridegroom gave the bride a ring with precious
stones, the latter presented the bridegroom with an embroidered silken
kerchief. There was a great display of precious garments and silk
damask. The servants wore the colors of the family to which they
belonged. The headgear of the patrician lady was a high diadem, while
the bridegroom wore a silver wreath adorned with artificial flowers. The
bride's maids and the table maidens wore the same kind of wreath and
their hair was arranged in loose waves. The first marriage day was
followed by an "early morning dance at the city-hall, a night-dance, and
a wedding-assembly only for the ladies."
The artisan marriages are recorded to have been similar in character,
only the jests of the official "speaker" (_Sprucksprecher_) were
probably somewhat rude, and the display was not so elaborate as that
used in patrician weddings.
Hans Sachs's married life was very happy. His manifold jests regarding
quarrelsome women and their qualities, and regarding the hardships of
married life were merely products of his humor. "My wife is my Paradise
dear, and also my daily hellfire sheer;" and the climax:
"She is my virtue, and my vice;
She is my wound, and yet my balm.
She is my heart's constant abode,
Yet makes me gray and makes me old."
While happily married himself, he knew enough of bad wives. Albrecht
Durer's unhappy married life could furnish him sufficient material for
his _Ninefold Skin of a Scold_, and _The Twelve Properties of a Bad
Woman_, against which all the arts employed in the "_taming of the
shrew_" came to naught.
In 1560 his beloved wife died, and one year later he married Barbara
Harscher, a charming girl of seventeen years, whose beauty he sang in
his _Artistic Woman's Praise_, and with whom he lived happily till 1576.
He was buried in Saint John's Cemetery at Nuernberg. The grateful city
erected in 1874 a beautiful monument in his honor. But the highest
monument, "more abiding than steel," the prince of poets, Goethe,
erected to him in his _Hans Sachs's Poetic Mission:_
"An oak wreath hovers yonder in the clouds,
With ever green fair foliage adorned;
With this the grateful nation crowns his brow."
Hans Sachs is the typical, the universal, the noblest, and the purest
Mastersinger; but he is only the first among hundreds of others who
helped to preserve in Germany the sacred fire of poetry.
The bourgeoisie womanhood of the school of humanism, of the circle where
virtue was the ideal of life, ably seconded the efforts of men like
Sachs. But no one lofty specimen of superior womanhood arose from the
atmosphere of feud, brigandage, and drunken intemperance among the
so-called higher classes. Banqueting, hunting, fighting, gambling,
carousing, and sexual excesses are recorded in plenty. _The diary of the
Silesian knight Hans Von Schweinichen_ introduces us, in the middle of
the sixteenth century, into a "noble" society full of poverty,
brutality, and ignorance. He relates the slight acquirements of his
education, interrupted by the occupation of tending the geese, his
service as a page at the court of the Duke of Liegnitz, his early
interest in women, his presence at weddings, "where he ate and drank his
fill for day and night just as they wanted to have it." Of his friendly
expedition with the Duke of Liegnitz to Mecklenburg, he says: "I have
made for myself a great reputation with drinking, as I could never get
enough to drink myself full." Anna of Saxony, daughter of Elector
Moritz, wife of William of Orange, who died of _delirium tremens_,
proves, by the way, that drunkenness was by no means uncommon with
princely ladies. Scherr also adduces many other such princely examples.
A festival at the Mecklenburg court is thus described in naive fashion
by Schweinichen in his diary: "The native squires as well as the noble
young ladies lost themselves little by little, until finally there
remained with me but two ladies and one knight, who began a dance. I
followed with the other lady. It did not last long; my good friend
slipped with his dancer to the next chamber; I followed him. As we came
to the chamber, two squires and ladies rested in a bed; the one who
danced before me fell also with his lady in one bed. I asked my lady
what we should do. She said in her Mecklenburg language: I should lie by
her. I did not have her ask me a long time, but lay down with mantle and
garments, so did the lady, and thus we chatted till the dawn of morning;
however, in all honor. This they call there 'to lie by a maiden on truth
and faith,' but I do not trust such a 'lying by' for such truth and
faith might easily become roguish." Evidently, so far as the nobility
were concerned, delicacy and propriety were quite unknown in sixteenth
century society.