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cahnMore diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!
January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!
January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!
Re: Peter Hagendorf: Diary of a Mercenary from the 30-Years-War - I
Date: 2022-08-09 01:20 pm (UTC)<3333
It's like Yuletide, but even better!
Which we know because we even know the papermill where Hagendorf got the paper from
Wow, that is amazing. I love how much detective work went into tracing down Hagendorf and family.
the pyhsical diary isn't a book with blank pages into which he wrote, stuff like that wasn't made in the 30 Years War
When did they start making these, do you know? I was assuming when betaing one of Cahn's fics that such a thing would be expensive but available to a crown prince with sugar daddies in the 1730s, but maybe I was wrong!
in my hometown with a population of ca. 8000, over 1000 were burned within 5 years.
?!!!
I knew it was witch burning time (I'm sure the war contributed to the cycle of trauma), but that is a lot! Good lord.
Basically, being a soldier is his job, it's how he survives, and he's indifferent to the reasons why this war is fought.
I mean, without saying I've burned any witches or villages, I can kind of understand how that works: I dislike the amount of marketing emails I get spammed with, and how inconvenient it is to unsubscribe from them, and yet I work for an email marketing company, because hey, they need a database administrator (so their clients can send large volumes of emails of dubious value).
Hagendorf himself at one point gets beaten up and mugged by farmers who have banded together. This is presented in a matter-of-fact way, without cursing the farmers.
That is really interesting!
I didn't know executioner's wives also provided such services.
Neither did I, interesting!
(This one must have been good at it, too; Mrs. Hagendorf recovered.)
Or at least not bad enough to kill her, which is not to be taken for granted in those days!
clearly he knows the story of Hildebrand and Hadubrand and applies it to what he's seeing
Oh, that is interesting! Cahn, do you know this story? It's the oldest surviving poem in Old High German (and only a fragment of it survives), and I remember reading it in my Old High German class.
to me the way he notes the birth and death of every baby by name is touching by itself; they lived only a few months or sometimes days, but apparantly he was determined not to forget them.
Yeah, that is heartbreaking.
I was shot through my body two times, those were my spoils.
Ooh, I like the way he phrases that, surprisingly ironic or even literary.
for I was shot once though the stomach, with the shot doing through entirely, and secondly through both shoulders so that the bullet was in my shirt. So the surgeon bound my hands on my back so he could use his chisel.
Like Cahn, I'm impressed he survived! Mind you, the bullet exiting the body on its own was often the best possible outcome (meaning it didn't stick around to do further damage or the doctors didn't have to do more damage trying to get it out), if it managed to avoid hitting any major organs or arteries on the way through. That said, many people lived many years with bullets in their bodies that the doctors thought it was safer to leave in!
I was heartily sorry that the town was so terribly burned, because it was a beautiful town, and because it belonged to my fatherland.
Huh, that is interesting, especially in the context of him generally being matter of fact about everything. But the Magdeburg sack was big enough that I remember it even from the one book I read on the Thirty Years' War, and I remember telling my wife about it right after I finished that section--mostly the insane death toll.
Because history is like that, both of Hagendorf's wives are called Anna
*lolsob*
(At least I assume Hagendorf didn't ask the girl, anymore than his boy asked the cow.)
Just *sob* here. But yeah, war = rape.
you get the impression entire families of the wives went along as well. (Presumably on the rationale that this got you protection.)
Did not know that, but that makes sense! Perhaps they were also providing goods and services to the soldiers, like laundry? I know that this was a common way to make a living when an army was on the move in those days.
Re: Peter Hagendorf: Diary of a Mercenary from the 30-Years-War - I
Date: 2022-08-09 02:20 pm (UTC)That is indeed awesome, but in the case of the paper, it helped that it was a water signature. Even Jan Peters' first edition background text when he didn't yet know Hagendorf's name has the information that the paper came from the paper mill Ronsberg in southern Bavaria, which used a water sign (the capital letter R with a crown on top) in 1649 (we have other exemples dating from that year) and probably a few years earlier than that. Since according to the diary the diary writer was in Braunau and Altheim in September 1647, and then in Memmingen, he would have been within the distribution range of this paper mill. Hagendorf bought at least twelve sheets, sowed them together himself and wrote on avarage twelve lines per page, with the handwriting fluent, i.e. not that of a man newly taught but experienced in writing.
When did they start making these, do you know?
Alas no, I have no idea. I'll have to check the preface to Lehndorff's first diary volume again so see whether Schmidt-Lötzen mentions what material Lehndorff uses, i.e. sheets or a book with blank pages.
I knew it was witch burning time (I'm sure the war contributed to the cycle of trauma), but that is a lot! Good lord.
Indeed. It was the worst of three persecution waves, from 1626 to 1631, finally stopping when the Swedes entered the city. That's the era the letter of mayor Junius is from (one of the many victims - the victims in Bamberg came from all stages of society, not just as the cliché has it from the poor) to his daughter is from, which is one of the few documents written by not the perpetrators but one of the victims who already had been tortured and had thus confessed but tried to smuggle a letter to his daughter to tell her he was innocent, which was intercepted, which is why we still have it. One of the most moving and shattering documents I've read outside of the 20th century.
But the Magdeburg sack was big enough that I remember it even from the one book I read on the Thirty Years' War, and I remember telling my wife about it right after I finished that section--mostly the insane death toll.
Yes, it even became proverbial for a time, until later atrocities competed. But there were a lot of pamphlets all over Europe describing the horror of it. Magdeburg never really recovered from it; it had been one of the wealthiest German cities, starting from when Otto I. made it a favored place of residence. (He and his first wife are also buried there.)
Perhaps they were also providing goods and services to the soldiers, like laundry? I know that this was a common way to make a living when an army was on the move in those days.
Yes, that makes sense. In Brecht's Mother Courage which itself is based on Grimmelshausen's novel written during the 30 Years War, the (anti)heroine and her entire family work for the army in various capacities.
Re: Peter Hagendorf: Diary of a Mercenary from the 30-Years-War - I
Date: 2022-08-09 02:47 pm (UTC)Alas no, I have no idea.
Well, good, at least you won't thrown out of the story by the egregious lack of realism! ;)
One of the most moving and shattering documents I've read outside of the 20th century.
I have just read it, and yiiiiikes, yes. And I can see why the 20th century is the obvious comparison.
Yes, that makes sense. In Brecht's Mother Courage which itself is based on Grimmelshausen's novel written during the 30 Years War, the (anti)heroine and her entire family work for the army in various capacities.
Without knowing the details, it would make sense to me if the whole family had been following the army providing services of whatever kind, and that was how Hagendorf and Anna Maria met.
Mayor Junius
Date: 2022-08-13 05:13 am (UTC)I have just read it, and yiiiiikes, yes. And I can see why the 20th century is the obvious comparison.
Yiiiikes indeed. Thank you for the link, Mildred. And to think of the letter being written in the handwriting of someone who had been subject to the thumb-screws...
Selena, you said it was intercepted? So she never got it? But then why didn't the people who intercepted it destroy it? And were the jailers beheaded like he said they would be?
Re: Mayor Junius
Date: 2022-08-13 02:59 pm (UTC)English wiki claims the letter reached Veronica, but as far as I recall this isn't the case, which is why we still have it. It was filed with the rest of the trial records. Now the reason why a lot of the Bamberg witch trial material survives is nothing short of miraculous. When Bamberg, which wasn't just the seat of a bishop but a prince bishop, got secularized and became a part of Bavaria courtesy of Napoleon in 1806, a lot of the church archives got dissolved, were sold or what not. Some years later, a man who just bought some new screws and bolts sees they got wrapped in very old looking paper, checks out the paper, sees it consists of trial records, goes to the ironmonger who sold him the bolts who says yes, he just bought a cellar full of wrapping paper cheaply, and lo, it were most of the 1626 - 1631 witch persecution files. Who this history-conscious buyer immediately bought from the iron monger and thus rescued for posterity.
As for why it didn't get destroyed, well, never underestimate the thoroughness of bureaucrats. It wasn't proof of his innocence to them, just additional material of him being unlawful, trying to smuggle out a letter.
Re: Mayor Junius
Date: 2022-08-14 05:09 pm (UTC)I live close enough to Salem these days that I would have gone to see the museums by now, if not for the pandemic. One day! (At least it wasn't 1/8th of the population killed, I still can hardly conceive of that!)
Re: Mayor Junius
Date: 2022-08-15 01:02 pm (UTC)“Es sei weltbekannt und werde wohl aus dem, zu Regensburg überreichten, Verzeichniss aller Eingefangenen Bericht darüber erstattet worden sein, wie blutgierig, unchristlich und unbarmherzig die fürstlich Bambergischen Hexen-Commissäre in so kurzer Zeit eine so grosse Menge von sechshundert Personen, vornehme und geringe, junge und alte, mit Schwert und Feuer, unter Einziehung ihres Vermögens, ohne ordentliche Rechtsprechung, in Folge eines verwirrten Processes hätten hinrichten lassen.
Die hochbedrängten armen Leute, welche gegenwärtig den kaiserlichen Schutz anriefen, seien theilweise ein, zwei und drei Jahre an den genannten Orten, mit harten, schweren Banden und Ketten, unschuldig eingeschlossen, des Sonnen-Lichtes beraubt und, abgesehen von Hunger und Durst, harrten sie, nach Erduldung verschiedenartiger Folterqualen, im grössten Elend geduldig und standhaft aus, um ihre Unschuld zu beweisen.
Bis zur Stunde müssten sie - Gott möge sich darüber erbarmen! - ohne allen menschlichen Trost, oder Hoffnung auf Erlösung armselig leben. Deshalb seien sie genöthigt, dem Kaiser, als dem Vater aller Armen und dem Oberhaupt der Christenheit, ihre höchste Beschwerde, Angst und Nothlage vorzutragen, welcher in seiner Gerechtigkeit sie nicht trostlos lassen werde. Um der Bande Jesu Christi willen flehten sie die kaiserliche Majestät an, dass von derselben den bezeichneten Hexen-Commissären bei strenger Strafe befohlen werde, die wegen angeblicher Hexerei Gefangenen, die meistentheils wohlvermögend, unter Bürgschaftsleistung mit Hab und Gut, aus solch ungeheuerlichem, abscheulichem Gefängniss und solcher, durch Würmer und Ungeziefer drohenden Todesgefahr zu entlassen und ihnen zu gestatten, dass ein Rechtsanwalt vor einer unparteiischen Commission ihre Unschuld ans Licht bringe.
Für den Fall, dass in Folge rechter Untersuchung ihres Handels und Wandels, sowohl vor, als nach ihrer schweren Gefangenschaft, etwas Erhebliches wider sie mit Wahrheit erwiesen werden sollte, verpflichteten sie sich, wie es billig sei, sich vor Gericht zu stellen. Durch Gewährung dieser Bitte erweise der Kaiser die Gerechtigkeit, wie der Liebe Gottes und des Nächsten einen grossen Dienst. Die armen Gefangenen aber würden ihre Dankbarkeit durch inbrünstiges Gebet für seine zeitliche nnd ewige Wohlfahrt erzeigen.”
Emperor Ferdinand among other things forbade the way the fortune of the accused was just kept by the Prince Bishop. Which, wouldn't you know, suddenly reduced the number of accusations. By the time the Swedes entered the town, there were still some left in the prison specifically built for the "witches", though, which were then freed.
Re: Mayor Junius
Date: 2022-08-16 04:51 am (UTC)Ouuuuch. I'm glad he was able to put a stop to it :(
Re: Mayor Junius
Date: 2022-08-16 09:51 pm (UTC)Omgggg. I had no idea. Well, no WONDER the rash of accusations hit the more prosperous classes as well, aka "die meistentheils wohlvermögend." "You won't get off even if you're an earl." You won't get off ESPECIALLY if you're an earl, I see!
I don't suppose this was applied retroactively and the Prince Bishop had to give up the property he'd already confiscated?
Witch Trials of Bamberg
Date: 2022-08-17 07:03 am (UTC)The other main culprit of that particular persecution wave, his sidekick Förner (who was the Weihbischof to Fuchs von Dornheim's Fürstbischof), had died a bit earlier than that, but not before between the two of them, they brought so many people to death. Förner was the one delivering the ideological foundation, so to speak, via his writings and preaching long before 1626. He also was a hardcore counter reformationist whose ideas of how to re Catholize the country included trying to starve Nuremberg (which was the larger city but belonged to the Bamberg bishopry, except by then it had already turned Lutheran, big time), and was most put out when being told besieging, sanctioning and starving Nuremberg really could not be done. This wiki article delivers a pretty good summary of how the witch trials started proceeded and ended. A good illustration of just how in-their-own-world the terror regime got is the case of Dorothea Flock, who was pregnant when denounced, arrested and tortured (this was against the Carolina, the legal code established during the reign of Charles V., which forgabe the torture of pregnant women), and when her husband managed to get an actual papal intervention for her - on April 20th, 1630, Pope Urban issued a decree in her favor in Rome - the Bamberg witch commissioners upon learning a papal decision was coming instead expedited her death sentence (by then her baby had been born) and had her executed on May 17th. Similarly, chancellor Georg Haan's attempt to stop the witch trials by denouncing the Prince Bishop to the Imperial diet instead resulted in nearly his entire family (including himself) getting wiped out, more here. Of course, the fact that there was a brutal long term war going on and accordingly central control of individual German realms was shaky at best didn't help.
Re: Witch Trials of Bamberg
Date: 2022-08-19 04:44 pm (UTC)Yeah, I figured retroactive reparations would be too much to ask. I am pleased to hear he died in 1632, at least! Those are some ill-gotten gains indeed.
the Bamberg witch commissioners upon learning a papal decision was coming instead expedited her death sentence
WTF??!! *speechless rage*
attempt to stop the witch trials by denouncing the Prince Bishop to the Imperial diet instead resulted in nearly his entire family (including himself) getting wiped out, more here.
To avoid an arrest, Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria attempted to save him by offering to employ him, but the messenger he sent to Bamberg to deliver this news was prevented from reaching the city.
ZOMG, this story keeps getting worse!
Re: Witch Trials of Bamberg
From:Re: Witch Trials of Bamberg
From:Re: Witch Trials of Bamberg
From:Re: Witch Trials of Bamberg
From:Re: Mayor Junius
Date: 2022-08-16 04:50 am (UTC)Yes, this! Wow!
Re: Peter Hagendorf: Diary of a Mercenary from the 30-Years-War - I
Date: 2022-09-03 07:20 pm (UTC)When did they start making these, do you know? I was assuming when betaing one of Cahn's fics that such a thing would be expensive but available to a crown prince with sugar daddies in the 1730s, but maybe I was wrong!
Alas no, I have no idea. I'll have to check the preface to Lehndorff's first diary volume again so see whether Schmidt-Lötzen mentions what material Lehndorff uses, i.e. sheets or a book with blank pages.
Our fic decision is VINDICATED! \o/
According to a book I'm reading/dipping into (same series as the Cunegonde book), Joseph Ryder, prosperous English cloth-maker of the 18th century, started his diary in 1733, and he was able to buy his blank books at the local bookstore in Leeds.
We can start with the concrete: what did Ryder's diary look like? Its bound octavo volumes came in two sizes, six and a half by eight inches and seven and a half by nine and a half inches. Virtually the only blank pages, besides those in his final volume that his death left unfinished, resulted from two pages apparently having been stuck together. The numbers also suggest that he grew more affectionate for writing over time. In mostly consistently sized handwriting, his first twenty volumes, which contain 5,578 pages, cover nineteen and a half years, while the second twenty volumes, 6,777, cover fifteen years. The two and a half million words he wrote (after we throw in thirty-five hundred more for the forty-first volume that he he had just begun before he died) amount to twelve times the total words in Moby Dick, more than three times the number in the King James Bible, and just less than three times the word count of Shakespeare's complex works.
Also,
The book plate advertisements in two of his own volumes...reveal that he bought at least some of his blank books from Samuel Howgate, whose store lay in the commercial center of the city. The fact that the bookplate ad for Howgate's Kirkgate bookshop grew more elaborate between the two volumes in which it was affixed indicates some measure of the store's prosperity. But judging by the content of both plates, this already seems to have been a place with varied consumer possibilities, selling "books in all faculties and sciences," maps, prints, parchment, paper, and at least one doctor's "elixir."
I don't promise a write-up of the book, especially as I'm not sure I'm going to read it beginning to end, but I'll try to at least do a paragraph or two to indicate what the book is *about*.
Re: Peter Hagendorf: Diary of a Mercenary from the 30-Years-War - I
Date: 2022-08-10 07:05 am (UTC)I am intending to read the book Women, Armies and Warfare in Early Modern Europe by John A. Lynn (because I am writing a fic where a woman goes along with the 1745 Jacobite army)! I can do a write-up when I've read it, if you want.
Re: Peter Hagendorf: Diary of a Mercenary from the 30-Years-War - I
Date: 2022-08-10 12:32 pm (UTC)Re: Peter Hagendorf: Diary of a Mercenary from the 30-Years-War - I
Date: 2022-08-13 05:14 am (UTC)Re: Peter Hagendorf: Diary of a Mercenary from the 30-Years-War - I
Date: 2022-08-13 05:07 am (UTC)I have not read the Hildebrandslied! (If it's a poem from OE or Medieval Welsh, I'm probably at least in-passing familiar with it... but not necessarily with lit in other languages.) I'm kind of sad about this, as I was much more motivated to read this kind of thing twenty years ago than I am now... but maybe it will happen!
Hildebrandslied
Date: 2022-08-15 12:09 pm (UTC)Since what survives a fragment with many lacunae, it can be confusing, so quick plot summary:
Hildebrand: father
Hadubrand: son
Hildebrand and Hadubrand are about to kill each other in combat. Hildebrand asks for Hadubrand's genealogy. Hadubrand says his father was named Hildebrand and went off to war 30 years ago, [insert more identifying details] and is dead.
Hildebrand goes, "No, that's me! Let's not kill each other!"
Hadubrand thinks it's a trick and insists they kill each other.
Honor requires they fight to the death.
The fragment breaks off while they're fighting, but this is early Germanic poetry so it probably ended in death. :P Comparanda suggest it's usually the father killing the son, and if this whole episode reminds you of Cuchulainn killing his son in single combat after they don't recognize each other...yep!
Also, Wikipedia says "Legendary material about Hildebrand survived in Germany into the 17th century and also spread to Scandinavia." Do you know this story,
Re: Hildebrandslied
Date: 2022-08-15 12:16 pm (UTC)Re: Hildebrandslied
Date: 2022-08-15 12:21 pm (UTC)Where "Bern" is not the better-known Bern of Switzerland, but Verona.
It's also fascinating that he's so sure that Hildebrand and Hadubrand fought in Mantua
Yes!
Re: Hildebrandslied
Date: 2022-08-16 05:13 am (UTC)Re: Hildebrandslied
Date: 2022-08-16 05:12 am (UTC)Yeah... I think I kind of need fix-it for basically ALL EARLY POETRY, omg. Hmm, I should give this some thought before Yuletide. I've gotten great fic for Mabinogion, Der Ring des Nibelungen (which I realize isn't quite the same, but which is related enough that it slots in the same part of my head), and Preiddeu Annwn (all three fics on AO3 were presents for me :D though I wouldn't call any of them fix-it).
Re: Hildebrandslied
Date: 2022-08-16 10:32 am (UTC)Also according to Wikipedia,
The textual form of the Jüngeres Hildebrandslied is a product of the fifteenth century, though its material is clearly much older...It is transmitted in five manuscripts, beginning with a fragment from 1459, with the first complete version found in the Dresdener Heldenbuch. The poem was printed numerous times beginning in the sixteenth century, and continued to be printed into the eighteenth century. The ballad even ended up in the collection of German folk poetry known as Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805). The poem and the melody to which it was sung were both extremely well known throughout this period.
I think that answers our question of how Hagendorf knew about it, and tells us which version of the story he'd probably heard (the fix-it fic version)!
Re: Hildebrandslied
Date: 2022-08-22 03:32 pm (UTC)Nope, have not heard of it! Which doesn't mean it's not known in Sweden, obviously...
Re: Hildebrandslied
Date: 2022-08-26 12:14 pm (UTC)