The Pictures of German Life Throughout History. Gustav Freytag

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СКАЧАТЬ In Augsburg, the old patricians were more indulgent to merchants: he who had married the child of a patrician family, could be received into the noble society. The remaining commercial cities of note, Prague and Breslau, were most amply supplied with newly ennobled merchants. There was bitter complaint that, under the Emperor Leopold, even a chimney-sweeper, whose trade was then in particularly low esteem, could for a little money procure nobility, and that frequently tradesmen, with patents of nobility in their pockets, might be found packing up herrings for their customers in old paper.

      After the Thirty Years' War, officers also sought for patents of nobility, and they were often granted to them for their services, as also to the higher officials and members of the city administration in the larger cities.

      It was through families who had taken part in the literary and poetical culture of the time, that patents of nobility in this and the following century entered into our literary class. Many poets of the Silesian school, nay, Leibnitz, Wolf, and Haller, were placed among the privileged of their time by patents of nobility, which they themselves or their fathers had acquired.

      Wholesale traders were never esteemed in Germany, nor held in that consideration by the privileged classes of the people, which the great interest they frequently represented deserved. They had of old been mistrusted and disliked; this originated, perhaps, in the time when the astute Romans exchanged, among the simple children of Tuisko, the foreign silver coin, for the early products of the country. The feudal system of the Middle Ages required this disregard of wealth, and not less so Christianity, which commanded men to despise the riches of this world, and granted to the wealthy so little prospect of the Kingdom of Heaven. Since the time of the Hohenstaufen, after the nobles were constituted as a privileged order, the antagonism between the rich money-makers of the city and the needy warriors of the country, was more and more strongly developed. In the Hanse Towns of the north undoubtedly the warlike merchant obtained dominion and respect by his armed vessels, even in distant countries. But the rich and highly cultivated gentlemen of Nüremberg and Augsburg, were scarcely less distasteful to the people than to the princes and nobles who dwelt in predatory habits on the frontiers of their domain; it was not the Fuggers alone who were accused by the Reformers of usury and un-German feeling. After the Thirty Years' War, this enmity bore new fruit, and one can easily believe that the great merchants gave no little occasion to keep alive such antipathy. No human occupation requires such free competition and such unfettered intercourse as trade. But the whole tendency of the olden time was to fence in from the outer world, and to protect individuals by privileges; such a tendency of the time could not fail to make the merchant hard and reckless; his endeavours to obtain a monopoly, and to evade senseless laws with respect to the interest of money, gave the people, frequently with justice, the feeling that the gains of the merchant were produced by the pressure they exercised on the consumer. This feeling became particularly vigorous after the Thirty Years' War. Whilst in Holland and in England the modern middle classes were pre-eminently strengthened by widely extended commerce, German commerce--except in the larger sea-port towns--was prevented from attaining a sound development by the subdivision of territory, the arbitrary dues, the varying standard of money, and, not least, by the poverty of the people; on the other hand, there was constant temptation to every kind of usurious traffic. The diversity of German coinage, and the unscrupulousness of the rulers, favoured an endless kipperei: to buy up good coin at an advantage, to clip gold of full weight, and to bring light money into circulation, became the most profitable occupation. As now, multifarious stockjobbing, so then, illegal traffic in coined metal, was to a great extent the plague of commercial towns. It was not to be exterminated. If sometimes the scandal became too great, then indeed the governments tried a blundering interference: but their courts were hoodwinked. Thus, in Frankfort-on-the-Maine, the clipping of ducats was carried on to such an extent, that a special commission was sent from Vienna to the free Imperial city; Jews had been the colporteurs of Christian commercial houses, among which many great firms, whose names are still in existence, were the great culprits. The only result was that the Imperial commissaries pocketed the larger portion of the illicit gains.

      Such wealth, acquired rapidly, and contrary to law, had, as now, all the characteristics of an unstable acquisition: it seldom lasted to the third generation. It turned the culprits into spendthrifts and pleasure-seekers; their arrogance and deficiency of culture, and their ostentation, became especially offensive to their own fellow-citizens. It was more particularly such individuals who bought patents of nobility; and it was assuredly no accident that, of the numerous noble families of this kind, many in proportion have become extinct.

      One of the newly ennobled of such a circle kept his real name in the firm, but among his fellow-citizens he adhered jealously to the privileges of his new order. He liked to have his coat of arms carved in stone and richly gilt on the outside of his large house, but the stone did not guarantee long duration to its possessor. It was striking, for example, to observe in Breslau, how quickly the houses on the great crescent, which then belonged almost exclusively to the new patent nobles, changed their possessors. In the interior of the house ostentatious luxury was displayed, which in this period of misery was doubly grating to the people. The rooms were decorated with costly carpets, with Venetian mirrors of immense size, with silk hangings and tapestry, which on festive occasions were fixed on the walls or on a special framework, and afterwards removed. The women sewed diamond buckles on their shoes, and it was a subject of complaint that they would wear no lace that was not brought from Venice or Paris, and did not cost at least twenty thalers the ell; nay, it was reported of them that their night utensils were of silver. Great was the number of their lackeys; their carriages were richly gilt, the coachmen drove from a high box four horses, which were then harnessed abreast; but when the splendid equipage rattled through the streets, the people called out deridingly, "That the pot always tasted of the first soup." The rich man could well keep fine horses, as he at the same time traded in them; and the workmen in the business, the porter, carpenter, and apprentice, were put into the costume of lackeys, but the page who went behind the lady was generally a child from the poor school. In such houses there was also the most luxurious living. The invited guest was received with a formality that was then characteristic of the highly educated; the host met him on the staircase, and to one of the highest distinction went even to the house door; verbose were the compliments on receiving precedence or the higher place at table, and yet the greatest value was attached to not humbling themselves too much. As soon as they were seated at table, the buffet was opened, in which was a mass of costly plate. The dishes were large and the viands in keeping, but out of all proportion to the number of guests; the most expensive things were procured, with a refinement that still astonishes us; great pies, filled with various game, black game, pike liver, and Italian salad. The pheasants and partridges were caponed and fed, a brace cost as much as a ducat; it was thought horrible that these spendthrifts gave a gulden for a fresh herring, and from eight to ten thalers for a hundred oysters. To these were added the costly wines of the seventeenth century, Tokay, Canary, Marzenin, Frontignac, Muscat, and finally wine of Lebanon; at dessert there was no longer marchpane, but candied citron, the fashionable delicacy. The ladies sat adorned and silent. It was complained that their principal anxiety in the choice of a husband was, that their intended should be of rank, that they might follow near to the corpse at funerals, and have a high place at weddings. On such occasions they went little short of boxing each other's ears for precedence. So far was the eagerness for rank carried, that he considered himself materially better whose new patent of nobility dated ten years earlier than that of another; and these city nobles considered fresh creations in nowise their equals. Whoever had been lately ennobled was only called "Wohledel" (just ennobled), but he who had for some time been in possession of his patent, was called, "Hoch-and-edelgeborne Gestrengigkeit" (high and noble-born worship). Every effort was made to obtain a title in addition to their city dignity.

      The military dignities also of the city were often occupied by the greenhorns of such families; a poor wight who had never been on a battle-field, with a staff thickly set with silver, with armed jäger behind him, might be seen passing daily from city gate to city gate, in order to parade before the people, and to receive the salute of the guard.

      Only one thing was required of him, he must know how to handle СКАЧАТЬ