The Pictures of German Life Throughout History. Gustav Freytag

salt, and the baptism of bells with their two hundred godfathers, he was not in a position to perceive that the old Church had given growth to these excrescences, by having yielded too much to the imaginative disposition of the German popular mind.

      The artisans liked to reproduce the formulas of their religion and guilds for their amusement: dialogue and gesture were interchanged, and thus dramatic representations arose. The initiated and best informed of every class became known by this; they had an opportunity of showing their nature under the traditional form. In such a way every young nation tries to represent life, and among the Germans, this inclination, together with the love of mystery, worked most powerfully in the same direction. It gave much opportunity for dramatic acting, though it was a peculiarly undramatic period in the life of the people, for words and characteristic gestures do not flow from the inward man; they come with imposing power from external circumstances, leading, forming, and restraining the individual.

      Such union of order and discipline belongs to the epic time of the people.

      How the German mind outgrew these bonds we shall learn from the following stories of the olden time. In the course of four centuries the great change was accomplished--a powerful action of the mind brought freedom in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and a fearful political catastrophe brought destruction in the seventeenth.^[3] After a long deathlike sleep the modern spirit of the people awoke in the eighteenth century.

      CHAPTER I.

      SCENES FROM THE HUSSITE WAR.

       Table of Contents

      (about 1425.)

      Among the events of the thirteenth century, the wonderfully rapid colonization of the Sclave country east of the Elbe has never been sufficiently appreciated. In the course of one century a numerous body of German emigrants of all classes, almost as many as now go to America, spread themselves over a large tract of country, established hundreds of cities and villages, and united it for the most part firmly to Germany. Nearly the whole of the eastern part of Prussia extends over a portion of the territory that was thus colonized.

      The time however of this outpouring of national strength was not the heroic period of Germany. The enthusiasm of the Crusades, the splendour of the Hohenstaufen, the short reign of German chivalry, and the greatest elevation of German art, were at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century, whereas the colonization of the Sclave frontier was carried on with most energy towards the close of it. This was the period when Neumark and Prussia were conquered, and Lausitz, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Rugen, and Silesia colonized. But there was a striking difference in the case of Silesia; for whilst in the other Sclave countries the people were crushed by the iron hand of the conqueror, and were compelled to adopt German habits of life, Silesia became the centre of a quiet, peaceful colonization, which spread itself far and wide over, the frontier towards the east.

      How powerful a passion the love of wandering became in the German people at this period, is a point we will not attempt to enter upon. The expeditions of the Hohenstaufens into Italy, and still more the Crusades, had roused and excited the masses, who became restless and eager for foreign adventure; and the life of the peaceful labourer in Germany was full of danger, indeed almost insupportable. Pious monks, enterprising nobles, even princely brides were to be seen knocking at the doors of their peasantry, and trying to induce the young labourers to follow them to Poland. But little is known concerning this emigration; we do not even know from what province the great stream of Silesian wanderers flowed. There are grounds for thinking that most of them came from Magdeburg, Thuringia, and perhaps Franconia. There is no mention of it in the ancient manuscripts or chronicles; the only evidence concerning it might perhaps be found in the Silesian and Thuringian dialects, but even these have not been sufficiently investigated. We have however more knowledge as to who invited the Germans into the country of the Oder. It was the Sclavonian dukes of the Piasten family, who were then rulers of the country.

      At the end of the twelfth century a race of ancient Polish princes resided on their paternal inheritance in Silesia; inferior to these were numerous Sclave nobles, and below them again a much oppressed and enslaved people. The country was thinly populated, and poor both in capital and labour. The heights of the Riesenberge and the plains of the Oder were clothed with wood; between them stretched out miles of desolate heath. Herds of wild boars laired in the swamps, bears picked the wild honey from the hollow trunks of the trees, and the elks fed on the branches of the pine; the beaver made its home beside the rivers, the fish eagle hovered about the ponds, and above him soared the noble falcon. The beaver and falcon were more valuable in the eyes of the princes than their serfs. The peasants looked from their miserable huts with horror on the lords of the water and air, for the preservation of which they had to pay exorbitant penalties. What the earth yielded freely they had to collect for their rigorous masters and the Church. They had to pay tribute from the water and the heath of fish and honey, and heavy imposts on their arable land, sheaves of corn, grain and money; and a certain amount of service was required of them. The greater part were serfs; few were free. And not only the peasants, but also the artisans and tradesmen of all kinds lived in every gradation of servitude, ground down by oppression without hope or pleasure in their work. The Sclave cities only differed from the villages in being a larger collection of bare huts, surrounded by a moat and wooden palisades, and usually situated in the vicinity of a nobleman's castle, under whose protection they lived. In peaceable times markets were held in the towns. Even till the end of the twelfth century the merchants often made their payments, as in Poland, with the tails of martins and skins of squirrels instead of money. But the Silesian mines were already being worked; they yielded silver and gold, copper and lead, and mining, which was considered the nobleman's right, was carried on actively. Mints were erected in all the great market towns, and, as in Poland, the coinage was changed three times a year; and the princes derived some of their income from tolls on the market-places, butchers' stalls, and public-houses.

      Such was the country that was then ruled by the royal Piasten families under the Polish sovereignty, which, however, was often disputed, and sometimes entirely thrown off. A great dissimilarity might however be discerned in the different branches of the family. The Piastens of Upper Silesia united themselves closely with Poland, and kept up the Sclave habits in their country, so that even at the present day a Sclave population is to be found there; but the rulers of Lower Silesia adhered to the Germans. It was their policy to marry the daughters of the German princes: they set the highest value upon everything German, and German manners were introduced into the court; their children were sent to travel in Germany, and often brought up there, so that in the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Piasten family was held in great consideration throughout that country; they sought for knighthood from their relations in the west, and out of courtesy to them dressed their followers in their colours. They knighted their own nobles with the German straight sword, instead of using the crooked Sclave sabre; they preferred getting drunk on malmsey and Rhine wines, instead of the old mead. The German dances were in great request among the ladies of the court.

      In this way a numerous German nobility was established in the country, for these courtiers or adventurers and their relations soon became landed proprietors, and the Sclavonian institution of the Castellan was replaced by the German feudal tenure. But an influx of priests and monks tended still more to the promotion of German habits; a stream of them poured incessantly from the west into the half-civilized country. Monasteries, cloisters, and other pious establishments sprang up rapidly, and became as it were the strongholds of German life; for the brotherhoods of the west sent their best and most distinguished members, and continued to furnish them with learning, books, and spiritual energy. The princes, nobles, and clergy soon became aware of the difference between German and Sclave labour; under the latter, large tracts of country yielded little produce, except wood from the forest and honey from the heath. The landed proprietors therefore, with due regard to their own interests, introduced everywhere German labour. Thus in Silesia the great truth first dawned upon men, on which rests the whole system of modern life, that the labour of free men, can alone give stability to a nation and make it powerful and