Bartholomew Sastrow: Being the Memoirs of a German Burgomaster

by Bartholomäus Sastrow

At Lubeck the pitiful collapse of the council brought about the reinstatement of the old magistracy. In a spirit of pacification they gave Wullenweber the captaincy of Bergendorf; but Wullenweber, while crossing the territory of the Abbey of Werden, was seized by order of Christopher, bishop of Bremen, who handed him over to his brother, Duke Heindrich of Brunswick. After a cruel captivity at Wolfenbüttel, and in consequence of indictments as numerous as they were grave (especially from Lubeck, represented by his secretary), he was sentenced to death in September, 1537, and his body quartered. At the taking of the fortress of Wardenburg, Duke Christian captured Marx Meyer, his brother Gerard Meyer, and a notorious Danish priest. These three were executed by the sword, quartered, and their bodies shown on the rack to the great satisfaction of the Danish people and the honest Lubeckenaars so long oppressed.

Nicholas Nering, a citizen of those parts, had sold to Johannes Krossen a farm with all its live stock and belongings, but, according to him, he had reserved for himself the foal of a handsome mare, if it should happen to be a colt, and a colt it turned out to be. At the period of its weaning, in 1535, he claimed the young animal. Krossen contested the claim. Thereupon, according to the evidence of his step-son, Peter Klatteville, who was about fifteen, and whose evidence was recorded in the black register of the court, Nering, not to be outdone, mounted his black horse, the lad trotting barefooted by his side, and both went at five a.m. to Krossen's farm. Nering got the colt out of the stables while the youngster kept watch. Nering hid his spoil for three weeks at Schwartz's, at the new mill, and after having made Peter promise to keep the secret on the penalty of the most terrible punishment.

Different is the version recorded in the new register, written on parchment and bound in white sow's skin. "In 1536, on the Monday after Reminiscere, Nicholas Nering, accused of pillage, has confessed before the court that riding along the Frankische landstrasse, after passing the gate, he noticed three colts; that moved by a wicked inspiration, he had gone up to them and thrown the leash over one of these, and fastened it to the pommel of his saddle, and in that way brought it to his own stables. After having heard the above confession, it was decided to take Nicholas Nering outside the city and hang him on the gallows."

Nicholas Nering's bad reputation did not dispose the council in his favour; hence all his friends had employed him to restore the colt in order to prevent the matter going into the courts, but he had proved obstinate. While he was in his cell, he repeated that he was indifferent to death, but that he deplored the calamities which his execution would entail. It was an evident proof of his having concocted a scheme of vengeance with his confidants. This became obvious enough after his death, when his kindred left the city and began setting fire to mills, homesteads and villages of the neighbourhood, and recruiting accomplices by sheer weight of money. Two of these malefactors were taken at Bart, and put on the rack. At Stralsund they arrested ten individuals at once, among others, Christian Parow, the dean of the drapers, and Johannes Blumenow, the dean of the shoemakers. Young Peter Klatteville confessed to having set the New Mill on fire at the instigation of his mother, Nering's widow. Three were put on the rack; they declared having received of Parow ten marks for committing the crime, and the ministers who conducted them to the execution had much trouble to make them retract the accusation in the presence of the crowd. The following is the version in the Annales of Berckmann, one of the ministers: "This is what I have personally seen. When Parow took his stroll in the market place, the raven of Barber Grellen ran to peck at his legs, so that Parow considered it the best part of valour to quit the place. I am bound to admit, though, that this bird was in the habit of annoying the peasants who happened to wear wide linen breeches. Parow, who was an old man, did not pay sufficient attention to his appearance as to have his breeches properly pulled up like those of his companions; hence, there is nothing to prove that Providence made use of the raven to declare which kind of death Parow deserved."

Berckmann is simply nothing more nor less than Satan's slave when he tries to make Parow odious. It is true that this worthy man signed and sealed the avowal of his forfeit; the act happened to fall into my hands when I was secretary of the city. I destroyed it, in that way saving an honourable family from future affronts, without causing any damage to the public welfare. Besides, this concession was known to every one. It had in the opinion of those who gave themselves time to think the same value as that of Burgomaster Smiterlow branding himself as a traitor and an infamous creature. During the inquiry, everybody could see how incensed Parow was with the Nerings. If he did give them ten marks, it was because the money was extorted from him bit by bit by a certain Smit who perished on the rack. Nering's stepson Klatteville even declares that Parow came one day to his mother and had a long conversation with her. He does not know what Parow said to her, but he seemed heartbroken at the behaviour of the Nerings, for he wept like a child and went away weeping. In the draper's company no one ever objected to sitting next to him at table, except Olaff Lorbeer, a ridiculous personage, and the son of one of the principal faction-mongers. He always overwhelmed the good old man with his coarse allusions.

Johannes Blumenow, condemned to death on Tuesday, was only led to the scaffold on the following Thursday. I saw the execution. The corpse remained on the wheel, wrapped up by means of a cord in the blue dress he wore every day. This was done in order to prevent the crows from going to work too quickly. This Blumenow, a lively, though grey-haired fellow, the dean of the shoemakers, was the wealthiest of the Forty-Eight. He was very ambitious for the burgomastership which, he flattered himself, he could discharge better than any body. At the last burgomaster's banquet, that of Nicholas Sonnenberg, Frau Blumenow said to the matron next to her: "I did not wish to come, but I ought to know what to do when our turn comes to give the banquet." I have seen Blumenow busy cleaning skins and during that time many a notable personage clad in furs bowed down before him with more respect than before any former burgomaster. Berckmann attributes no other wrong to him than that of having induced Nering to renounce his citizenship (that is honest enough); but, he insinuates they had made up their minds to ruin him because he had in his possession the famous act elaborated by the Forty-Eight. What a pity it is that Berckmann sets so little store by the truth. Who compelled him to commit so many foolish fabrications to paper? With a little trouble on his part he could have learnt that about forty years previously a priest had been assassinated in his dwelling. The murderer remained unknown until Blumenow, being put to the torture, confessed to being the author of the crime. He had counted upon a big sum of money, but the victim did not possess more than a few pence. That, my very dear Berckmann, was what brought Blumenow to the scaffold. The sedition mongers had taken their precautions so well in the act of 1535 and in its appendix that, but for the Nering lawsuits, the honest part of the community would have never had the joy of seeing their oppressors pay for their misdeeds.

I have already recounted the pitiful end of Rolof Moller; the whole of his line was overtaken with similar punishment. His eldest son, George, who had been my schoolfellow at Rostock, was only a stripling when he caught a nameless disease through frequenting a certain class of women. He wanted to play the young country squire, did little work and spent much. His stepfather took him away from his studies, and sent him to England to learn the language of the country, and then to Antwerp, to get an insight into business. The young fellow, however, continued his spendthrift ways, and it became necessary to recall him. Rolof Moller's second son, for a mere trifle, stabbed in the open street his cousin with whom he had been drinking claret at an apothecary's. The name of Moller is fated to be extinguished in a short time.

What shall I say about Burgomaster Lorbeer, the instigator of the three riots, and especially of the third against Smiterlow? Everybody is aware of the contempt into which he fell even during his lifetime, and of the horrible malady that carried him slowly to the grave. After his death his wife and daughters still believed themselves to be the masters, as in the days when visiting an estate of the city they were greeted with the formula of reception, "Be welcome, dear ladies, on thy lands," and when the passers-by hailed them with a "God preserve you, young and dear burgomasters." This deference had inflated their presumption to such an extent that they lost all respect for both the council and the law courts. They ended up by exhausting the Divine patience.

The master-miller Nicholas Hildebrand was not the least influential among the Forty-Eight. A busybody, self-interested, he meddled with everything that could bring water to his milldam. Having had certain private reasons for retiring to Wolgast, he intrigued so barefacedly as to compel the duke to imprison him; and inasmuch as nobody dreamt of interceding for him, he spent the whole winter in a cell. At his discharge his legs were frost-bitten and he was eaten up with vermin. Another active and restless firebrand, the erewhile tailor Marschmann, who came to Wolgast to escape his creditors, kept Hildebrand company the whole of the winter. Knigge took to making false coin; but for Doctor Gentzkow, whose step-daughter he had married, the capital sentence passed on him would not have been commuted into banishment. Christian Herwig died in abject misery. They had given him the nickname of Count Christian, because in his prosperous days he strutted about in his best dress, one hand on his hip, and taking up the whole width of the street by himself. His wife became an inmate of the St. John's Asylum. One of his daughters, a downright slattern, had to beg her bread and was found dead one morning; the rest vegetated in the most sordid conditions. Nicholas Loewe, a quarrelsome creature who tried to look like a captain in his white dress set off with red velvet, in the end considered himself lucky at the St. John's Asylum to don the grey small clothes provided for him by charity. Long before his death he became stone blind. His daughter Anna was the talk of the town. I could easily extend this list, for, as far as I recollect, not one of those sedition-mongers escaped the punishment inflicted by the Almighty on rebels unto the third and fourth generations.

Stralsund, there is no doubt, is likely to feel for a long while the pernicious effects of Rolof Moller; but just as history praises Cambyses, that arch-tyrant, monstrum hominis el vera cloaca diaboli for having ordered the death of the prevaricating judge and for having had his skin nailed on the judgment seat; so on one point, and on one only, are the sedition-mongers entitled to commendation. They replaced the banquets of the burgomaster and the councillors by presents of goldsmith's work or by a piece of silver. Nowadays the city receives from the burgomaster a piece of silver-gilt; a councillor merely gives a piece of silverwork. The guilds have also done away with the banquets of reception and election. Instead of foolishly wasting their money in gormandizing, the new dean or the new companion offers a present of silver which does duty at the fêtes and gatherings, so that nowadays the wooden and pewter goblets have made room for silver tankards. On Twelfth Night the council and the corporations make a display of their treasure, to show to the public that it is not only intact, but increased.