"My mother accustomed her daughters from their youth up, to suitable household work. Once when my sister Gertrude, who was about five years old, was sitting spinning at her distaff--for spinning-wheels were not then in use--my brother Johannes told her that his Imperial Majesty had summoned a Diet, where the Emperor, Kings, Electors, princes, counts, and great lords would be assembled: she inquired what they would do there, and he answered, 'That they would determine and decree what was to be done in the world.' Then the little maiden at the distaff gave a deep sigh, and said dolefully: 'Oh good God! if they would only decree that such little children should not spin.' This sister, together with my mother and two other sisters, Magdalen and Catherine, died in peace in the year '49, when the plague was raging: my mother went first, and as my sisters were weeping bitterly, she said to them when dying: 'Why do you weep? pray rather that God would in his mercy shorten my pain.' Some days after, my youngest sister Gertrude died: although my eldest unmarried sister Magdalen was herself nigh unto death, she rose from her bed, and laid out not only Gertrude's shroud and winding-sheet, but her own also, and desired that when Gertrude was buried, the grave should be left open, being only lightly covered with earth, that she might be laid next to her; she then returned to her bed, and lived till the next day after Gertrude was buried: so she died, the tallest and strongest of all my sisters, an excellent, clever, and industrious housekeeper. This was written to me by my sister Catherine two days before her own death, who added, that it was even so with herself, that she was about to follow her mother and sisters, and that she did yearn for it, and she did admonish me not to grieve thereat.
"Now my parents when they were first married were comfortably established; their buildings were finished, they were prosperous, and possessed plenty of feathers, wool, honey, butter, and corn; they had their stately mill and brewery; when suddenly all this happiness changed into sorrow and misfortune: for in the same year 1523, George Hartmann, the son-in-law of Doctor Stoientin,[[48]] bought of my father a quarter of butter, and they came to angry words thereupon. Hartmann, who was going to carry a sword to Herr Peter Korchschwantz, went on his way to complain to his mother-in-law: she, who was haughty and very rich, had married a doctor, councillor to the prince, and looked down upon smaller people; she put an axe into his hand with these words: 'See, I give you a trifle, go to the market and buy yourself a heart.' He then met my father, who was without arms, and had not even his bread-knife with him, as he was going to have a pot of honey weighed at the weighing-place in the streets where the locksmiths lived. Hartmann, armed with sword and axe, fell upon him; my father springing into the house of one of the smiths, seized a spit; the boys tore it away from him, and also prevented him from using the ladder which was standing near the gallery; but he tore from the wall a hunting-spear, and running out into the street with it, called out: 'Where is he who wants to take my life?' thereupon Hartmann sprang out of the adjoining smith's house, having added to his former weapons a hammer from the anvil, which he threw at my father, and though he parried the blow with the spear, yet the hammer glided along the spear and hit him on the breast, so that he spit blood for some days. Immediately after, Hartmann struck him with the axe on the shoulder; having now hit him with both hammer and axe, and fancying he had the best of it, he unsheathed his sword, and rushing at my father, ran on the spear, which went into his body up to the handle, so that he fell. This is the true account of this lamentable story; I know well that the adversaries maintain that my father stabbed Hartmann when he was hiding himself behind the stove in the smith's room, but it is a mere fable.
"My father hastened straight to the monastery of the Black Monks, with whom he was acquainted, and they took him into the church, up under the vaulted roof. Doctor Stoientin with many assistants and servants searched every corner of the monastery, and came also into the church. My father, thinking they saw him, was on the point of speaking out and entreating that they would spare him, as he was innocent and had only acted in self-defence; but the merciful God prevented him from speaking, and shut the eyes of his adversaries so that they could not see him.
"In the night the monks let him down over the wall, so that he could walk along the dyke to the village of Neukirchen. There my step-grandfather arranged that my father should go to Stralsund, in a cart that he had ordered from Leitz, concealed among some sacks of barley and fodder. Stoientin met the peasant in the night, and asked him where he was going. 'To Stralsund,' he said. He kicked at the sacks and inquired what load he was carrying. The other replied: 'Barley and fodder.' He then asked whether the peasant had not seen some one riding or running; the latter answered: 'He had seen one riding hastily towards the village of Horst, who had appeared to him like Sastrow from Greifswald; and he had been astonished at his riding so hastily in the night.' So Doctor Stoientin left the peasant and rode to Horst; but my father arrived at Stralsund and obtained a safe conduct from the councillor there.
"But my father could not trust to this, as the deceased had himself been under the safe conduct of my gracious sovereign Duke George; and Dr. Stoientin, the councillor of his princely grace, made good avail of it against my father; besides this, the adversaries were rich, proud, and powerful. So he was obliged to wander about in Denmark, going also to Lübeck, Hamburg, and elsewhere, till he conciliated the reigning prince by a considerable sum, which he was obliged to pay in ready money.
"And although later, after repeated endeavours, and at the cost of much labour and exertion on the part of my step-grandfather, my father became reconciled with the offended party, upon the payment of blood-money to the amount of one thousand marks, he could not remain unmolested at Greifswald, on account of these adversaries residing there. But it may be seen how little this blood-money prospered with the son and heirs of the deceased, for evil and misfortune to person, land, and property pursued both wife and children.
"Thus my mother was left in her youth without a husband, to keep house with four uneducated children. One can well imagine how many sad and sorrowful thoughts weighed upon her.
"Whilst my mother was dwelling in Greifswald, I went to school there, and learnt not only to read, but also to decline, parse, and conjugate in the Donat. On Palm-Sunday I had to sing the 'Quantus,' having sung the foregoing years first the lesser and then the great 'Hic est.'[[49]]
"This was a great honour to the boy, and no small pleasure to his parents, for the most courageous scholars were always selected for it, who were not alarmed at the great multitude of ecclesiastics as well as laymen, and could sing the Quantus with a loud and clear voice.
"In the year 1528, when my parents discovered that the Hartmann party were not to be mollified, and would not let my father return to the town and to his business, they desired, as is becoming an honest couple, to bear the burden of housekeeping together, and thus my mother must needs follow my father. Therefore my father became a citizen of Stralsund, and bought a house there; my mother in the spring quitted Greifswald, sold her house, and settled near the Sound. About the same time my step-grandfather, who was then chamberlain at Greifswald, took me to his house, that I might study there. I however studied very little, for I preferred riding and driving with my grandfather to the neighbouring villages, so that I made little progress in my studies.