"This report and intelligence increased the ardour of my love for her, especially as I now knew that she was indeed of distinguished family, but not of noble extraction, and also because Herr Pirner had highly commended the maiden on account of her godly behaviour, piety, prudence, and many domestic qualities; and the Frau Generalin had no hesitation in trusting her with the whole conduct of the household, during her many journeys to and fro. Now my whole heart being filled to overflowing with a stream of chaste love, I poured it out for the first time to this honourable man, and revealed to his discretion what else I would not have disclosed to any man in the whole world, namely, that if it were possible, and provided it were the will of God, I desired to make Mistress Mercer my wife, and I begged of him to lend me his faithful aid in this important affair, and help to promote my good purpose.
"The good man was willing to esteem it the greatest honour to perform this service for me; he devoted his heart to the work, and gave expression to my intentions, first to the Frau Generalin. Meanwhile I exchanged letters with him, and soon entertained good hopes. In summa, the affair advanced in a short time in the most satisfactory manner, so that nothing remained but for me to visit her in person. One Monday morning, having first sought aid of the Lord, I proceeded on horseback to Nickelstadt, called for the Herr Pirner there, and went with him to Klein-Polewitz, which lay about a quarter of a mile from thence. The son-in-law of the Frau Generalin, Herr Heinrich von Poser, the royal receiver-general of taxes in the principality of Jauer and Schweidnitz, received us in the baronial mansion, conducted us with great politeness to the dining-room, where he entertained us with various discourse, like a highly-talented and well-educated cavalier. Soon afterwards the Frau Generalin sent for me to her room, and welcomed me with much civility, receiving my compliments in return most favourably. My proposals contented her right well, and she gave me good hope that my desires would meet with a happy issue. In the mean time the table was spread, and the Frau Generalin with her maiden daughter, and Herr von Poser with his spouse, made their appearance, followed by good Mistress Mercer, who received me most courteously. During dinner every variety of lively discourse was carried on, and my love was the true centre to which all were attracted. When dinner was ended, the whole company absented themselves, and left me and my love alone in the dining-room. On this occasion I opened my heart to her, and begged for her sympathy, hoping she might in some degree reciprocate my chaste love, and allow herself to be persuaded, under God's providence, to be united with me in wedlock. Now as generally in love affairs a maiden's No is as good as Yes, so I considered my love's first uttered No as Yes, and was not thereby alarmed, but pursued my intent. Meanwhile, however, the Frau Generalin and the Herr von Poser passed to and fro, and teased us poor lovers with polite jests. At last our love could no longer hide itself under compliments, but burst forth like the moon from behind dark clouds, and we exclaimed, 'Yes, I am thine, and thou art mine!' And now we called together the Frau Generalin, the Herr Poser, and he who was my rightful wooer, who then, as assistants and witnesses, confirmed our verbal Yes, by joining together our hands. As a pledge of my affection, I hereupon presented my love with a small Bible handsomely embossed with silver, and a ring with ten diamonds, which had been made for me at Breslau for fifty-three imperial thalers. But my treasure entered into a contest of love with me, presenting me with a ring with one diamond, which, on account of its size, was estimated at ninety imperial thalers. Now when the affair had in such wise come to an arrangement, we sat down again to table in the evening, and supped together with gladness of heart, till at nightfall I and Herr Pirner were conducted to two comfortable bedchambers. The following morning I expressed to Frau Generalin my thankfulness for all the honour she had shown me, took leave of my love and all present, and returned with Herr Pirner to Nickelstadt, and from thence back to Liegnitz. From there I corresponded weekly with my love, visited her every Sunday after the performance of divine service, at Polewitz; treated her each time with a special present, and finally fixed with her upon St. Elizabeth's day, namely the 19th of November, 1675, for the conclusion of our nuptials.
"After this fashion did our courtship continue almost five weeks; then as the appointed nuptial day was approaching, and everything necessary had been procured, and the wedding guests invited, and more especially as my former colleague at Brieg, Herr Dares, whom I had requested to unite us, had arrived at Klein-Polewitz, the Frau Generalin sent two coaches, the one with six, the other with four horses, to Liegnitz to fetch me and my guests; but as these coaches could not bring all, the Captain General, Herr von Schweinichen lent me one, item the Abbess of Nonnenklosters, item the city councillor, nay one with four horses, together with certain calèches, whereupon, by God's will, I with my guests repaired to Polewitz. After the marriage sermon, in which Herr Dares introduced the names Friedrich and Elizabeth very ingeniously and emblematically, the wedding took place by the light of burning torches, about six o'clock in the evening in the large dining-room, whereunto I was conducted by the Royal Councillors Herr Kurchen and Herr Caspar Braun, and my love by Herr von Poser and Herr von Eicke, brother to the Frau Generalin. Before the wedding, Fräulein von Schlepusch had presented me with the wreath, and I had given her in return a beautiful gold ring. As soon as the marriage was completed we sat down to supper, which had been provided by my love at our cost, and were all very blithe and merry. In such fashion did we entertain our guests for the space of three days with the greatest gaiety and contentment; and it all ended in confidential union and harmony. On the fourth day, accompanied by Herr Rath Knichen and his wife, I brought home my love to Liegnitz in the coach of the Frau Generalin, drawn by six horses."
Here we conclude the narrative of the happy husband; he had won by his wooing a most excellent housewife. In the midst of flowery expressions the reader will perhaps discern here the deep emotions of an honourable heart.
But the mode of expressing the feelings of the heart was altered. When a century before, Felix Platter related the beginning of his love for his maiden, he expresses his feeling in these simple words: "I began to love her much;" Lucä, on the other hand, already expresses himself thus: "That the stream of chaste love filled his heart to overflowing." The bride of the Glauburger still decorously addressed her bridegroom in her letters as "Dearly beloved Junker;" but now in a tender epistle from a wife to her husband, she accosts him as "Most beautiful angel." In other European nations also, we find the same false refinement; with them also the finest feelings were overloaded with ornament. Through the foreign and classical poets this style had been brought into Germany, partly a bad kind of renaissance, which had originated in an unskilful imitation of the ancients. But nevertheless it satisfied a real need of the heart; men wished to raise themselves and those they loved, out of the common realities of life into a purer atmosphere: as angels, they placed them in the golden halo of the Christian heaven; as goddesses, in the ancient Olympus; as Chloe, in the sweet perfumed air of the Idylls. In the same childish effort to make themselves honourable, dignified, and great, they wore peruques, introduced ridiculous titles, believed in the philosopher's stone, and entered into secret societies; and whoever would write a history of the German mind might well call this a period of ardent aspirations. These aspirations were not altogether estimable, by turns they became vague, childish, fanatical, stupid, sentimental, and at last dissolute; but beneath might always be discovered the feeling that there was something wanting in German life. Was it a higher morality? Was it gaiety? Perhaps it was the grace of God? The beautiful or the frivolous? Or perhaps that was wanting to the people, which the princes had long possessed, political life. With the broken window-panes of the Thirty years' war, and the choice phrases of the young officers who banqueted in the tent of General Hatzfeld, this period of aspiration began; it reached its highest point in the fine minds which gathered round Goethe, and in the brothers who embraced in the east, and it ended perhaps with the war of freedom, or amidst the alarms of 1848.
The home life of the respectable citizen of the seventeenth century was as strictly regulated as was his wooing, prudent and circumspect, even in the most minute particulars. His energies were occupied in strenuous labour from morning to evening, which afforded him a secret satisfaction. Thoughtful and meditative, the artisan sat over his work, and sought to derive pleasure from the labour of his hands. The workman was still full of anxiety, but the beautiful product of his hands was precious to him. Most of the great inventions of modern times were thought out in the workshops of German citizens, though they may indeed sometimes have been first brought into practical use in foreign countries. Scarcely was the war ended when the workshops were again in full activity, the hammer sounded, the weavers' shuttle flew, the joiner sought to collect beautiful veined woods, in order to inlay wardrobes and writing-tables with ornamental arabesques. Even the poor little scribe began again to enjoy the use of his pen; he encircled his characters with beautiful flourishes, and looked with heartfelt pride on his far-famed Saxon ductus. The scholar also was occupied incessantly with thick quartos; but the full bloom of German literature had not yet arrived. Everywhere, indeed, interest was aroused in collecting materials and details, and the industry and knowledge of individuals appears prodigious. But they knew not how to work out these details, it was pre-eminently a period of collection. Historical documents, the legal usages of nations, the old works of theologians, the lives of the saints, and stores of words of all languages were compiled in massive works, the inquiring mind lost itself in the insignificant, without comprehending how to give life to individual learning. It wrote upon antique ink-horns and shoes it reckoned accurately the length and breadth of Noah's ark, and examined conscientiously the length of the spear of the old Landsknecht Goliah. Thus we find that industry did not obtain the full benefit of its labour; yet it assisted much in training the genius of our great astronomer Leibnitz; it also helped to give an ideal purpose to man, a spirit for which he might live.
The war had inflicted much injury on the artisan, and it was first in domestic life that he began to recover from the effects of it. The weaker minds withdrew entirely into their homes, for there was little satisfaction in public life, and their means of defence were diminished. There was now peace, and the old gates of the battered city walls grated on their hinges, but trivial quarrels distracted the council-table, and envious tittle-tattle and malignant calumny embittered every hour of the year to those stronger minds that exerted themselves for the public good. A morbid terror of publicity prevailed. When in the beginning of the eighteenth century the first weekly advertisers sprang up, and the Council of Frankfort-on-Main conceded to the undertakers of it, a weekly list of baptisms, marriages, and deaths, there was a general burst of displeasure; it was considered insupportable that such private concerns should be made public. So completely had the German become a private character.
There were few cities then in Germany on whose social life we can dwell with satisfaction. Hamburg is perhaps the best specimen that can be given. Even there war and its consequences had caused great devastation, but the fresh air that blew from the wide ocean through the streets of the honest citizens of a free town, soon invigorated their energies. Their self-government, and position as a small state in union with foreign powers, preserved their community from extreme narrow-mindedness, and it appears that in the period of laxity and weakness that followed the Thirty years' war, they became by their energetic conduct the principal gainers. Land traffic with the interior of Germany, as also nautical commerce across the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean, recovered their elasticity soon after the termination of the war. Hamburg envoys and agents negotiated with the States-general, and at the court of Cromwell. The Hamburgers possessed not only a merchant fleet, but also a small navy. Their two frigates were, more than once, a terror to the pirates of the Mediterranean and of the German Ocean. They convoyed, now Greenland and Archangel navigators, now great fleets of from forty to fifty merchantmen, to Oporto, Lisbon, Cadiz, Malta, and Leghorn, in short, wherever there were Hamburg settlements.
This commerce, inferior as it may be to that of the present day, was perhaps, in proportion to that of other German seaports of the seventeenth century, more important than now. The young Hamburgers went then to the seaports of the German and Atlantic Ocean, and of the Mediterranean, as they now do to America, and founded there commercial houses on their own account. Thus was formed in Hamburg a cosmopolitanism which is still characteristic of that great city. But it was undoubtedly more difficult for that generation to conform themselves to foreign customs, than for the present. It was not devotion to the German empire, but an attachment to the customs of their daily life and family ties, which made the Hamburgers then, as now, rarely consider a foreign country as their fixed home. When they had passed a course of years abroad, in profitable activity, they hastened home, in order to form a household with a German wife. The warm patriotism and the prudent pliancy to foreign customs, which are peculiar to the citizens of small republics, were produced by this kind of life, and also the love of enterprise, and the enlarged views, which were seldom to be found then in the courts of Princes in the interior. Thus the family of a Hamburg patrician of that period shows a number of interesting peculiarities which are well worth dwelling upon.
Such a family was that of the Burgomaster Johann Schulte, whose race still survives on the female side. Johann Schulte (who lived 1621-1697), was of ancient family, he had studied at Rostock, Strasburg, and Basle, had travelled, and married whilst secretary to the city council, and had then acted as envoy from Hamburg to Cromwell. He became burgomaster in 1668, was a worthy gentleman of great moderation of character, experienced in all worldly affairs as well as in the government of his good city, a happy husband and father. Some letters are preserved from him to his son, who in 1680 entered into partnership in a Lisbon house. These letters contain many instructive details. But most interesting, is the pleasing insight we get into the family life at that period; the terms the father was on with his children, the heartiness of the feeling on both sides; in the father the quiet dignity, and wisdom of the much experienced man, with a strong feeling of his distinguished position, and in all the members of the family a firm bond of union, which, in spite of all the inevitable disputes within the circle, formed an impenetrable barrier to all without.