Paper Memory

Matthew Lundin

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780674071230
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

Paper Memory tells the story of one man's mission to preserve for posterity the memory of everyday life in sixteenth-century Germany. Matthew Lundin takes us inside the mind of an undistinguished German burgher named Hermann Weinsberg, whose personal writings allow us to witness firsthand the great transformations of early modernity: the crisis of the Reformation, the rise of an urban middle class, and the information explosion of the print revolution. This sensitive, faithful portrait reveals a man who sought to make sense of the changes that were unsettling the foundations of his world.Weinsberg's decision to undertake the monumental task of documenting his life was astonishing, since he was neither prince nor bishop, but a Catholic lawyer from Cologne with no special claim to fame or fortune. Although he knew that his contemporaries would consider his work vain and foolish, he dutifully recorded the details of his existence, from descriptions of favorite meals to catalogs of his sleeping habits, from the gossip of quarreling neighbors to confessions of his private hopes, fears, and beliefs. More than fifty years—and thousands of pages—later, Weinsberg conferred his Gedenkbuch, or Memory Book, to his descendants, charging them to ensure its safekeeping, for without his careful chronicle, "it would be as if we had never been."Desperate to save his past from oblivion, Weinsberg hoped to write himself into the historical record. Paper Memory rescues this not-so-ordinary man from obscurity, as Lundin's perceptive and graceful prose recovers his extraordinary story.

CHAPTER ONE

A Secret Legacy

When Cologne rentier and Licentiate of Law Hermann Weinsberg died in 1597, few of his friends and relatives suspected the massive cache of papers kept locked away in his study—thousands of pages in all. Though a respected city-councilor and lawyer in one of Germany’s largest and most Catholic cities, Hermann Weinsberg ranked well below Cologne’s most illustrious men. And while his diligent work as a parish churchwarden and civic officer had earned him the respect of his contemporaries, he was unlikely to be remembered for his public deeds.¹ Two marriages to wealthy widows had brought him a decent income, but no offspring. For a Licentiate of Law, he had worn modest clothing, preferring plain coats and breeches to the more extravagant dress that had recently come into fashion.² A humanist-trained lawyer, his favorite motto was “blessed are those who hold to the mean.”³ At least outwardly, he had proved true to his word, living frugally as a middling burgher and praying for “necessities in moderation, between riches and poverty.”⁴

Upstairs in his study, however, Hermann Weinsberg had led a secret, troubled life. For over fifty years, this outwardly unassuming lawyer had compiled a vast and intricate family archive. In the midst of a tumultuous age, he had striven to leave behind a solid, impressive legacy. Since his only child was an illegitimate daughter fathered in his youth, Hermann Weinsberg had schemed for other ways to establish a great, enduring house. “Secretly I was eager for glory,” he confessed, “and ambitious to leave a good name and memory behind me.”⁵ As a relatively comfortable rentier, Hermann had had ample time to craft his paper legacy. “With my quill always at the ready”—that was how he described himself late in life.⁶ A compulsive scribbler, he had used writing to order every aspect of his life and family world, but in a project nonetheless kept hidden from his two late wives, his fellow civic notables, and his siblings.

The family archive Hermann Weinsberg left behind at his death was—to use two adjectives of contemporary derivation—both gargantuan and quixotic. Its scope and ambition might suit a prince, not a petty lawyer. A fabricated genealogy laid claim to a providential descent stretching back to a mysterious eighth-century foundling; an elaborate will entailed the estate within the male line in perpetuity; a manual of household governance gave explicit instructions for running the estate; and a massive Gedenkbuch (or “Memory Book”) recorded the events of his lifetime in incredible detail. Little was left unwritten. The archive included account books, copies of family documents, letters to future family members, detailed instructions for the executors of his estate, and endless amplifications of his will.⁷ The entire legacy was meant to equip a “middling” (mittelmessig) burgher family with all the advantages possessed by more illustrious aristocratic, patrician, and religious houses—an inalienable patrimony, a legendary past, a deeply rooted identity, and an enduring institutional memory.

The secret project was Hermann Weinsberg’s calling. Through it he hoped to live on among his heirs. “If my writings are continued and preserved,” he wrote, “the descendents will also know something to say about us.”⁸ The cache of papers was to be passed down in perpetuity, from housefather to housefather, secure within the confines of the Weinsberg household. To guarantee the survival of the family name, Hermann’s last will and testament established elaborate rules of succession to his modest estate. Though he lacked legitimate children, his writings would vouchsafe a legacy. “The housefather,” exclaimed Hermann, “shall be my immortal son, and I shall never be without a child for all eternity.” If all went according to plan, the Haus Weinsberg would be a community of prayer and memory—an “eternal gathering”—in the midst of a changing, uncertain city.⁹

As an instance of the perennial ambitions and anxieties that haunt human lives, few sixteenth-century collections of private writings are more poignant. Having failed to accomplish anything of public significance and all too aware of his own mediocrity and obscurity, Hermann Weinsberg invented a private theater of fame. Not unlike his fictitious contemporary Don Quixote, Hermann stubbornly transformed a shabby estate—“my poverty,” as he called it—into an ancient and enduring house, full of noble tradition and memory. No one could accuse him of having been “in this world in vain” (vergeblich in disser welt).¹⁰ Fancying himself the founder of a great family legacy, he filled his writings with affectionate letters to heirs, extolling the virtues of the Weinsberg clan:

Hark thou honest house of Weinsberg dear,

Mark all the kin that have sprung up here!

(Hoerzu Weinsberch du erpar hauß

Mirckt an ir frundt untsprossen drauß.)¹¹

Though he dared not reveal his writings to contemporaries, he looked forward to the day when his heirs would fondly remember him.

In pursuit of these perennial ambitions, however, Hermann Weinsberg was confronted with the particular problematics of his historical era. His search for a meaningful and significant identity was intimately linked with the peculiar uncertainties of his age. The impulse to entail estates and create legacies was far from uncommon in the sixteenth century; indeed, in an era in which the eternal institutions of the Church were called into question, such impulses could take on urgent, existential dimensions. As a humanist-trained lawyer and an admirer of Erasmus, Hermann was acutely aware of historical change and oblivion. Though Cologne had remained Catholic, the collapse of the Church in Protestant lands was unsettling. It is true, Hermann admitted, “nothing in the world is lasting or eternal, that cities, lands, churches, cloisters, religions, and governments are overturned and destroyed.” Nonetheless, he hoped that God might be the “eternal master builder” of his house, turning the modest foundations he himself had laid into something great and lasting.¹² Against this backdrop, Hermann Weinsberg’s quest to found an enduring house became something more complex than a simple grasping after fame and immortality.

Unbelievable Care

Even if he had not crafted his secret archive, Hermann Weinsberg would still have left behind many traces of his reading and writing habits. A lawyer who lived during an age of burgeoning lay literacy, when the practice of writing was expanding into more areas of everyday life, Hermann delighted in the increasingly eclectic variety of private reading that print had made possible. Friends and relatives were well aware of his penchant for holing himself up in his study with papers and books. Like many contemporary burghers, Hermann Weinsberg surrounded himself with paper; it was through the “means of quill, ink, and paper” (mittel der federen, uncks, und papyrs) that he sought to make his mark on the world.¹³

Hermann never compiled a complete list of his books, but references to the works he read or owned are scattered throughout his writings. His library was substantial. After his death, his heirs paid half a thaler—a decent sum—to draw up an inventory of his books.¹⁴ Hermann himself kept track of new publications, reading catalogs of books from the Frankfurt trade fair (Messe) and copying the most notable titles down in his private papers.¹⁵ As a university-trained Licentiate of Law, he owned several legal texts, including collections of both Roman and canon law—the Corpus juris civilis and the Corpus canonicum—as well as the essential commentaries of Bartolus.¹⁶ Similarly, his training in the liberal arts at a humanist school in Emmerich and at the University of Cologne had introduced him to several Latin grammars, the Vulgate, and to works of Virgil, Livy, Ovid, and Erasmus. Hermann’s father, Christian, who took up learning later in life, had given his son several of Erasmus’s works, and Hermann, who had never mastered Latin, peppered his writings with snippets from the Apothegmata, a collection of classical quotations compiled by the famous northern humanist. Other ancient works Hermann mentioned in his writings include texts by Terence and Boethius, as well as German translations of Livy, Herodotus, Cicero, and Justin.

Despite his university education, Hermann Weinsberg took greatest delight in the growing body of vernacular literature available to pragmatically minded burghers. As a city-councilor and parish churchwarden, he possessed copies of civic edicts and policies; a notebook he kept included a 1562 edition of Cologne policies and regulations, as well as handwritten entries on coinage, weights, and other civic concerns.¹⁷ A tolerant Catholic who was inspired by Erasmus, Hermann also possessed an eclectic collection of religious texts. Among other works, he read Lives of the Saints by Cologne scholar Laurentius Surius; a rhyming German psalmody by Cologne priest and theologian Kaspar Ulenberg, a convert from Lutheranism; and a volume of sermons by George Witzel, an irenic preacher who had converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism and then back to Catholicism and whose works had been put on the Church’s Index of Prohibited Books.¹⁸ Though faithful to the old Church, Hermann showed a keen interest in the middle ground between the two confessions; he sought to balance competing accounts of the Reformation, such as the Protestant historian Johannes Sleidan’s Commentaries on Religion and the State in the Reign of Emperor Charles V (1555) and its polemical Catholic counterpart, Jaspar Gennep’s Epitome (1559). Indeed, Hermann’s favorite pastime was to read histories, geographies, and chronicles. Among the many works he read and cited were Sebastian Frank’s irenic Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel (1531), local publisher Johann Koelhoff’s Die cronica van der hilliger stat van Coellen (1499), a German translation of Johannes Trithemius’s compendium of Frankish history, a German translation of Johann Carion’s Chronica, Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia (an overview of the known world), and the ancient Greek author Strabo’s Geographica.

In addition to a sizable collection of vernacular literature, Hermann Weinsberg left behind many of the papers typically found in the desks of lawyers, merchants, and urban notables. As a Licentiate of Law, he was adept at handling testaments, contracts, and inventories. As a wine merchant and, for several years, the husband of a successful textile merchant, Hermann balanced the books of his various businesses.¹⁹ Equally important were his records of household expenditures and consumption, of foodstuffs purchased and used.²⁰ Hermann was hardly unique in keeping such accounts. The papers of some of his kin have survived, including those of in-law Elizabeth Horn and nephew Hermann Weinsberg the Younger; Cologne archives hold rows of similar texts from the period.²¹ Hermann’s vigorous record keeping extended beyond the walls of his household. As a parish churchwarden, he had taken upon himself to keep records of the affairs of his church and neighborhood of St. Jacob.²² In a Memorialbuch he composed for future churchwardens and pastors, Hermann recorded parish elections, gifts to the church, and renovations to the building. He monitored the management of church property, the establishment and execution of endowed masses, the administration of poor relief, and the legal affairs of the parish. And he recounted notable events, such as the “cleaning” of the church cemetery during an excavation and a dispute over the burial of a suspected Protestant who had not received the sacraments.²³

By the standards of the day, this was already a substantial written legacy. The literary footprint of a burgher such as Hermann Weinsberg was much larger than that of notable Cologne burghers one hundred years earlier. Yet Hermann Weinsberg’s active reading and writing life had not prepared his heirs for the revelation of a large cache of private papers. There were thousands of pages that had been composed with the utmost secrecy. Only his brother Gottschalk and nephew Hermann knew of his plans.

The first document unveiled at the Licentiate’s death was his last will and testament, which attempted to keep the entire family estate in the male line.²⁴ Even though Cologne law limited entails to three generations, Hermann’s will called for the establishment of a “board of executors” to oversee an “eternal” succession to the estate. In the event that all suitable male kin died out, the executors were to elect a “stranger”—a Cologne Licentiate of Law—to take on the name Weinsberg and assume the responsibilities of “housefather.” Although Hermann’s will was notarized in 1557, after the death of his first wife, his kin had not surmised its grandiose ambitions and strict stipulations.

A number of additional documents served as supplements to the last will and testament. Chief among these was his Declarationboich.²⁵ This hefty volume not only explained the various provisions of the will, but also instructed future Weinsberg “housefathers” on how to discipline household members, balance domestic accounts, ensure a steady income, celebrate family memorials, and secure the patrimony against future dissolution. The Declarationboich was accompanied by a manual for the future executors of the estate and a set of instructions for preserving and augmenting Hermann’s archive—his “chest”—of writings.

This chest of writings—the repository of Hermann Weinsberg’s memory—lay at the core of the entire project. The archive aimed to preserve the full, true history of the Weinsberg lineage, both past and present. A “register” of kin recorded the names, births, and deaths of the many descendants of Hermann’s paternal grandfather. A “copy book” duplicated the most important legal documents related to Hermann’s estate. The core texts, however, chronicled the history of the lineage. A genealogical volume titled Das Boich Weinsberg told a fantastic story of the Weinsbergs from their alleged origins in the eighth century through the present.²⁶ Filled with fanciful drawings of coats of arms and knightly forebears, Hermann intended this work as a collection of “rough” paper material that future heirs would complete on more durable parchment.²⁷

The largest text was Hermann’s “Memory Book” (Gedenkbuch), an intimate, detailed, and comprehensive chronicle of his own life and times. There were three volumes, each corresponding to a stage of Hermann’s life. The “Book of Youth” (Liber iuventutis) recounted Hermann’s life from birth to the age of sixty (1518–1577);²⁸ the “Book of Old Age” (Liber senectutis) chronicled the decade between sixty and seventy (1578–1587);²⁹ and “The Book of Very Old Age” (Liber decrepitudinis) dealt with his life past seventy, gradually trailing off and ending with his death at the impressive age of seventy-nine (1588–1597).³⁰ This collection was detailed, candid, and massive; in both concept and execution it had grown over time. The hulking volumes covering his later years attested to an increasing preoccupation with systematic record keeping and the preservation of personal memory. Hermann’s aim was to salvage his life and family world from the oblivion that otherwise awaited them. If the Haus Weinsberg endured, so too would a complete account of his life—a “perfect” memory of his person—survive within its bosom. He hoped that the heirs—including the future housefather—would read the work and think kindly of him.

Hermann Weinsberg’s heirs struggled to make sense of this unwelcome corpus of texts and its ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. A Secret Legacy
• 2. My Father’s House
• 3. The Patriarch
• 4. The Middle Is Best
• 5. A Holy Household
• 6. As If We Had Never Been
• 7. Spare No Quill, Ink, or Paper
• 8. A New World
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Index