Cultures of Communication from Reformation to Enlightenment

Constructing Publics in the Early Modern German Lands

James Van Horn Melton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351946728
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Focusing on the territories of the Holy Roman Empire from the early Reformation to the mid-eighteenth century, this volume of fifteen interdisciplinary essays examines some of the structures, practices and media of communication that helped shape the social, cultural, and political history of the period. Not surprisingly, print was an important focal point, but it was only one medium through which individuals and institutions constructed publics and communicated with an audience. Religious iconography and ritual, sermons, music, civic architecture, court ceremony, street gossip, acts of violence, are also forms of communication explored in the volume. Bringing together scholars from diverse disciplines and scholarly backgrounds, this volume transcends narrow specializations and will be of interest to a broad range of academics seeking to understand the social, political and cultural consequences of the "information revolution" of Reformation Europe.

CHAPTER ONE

Violence and Urban Identity in Early Modern Augsburg: Communication Strategies Between Authorities and Citizens in the Adjudication of Fights

B. Ann Tlusty

On an August evening in 1591, a fight broke out in an Augsburg beer tavern over drinks and cards between two members of the local city guard. The disagreement between Caspar Aufschlager and Caspar Rauner began as a tavern brawl, but escalated to a deadly duel after moving into the street. While Aufschlager walked away from the swordplay with minor injuries, Rauner lost his life. Witnesses to the fight in the street testified that Aufschlager drew first and that he struck several vicious blows even after Rauner had been wounded and dropped his weapon. According to the family of the slaughtered Rauner, Aufschlager not only started the fight, but he broke the rules of fair swordplay by delivering deadly jabs rather than blows with the flat of the sword. Afterwards, Aufschlager returned to the tavern, unaware that he had wounded Rauner because, he claimed, he was ‘full of beer and drunk’.¹ When he subsequently heard that Rauner had died of the wounds, he attempted to flee from the city and was caught at the city gates.

At first glance, Aufschlager’s actions seem to support the view that early modern townsmen were ‘insensitive to the misfortunes […] of others’, and imbued with a ‘general brutality’,² as suggested by Robert Muchembled. Norbert Elias described a ‘violent’ nature among early modern commoners that seems almost manic.³ At the same time, the late sixteenth century is known to be a period characterized all over Germany by attempts on the part of the authorities to impose discipline and expel disorderly elements. Augsburg discipline ordinances of this period include increasingly detailed regulations aimed specifically at containing and punishing violence resulting from inflamed tempers among urban craftsmen and other commoners. In this atmosphere, one would expect Aufschlager to have been punished to the full extent of the law.

The majority of witnesses to the event, however, supported Aufschlager’s actions as correct and ‘honourable’. The captain of the guard unit to which both brawlers belonged also defended Aufschlager’s conduct, even though military regulations forbade unsupervised swordplay between members of the guard.⁴ The authorities considered Aufschlager’s behaviour to have been something less than exemplary, but settled for a five-year expulsion from the city, a punishment considerably less harsh than the permanent banishment normally imposed for killings deemed unnecessary. The temporary expulsion affected neither the honour nor the livelihood of the defendant, who in any case was not a native of Augsburg but a citizen of Nördlingen.⁵

How was Aufschlager able to convince the authorities to let him go with such a light sentence? Why did witnesses to the event support him even where his actions seemed to violate popular norms? To understand the dynamics involved in this case, it is necessary to take a close look at the language used by witnesses and participants in defence of Aufschlager’s actions. As a context for this illustrative case, I will first provide the norms established by Augsburg’s authorities for adjudicating fights, and also include supporting evidence from a sample of 114 additional cases of violent brawls occurring in Augsburg between 1540 and 1650, most of which began in social drinking situations.

How much value can be placed on the statements of witnesses and defendants involved in an interrogation process? Natalie Davis, in her analysis of pardon tales, has shown that stories told in one’s own defence, while not necessarily presenting the raw truth of the event, can be used to reconstruct the social and cultural norms that shaped their story and gave it meaning. Although Davis dismissed interrogation records as overly ‘confined’ and ‘directed’, and lacking a beginning and an end,⁶ my experience reading interrogations has taught me that when a defendant believed he had a story to tell, he found a way to tell it. Witnesses and defendants who felt strongly about their position often took control of the interrogation process, ignoring the questions and presenting their side of the story as a coherent narrative. In telling their stories, all of the participants in the drama had a stake in making their own actions seem as innocent and as honourable as possible. Their defence strategies were constructed to protect them not only from punishment, but also from loss of honour or status in the eyes of their peers. The resulting picture, if not necessarily the truth of the incident, represents fairly what the participants believed to have been a believable and justifiable truth. In defending their own actions and those of their companions, they described their own values and norms in a way calculated to appeal to the values of the authorities; values more often shared than at odds.

Let us begin, then, with the norms most easily traced – those officially set down by urban authorities in the discipline ordinances of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We can draw two conclusions from the rules established by the council regarding fights between male citizens: first, the behaviour expected by the authorities rarely deviated from the code of honourable behaviour adhered to by the populace at large; and second, the council expected to maintain a monopoly on violence by retaining exclusive power over the adjudication of fights. In the case of disagreements confined to an exchange of insults, for example, honour could normally be restored by a public retraction. The council members knew that such a retraction was necessary to restore the honour of the offended party in the eyes of his peers, and that failure to obtain satisfaction in such cases could only lead to further altercations.⁷ The council demanded, however, that such cases be reported to the mayor’s office so that the retraction became a matter of public record. Further altercations would then fall into the category of breaking an arranged peace (Friedbruch), a more serious offence resulting in a fine.⁸

Physical fights between male citizens were also discouraged by the levying of a fine of two gulden, payable by the party considered at fault (normally the person who landed the first blow or drew his weapon first). Since preventing fights altogether was an unrealistic goal, however, the council’s primary concern was to contain disagreements somewhere short of the point at which personal injury would occur. Regulations thus differentiated between a bloodless scuffle (or kleiner Frevel) and a ‘Blood fight’ (or Blutfrevel).⁹ Any fight that resulted in the shedding of blood carried a double fine. Even higher fines were collected for fights resulting in serious injuries, fights with representatives of the council’s police force (such as bailiffs or city guards while on duty), or brawls occurring in spaces representing civic authority, for example the areas in front of the courthouse or around the city gates. Citizens as well as city guards who witnessed brawls or exchanges of insults of an ‘inflammatory’ nature were charged with bidding peace to the parties involved.¹⁰ All male citizens were bound by oath to defend public order, and their call for peace therefore carried the weight of civic authority. Once a bid of peace had been made, brawlers were also bound by their status as citizens to honour it. Failure to do so would result in the significantly higher fine for breaking peace.¹¹

Where serious personal injury or death did result, the offender paid in addition to the fine a monetary award to the injured party or the family of the deceased, in the form of a formal settlement arbitrated by the council. This ‘blood money’ was recorded by the council and bound the recipient not to seek revenge.¹² As noted above, manslaughter cases in which the killer was considered to have acted dishonourably normally resulted in permanent banishment in addition to any fines or settlements, although petitions for a pardon some years later were sometimes granted – especially if the killer showed adequate remorse and the killing had not appeared to be based on revenge or otherwise premeditated.

How, then, did accused brawlers defend themselves against these penalties? The most effective defence for violence, then as now, was a plea of self-defence. Where action could be shown to have been necessary for the defence of life and limb, then the defendant could be freed without penalty.¹³ Where defence of life and limb could not be claimed as justification for participation in a fight, however, the next effective strategy was to claim that one’s honour had been offended. Such a defence required a specific, almost formulaic kind of language. This was the primary strategy employed by Caspar Aufschlager and those who defended him for killing Caspar Rauner. The final strategy, when all else failed, was to claim drunkenness at the time of the incident. Aufschlager was forced to resort to this strategy as well, but only on certain points that could not adequately be explained on the basis of defending his honour.

The argument between the fellow guardsmen began, typically, with an insult to Aufschlager’s male honour. Rauner, having suffered losses at cards, insisted that Aufschlager take a chance gambling for beer because he had not yet paid a round. Here Rauner was accusing Aufschlager of breaking the rules of tavern sociability. Aufschlager refused, pointing out that his part in the drinking bout had been paid by a companion, and that he was not in the habit of gambling – a response that was acceptable to others of the company.¹⁴ Rauner, however, was not satisfied. They came to words, and as Rauner’s insults crossed the threshold of tolerance, other members of the party began to urge Aufschlager to take action.

The insult that triggered the escalation from verbal abuse to physical action was ‘dog’s cunt’ (Hundsfud), an obscene accusation of extreme cowardice.¹⁵ As many as thirteen witnesses specifically noted that Rauner had used this insult to Aufschlager’s honour. A weaver at Aufschlager’s side reportedly chided him by saying, ‘He called you a Hundsfud, are you going to take that from him? I’ll hit you in the face myself, if you call yourself a soldier and put up with that.’¹⁶ Aufschlager responded by hitting Rauner, after which Rauner went to get a sword and challenged him to defend himself. Another witness reported that Rauner had said Aufschlager was ‘not man enough’¹⁷ to defend himself, and had claimed that if Aufschlager were an ‘honourable soldier’ (redlicher Landsknecht) he would meet him in the street. Aufschlager, then, ‘could not do less’ than to meet the challenge.¹⁸

As previously noted, military regulations forbade uncontrolled fencing between members of the guard. A statement signed by ten witnesses testified to the fact that Aufschlager had attempted to postpone the duel to the following day, when they could fence formally according to the rules of his regiment and with the approval of his superior officer. A dutiful soldier, he did not wish to jeopardize his ability to appear for guard duty that evening.¹⁹ Rauner would not be put off, however, leaving Aufschlager no choice but to fight. A petition from the Augsburg guard unit noted that Rauner had ‘not only greatly injured Aufschlager’s honour, but especially […] made claims that Aufschlager did not have the manhood or honour to fight.’²⁰ The captain of his regiment thus concluded that Aufschlager was forced to meet Rauner ‘in defence of his honour’ (zu errettung seiner Ehren).²¹ The descriptions by others present at the scene also represented Aufschlager as the true victim in this case – a peaceful, honourable soldier,²² forced against his will to take the life of a man he himself described as having always been ‘his good fellow’ (sein gueter gesel).

Some of these witnesses volunteered additional evidence of Rauner’s generally questionable behaviour. One statement signed by a number of persons present in the tavern noted that Aufschlager’s weapon was broken in the fight, but that Rauner continued to attack him anyway, clearly an infraction of the rules of sword fighting. This ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Violence and Urban Identity in Early Modern Augsburg: Communication Strategies between Authorities and Citizens in the Adjudication of Fights
• 2 Patricide and Pathos: a 1565 Murder in Deed and Word
• 3 From Public Event to Publishing Event: Court Funerals and the Print Medium in Early Modern Germany
• 4 Anticlericalism in Bamberg on the Eve of the Peasants’ War
• 5 Anabaptist Liars: Communicating and Concealing the Faith in Early Modern Tyrol
• 6 Preaching and Discipline: the Case of Seventeenth-century Rostock
• 7 Debating the Meaning of Pilgrimage: Maria Steinbach 1733
• 8 The Public of Confessional Identity: Territorial Church and Church Discipline in Eighteenth-century Hesse
• 9 Conspiracy and Denunciation: a Local Affair and its European Publics (Bern, 1749)
• 10 Garlic and the Jews: Jörg Breu the Elder’s The Mocking of Christ as Protestant ‘Thesenbild’ or Catholic Devotional Image?
• 11 Standing by the Ancient Faith: Fribourg’s Public Fountains and the Coming of the Reformation
• 12 Musical Pedagogy in the German Renaissance
• 13 ‘Not Like the Unreasoning Beasts’: Rhetorical Efforts to Separate Humans and Animals in Early Modern Germany
• 14 Expanding the Therapeutic Canon: Learned Medicine Listens to Folk Medicine
• 15 The Debate between Johann Weyer and Thomas Erastus on the Punishment of Witches
• Index