Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564
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in the German churches, and inclined princes to a religious reform
that allowed them to confiscate ecclesiastical wealth. Aeneas Sylvius,
in 1458, marveled to see German innkeepers regularly serving drinks in
silver cups, and asked: "What woman, not only among the nobility but
among the plebeians, does not glitter with gold?- and shall I make
mention of horse bridles embossed with the purest gold, of... armor
and helmets sparkling with gold?" `06153
The financiers were now a major political power. The Jewish
moneylenders of Germany were displaced by the Christian family-firms
of the Welsers, the Hochstetters, and the Fuggers- all of Augsburg,
which, at the end of the fifteenth century, was the financial
capital of Christendom. Johannes Fugger, a weaver's son, became a
textile merchant, and left at his death (1409) a small fortune of
3,000 florins ($75,000?). His son Jakob expanded the business; when he
died (1469) his wealth ranked seventh in Augsburg. Jakob's sons
Ulrich, Georg, and Jakob II raised the firm to supremacy by
advancing money to the princes of Germany, Austria, and Hungary in
return for the revenue of mines, lands, or cities. From these
speculative investments the Fuggers derived immense profits, so that
by 1500 they were the richest family in Europe.
Jakob II was the culminating genius of the family, enterprising,
ruthless, and industrious. He trained himself stoically by studying
every phase of the business, every advance in bookkeeping,
manufacturing, merchandising, and finance. He demanded the sacrifice
of everything but the family itself to the business, and the
subordination of every individual Fugger to the family interest; he
established the principle that none but a Fugger should have power
in the concern; and he never allowed his political friendships to
influence his loans. He formed cartels with other firms to control the
price and sale of various products; so in 1498 he and his brothers
entered into an agreement with Augsburg merchants to "corner" the
Venetian market in copper and uphold the price. `06154 In 1488 the
family lent 150,000 florins to Archduke Sigismund of Austria, and as
security it received the entire yield of the Schwarz silver mines
until the debt should be repaid. In 1492 the Fuggers intermarried with
the Thurzos of Cracow in a cartel to work the silver and copper
mines of Hungary, and to maintain the "highest possible prices" for
the products. `06155 By 1501 the Fuggers were operating vast mining
enterprises in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and Spain. In
addition they imported and manufactured textiles; they traded in
silks, velvets, furs, spices, citrus fruits, munitions, jewelry;
they organized express transportation and a private postal service. By
1511, when Jakob II became sole head of the firm, its assets reached
196,791 guilders; by 1527 (two years after his death) its capital
was reckoned at 2,021,202 guilders ($50,000,000?)- a profit of 50
per cent per year through sixteen years. `06156
Part of this profit came from the Fuggers' relations with emperors
and popes. Ulrich Fugger made loans to Frederick III; Jakob II
became chief broker to Maximilian I and Charles V; the vast
extension of the Hapsburg power in the sixteenth century was made
possible by Fugger loans. Though, Jakob rejected the ecclesiastical
limitations on interest, and the attempts of churchmen to fix a
"just price" for consumers' goods, he remained a Catholic, made
loans to clergymen to pay their promotion fees, and, with Ulrich,
obtained (1494) the management of papal finances in Germany,
Scandinavia, Bohemia, and Hungary.
In his final years Jakob Fugger was the most honored and unpopular
citizen in Germany. Some Catholics attacked him as a usurer; some
nobles for outbribing them in the pursuit of office or power; some
merchants for his enviable monopolies; many workers for overriding
medieval regulations of trade and finance; most Protestants for
managing the export of German money to the popes. But emperors and
kings, princes and prelate, sent envoys to him as to a ruler; Durer,
Burgkmair, and the elder Holbein painted his portrait as a stern and
simple realist; and Maximilian gave him the title of Count of the
Empire. Jakob tried to atone for his wealth by building 106 houses for
the poor but Catholic of Augsburg. *06035 For his bones he raised a
pretty chapel in the church of St. Anna. He died in the odor of
sanctity, leaving millions of guilders and no children; the greatest
gift of all had been denied him.
From him we may date the capitalist era in Germany, the growth of
private monopolies, the dominance of businessmen controlling money
over feudal lords owning land. German mining and textiles were already
organized on capitalist lines- i.e., controlled by providers of
capital- by the end of the fifteenth century, following the lead of
Flanders and Italy in textiles a hundred years before. The Middle Ages
had thought of private property as in some measure a public trust: the
rights of the owner were limited by the necessities of the group whose
organization gave him opportunities, facilities, and protection.
Perhaps under the influence of Roman law- which now overshadowed
German jurisprudence- the property owner began to think of his
ownership as absolute; he felt that he had a right to do what he liked
with his own. It did not seem wrong to the Fuggers, the
Hochstetters, and the other "merchant princes" to "corner" a product
and then force up its price, or to form cartels for the limitation
of output and the control of trade, or to manipulate investments so as
to cheat small stockholders. `06157 In many instances a merchant
placed his agents at the city gates with orders to buy for him all
specified incoming goods, so that he might resell them at his own
price in the town. `06158 Ambrose Hochstetter bought up all
available quicksilver, then raised the retail price 75 per
cent. `06159 A German company bought 600,000 guilders' worth of pepper
from the king of Portugal at higher than the usual price, on condition
that the king would charge a still higher price to all other importers
of pepper from Portugal into Germany. `061510 Partly through such
agreements and monopolies, partly through growing wealth and an
increase in the demand for goods, partly through a rising supply of
precious metals from Central Europe and America, prices mounted
between 1480 and 1520 with a celerity rivaled only in our century. "In
a short time, because of usury and avarice," Luther complained, "he
that could formerly live on a hundred guilders cannot do so now on two
hundred." `061511 It is more than a twice- told tale.
The Middle Ages had seen great inequalities of political power;
the new age of the Fuggers added such economic disparities as Europe
had not known since the millionaires and slaves of Imperial Rome. Some
merchant capitalists of Augsburg or Nuremberg were worth 5,000,000
francs each ($25,000,000?). Many bought their way into the landed
aristocracy, sported coats of arms, and repaid highborn contempt
with "conspicuous consumption." Joachim Hochstetter and Franz
Baumgartner spent 5,000 florins ($125,000?) on a single banquet, or
gambled with 10,000 florins in one game. `061512 The luxuriously
furnished and artistically decorated homes of rich businessmen aroused
the resentment of nobility, clergy, and proletariat alike.
Preachers, writers, revolutionaries, and legislators joined in
fulminating against monopolists. Geiler von Kaisersberg demanded
that they "should be driven out like wolves, since they fear neither
God nor man, and breed famine, thirst, and poverty." `061513 Ulrich
von Hutten distinguished four classes of robbers: merchants,
jurists, priests, and knights, and judged the merchants to be the
greatest robbers of them all. `061514 The Cologne Reichstag of 1512
called upon all civic authorities to proceed "with diligence and
severity... against the usurious, forestalling, capitalistic
companies." `061515 Such decrees were repeated by other diets, but
to no effect; some legislators themselves had investments in the great
merchant firms, agents of the law were pacified with shares of
stock, `061516 and many cities prospered from the growth of
unimpeded trade.
Strasbourg, Colmar, Metz, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Ulm, Vienna, Ratisbon
(Regensburg), Mainz, Speyer, Worms, Cologne, Trier, Bremen,
Dortmund, Hamburg, Magdeburg, Lubeck, Breslau, were thriving hubs of
industry, commerce, letters, and arts. They and seventy-seven others
were "free cities"- i.e., they made their own laws, sent
representatives to the provincial and Imperial diets, and acknowledged
no political obedience except to the emperor, who was too indebted
to them for financial or military aid to attack their liberties.
Though these cities were ruled by guilds dominated by businessmen,
nearly every one of them was a paternalistic "welfare state" to the
extent that it regulated production and distribution, wages and prices
and the quality of goods, with a view to protecting the weak from
the strong, and to ensure the necessaries of life to all. `061517 We
should now call them towns rather than cities, since none of them
exceeded 52,000 population; nevertheless they were as populous as at
any time before the middle of the nineteenth century, `061518 and more
prosperous than at any time before Goethe. Aeneas Sylvius, a proud
Italian, wrote of them enthusiastically in 1458:
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Never has Germany been richer, more resplendent, than today....
Without exaggeration it may be said that no country in Europe has
better or more beautiful cities. They look as fresh and new as if they
had been built yesterday; and in no other cities is so much freedom to
be found.... Nothing more magnificent... can be found in all Europe
than Cologne, with its wonderful churches, city hall, towers, and
palaces, its dignified burghers, its noble streams, its fertile
cornfields.... Nor is Augsburg surpassed in wealth by any city in
the world. Vienna has palaces and churches that even Italy may
envy. `061519
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Augsburg was not only the financial center of Germany, it was the
main commercial link with then flourishing Italy. It was chiefly
Augsburg merchants who built and managed that Fondaco Tedesco, in
Venice, whose walls were frescoed by Giorgione and Titian. So bound to
Italy, Augsburg echoed the Italian Renaissance; its merchants
supported scholars and artists, and some of its capitalists became
models of manners and culture, if not of morals. So Konrad
Peutinger, syndic or mayor in 1493, was diplomat, merchant, scholar,
jurist, Latinist, Hellenist, and antiquarian as well as businessman.
Nuremberg was a center of arts and crafts rather than of large-scale
industry or finance. Its streets were still medievally tortuous, and
shaded by overhanging upper stories or balconies; its red-tiled roofs,
high-peaked gables, and oriel windows made a picturesque confusion
against its rural background and the Pegnitz' turgid stream. The
people were not as affluent here as in Augsburg, but they were joyous,
gemutlich, and loved to disport themselves in such festivities as
their annual carnival of mask, costume, and dance. Here Hans Sachs and
the Meistersingers sang their lusty airs; here Albrecht Durer raised
German painting and engraving to their zenith; here the best
goldsmiths and silversmiths north of the Alps made costly vases,
church vessels, statuettes; here the metal workers fashioned a
thousand plant, animal, and human forms in bronze, or wrought iron
into handsome railings or screens; here the woodcutters were so
numerous that we wonder how they could all make a living. The churches
of the cities became repositories and museums of art, for every
guild or corporation or prosperous family commissioned some work of
beauty for the shrine of a patron saint. Regiomontanus chose Nuremberg
as his home "because I find there without difficulty all the
peculiar instruments necessary for astronomy; and there it is
easiest for me to keep in touch with the learned of all countries, for
Nuremberg, thanks to the perpetual journeyings of her merchants, may
be counted the center of Europe." `061520 It was characteristic of
Nuremberg that the most famous of her merchants, Willibald Pirkheimer,
was also an enthusiastic humanist, a patron of the arts, and a devoted
friend of Durer's. Erasmus called Pirkheimer "the chief glory of
Germany." `061521
The voyages of Da Gama and Columbus, the Turkish control of the
Aegean, and Maximilian's wars with Venice disturbed the trade
between Germany and Italy. More and more German exports and imports
moved along the great rivers to the North Sea, the Baltic, and the
Atlantic; wealth and power passed from Augsburg and Nuremberg to
Cologne, Hamburg, Bremen, and, above all, Antwerp. The Fuggers and
Welsers furthered this trend by making Antwerp a chief center of their
operations. The northward movement of German money and trade
divorced northern Germany from the Italian economy, and made it strong
enough to protect Luther from emperor and pope. South Germany, perhaps
for opposite reasons, remained Catholic.
II. THE STATE
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How was Germany governed in this critical and formative age?
The knights or lower nobility, who in former years had ruled the
countryside as vassals of feudal seigneurs, were losing their miltary,
economic, and political position. Mercenary troops hired by princes or
cities, and equipped with firearms and artillery, were mowing down
knightly cavalry helplessly brandishing swords; commercial wealth
was raising prices and costs, and was outstripping landed property
as a source of power; cities were establishing their independence, and
princes were centralizing authority and law. The knights took some
revenge by waylaying the commerce that passed their way; and when
merchants and municipalities protested, the knights asserted their
right to wage private wars. Comines described the Germany of this time
as prickly with castles from which at any time "robber barons" and
their armed retainers might pour forth to plunder merchant,
traveler, and peasant alike. `061522 Some knights made it their custom
to cut off the right hands of the merchants they robbed. Gotz von
Berlichingen, though he himself had lost his right hand in the service
of his prince, substituted an iron hand, and led knightly bands to
attack not only merchants but cities- Nuremberg, Darmstadt, Metz,
and Mainz (1512). His friend Franz von Sickingen laid claims against
the city of Worms, ravaged its environs, seized its councilors,
tortured its burgomaster, resisted all attempts of Imperial troops
to capture him, and was transiently subdued only by receiving an
annual subsidy to serve the emperor. Twenty-two cities of Swabia-
chiefly Augsburg, Ulm, Freiburg, and Constance- joined with some of
the higher nobility to re-form the Swabian League (1488); these and
other combinations checked the robber knights, and succeeded in having
private war declared illegal; but Germany on the eve of Luther was a
scene of social and political disorder, "a universal reign of
force." `061523
The secular and ecclesiastical princes who presided over the chaos
contributed to it by their venality, their diverse coinages and
customs dues, their confused competition for wealth and place, their
distortion of Roman Law to give themselves almost absolute authority
at the expense of the people, the knights, and the emperor. Great
families like the Hohenzollerns in Brandenburg, the Wettins in Saxony,
the Wittelsbachers in the Palatinate, the dukes of Wurttemberg, not to
speak of the Hapsburgs of Austria, behaved like irresponsible
sovereigns. If the power of the Catholic emperor over the German
princes had been greater the Reformation might have been defeated or
postponed. And the rejection of Rome by many of the princes was a
further move toward financial and political independence.
The character of the emperors in this period accentuated the
weakness of the central government. Frederick III (r. 1440-93) was
an astrologer and alchemist who so loved the studious tranquillity
of his gardens at Graz that he allowed Schleswig-Holstein, Bohemia,
Austria, and Hungary to detach themselves from the Empire. But
toward the end of his fifty-three-year reign he played a saving stroke
by betrothing his son Maximilian to Mary, heiress to Charles the
Bold of Burgundy. When Charles fought himself into an icy grave in
1477, the Hapsburgs inherited the Netherlands.
Maximilian I (r. 1493-1519), emperor-elect but never crowned,
began his reign with every omen of success. All the Empire rejoiced in
his good looks and good nature, his unassuming sensibility, his
effervescent cheerfulness, his generosity and chivalry, his courage
and skill in joust and hunt; it was as if an Italian of the High
Renaissance had mounted a German throne. Even Machiavelli was
impressed, calling him "a wise, prudent, God-fearing prince, a just
ruler, a great general, brave in peril, bearing fatigue like the
most hardened soldier... a pattern of many princely
virtues." `061524 But "Max" was not a great general, and he lacked the
cynical intellect required for Machiavelli's model prince. He
dreamed of restoring the grandeur of the Holy Roman Empire by
recapturing its former possessions and influence in Italy; he
invaded the peninsula time and again in futile wars which the more
practical Diet refused to finance; he allowed himself to think of
deposing the doughty Julius II and making himself pope as well as
emperor; `061525 and (like his contemporary, Charles VIII of France)
he excused his territorial ambitions as necessary preludes to an
overwhelming assault upon the Turks. But he was constitutionally and
financially incapable of sustained enterprise; he was unable to will
the means as well as to wish the ends; and at times he was so poor
that he lacked funds to pay for his dinner. He labored to reform the
administration of the Empire, but he violated his own reforms, and
they died with him. He thought too much in terms of the Hapsburg
power. After many disappointments in war he returned to his father's
policy of diplomatic marriages. So for his son Philip he accepted
Ferdinand's offer of Juana's hand; she was a bit off-color mentally,
but she brought Spain as her dowry. In 1515 he betrothed his
granddaughter Mary and his grandson Ferdinand to Louis and Anne, son
and daughter of Ladislas, King of Bohemia and Hungary; Louis was
killed at Mohacs (1526), Ferdinand became King of Bohemia and (so
far as the Turks would permit) of Hungary, and the Hapsburg power
reached its widest range.
The most amiable facet of Maximilian was his love and
encouragement of music, learning, literature, and art. He applied
himself zealously to the study of history, mathematics, and languages;
we are assured that he could speak German, Latin, Italian, French,
Spanish, Walloon, Flemish, and English, and that on one campaign he
talked with seven alien commanders in their seven different tongues.
Partly through his example and exertions, the dialects of South and
North Germany merged into a gemeines Deutsch which became the
language of German government, of Luther's Bible, and of German
literature. Between wars he tried to be an author, and left
compositions on heraldry, artillery, architecture, hunting, and his
own career. He planned an extensive collection of monumenta -
relics and inscriptions- from the German past, but again funds ran
out. He proposed to the popes a calendar reform which they effected
eighty years later. He reorganized the University of Vienna,
established new professorships of law, mathematics, poetry, and
rhetoric, and made Vienna for a time the most active seat of
learning in Europe. He invited Italian humanists to Vienna, and
empowered Conradus Celtes to open there an academy of poetry and
mathematics. He favored humanists like Peutinger and Pirkheimer, and
made the harassed Reuchlin a Count Palatine of the Empire. He gave
commissions to Peter Vischer, Veit Stoss, Burgkmair, Durer, and the
other artists who flourished in his reign. He ordered at Innsbruck
an ornate tomb to cherish his remains; it was left incomplete at his
death, but it gave occasion for Peter Vischer's fine statues of
Theodoric and Arthur. If Maximilian had been as great as his plans
he would have rivaled Alexander and Charlemagne.
In the Emperor's last year Durer painted an honest portrait of
him- worn out and disillusioned, defeated by the maddening
stinginess of time. "Earth possesses no joy for me," said this once
joyous soul, and he mourned, "Alas, poor land of Germany!" `061526 But
he exaggerated his failure. He left Germany and the Empire (if only
through economic developments) far stronger than he had found them.
Population had risen, education had spread; Vienna was becoming
another Florence; and soon his grandson, inheriting half of Western
Europe, would become the most powerful ruler in Christendom.
III. THE GERMANS: 1300-1517
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They were probably at this time the healthiest, strongest, most
vital and exuberant people in Europe. As we see them in Wolgemut and
Durer, in Cranach and Holbein, the men were stout, thick-necked,
massive-headed, lion-hearted animals ready to consume the world and
wash it down with beer. They were coarse but jolly, and tempered their
piety with sensuality. They could be cruel, as witness the awful
instruments of torture that they used on criminals, but they could
be merciful and generous, too, and rarely displayed their
theological ferocity in physical ways; in Germany the Inquisition
was bravely resisted and usually subdued. Their robust spirits made
for bibulous humor rather than dry wit, dulled their sense of logic
and beauty, and denied them the grace and subtlety of the French or
Italian mind. Their meager Renaissance foundered in bibliolatry; but
there was a steady persistence, a disciplined industry, a brute
courage, in German thought that enabled them to break the power of
Rome, and already gave promise of making them the greatest scholars in
history.
By comparison with other nations they were clean. Bathing was a
national passion. Every well-arranged house, even in rural
districts, had its bathroom. As in ancient Rome, the numerous public
bathhouses provided much more than baths; men could be shaved there,
women could have their hair dressed, diverse forms of massage were
offered, drinking and gambling were allowed, and relief could be found
from monogamy. Usually the two sexes bathed together, chastely
clothed; but there were no laws against flirtations, and an Italian
scholar, visiting Baden-Baden in 1417, remarked that "no baths in
the world are more fit for the fecundity of women." `061527
The Germans of that age could not be accused of puritanism. Their
conversation, correspondence, literature, and humor were sometimes
coarse by our standards, but that went with their vigor of body and
soul. They drank too much at all ages, and imbibed sexual experience
lavishly in their youth; Erfurt in 1501 seemed to the pious Luther
"nothing better than a brothel and beerhouse." `061528 German
rulers, ecclesiastical as well as secular, agreed with St. Augustine
and St. Thomas Aquinas that prostitution must be permitted if women
are to be safe from seduction or assault. Houses of prostitution
were licensed and taxed. We read of the bishops of Strasbourg and
Mainz receiving revenues from brothels; and the bishop of Wurzburg
gave the municipal brothel to Graf von Hennenberg as a
revenue-producing fief. `061529 Hospitality to valued guests