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"Lundin, Matthew"
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Paper Memory
Paper Memory tells of one man's mission to preserve for posterity the memory of everyday life in sixteenth-century Germany. Lundin takes us inside the mind of an undistinguished German burgher, Hermann Weinsberg, whose early-modern writings sought to make sense of changes that were unsettling the foundations of his world.
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Paper Memory
Paper Memory tells of one man’s mission to preserve for posterity the memory of everyday life in sixteenth-century Germany. Lundin takes us inside the mind of an undistinguished German burgher, Hermann Weinsberg, whose early-modern writings sought to make sense of changes that were unsettling the foundations of his world.
eBook
A Holy Household
If the boundary between commoner and aristocrat had grown problematic by the sixteenth century, the line dividing laity and clergy was a site of open cultural and religious conflict. Many German burghers resented the idea that the religious life was a higher calling, set apart from the sinful affairs of the world. From the very beginning of the century, anticlerical sentiments ran high. Some of the fiercest critics of the clergy, such as Erasmus and Luther, were clergymen themselves.¹ The most dangerous opponents of the independent clerical estate, however, were magistrates, who had long been frustrated by the clergy’s meddling
Book Chapter
My Father’s House
Within the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire, the first half of the sixteenth century was a period of profound cultural upheaval. The traditions of Christendom had lost much of their coherence. The agrarian and clerical values inherited from earlier ages awkwardly fit the emerging realities of a more mobile mercantile society. To many contemporaries, the selfishness at the heart of a money economy seemed to threaten the ideals of the Christian community. An ecclesiastical hierarchy hungry for cash had exploited the penitential rites and teachings of the Church. And Christendom itself threatened to splinter apart into competing dynastic
Book Chapter
As If We Had Never Been
Why had the townsmen of Cologne not done more to secure their own memories? Just as Cologne Licentiate Hermann Weinsberg wondered why urban households were so fragile and fleeting, so he also asked why burgher life was poorly represented in the written records that had come down to him. When he looked through chronicles and histories, he could find few records resembling his ordinary life. “One will not truly find us,” he lamented. The most past burghers had hoped for was some sort of posthumous survival in church windows, altarpieces, and memorials. But these, in turn, told little about their
Book Chapter
The Middle Is Best
Why had the burghers of Cologne not done more to secure the future of their families? This was a question that Licentiate of Law Hermann Weinsberg asked himself again and again in his secret writings. “I cannot sufficiently express my astonishment,” he wrote in 1578, “that among all the forty-five old, splendid lineages in Cologne, and among the families of burghermeisters and prominent men, not one can be found that has established and endowed a house for its descendants.”¹ The families that Hermann invoked here were not only the city’s old patrician lineages (many of them now defunct) but also
Book Chapter
The Patriarch
With his father’s encouragement, the young Hermann Weinsberg came to believe his life had a special significance—that the Weinsbergs rose above the obscurity and oblivion to which Cologne families were normally consigned. His imagination was captivated by the figure of the patriarch, the heir of a great family tradition; he associated this idea with his father’s love and approbation. Such family pride was contagious in the early sixteenth century. In the patriarchal ideals of classical literature and Roman law, urban elites found a powerful social imaginary, one that afforded them a greater sense of self-possession and autarky. Though catechisms
Book Chapter
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,
Book Chapter