DOCUMENTATION | Exhibitions: 1648 - War and Peace in Europe |
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| Essay Volumes > Tome II: Art and culture |
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WALTER ERNST SCHÄFER
The Thirty Years' War in Moscherosch's "A Soldier's Life" and the Simplician Tales of Grimmelshausen |
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Neither lacked experience of war: Johann Michael Moscherosch (1601-1669), the most famous satirist, and Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (circa 1621-1676), the most important storyteller of the period - both had first-hand experience of the "Teutonic War" and suffered times of need, blackmail and death threats. They share many of the insights gained from war. But there is a difference in emphasis. This due partly to the generation gap between them - Grimmelshausen was a good twenty years younger than Moscherosch and, unlike the latter, was confronted with war at the tender age of fourteen - and partly to the difference in their respective environments. [1]
Moscherosch enjoyed a relatively sheltered life until about 1622, when the Palatine War spread to the Upper Rhine. His school education and academic career at Strasbourg University followed an orderly path, even if he was unable to achieve his final goal, a doctorate in law. His humanist and legal abilities secured him administrative posts at the courts of German princes, initially in the Lorraine area.
Grimmelshausen's life was shaped by the dangers of war, fear and unrest from the very outset. He was torn from his family in 1634, his education - probably at the grammar school in Gelnhausen - was abruptly curtailed. It is therefore no wonder that he - quite literally - had to work his way up through the ranks during the tribulations of war. As far as one can reconstruct the course of his life from his stories, Grimmelshausen gained the broader experience from this war. He was a young boy with the Swedes in the fortified town of Hanau, a stable boy with the imperial Croats, a waggoner with a Saxon regiment at Magdeburg in 1636, a dragoon under the command of the Bavarian General von Götz on the Upper Rhine, a musketeer and regimental clerk with the imperial commander of Offenburg and the Colonel von Elter in Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate. He was personally present at the most famous battles, probably at Wittstock in 1636 and certainly at Wittenweier in 1638. He quickly became familiar with virtually all the warring factions and most of the armed services, their tactics and weaponry. His clerical work gave him an insight into the higher echelons of command, their attitudes and war objectives.
Moscherosch had a more limited horizon. His life is better chronicled and we therefore know that he was not present at any of the battles but experienced the war from the distant areas of Lorraine and Alsace, mostly within fortified towns. But his suffering was no less great. He also had closer contact with rulers and high-ranking officers than Grimmelshausen. Nevertheless, out of conviction he only served one side: Lutheran imperial princes and their protecting power, the Swedes. He declined offers from the French side, suspicious of the aims of the absolutist state. [2] Grimmelshausen, cast into war penniless and without the support of a family, could not afford the luxury of such loyalty to one of the parties. Almost all of his writings speak of the war, from the first treatise, the "Satirical Pilgrim" (1666/67), to the second part of the "Miraculous Bird's Nest" (1675), but admittedly most of all his most famous novel "Simplicissimus Teutsch" (1668).
With his broader humanist education, his interest in history, economics and politics, Moscherosch wrote only one satirical work dealing in depth with the events of war, "A Soldier's Life" in the edition of his "Gesichte Philanders von Sittenwalt" (1644). [3]
This work has been neglected in the twentieth century - unjustly, since its reports of the prowling and plundering exploits of a marauding gang between the Moselle and the Rhine during the final phase of the war are more detailed and, in a certain sense, more realistic than those in Grimmelshausen's "Simplicissimus". Grimmelshausen was familiar with the Moscherosch's writings. The geographical proximity of Renchen, where he was a village mayor from 1667, and Willstätt, Moscherosch's home town, as well as his main work-place Strasbourg, mean that he must have known them. He borrowed certain motifs and ideas from "A Soldier's Life" and developed them further. The patterns of interpretation and models of explanation, with which the two authors attempt to impose order on the confusion of war, are essentially the same. Historical events are seen in the overall context of the history of divine salvation and understood as repercussions of the providentia Dei. This applied equally to Moscherosch the strict Lutheran and Grimmelshausen the Catholic convert.
According to this pattern of thought, war is divine judgement for the sins of Mankind, the greatest of the three "principal punishments" beside famine and plague. Peace can only be achieved through repentance and the raising of moral standards of all elements of society. There is a danger of this religious concept of causality, common to all authors of the period, distorting the perception of the practical political reasons for war and its objectives. [4]
In his three war novels centred on the figures of Simplicissimus, Courasche and Springinsfeld, Grimmelshausen sought to reconcile the events of war with his religious beliefs. Like most people of his day, he also wanted to perceive the fate of individual soldiers and war victims as foreordained divine disasters and destinies arising from the constellation of the stars at each individual's hour of birth ("nativity" or horoscope). But his stories clearly show that there were limits to these attempted explanations. Mass death on the battlefield could not be easily explained by the different "nativity" of the casualties. But above all else, Grimmelshausen regarded the battlefield as a symbol for the antithesis of all systems of order which enable human beings to carry on a regulated coexistence.
He did not present battles like the artists who created a panorama copper engraving of the battle at Wittstock as an orderly, well-arranged event, but as the antithesis of all divinely ordained relations among human beings and between human beings and animals:
"Everything was shrouded in thick smoke and dust which appeared to want to cover up the atrocities of the wounded and the dead. At the same time, one could hear the wretched lamentation of the dying and the cries of those still full of courage. The horses looked as if the longer they defended their masters the fresher they became, so heated did they appear in the services they were compelled to perform. One saw many of them fall beneath their riders, covered in wounds which they had received through no fault of their own as reward for their loyal services; others fell for the same cause on top of their riders and thus had the honour in death of being carried by those it had been their duty to carry in life..." (Simplicissimus, Volume II, Chapter 27: "The Battle of Wittstock")
For Grimmelshausen war is a "monster". The chaos of war is regarded as the opposite of orderly peace, a "topsy-turvy world". Both authors paint numerous different versions of order turned on its head. This is the only explanation for the fact that Moscherosch attached such great importance in "A Soldier's Life" to the monumental copper engraving portrait depicting him as the bailiff of Finstingen. [5]
Admittedly, this portrait captured a crucial moment in his biography: the attack by robber bands of renegade soldiers on him and his farm-hands outside the gates of Finstingen on 6 September 1641. [6] The attack cost him his livestock, his source of income, and forced him to return with his family behind the fortified walls of Strasbourg. But that alone does not constitute the significance of the engraving. It is the portrayal of an order turned upside down. It shows that the representative of a "teaching profession", the royal official Moscherosch, was compelled by the circumstances of war to feed his family through manual work as a farmer. Moscherosch had not received any pay for months. War turned the basic order of the hierarchy of teaching, farming and military professions on its head. Grimmelshausen devoted an entire treatise to this "Topsy-turvy World" (1672) and described in detail the upheavals caused by war. [7] This is precisely what he means when he repeatedly describes war as a "monster", as a creature whose shape is composed from human and animal parts. [8]
The reversal with the most severe consequences is the change from man to beast, from soldier to bandit. Moscherosch and Grimmelshausen discuss the same experience which we can still observe in protracted wars today at the end of the twentieth century: the risk of soldiers' behaviour becoming increasingly brutalised and their spiritual life becoming reduced to animal instincts. There is a danger of them committing murder and acts of bestiality Both authors detail this psychological process: Moscherosch as the gradual adaptation of his hero Philander to the depraved morals of a gang of bandits and murderers, Grimmelshausen in his description of the growing worldly wisdom of his character Simplicissimus. Both interpret their empirical experience through their religious understanding of the world. The soldier who has degenerated into an animal destroys what distinguishes Man from other living creatures, his likeness to God ("imago Dei"). [9] Man deteriorates to a hybrid, half Man, half animal. The monster on the cover engraving of "Simplicissimus" is loaded with meaning - a sign of the threat to the humanity. [10]
According to the older traditional humanist understanding of the role of satire, both authors had a duty as satirists to present criteria for more just systems to counter the "topsy-turvy world", the distortions of anthropological and social systems caused by war. [11]
Both share the traditional idea of a "just war", i.e. warfare conducted according to ethical principles which can only be legitimised by a sense of right and wrong, by just aims which favour peace and by the principle of proportionality. It was all the more important to appeal to the theory conceived by Augustinus and comprehensively developed by Thomas Aquinus and late-mediaeval Spanish scholastics since there was a danger of it being forgotten under the impression of the pragmatic war policy of absolutist rulers intent on rounding off state territory and increasing their "reputation". Significantly, Moscherosch chooses a farmer to present the principles of this theory to a group of morally depraved soldiers:
Gentlemen, when you plan something, a battle, a skirmish, a campaign, consider first whom you serve. Do not follow the example of some who say: I take the money and serve the Devil. For those who serve against their fellow-Christians are worse than pagans. Then consider whether right is on your side. Thirdly, whether it can be for the honour of God, the service of your master and the salvation of the fatherland. If that is so, then speak thus: Almighty God, heavenly Father! Here I am according to your divine will in this worldly work and service of my ruler as is my duty and I am certain that you are pleased with my obedience.
Preserve, dear God, and strengthen such belief through your spirit and help me to avoid all vice and cruelty towards innocent people and to show a sympathetic heart, but give me a hard manly heart against my master's enemies, health, constant courage and bravery, so that I might fight like a hero for the honour of Your name and the well-being of my soul, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen. [12]
At the narrative level, the admonition bears little fruit. One of the listening marauders retorts:
When I get up in the morning I recite an entire alphabet. That contains all prayers. Our Lord God can take the letters and compose whatever prayers he wants. And when I have said my ABC, I am cleansed and as solid as a wall for the whole day. [13]
Yet another proclaims, "And me, [...], I unleash a fart as a morning prayer. That makes me feel good all day."
Moscherosch knows that any attempt to commit the rabble of soldiers (Soldateska) to the principles of conducting a just war is in vain. He is also aware that resorting to the ideal of a Christian combatant, as Luther described in the treatise "Whether soldiers can also be in a state of grace" (1526), will not alter the facts much. Nevertheless, he includes in "A Soldier's Life" a long poem entitled "The soldiers' articles of apprenticeship", which develops in eighty verses the code of conduct for such a combatant. [14]
Moscherosch and Grimmelshausen vehemently reject any attempt to interpret the war - especially in its later phase - as a conflict between confessional parties. The beliefs of soldiers and officers who plundered, blackmailed and raped just as much in friendly territory as in enemy territory, the switch of allegiance by prisoners who became mercenaries for the opposing side, the selfish attempts by army commanders to acquire land and even territory of their own - all this no longer permitted such an interpretation. Behind the fronts of the warring factions a deeper opposition appeared between settled citizens and defenceless peasants on the one hand and roving soldiers and marauders on the other.
Moscherosch and Grimmelshausen also had experiences which could obviously no longer be interpreted in accordance with the established patterns of Lutheran or Catholic doctrine. At such points in their stories, the two authors present their doubts in the form of a controversial debate between individual characters or toned down by the insertion of a fictitious dream figure, an apparently non-committal vision.
One of the tormenting experiences of war is doubt about divine providence insofar as it preordains the life and destiny of individuals (providentia privata). The sight of thousands killed in a single moment on a battlefield or during a plague epidemic undermined belief that the hand of God was involved in the life of individuals. In Moscherosch's "A Soldier's Life" a debate is provoked by a ship sinking in the Saar whereby "around twenty-five persons, many noble, honest people" die at the same instant. The narrator Philander wonders
how it is possible that so many honourable people all had to die, at the very same time, in the very same place, in the very same manner, although they undoubtedly did not all share the same hour of birth and the same heavenly star signs.
[15]
A friend of Philander's, a doctor of medicine, insists on the premise that those who died must have shared the same "birth sign" since "nativity" determined the course and end of life. Superficially the argument is about astrology. But Philander's counter-argument shows that there is a deeper meaning below the surface:
Take the case of someone born under an auspicious sign promising a long life but who moves to or already lives in a town which is struck by a major disaster, like the town of Magdeburg during our era. He will perish together with the entire town despite having such good signs of a long life in his horoscope. How often have we witnessed a general plague epidemic killing people who could and should have lived for many more years according to their horoscope. The Holy Scriptures also speak of the innocent frequently having to lose their lives due to the evil of the guilty and die prematurely although God will not punish their souls.
It is a matter of guilt and innocence, punishment and reward by God in this life and the next, about divine justice in the apportionment of individual destiny. Philander can no longer recognise any connection. Divine justice is shrouded from view by the events of war. But this was a central article of faith whose foundations were now being shaken. No wonder the narrator interrupts the discussion by declaring:
it is impossible for me in my simplicity to grasp or describe all this. Nor is it my nature, desire or intention. However, I should like to hear the verdict of learned scholars on this question.
Grimmelshausen tackled the same problem in a more subtle manner. In "Simplicissimus" he used the device of a debate among the Gods, in the tradition of the ancient Greek satirist Lucian, to design the vision of a just realm of peace whilst at the same time distancing himself from such a bold utopia. [16]
Jupiter, the "super-erudite" "arch-dreamer" explains to Ganymede - played by Simplicissimus - that he had descended to Earth incognito because news of the vices of Mankind had come to his ears in the Council of the Gods. The divine assembly had decided to wipe out the human race in a second flood. He continues:
because I am particularly well-disposed towards the human race and always prefer benevolent action to severe treatment, I am now travelling around to gain a first-hand impression of human activities and although I find everything worse than I would wish, I am not inclined to exterminate all humans at one blow and without making any distinction but merely to punish those who should be punished and then to educate the rest according to my wishes.
The sceptical Simplicissimus replies:
Oh Jupiter, I fear your efforts and travails will nevertheless be in vain if you do not afflict the world with a flood or a conflagration; if you send a war, all the evil and depraved rogues will join forces and simply torment the peace-loving devout people; if you send a price increase it will be well-received by the usurers because then their grain will be worth more; but if you send death, the avaricious and all those who stand to inherit will have it made; so you will have to eradicate the whole world root and branch if you want to punish in a different way.
The instrument of God's three "principal punishments" which Simplicissimus lists [war, famine (as a result of price increases) and plague ("death")] proves inadequate for the just treatment of Mankind. Nevertheless, Jupiter appears to know what to do. He proceeds to outline a just realm of peace which he intends to enforce by violent means; not with soldiers - that is important - but with a miraculous weapon, a magic sword, as only he can possess. Soldiers of whatever allegiance cannot restore a just order. But the idea of a "just war" thus also collapses. Grimmelshausen does not explicitly elaborate this conclusion but implies it.
One specific problem of warfare which Moscherosch and then later Grimmelshausen discuss is highlighted in the context of the above, namely the effect of firearms, of guns of all kinds. This topic had already troubled Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther but in the era of the development of a penetrating, wall-breaking artillery, as used in particular by the French army of Louis XIII, the issue emerged again with new ferocity. [17]
In "A Soldier's Life", Moscherosch goes back to the origins of firing technology and places the supposed inventor of gunpowder, Berthold Schwarz, (14th century) before an imaginary court of ancient German heroes from the early Germanic era who still fought with a spear in their hand and a sword in their fist. The prosecutors appeal to the court assembly:
What use are old German virtue and honesty when the mightiest and boldest hero must constantly fear that the worst and most faint-hearted villains and rogues can take his life with a bullet fired from a long distance and from a concealed position behind a hedge. By someone who would not otherwise have the courage even to look a hero in the face! How is one supposed now to distinguish between those who are virtuous in war and those who are not since a cowardly fellow can shoot down and kill even the most courageous man by such means! Earlier, in the time of our honest fore-fathers, when men fought one-to-one battles with their bare fists, it was possible to see and recognise who was instilled with true virtue, loyalty and honesty! Yes, who bears more guilt over the spilling of so much Christian blood than this damn monk! [18]
The soldier's traditional virtues, physical strength and dexterity, courage and honesty in battle, are no longer worth anything in the face of the new firearms. But even more disturbing is the fact that weapons of mass destruction leave no opportunity to perceive the dying and death of a soldier as a personal destiny ordained by God. Faith in divine providence, in providentia privata, again dwindles from this aspect. We shall skip over the - very skilful - justification of Berthold Schwarz before court and turn our attention to Grimmelshausen who incorporated a chapter entitled "About Guns" in his first treatise, the "Satirical Pilgrim". He broached the subject again in a later chapter "About War". In the "Contradiction", the section of the chapter "About Guns" which is intended to highlight the dubious side of the invention, Grimmelshausen writes as one "who was also present":
I do not mean to say that schoolboys with key guns and stablelads, shepherd boys and vagabonds equipped with hand-guns and pistols do not also cause some damage, but it is more regrettable when an honest man, who has not even seen his enemy, is suddenly shot dead by a blackguard.... [19]
And in an equally clear resumption of Moscherosch's argumentation in the chapter "About War", he writes:
But in a battle one Christian kills another, not with the natural weapons which God has given him, such as fists, nails, teeth etc, but with metal, lead, steel and iron; those whom God created in his own image kill and destroy one another! Those for whom Jesus Christ died that they might live! [...] Someone has to kill another whom he has never seen, let alone been insulted by. There is no room for sympathy! Each must prevent his own death by sacrificing another and before a soldier realises what has happened his gun has killed both the guilty and the innocent, and those standing nearby are sprayed and soiled with blood, brains and entrails. Let this be said in passing to those who would gladly go to war and desire to be there. [20]
For Grimmelshausen too it is a matter of attributing guilt, of justice towards the guilty and the innocent. His experience of war also makes him doubt whether God's hand is involved when soldiers fight and fall. Traditional religious patterns of explanation begin to crumble. Doubts emerge, still shrouded in fictitious conversations and imaginary visions from which the author can distance himself.
However, these common elements must not obscure the fact that Moscherosch and Grimmelshausen also set clearly different points of emphasis, partly due to differences in mentality but partly also from their different historical standpoints and the resulting perspectives. Moscherosch wrote "A Soldier's Life" in the midst of war. He drafted the text in Finstingen, in lulls between attacks, plunderings and sickness. Grimmelshausen's "Simplicissimus Teutsch" did not appear until after the war was over, in 1668. It was written retrospectively in a peaceful environment, although under the threat of new wars created by the expansionist drive of the French Crown in the Upper Rhine region.
Differences in mentality may explain why Grimmelshausen's stories contain a series of sometimes only intimated social utopias where the impetus of social and political peace plays a major role. This also appears in the much quoted Jupiter episode in "Simplicissimus" (III,5), which is still hotly debated among scholars. In this episode, the hero of the story, who is in Westphalia on the lookout for war booty meets a well-dressed gentleman who claims to be the God Jupiter. In the course of a conversation with Simplicissimus he develops the idea of a peaceful German realm where the autocratic rule of a powerful individual is controlled by a parliament, an assembly of the representatives of the towns in the realm and where denominational conflict is resolved by a single Christian state religion. Jupiter's proposals stem from the tradition of late mediaeval reform writings such as the "Reformatio Sigismundi" (around 1440), those of the Upper Rhine revolutionary (around 1495) and the writings of the Rosicrucians.
The ideas which Grimmelshausen developed in the so-called Mummelsee episode (Simplicissimus V,13-16) have similar origins. They deal with an underwater world of sylphs where discord and war cannot occur because they lack the anthropological prerequisites: the sylphs, who do not share Man's immortal soul, also have no trace of selfishness and evil.
Closer to the experiences of his own time is Grimmelshausen's report on the life of the Anabaptists (Simplicissimus V,19). They have a well-organised and strict division of labour. Each sector has the common good in mind during its work. Their ethical attitude is supported by the promotion of religious ties and by religious exercises which permit no idleness.
They knew no anger, no zeal, no lust for revenge, no envy, no enmity, no worry about temporal matters, no vainglory, no remorse! Overall it was such a loving harmony which seemed to have no other goal than to multiply the human race and God's empire in all respectability....
One could mention other ideas of peace which Simplicissimus had, for example his impressions of Switzerland (V,1). But common to them all is the fact that they are all disavowed through satire in the novel itself, for example by disparaging those who put forward such ideas. Jupiter, the "super erudite fool" finally pulls down his trousers and gives lessons in civics to the lice which live there - in the tradition of the satirical animal epics of the Upper Rhine. [21]
But the tersest and clearest example is at the end of the report on the Anabaptists where the old Knan, the foster-father of Simplicissimus tells the latter that he "would never again assemble such men" as would be required for such a peaceful society. (22) Put another way: Man is not made of the stuff to be capable of such a society. Since the Fall, he is selfish and thus inclined to dispute and war. Grimmelshausen sought a path between his constantly recurring desire for peace and his scepticism about all forms of utopia. Like Erasmus of Rotterdam, he finally found a solution - one could probably say a makeshift solution - in his story by segregating those who seek peace in a precarious hermit-like existence. The aged Simplicissimus as a hermit on the Kreuzinsel (VI,22-27) is the final image Grimmelshausen leaves his readers.
Grimmelshausen's underlying tone of scepticism can be explained by the fact that, when writing "Simplicissimus", he was able to look back on almost twenty years of peace which must have disappointed him in some respects. Moscherosch, on the other hand, produced no further stories after the conclusion of peace in 1648 which would have been about the era of peace. Grimmelshausen saw the younger generation who had missed the experience of war, who pressed for and craved the opportunity to seek their fortune in war. In "Proud Melcher" (1672) he outlined the profile of a farmer's lad who, in order to escape the control of his father and seek the spoils of war, had followed Dutch recruiters and fought in France's second war of conquest against the Netherlands (1672-1678). [23]
Grimmelshausen portrays him as a down-and-out, mangy beggar, in accordance with the familiar saying "Young soldiers, old beggars". In general, he repeatedly presents his readers with the image of the poverty-stricken and often sick invalid, the peg leg. Springinsfeld is simply the most compelling of these figures. They are intended to warn and deter the younger generation. The merchant, who is the subject of the "Miraculous Bird's Nest", Part II (1675) (Chapters 21,22), is also on the point of signing up out of boredom and despair when, in the company of dissolute brothers, a magical picture ("spectacle") is conjured up in which "one could see the past, present and future at the same time". Once again the God Jupiter appears, once more disturbed from his Olympic rest by Man's evil, and attempts to find the cause of so much vice on Earth. He comes to the conclusion that, with the exception of a few peace-lovers, peace does not agree with Mankind.
In view of this story, anyone would understand without effort, much to his moral edification, how the abundance of God's rich blessings - which in times of peace are felt in superabundance and enjoyed by man according to his need but also wasted uselessly - leads among the children of this world to the emergence of harmful idleness, accompanied by all manner of loathsome vices and luxuries, while at the same time God's children coldly allow the devout virtue contained in all of the highly esteemed sensual pleasures and delights of the world to pass by without vouchsafing it even a glance, to say nothing of allowing it to touch them in any way, by which means they arouse the just and inevitable fury of God. [24]
Here too, Jupiter knows of no other way of improving matters than repeatedly to afflict Mankind with war, famine and plague, in the vague hope of bringing people to their senses. The reader of earlier writings knows that Jupiter is resorting to desperate means. As far as Man's ethical behaviour is concerned, peace and war are one - even if the vices of peace are different from those of war. The experience of war seldom made a new generation wiser.
There is no evidence to suggest that Grimmelshausen himself came any closer to achieving his desire for a peaceful existence in seclusion during the final, poorly documented years of his life. On the contrary. As mayor of a rural farming community he was severely affected by the turbulence of war when the French army under Turenne invaded the Upper Rhine regions in 1675. From the little that we know about his death from the parish priest's entry in the church register, he died in military service at the age of fifty-five, bearing arms once again. [25]
FOOTNOTES
1. For the biographies: Schäfer 1982; Hohoff 1978; Weydt 1979.
2. Cf. Bechtold 1918, p. 565.
3. Moscherosch 1644. The original text is not available in any modern edition. The reprint of the "Gesichte" in Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, New York 1974, does not contain it. I have published a shortened and linguistically modernised edition: Schäfer 1996.
4. The perception of war and peace in Grimmelshausen's work has frequently been treated, most recently: Breuer 1985; Mannack 1987; Battafarano 1988.
5. Schäfer 1996, p. 37.
6. Schäfer 1982, p. 115.
7. Grimmelshausen 1975.
8. Grimmelshausen 1970a, p. 160: "I freely admit that I did not recount even one-hundredth of what a terrible and cruel monster war is [...]".
9. Cf. Grimmelshausen 1970a, p. 158:
"Those whom God created in his own image are corrupting and destroying one another!"
10. Cover engraving of "Simplicissimus Teutsch": Cf. exhibition catalogue Münster 1998, Vol. 3.
11. The extensive literature on the theory of satire is summarised in the encyclopaedia entry by Röcke 1993 (with bibliography).
12. Schäfer 1996, p. 70-71.
13. "solid as a wall": rendered unassailable, invulnerable by magic power.
14. Schäfer 1996, p. 115.
15. Schäfer 1996, p. 32.
16. Grimmelshausen 1984, Third Book, chapters 3-5. On the presentational form of the symposium of Gods in the tradition of Lucian and Boccalini: Koppenfels 1981, pp. 28-30; Schäfer 1992; Trappen 1994, p. 160.
17. Luther in his early sermons: Luther complete works, I,4, p. 651.
18. Schäfer 1996, pp. 122-123.
19. Grimmelshausen 1970a, p. 99. Key guns are simple home-made firearms created by drilling or filing a hole in the shaft of a key close to the key ring and loading it with gunpowder: DWB Vol. 15, p. 860.
20. Grimmelshausen 1970a, p. 158.
21. In Johann Fischart's "Flöh-Hatz, Weiber-Tratz" ("Flea-Hunt, Women's Gossip") and Wolfhart Spangenberg's "Esel König" ("Donkey King"), the principles of civics are treated ironically in a similar fashion using the example of animal societies.
22. Grimmelshausen 1984, p. 442.
23. Grimmelshausen 1973, pp. 29-50.
24. "Mancher hingegen, wann er diß Gesichte sehen sollen, hätte zu seiner geistlichen Aufferbauung ohne Mühe begreifen mögen, wie durch die Völle und Genüge deß reichen Segen Gottes, der sich in den lieben Friedens-Zeiten überflüssig verspüren und sowohl von den Menschen nach Nothdurfft geniessen als unnützlich verschwenden läst, bei den Weltmenschen der schädliche Müßiggang und mit ihm alle abscheuliche Laster und Uppigkeiten geboren werden, dargegen die Gottselige diese von andern großgeachte Wollüsten und Ergetzlichkeiten der Welt ganz kaltsinnig vorbeipassieren und sie kaum einigen Anschauens würdigen, geschweige, daß sie sich damit besudlen sollten, wordurch jene den gerechten und unausbleiblichen Zorn Gottes reitzen und erregen." Grimmelshausen 1970, p. 282.
25. Weydt 1979, pp. 13-14.
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