DOCUMENTATION | Exhibitions: 1648 - War and Peace in Europe |
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Essay Volumes > Tome II: Art and culture |
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AXEL E. WALTER
A Political Publicist in the Thirty Years' War: The Literary Work of Julius Wilhelm Zincgref |
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When the Thirty Years' War swept over Germany in 1618, it was in no way unexpected by contemporaries. During the confessional age, a general sense of crisis had been spreading. The Empire was internally paralysed: parties divided along religious lines had long been formed and stood opposing each other in preparation for war. Religious and political propaganda had long defined concepts of the confessional enemy B concepts that were exploited by the early absolutist principalities for the purposes of power politics. Attempted resolutions made by late humanists B who desperately struggled to disentangle religion and politics and restore the basic unity of a res publica christiana that went beyond confessional and political boundaries B finally failed on the battlefields of the cruel and raging war. This war brought unspeakable human misery to the people and wrested them of their Seelenschatz B the treasure of their soul B as Andreas Gryphius, representative of his generation, lamented in one of his best-known sonnets, Threnen des Vatterlandes / Anno 1636 (Tears of the Fatherland / Anno 1636). The experiences of the war were abundantly echoed in the literature of these decades. Next to an unending flood of leaflets and pamphlets, some of the most significant works of seventeenth-century German literature were produced. The breakthrough toward the development of a national poetry was also an accomplishment of these decades. [1]
Julius Wilhelm Zincgref belongs to the countless authors who took up their quills and eloquently positioned themselves on the side of a religious party and its political leader. Since the canon of seventeenth-century German literature has been limited to the most influential writers such as Gryphius and Grimmelshausen, Zincgref's name and work have largely been forgotten. It is certainly not a coincidence but rather a conditio sine qua non that the search for traces of Zincgref's past lead to the Electoral Palatinate and the Palatine residence of Heidelberg. It was there that Julius Wilhelm Zincgref was born in 1591 to Lorenz Zincgref, legal councillor to the Elector Palatine.
Around the year 1600, the reformed confession finally prevailed in the Electoral Palatinate and a programme of confessional politics upheld by convinced Calvinists was instituted. This political agenda was, on the one hand, focused on all of Europe: intensive diplomatic relations with the Protestant and anti-Habsburg powers were formed and, through a well-planned politics of marriage, dynastic ties with the houses of Orange and Stuart were established. On the other hand, an exceptionally active policy regarding the Empire was asserted. This policy strove for an "irenic" compromise between the German Protestants and was meant to ensure a serried front against the emperor and the Catholic estates of the Empire. Under the leadership of Christian von Anhalt (1568-1630) B who had won decisive influence over the politically dependent Frederick V (1610-22/23), a king easily blinded by courtly splendour B the Electoral Palatinate's confessional policy acquired an increasingly militant character and prepared for a decisive military battle against the Catholics who had regained their strength through the Counter Reformation.
Simultaneous to confessional consolidation within the Electoral Palatinate, Heidelberg experienced a blossoming of intellectual and literary life around 1600 B supported by a circle of late humanist scholars and literati whose leading thinkers were to be found among university professors and upper civil servants. In addition, a gifted younger generation also joined this circle. This group came primarily from the same social stratum and was likewise committed to humanistic education and Neo-Latin poetry. Extensive correspondence and personal contacts tied these late humanists in Heidelberg to the republic of letters; they entwined their official duties with the policies of the Electoral Palatinate formed under the banner of European Calvinism. On the eve of the Thirty Years' War, this same circle of scholars and literati turned Heidelberg into the centre of a new German poetry. This new national poetry was to a great extent a product of the transformation of traditional humanist Neo-Latin poetry into the German vernacular. At the same time, it was linked to the specific confessional-political environment in the Palatinate.
The Strasbourg edition of Teutsche Poemata (German Poetics) B written by the Silesian Martin Opitz who also participated in the Heidelberg circle in 1619/20 B was published by Zincgref in 1624. As a supplement to Opitz's poems, Zincgref added to his edition an "Anhange Vnderschiedlicher au gesuchter Getichten anderer teutschen Poeten" ("Appendix of Various Selected Poems by other German Poets") B a collection of poetry created in Heidelberg that merged a thoroughly independent tradition influenced by French literature with the new poetic reform. With his edition, Zincgref erected a memorial to the Heidelberg circle B a memorial, however, that had been erected in exile.
With his acceptance of the Bohemian royal crown in August 1619, the Elector Palatine had strained his prospects by completely misjudging the strength of his dynastic and diplomatic ties as well as the Protestant Union's readiness to turn against the emperor. Indeed, soon after the Battle of White Mountain and the conquest of the Electoral Palatinate, Palatine policy collapsed like a house of cards. The military catastrophe also meant the end of the blossoming of late humanism in Heidelberg. The scholars and literati fled and saved themselves (minus their goods and chattel) by escaping the Catholic victors who B bent on extinguishing Calvinist and humanist Heidelberg and destroying its intellectual foundation B stole the Palatina, carrying it to Rome on ox-carts.
It was precisely this constellation of confessional politics and intellectual history that shaped Julius Wilhelm Zincgref's biography as well as his literary work. He struck out on a humanistic course of education characteristic for his time: from 1607 on, he attended the University of Heidelberg and continued his studies in 1612/13 in Basle which, next to Heidelberg and Strasbourg, was the most important institution of higher learning for humanists in the upper-Rhine region. From there, he set out for a peregrinatio academica that would last several years. By the year 1615, his journey had taken him to France, England and the Netherlands. Thereafter, he returned to Heidelberg. His patrimony and the income from a fief near Münster on the Nahe River made it possible for him to continue without an appointment to public office for the upcoming years and enabled him to postpone his graduation to doctor of both laws until the year 1620. [2]
During this period, Zincgref could evidently afford to devote himself exclusively to his literary and scholarly interests. He emerged early on as a gifted composer of Neo-Latin occasional verse. No other literary genre was so widespread in the seventeenth century nor so nurtured by both the poetae minores and the eminent poets of the day as occasional poetry: it accompanied all events. Occasional poems were written for birthdays, funerals, the inauguration of educational journeys, or the conclusion of a dissertation and so on; it served as testimony to friendships, as a way to recommend oneself and as a means to establish contacts. [3] The list of addressees of Zincgref's early occasional poems document his illustrious contacts with leading figures of the Heidelberg circle gathered around the high councillor Georg Michael Lingelsheim (1558-1636) and the professor of history and librarian of the Palatina, Janus Gruter (1560-1627). In 1618, Zincgref's occasional poems were collected together with those of his friends Friedrich Lingelsheim (before 1593-1616) and Johann Leonhard Weidner (1588-1655) in an anthology produced by Weidner. [4] At this time, Zincgref took the leading role among the younger generation of late humanist poets. When Friedrich Lingelsheim B with whom he had completed a part of his educational travels B unexpectedly died on 13 September 1616, the bereaved Zincgref was given first position (even before the famous Gruter) among the authors who presented their epicedia in a printing honouring the occasion. [5] Until the end of his days, Zincgref consistently produced occasional verse in Neo-Latin, although the yield of poems decreased noticeably after leaving his circle of close friends in Heidelberg.
Even before the war penetrated the Electoral Palatinate, two larger works by Zincgref were published that reveal him to be firmly anchored in the tradition of humanist poetry, and, at the same time, already committed to the interests of the early absolutist principality and Palatine politics. In 1618, he published his Facetiae Pennalium, [6] a collection of facetiae and theophrastic characters in which he attacked academic pedantry and drudgery and reminded scholars of their obligations to society. According to Zincgref, the times demanded that humanists participate as active politicians. He claims at the beginning of his "Preface to the Reader": "Cicero writes in the third book of his Orator that at one time the ancient Greeks called politicians or men of wisdom >philosophers' because of their great knowledge and because they induced various peoples to submit themselves to certain forms of government, law, order and propriety B and to maintain them". [7]
In his next work, Emblemata ethico-politica, [8] which appeared the following year, Zincgref attempted to make these humanist politicians responsible to the prudentia politica as it was first defined in 1589 in the immensely resounding work Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex by the Dutch late humanist, Justus Lipsius (1547-1606). Based on ancient Stoic thought, Lipsius' work outlined a monarchical state founded on virtus and prudentia which the prince and his officers should feel bound to. He also defined this state's responsibility which was to ensure a system of rule and authority. Of special importance for Lipsius was the military securing and armipotency of the state, issues which he treated in detail in the last two books. [9] One aspect important to Zincgref about which he complained in his Facetiae Pennalium was that since nowadays "every peasant's son" elbowed his way into the university, "the necessary skills of bearing arms were falling by the wayside". [10] Zincgref included the tenets of the Dutchman in his prose commentaries which he adopted in the genre-specific triadic structure of the emblem. However, in transcending Lipsius' ideas, Zincgref also argued for a more important role for the people in the system of rule. Thus, he appealed to the citizens to always serve the state with their voice, advice and circumspection ("la voix, le conseil, le regard") [11] just as the sound of the trumpet strengthened the soldiers in their fight.
That Zincgref did not recur in his Emblemata to a decidedly Calvinistic theory of the state, but rather relied on the leading theory of late-humanist political thought which eschewed all religious partisanship (and whose author taught at the Catholic university in Leuven), was symptomatic of the situation in which the Electoral Palatinate found itself: in its attempt to win over the Lutherans, all possible confessional confrontation had to be avoided. On the other hand, Zincgref's posture was also characteristic for the Heidelberg circle of late humanists who kept their distance from the agitators around Christian von Anhalt and maintained their basic irenic tendency. Zincgref's Emblemata represented the views of this circle which had actively contributed to the creation of the work. That this work was meant to have a far-reaching effect is suggested by the quatrains of the "Subscriptio" which were not composed in Latin but rather in French B the language that was gaining more importance at the courts. Yet, with the outbreak of war, even this overture towards Protestant conciliation resulted in failure. The Lutheran estates of the Empire, gripped by a strict obedience to authority, largely failed to provide military support to the Electoral Palatinate, not least because of the chronology of events involving Frederick V. Indeed, when Frederick V became king of Bohemia B succeeding Ferdinand II who two days later became emperor (with the vote of the Electoral Palatinate) B the Bohemian question evolved into a revolt against the emperor.
Immediately after Frederick's acceptance of the Bohemian royal crown, Zincgref showed his support for the king's decision in his epos Ad Fridericum Bohemiae Regem, a composition of 184 Latin hexameters. [12] Frederick was to bring ever-lasting peace to Bohemia, protect the state from foreign enemies, and legally secure its protection:
Ite anni, Fridericus, adest, qui prospicit ævo, / Proq. hoc arma feret, pacemq. armatus amabit, / Et nostris hostem peregrinum arcebit ab oris, / Atque perennanti circumdabit omnia Lege. [13]
Frederick's efforts served not only Bohemia, but also the so-called fatherland B pro patria, and the faith, that is, the "true" faith B pro relligione. [14 ]These motives justified on a confessional political level the momentous steps taken by Frederick and as such were accepted by the Heidelberg late humanists. They felt that it was necessary to defend the German fatherland and the Christian religion against their foreign enemies. Easy to identify, these enemies were seated in Rome and Madrid.
Frederick V, stylised by Zincgref in his epos as verae fidei defensor, [15] was expected to ultimately force even these enemies into a true peace. The allusion to the 1609 truce between Spain and the insurgent Netherlands could easily be deciphered by the contemporary reader:
Et quis praeterea bellum/ belloque moretur / Pejorem multo; quam spondet Iberia, pacem? [16]
However, in order to prevail in this combat, it was most important to attain unity among the German estates. With the Electoral Palatinate's entry into the war, Zincgref came to be a political journalist and the spokesman of the late humanist circle, of which the youngest B and indeed last B generation vehemently sided with Frederick V Zincgref was the author of numerous pamphlets and leaflets only a portion of which may have so far been identified since they were published under the cover of anonymity and pseudonyms. In these publications, Zincgref pursued a clear string of accusations. In a world of decadence and decay dominated by the idle pursuit of earthly and hence passing possessions and political power, Zincgref's indictment was inseparable from the call to reflect back on the divine order. In his pamphlet Newe Zeitungen / Von vnterschiedlichen Orten (New Reports / From Different Places), [17] also first printed in 1619, Zincgref sketched the situation of contemporary Europe and its states and estates in short satirical epigrams. He formulated what in his opinion was already apparent among his "sensible" contemporaries but which he nevertheless wanted to remind them of. [18] In a piece with the lemma Auß Deutschland (from Germany), he complained of the lack of unity among the German estates:
That among so many religions, there is nevertheless none to be found who so believes in our Lord and His infallible Word as to see that an empire which is in itself disunited cannot endure. That it is good to form a union, better to maintain it, and best to not need it at all.
With all of the power-political skirmishes among the religious parties, it appeared B as subsequent "reports" informed B that they had forgotten one thing: "that the covenant of God and the kingdom of heaven alone would last to the end of time". [19]
While on the one hand, the Protestants repeatedly called for the conciliation of the estates throughout the Thirty Years' War, on the other hand, they disavowed the alliance of their foreign enemies on both a confessional and political level. Protestant propaganda developed an influential conspiracy theory meant to expose the concerted action of the pope, the Jesuits and Spain in their united influence on the emperor which was solely targeted on annihilating the heretics and the "liberty" of the estates. The Jesuits in particular, consistently successful in promoting the Counter-Reformation, were a thorn in the eyes of the Protestants. The play on words "Jesu zu wider" ("To the displeasure of Jesus"), stemming from Johann Fischart (1546-90), corresponded to popular opinion. Already in 1604, Petrus Denaisius (1560-1610) B a pre-war Palatine author and assessor to the Imperial chamber B had released a vehement lampoon entitled Drey Jesuiten Latein (Three Jesuits' Latin), a translation of a poem he had originally written in French. In the new and expanded editions of his Newe Zeitung which appeared in 1620 and 1621, Zincgref also added a chapter entitled "Au dem Jesuiter Collegio" ("From the Jesuit College") in which Protestant polemics were tersely formulated. Responding to Catholic polemics like that of Kaspar Schoppe, Zincgref included concrete (and not entirely unfounded) accusations that charged the Catholics with deliberately waging war against the heretics:
where one so likes to nest in the region / there one must split it up (re:gion) and push a Liga in between / so that you then have a religion. [20]
Along with Spain and the Jesuits, the pope B the "Roman Antichrist" as he was known by many Protestants B was also pilloried in Zincgref's polemics. In 1623, Zincgref published a satirical leaflet Der Römische Vogelherdt (The Roman Fowler) under the telling pseudonym "Laurentiadus Primnicius, Exul Bohemus". In this leaflet, Zincgref exposed the pope's intentions in the war and accused him of being a "fowler":
seinen Vogelherdt / Der armen Christenheit so werth / An allen enden rüstet auß / Zu machen jhro den garauß. [21]
The cunning lure of this "fowler" was to be trusted neither by the Germans nor (especially) not by the Protestants. Those trusting a betrayer of both God and the world, would in the end only succumb to misfortune.
According to Zincgref, the true intentions of the "Spanish goat-herds" and the "Roman stallions of the cloth" could best be seen in the fate of his Palatine homeland. [22] In Quotlibetisches Weltkefig" (World Cage, As You Please), a pamphlet published in 1623, he attempted to show that the war against the German Protestants and particularly the assault on the Electoral Palatinate had been prepared long in advance. In Zincgref's view, the emperor had been a compliant accessory of a long-entertained and well-thought-out plan which had been successfully accomplished by Frederick's expulsion from his motherland, the decree of his banishment (1621) and the subsequent transfer of the electoral dignity to Maximilian I of Bavaria B leader of the League and military arm of the plot. The allegations that Zincgref expressed here in a coarse popular prose were simultaneously disseminated in several pamphlets produced by the Palatine government-in-exile in The Hague. These pamphlets drew on intercepted Imperial correspondence betraying Catholic intentions. [23] As obvious as the evidence may have been, and despite Zincgref's vehement appeals for the coherence of the German Protestants B the situation was unmistakably to their disadvantage. The Electoral Palatinate had been lost, the Calvinists found themselves in a hopeless predicament, the Lutheran estates were primarily interested in finding a compromise with the emperor, and the Union had dissolved. At the last moment, Zincgref succeeded in fleeing from besieged Heidelberg. He turned to Strasbourg where many other Heidelbergers had gone and where a small colony of the scattered late humanist circle of scholars and literati was forming.
Shortly before Heidelberg was conquered by the superior Spanish and Catholic League troops, Zincgref B who had just entered public office and accepted a position as general auditor of the Heidelberg garrison B directed a flaming appeal to the surrounded resisters entitled Vermanung zur Dapfferkeit (Call to Courage). He forcefully depicted the consequences of cowardice and reminded them that they would not only be fighting and dying for themselves and their families, but also for the fatherland. Thus, he attempted to re-ignite their fury and urge on their bravery:
No death is more praiseworthy / no death is more honoured / As that / through which the healing of the fatherland is nurtured / A death one welcomes/ and greets with joy / And takes into his arms / but yet at the same time scorns. / Such a man stands stiffly with feet unmoving / He yields to no one / his enemies must yield / Such a man is the common good of the city / The opponents' horror / the country's able-bodied guardian: / He can subdue the flood of battles as he wills / And with his presence still the enemies' obstinacy / His unfaltering heart is for his fatherland / A castle unconquerable / and the people's right hand. [24]
Zincgref, who as a humanist always had the classical poets ready at hand, drew on a meaningful model: that of Tyrtaios, the Spartan poet who, according to Strabon, once lead the Lacedœmonians in war against the Messinese. Zincgref deliberately turned to Tyrtaios' poem fragments, knowing B as he expressed in the heading of his own Vermanung B that these elegies had once been read aloud by the Spartan commanders "to their fellow citizens and soldiers before going to battle". Relying on simple and direct language that largely dispensed with rhetorical ornatus, Zincgref drew on the glorious tradition of the Spartans who were inured to war: humanistic potential was implemented for practical purposes. In these poems, he again made it clear that the struggle was not only about Heidelberg and the Electoral Palatinate, but rather that it had to do with something much larger: the liberation of the German fatherland from foreign tyranny and the sacrifice of one's life to this cause. It was this message that Zincgref directed to the soldiers at the end of his poem:
So must / he who wants to live freed from tyranny / Be ready to offer his life voluntarily / He who covets death / who goes briskly toward it / He has the victory / and indeed life to win. [25]
Among the German Protestants, Zincgref was not the only one issuing warlike appeals to his fellow countrymen to free themselves from the devastating influence of the conspiring triad of enemies B Spain, the pope and the Jesuits.
Considering the adverse situation on the battlefields, it was even more necessary to awaken the national spirit for the struggle. Evidently impressed by Martin Opitz's programme of poetic reform and actively supported by his late humanist circle of friends comprised of refugee Heidelbergers and Strasbourg humanists clustered around the history professor Matthias Bernegger (1582-1640), Zincgref, now in the Imperial city on the upper Rhine, dedicated himself fully to the task of drafting a national programme for language and literature. Already in his Facetiae Pennalium and Emblemata, Zincgref had formulated the key prerequisites for the realisation and subsequent effectiveness of this national programme: the liberation of classical education from its scholastic rigidity and the redefinition of the scholar's role and practical function for the early absolutist principality.
In his "Dedicatio" prefacing the 1624 edition of Teutschen Poemata, Zincgref formulated his central concerns: firstly, to prove to foreigners the poetic capacity of the German language; secondly, to demonstrate the same to his compatriots through his edition of Teutschen Poemata which presented the collected works of Opitz and the Heidelberg poets who had been included in the supplement; and thirdly, to make it unquestionably clear to those Germans who
prefer to stutter in foreign languages / than to improve themselves in that / which is innate to them / and capable of perfect as well as pleasant expression" that "it is not a lesser yoke / from a foreign language / to be ruled and tyrannised as from a foreign nation". [26]
This latter statement was indeed the core message of Zincgref's programme. By resuming the tyranny motif, he asserted a connection between national poetry and the national struggle B a correlation already conceptualised in his "appendix". At the beginning of the appendix, Zincgref presented three poems which invoked the equal status of the German muses to the Greek and Roman muses as well as other national poetry, and awarded German poetry the laurel crown. Included among the three was Zincgref's own poem An die Teutschen (To the Germans). At the end of the poem he placed his inculcating and combative "Vermanung zur Dapfferkeit".
Zincgref offered a similar programmatic argumentation in his 1626 work Der Teutschen Scharpfsinnige kluge Sprüch (Witty and Clever Sayings of the Germans), which he identified in his correspondence as the first part of his Apophthegmata. The Germans, he reinforced in the preface, need not be afraid of either the comparison with the antique world nor contemporary Europe; rather, they were just as capable of outstanding poetic and intellectual achievements. Moreover, it was precisely
the indigenous sayings and examples that have more influence on fellow countrymen than the foreign and alien / and they better inspire the citizens' souls to the love of the fatherland. [27]
Like with the facetiae and emblems, Zincgref again chose a literary genre favoured by European humanists. But this time, the canon that he referred to had changed. No longer did he rely on the "arsenal" of Greek and Roman examples. Rather, he now collected aphorisms and epigrams of German popes, bishops, emperors, kings, princes and scholars of all generations and ranks whose language and rhetoric he regarded as equal. Zincgref wanted to document German acumen and worldly wisdom and extract a practical application for the afflicted times in which he lived. He claimed these apophthegms
hold as it were the essence / of not only the German / but rather of all Heavenly and earthly philosophy and knowledge/ because it was not only nature and reason that, as it were, wrote and placed such sayings in the ancestors' hearts and mouths / but rather the long-lasting trial and experience of our whole nation / lineage after lineage / taught these. [28]
The collection of pieces of evidence substantiating poetic and intellectual strength as well as the conscious return to that which was common and binding in times of massive foreign threat possessed unremitting relevance.
Indeed, as power politics became increasingly internationalised during the Thirty Years' War, the confessional-political front lines became more and more blurred. Therefore, particularly among the Protestants, the demand that the estates themselves should author the solution to the problems grew louder. Despite the swell in appeals, this wish was not to be fulfilled. The war raged on and the warring parties sought an alliance with foreign powers whose money and troops streamed into the Empire. Like many of his contemporaries, Zincgref drifted into the waves of the war like a shipwrecked person. Due to a serious illness, he was forced to give up a position in the service of a French diplomat; in Strasbourg he found no further post and attempts to settle down elsewhere also failed. Late in 1626, he married a wealthy widow and in the next few years retreated to Saint Goar. Because he lived in a region that was under Spanish influence, it is no wonder that during this time he seemed only to be working on the second half of his apophthegms which appeared in 1631 in Strasbourg under the title of Teutscher Nation Denckwürdiger Reden Apophthegmata genannt (Memorable Adages of the German Nation, Entitled Apophthegmata). It appears that he was not further active as a propagandist. A public and propagandistic defence of the Protestants would have put him and his family in danger: the camouflage of anonymity would have been all too easy to uncover. Instead, he lived privately, saving his energy for better times. [29]
After the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, bearer of the Protestants' hope, intervened and the Swedish troops drove the Spanish back from the Rhine, these better times seemed to have arrived and the war turned to the advantage of the Protestants. In 1632, Zincgref returned in the service of the Palatine Wittelsbach, who had been reinstalled through the grace of the Swedish. Now a magistrate's clerk in Kreuznach and later Alzey, he immediately returned to the public stage and, in a leaflet from 1632, celebrated the Swedish king with two Latin epigrams. As victor of the enemies, it was, after God, Gustavus Adolphus alone who was to be praised:
Quod Victos armis hostes quoque vincis amore / Post Diuos soli laus ea danda tibi. [30]
The position that Zincgref represented had not changed but rather had gained new relevance and, under the aegis of Sweden, appeared now to be coming true. Again, it was imperative to ignite the soldiers to the courageous defence of the fatherland and, even more than ever before, to call upon the Protestants to unify themselves. Consequently, a reprint of Vermanung zur Dapfferkeit appeared in 1632 under the title of Soldaten Lob (Soldier's Praise) and a supplementary edition of Quotlibetisches Welt und Hummel Kefig (World and Bumblebee Cage, As You Please) was also released. Since several Protestant estates were hesitant and even rejected Swedish efforts to organise an alliance, Zincgref made an unequivocal reference to Calvinist teachings of resistance, sharpening his call to unity into an explicit threat. He insisted that the German princes were not to forget that they had been appointed by God in order to protect His people "and that this was the very reason, and no other, why they were called Vncti Domini, the Anointed of God because God the Lord had made the rulers, kings and authorities for the sake of the people, and not the people for the sake of the powerful". [31]
Although in the years of silence Zincgref's voice had lost none of its severity, it would, however, soon be silenced for good. Zincgref, like so many others of his generation, would be consumed by the beast of war. When the Catholic troops powerfully forced their way back into the Electoral Palatinate, he was again driven to flee. Wounded by marauding soldiers, Zincgref retreated to Saint Goar where he died of the plague in 1635. With his death, Heidelberg lost the spokesperson of its irenically influenced late humanist political thought B who in a specific confessional-political context, attempted to bridge the humanist sphere of scholars and the national programme of language and literature. This programme B whose offerings went beyond confessional boundaries B bound (as always) literary work to engaged political writing. From the perspective of the Electoral Palatinate, this campaign encouraged the unity of German Protestants as well as the unified fight against the tyranny of the Catholic foreigners who conspired against both the Empire and the supposed heretics. His work aimed at efficacy and, evidenced by the fact that almost all of his many writings had several prints or reprints, apparently reached its goal. Although not an original thinker, Zincgref nevertheless counts as one of the most interesting political writers of the Thirty Years' War.
FOOTNOTES
Literature References:
Friederich 1934; Garber 1984, 1979 and 1986; Graupner 1912; Krummacher 1990; Kühlmann 1980, 1982 and 1988; Kühlmann/Wiegand 1989; Mertens/Verweyen 1972; Mertens 1974; Press 1970; Schilling 1981; Carolsfeld 1879; Trunz 1995a; Verweyen 1970, 1984 and 1995.
1. See the articles in this volume by Klaus Gerber and Wilhelm Kühlmann.
2. Regarding the administration of the Münster fiefs, see Zincgref's letters which in the past have been overlooked, Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz, abt. 4, no. 3,647, pp. 83-102.
3. The most authoritative introduction to this genre (which only in the past few years has become a focus in the study of literature) is still that of Segebrecht 1977.
4. Triga Amico-Poetica. siue ivlii Gvlielmi Zincgrefii Heidelbergensis Iuuenilia Poetica: Friderici Lingelshemii Heidelbergensis p.m. Reliquiæ Poeticæ. Ioannis Leonhardi Weidneri Palatini Conatuum Poeticorum Prodromus. Editio prima procurata ab eodem Ioanne Leonhardo Weidnero. Excusa Anno M. DC. XIX. (The only known copy is found in the Stadtbibliothek Wuppertal, Gym. D 12 56).
5. Memoriæ Friderici Lingelshemii Georgii Michaelis Magni Patris Magni Filii Cuius Virtuti Fortuna Favit mors Invidit heu Immatura Præpostera Haidelbergæ idibus Septembr. Anno Christi (i)i) (xvi. Pie Defuncti Amoris Doloris Monumentum Amic. p. (The only known copy is found in the University Library of Wroclaw: 372344).
6. They are now easily accessible in the critical edition of Zincgref 1978.
7. "Es schreibt Cic. lib. 3 de Or. da man vorzeiten bey den alten Grichen die Politicos oder Weltweisen wegen jhrer grossen Wissenschaften habe Philosophos geheissen, als die da vnderschiedliche Völcker vnder gewisse Regimentsformen, Gesetze, Ordnungen vnd Richtigkeiten gebracht, vnd sie auch darbey erhalten haben." Zincgref 1978, p. 3.
8. This work has meanwhile been published in the complete edition of Zincgref's writings, Zincgref 1993. That Zincgref adhered to the example set by Lipsius is indicated for the first time in the introduction of this 1993 edition.
9. For a thorough discussion, see Oestreich 1989.
10. "Ein jeder Bawren Sohn insonderheit aber die nothwendige Waffenhandlung zu grund gehet". Zincgref 1978, p. 3.
11. Zincgref 1993, I, p. 212.
12. Zincgref 1619 (The only surviving copy was discovered by D. Mertens and T. Verweyen in their bibliographic research in the Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen.)
13. Zincgref 1619, p. 4.
14. Zincgref 1619, p. 5.
15. Zincgref 1619, p. 8.
16. Zincgref 1619, p. 8. "And who should bring the war to a standstill and bring about the peace? The peace which is promised by the Spanish, would it not be far worse than war?"
17. Zincgref 1619a. Cited from the copy in the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel (H. A. B.).
18. "That all of these new reports offer nothing new to a judicious man." Zincgref 1619a, f. Aiijr.
19. "Das allein der Bund vnd das Reich Gottes Ewig wehre." Zincgref 1619a, f. Aiijr.
20. "Das wo man gern in die Region nisten wolte / da müsse mans trennen (Re:gion) und ein Liga darzwischen hinein schieben / so werde dann ein Religion daraus." Zincgref 1620, f. Biijv (copy in the H. A. B.).
21. "His fowling floor / So treasured by poor Christendom / He fortifies on all sides / Bringing Christendom to its demise". Quote from Schilling 1981, p. 298.
22. Quoted from the copy in the Bibliothek des Interdisziplinären Instituts für Kulturgeschichte in der Frühen Neuzeit an der Universität Osnabrück (S4: 8506-721), p. 25. Dünnhaupt 1993, p. 4369, was able to describe five prints of this leaflet not less than three of which were from 1632. Another reprint from the year of the first publication (which has not yet been written about) is found in the Biblioteka Narodowa in Warsaw (XVII.3.27688), Zincgref 1623.
23. See Müller 1875. On the propagandistic struggle between the Electoral Palatinate and Imperial Bavaria, see Koser 1874.
24. "Kein Tod ist löblicher / kein Tod wird mehr geehret / Als der / durch den das Heil deß Vatterlandts sich nehret / Den einer willkomm heißt / dem er entgegen lacht / Ihn inn die Arme nimpt / vnd doch zugleich veracht. / Ein solcher stehet steiff mit vnverwendten Füssen / Er weichet neimandt nicht / sein Feinde weichen müssen / Ein solcher Mann der ist der Statt gemeines gut / Der Wiedersacher grauß / des Landts wehrhaffte Hut: / Er kan der Schlachten Fluth bezwingen nach seim willen / Mit seiner gegenwart deß Feindes Trotze stillen / Sein vnverzagtes Hertz ist seinem Vatterlandt / Ein vnerstiegne Burg / deß Volckes rechte handt."
See Opitz 1968ff., II, Die Werke von 1621 bis 1626, 1. Teil, p. 286-87.
25. "So muß / wer Tyranney geübriget will leben / Er seines Lebens sich freywillig vor begeben / Wer nur deß Todts begert / wer nur frisch geht anhin / Der hat den Sieg / vnd dann das Leben zu gewinn." See Opitz 1968 ff., II, Die Werke von 1621 bis 1626, I, p. 290.
26. "Lieber in frembden Sprachen stamlen / als in deren / welche jhnen angeboren / zu vollkommener Wohlredenheit gelangen"... "es nicht ein geringeres Joch ist / von einer au ländischen Sprach / als von einer au ländischen Nation beherrschet vnd Tyrannisiret werden." Opitz 1968 ff., II, Die Werke von 1621 bis 1626, I, p. 169.
27. "Die einheimische reden vnd Exempel mehr als frembde vnd au ländische bey den Landsleuten vermögen / vnd die Burgerliche Gemüther zur lieb de Vatterlands besser anfrischen." Zincgref 1626, f. b3r. (Cited from the copy in the H. A. B., Lo 8326.)
28. "Gleichsam der Kern / nicht allein Teutscher / sondern aller Himmlischen vnd Jrdischen Philosophia vnd wissenschaft begriffen ist / dann es hat solche Sprichwörter nicht allein die Natur vnd vernunfft selber gleichsam in der vorfahren Hertz vnd Mund geschrieben vnd eingelegt / sondern es hat sie auch die langwierige prob vnd erfahrung vnserer gantzen Nation / von Geschlecht zu Geschlecht / gelehrt". Zincgref 1626, f. b [v].
29. Matthias Bernegger reported this to Christoph Köler in a letter from 8 May 1630: "Zincgrefius privatus vivit cum uxore in Palatinatu sub Hispanorum dominatu, ac se melioribus temporibus servat." ("Zincgref is living privately with his wife in the Palatinate, which now is under the control of the Spanish, and is preserving himself for better times.") Cited from Reifferscheid's edition of Zincgref's letters which are indispensable to the study of Zincgref and late humanism in the upper-Rhine region. See Reifferscheid 1889, p. 401.
30. Cited in Schilling 1981, p. 303. The portrait of the Swedish king was engraved by Matthäus Merian (1593-1650) with whom Zincgref had already collaborated for the edition of his Emblemata in 1619 and again one year later when he composed the text for Merian's View of Heidelberg.
31. "Und da sie eben vmb dieser, vnd keiner Ursachen willen, Vncti Domini, die Gesalbten de Herrn genennet werden... dann Gott der Herr hat die Herrschafften, König, vnd Obern, vmb de Volkes willen, vnd nicht das Volck vmb ihrent willen gemacht." Zincgref 1623, p. 25.
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