Erfurt

“ Here too you will see the churches almost invariably with gabled aisles,—sometimes, as in the cathedral at Lemgo, so gabled at the sides that one doubts which is the side and which the end, and sometimes, as in a church at Brunswick, filled with tracery and panelling of extreme beauty. Then again at Halberstadt, Erfurt, Naumburg, and Marburg, you may see some of the most excellent work in all Germany of the best period. ”

“ Today we have a much truer and detailed conception of the conditions prevailing at Erfurt at that time, and of its teachers than the one obtained through F. W. Kampschulte's "Die Universitaet Erfurt in ihrem Verhaeltnis zu deni Humanismus und der Reformation" (1858 and 1860) , which, however, is still worthy of notice today. This change was primarily brought about by Oergel, Kolde, Bauch, Hermelink and Scheel.33 Hermelink has taught us better to understand the teaching of the Humanists, which naturalized itself also in Erfurt. ”

“ Bismarck and Oppermann left Erfurt one morning together. At the first stage the travellers refreshed themselves at Arnstadt, as keen sportsmen, thinking nothing of the caddish opinions of the day, by a plentiful breakfast at eight o’clock, of delicate groundlings, and drank 1811 Bocksbeutel therewith. At the succeeding stations they whetted their appetites with trout, and drank beer with them, as the nectar of 1811 would allow no other wines to attract the palate. ”

“ You can scarcely believe it that in this unhealthy occupation girls are employed at three and a half silver-groschen, or nine cents, per day, whose food consists of potatoes and rye meal cooked together, who scarcely know what it is to get a piece of meat. In Erfurt, an old city of thirty thousand inhabitants, where nothing of interest offered except the cathedral, dome, and the fortifications, I mounted the steeple for a view and to look at a bell of great weight, here considered a wonder, and called the Maria Gloriosa. ”

“ I wonder if it sends the thrill of joy into Fritz's cell at Erfurt that it does into all the forests around us here, and into my heart!
I suppose there are trees near him, and birds—little happy birds—making their nests among them, as they do in our yard, and singing as they work.
But the birds are not monks. Their nests are little homes, and they wander freely whither they will, only brought back by love. Perhaps Fritz does not like to listen to the birds now, because they remind him of home, and of our long spring days in the forest. ”

“ Erfurt was in his day the headquarters of a humanism which was both devout and opposed to the realist metaphysic and the Thomist theology which prevailed in the universities of Cologne and Heidelberg. Wesel was one of the professors at Erfurt between 1445 and 1456, and was vice-rector in 1458. In 1460 he was appointed preacher at Mainz, in 1462 at Worms, and in 1479, when an old and worn-out man, he was brought before the Dominican inquisitor Gerhard Elten of Cologne. ”

“ Still at the one end stood the lofty Archduchess, at the other her lovely and almost twin cousin, Ottilie von Thüringen, and between Wallenstein, the cold seeker after power, swaying, utilising both to further his schemes and ambition.
Nigel groaning in spirit, continued to ride on, and presently reached Erfurt. ”

“ Said by Wolfner and Weisz, of Vienna, to be an old superior sort, still grown for the first and second crop.
Early Erfurt (Erfurt, Large Erfurt, Large Early White Erfurt, Late Erfurt) .—This is still a popular variety, but less hardy and less valuable as a late sort than the improved varieties from the south of Europe; and as an early sort it has been displaced by its offspring, the Extra Early Erfurt, and the newer varieties derived from that. The heads of the Early Erfurt are large and fine-grained but more inclined to be open and leafy than those of Early Paris. ”

“ Humanism had won an early entrance, and in Luther's time the Erfurt circle of “Poets” was already famous. The strongly anti-clerical teaching of John of Wessel, who had lectured in Erfurt for fifteen years (1445-1460) , had left its mark on the University, and was not forgotten. Hussite propagandists, Luther tells us, appeared from time to time, whispering among the students their strange, anti-clerical Christian socialism. While, as if by way of antidote, there came Papal Legates, whose magnificence bore witness to the might of the Roman Church. ”

“ After three happy years at Eisenach, Luther entered the university of Erfurt (1501) , then the most famous in Germany. Hans Luther had been prospering, and was more than ever resolved to make his son a lawyer. Young Luther entered his name on the matriculation book in letters which can still be read “Martinus Ludher ex Mansfelt,” a free student, no longer embarrassed by great poverty. In Luther’s time Erfurt was the intellectual centre of Germany and its students were exposed to a variety of influences which could not fail to stimulate young men of mental ability. ”

“ We were not the only ones in motion; all were marching; everywhere we met regiments on the road, detachments of cavalry, long lines of cannon, ammunition trains—all advancing toward Erfurt, as after a heavy rain thousands of streams, by thousands of channels, seek the river.
Our sergeants keep repeating, "We are nearing them! there will be hot work soon;" and we thought, "So much the better!" that those beggarly Prussians and Russians had drawn their fate upon themselves. If they had remained quiet we would have been yet in France. ”

“ Now, as there was little to see in Erfurt, and still less to do, I made up my mind to start early the next day, and push forward to Weimar, a good resolution as far as it went, but then, how was the day to be passed? People dine at “one” in Germany, or, if they wish to push matters to a fashionable extreme, they say “two.” How is the interval, till dark, to be filled up—taking it for granted you have provided some occupation for that? Coffee, and smoking, will do something, but except to a German, they can’t fill up six mortal hours. ”

“ Erfurt, however, was generally regarded as the special nursery of German university Humanism ever since Peter Luders had taught there in 1460. From that date the University never lacked Humanist teachers, and a Humanist circle had gradually grown up among the successive generations of students. ”

“ Broad, was printed at Berlin in 1841, with a prefatory notice, from which we learn that they were preserved at Erfurt until 1805, when the library was broken up and dispersed on the occupation of the city by the French army, who stabled their horses in the place where the books were deposited, and burned many of them for fuel, while others were carried away and secreted with a view to their safety. ”

“ German Humanism.―The home of German humanism was the University of Erfurt, founded A.D. 1392. At the Councils of Constance and Basel Erfurt, next to Paris, manifested the greatest zeal for the reformation of head and members, and continued to pursue this course during the twenty years’ activity of John of Wesel (§ 119, 10) . About A.D. 1460 the first representatives of humanism made their appearance there, a German Luder and a Florentine Publicius. ”

“ And after that he had come unto Erfurt, he gat him unto a notary, and with fine writing had he letters marvellously done in goodly and fair manuscript, setting forth therein his wondrous parts. And such letters of challenge he set upon the church doors. And the great fame of Owlglass had come unto Erfurt, where the rector and learned doctors had heard not a little of his knavish beguilings and conceits ”

“ The fortified city of Erfurt was garrisoned with fourteen thousand Prussians under Mollendorf, who, on the first summons, capitulated to Murat, the general of the French cavalry. The hereditary Prince of Orange was also taken prisoner on this occasion. Von Hellwig, a lieutenant of the Prussian hussars, boldly charged the French guard escorting the fourteen thousand Prussian prisoners of war from Erfurt, at the head of his squadron, at Eichenrodt in the vicinity of Eisenach, and succeeded in restoring them to liberty. ”

“ The largest city in central Germany, if not in the whole country—as a chronicler stated in 1572—was Erfurt, with a population of 32,000 in 1505. It was the center of the rising Saxon industries, mining and dying, and of commerce. Lübeck, Cologne, Nuremberg and Augsburg equalled or perhaps surpassed it in size, and certainly in wealth. The total population of German Switzerland was over 200,000. The whole German-speaking population of Central Europe amounted to perhaps twenty millions {455} in 1600, though it had been reckoned by the imperial government in 1500 as twelve millions. ”

“ Occasionally we also see the great reformer descending at a lay tavern, such as the famous inn of the High Lily in Erfurt, which subsequently saw within its walls great warriors like Maurice of Saxony and Gustavus Adolphus. ”

“ Let us mount the flight of steps which lead by the entire length of the north side of the choir to the porch, and we shall see reason to class one at least of the architects of Erfurt, with the greatest of his race. No position can be conceived which would present more difficulty to one who wished to show the doors of his church to the people who might gather in crowds in the Dom-Platz, and seeing nothing but the tall east end of their church and the sharp perspective of its side, shrink from the attempt to find a door at the end of the long flight of steps before them. ”

“ We all feel the tender care with which she watches over his health, a gift to the whole land. His strength has never quite recovered the strain on it during those years of conflict and penance in the monastery at Erfurt. And it is often strained to the utmost now. All the monks and nuns who have renounced their idle maintenance in convents for conscience' sake; all congregations that desire an evangelical pastor; all people of all kinds in trouble of mind, body, or estate, turn to Dr. Luther for aid or counsel, as to the warmest heart and the clearest head in the land. ”

“ It is better than being in barracks, at home.
"While, on the other hand, it is no joke fighting these Prussians. The fights are not skirmishes, they are battles. It is not a question of a few hundred killed, it is a question of ding-dong fighting, and of fifteen or twenty thousand killed on each side--no joke, that. For my part, I am quite content to take it easy at Erfurt, and to leave it to the Austrians to settle matters with these obstinate fellows."
So they continued talking, and Fergus saw that, so far, no news whatever of Frederick's march against Erfurt had reached them. ”

“ Maternus retired, and Mutian, an old Erfurt student, assumed the leadership in Gotha. Erfurt and Gotha were kept associated by a lively intercourse between the students resident at these two places. Mutian had no literary ambitions, and firmly declined a call to the new University of Wittenberg. All the more powerfully he inspired his contemporaries. His bitter opposition to hierarchism and scholasticism was expressed in keen satires. On retiring from public life, he devoted himself to the study of Holy Scripture and the Fathers. ”

“ THE PREVALENT SOCIALISM
In the Erfurt Programme we have seen that the task of the social democracy is to give form and unity to the struggle of the working class, and to point out its natural and necessary goal. This goal is the transformation of private property in the means of production into collective property, but the change will be accomplished not in the interest of a class but of the entire human race. The Erfurt Programme has been followed by others of a like nature in Belgium, Austria, France, and elsewhere. ”

“ At Erfurt meanwhile, and by this same philosophical facility, a fresh and vigorous impulse was being given to that study of classical antiquity, which gave birth to a new learning, and ushered in a new era of intellectual culture in Germany. We have already had occasion to refer to the movement and influence of Humanism at the schools which Luther attended at Magdeburg and Eisenach. ”

“ At thirteen he was sent away to Magdeburg to a charitable school, and the next year to Eisenach, where he spent three years in study. He contributed to his support by the then recognized means of begging, and was sheltered by the pious matron Ursula Cotta. In 1501 he matriculated at the old and famous university of Erfurt. [Sidenote: Erfurt] The curriculum here consisted of logic, dialectic, grammar, and rhetoric, followed by arithmetic, ethics, and metaphysics. ”

“ When these two had left Erfurt, Maternus Pistorius headed the humanist movement. Crowds of enthusiastic scholars from all parts of Germany gathered around him. As men of poetic tastes, who appreciated the ancient classics, they maintained excellent relations with the representatives of scholasticism. But in A.D. 1504 Busch, a violent revolutionist, appearing at Erfurt, demanded the destruction of the old scholastic text-books, and thus produced an absolute breach between the two tendencies. ”

“ A farmer does not ride about the country on a horse fit for a king, or put up at a cottage like this."
"Yes; you can help me by leading me by quiet paths to Erfurt. I tell you frankly that my business, there, is to find out how strong the French and Confederacy army is, in and around the town; also whether they are taking any precautions against an attack, and if there are any signs that they intend to enter Hanover, or to move towards Dresden." ”