Hansei

“ As for Wulf, he lay upon the barn floor and watched Hansei care for Siegfried, who was quiet enough now that the armorer’s lad was with him. The lad Hansei was the same who had played with the others on the plateau on that day when the shining knight rode up the pass. Well was it for our boy that the honest young peasant took a liking to him, and was minded to stand his friend, for he had else scarce found comfort at the castle. ”

“ A carriage stopped before the cottage. First, the loud cracking of a whip was heard; then, approaching footsteps, and at last, the jolly doctor calling out: "Hansei! Is there no one at home?"
"No," answered Stasi, "there's nobody but Walpurga and me," whereupon there was great laughter out of doors.
Doctor Kumpan entered the room, followed by the stranger, who started as if amazed. Moved with admiration by the sight he beheld, he bowed involuntarily; but, checking himself, he was more erect than before.
"Where's Hansei, the Sunday child's father?" inquired Doctor Kumpan. ”

“ For longer far is the life beyond."
"But though life drags, we'll not despond, For longer far is the life beyond." The words sank deep into Hansei's heart, and the fireflies flitting about in the darkness, or resting on fence and grass, drew his glance hither and thither, as if they were some new and startling phenomenon. ”

“ If Hansei, at that moment, could have laid hands on the Hansei of an hour ago he would have strangled him.
The mist had become so thick that it was almost like a drizzling rain. The forest seemed to be growing vaster, and a path was nowhere to be found.
"You've lost your way, and it serves you right," said Hansei, speaking to himself. "You're no longer fit to be with decent men, you good-for-nothing wretch. ”

“ True culture includes this feeling; for what is culture but the power to put one's self in another's place, and "to see ourselves as others see us"?
My opinion is still unchanged. Hansei seems dull and awkward, and yet he has far more of the best culture than many a one who is decorated with orders and epaulettes and is regarded as one of the most charming of cavaliers. ”

“ In the close quarters there was no work for the bowmen, so Wulf fought with the sword that Karl had given him the day before, and a goodly blade he found it; while Hansei wielded a great pike that he had wrested from one of the baron’s men, and laid about him lustily wherever a foe showed.
So the hours passed, and many men 194were slain on either side, when it began to be felt by the emperor’s soldiers that the Swartzburg men were slowly falling back toward the defile to gain the castle.
“An they do that,” Hansei gasped, as he met Wulf again, “a long and weary siege will be ours ”

“ But Hansei was filled with dread at that part of the tale, for he feared for Wulf that he had given shelter to the traitor, as he believed Bell-Hutten to be.
“Nay; but he is a fellow-man who risked his life for me,” Wulf said.
“But a black sinner was he, curst of God and men,” Hansei answered. “And what says the priest o’ Sundays? Is’t not that we should hate evil?”
190“To hate evil, surely,” said Wulf, soberly; “yet not to forget, as we are men, where evil touches good ”

“ He who possesses a firm faith, although in solitude, is not alone.
My master is always out of humor. His wife and three daughters assist him at his work. Hansei has advanced the pay for my lessons. I am an apt pupil.
I notice that these people regard me as slightly demented. The little pitchman informed me that Hansei had given out this report, intending that it should serve as a sort of invisible cap. ”

“ Dear Hansei: This time, I write to you all alone. Here are a hundred florins that the queen has given me for a special present, because you haven't come to see me; but I must tell you all about it so that you can understand it. You've no idea what a good soul the queen is; whenever you pray, pray for her. We often sit together for hours, and she can take down everything on paper beautifully--the trees and all sorts of things, and we talk to each other as if we had gone to school together. ”

“ Her temperament was suggestive of life among the mountains; for there, when it is dull and rainy, everything is covered with darkness, but, as soon as the sun breaks forth, every object is lighted up afresh--the green meadows are brighter, the lake acquires a darker blue, every mountain height and every forest stream is revealed anew in clear and perfect lines. Like a beautiful flower, opening and revealing all its beauty in the glowing sunshine, Walpurga was always better and brighter in fair weather. Hansei remained steady and, indeed, gained in firmness while the bad weather lasted. ”

“ The world below me is covered by a sea of mist from which the mountain peaks here and there protrude. With every day, as it were, I behold the first day of creation.
I am beginning to understand the idea of the sublime. It is the awe of greatness, not the awe of fear. I feel as if dwelling in a temple.
Solitude often makes one dull and torpid. I sometimes experience this even in myself.
On a rainy Sunday, Hansei will often stand looking out of the window, for hours at a time. I feel satisfied that his first thoughts are of a horse, a cow, the sale of his wood, or of some acquaintance. ”

“ Once a man had gone bearing a burden. Another time, as Hansei and his mother gathered up their fagots at evening, a man and woman passed together; the sunset light was on the woman, and she sang as she went. Again, men in dark robes and hoods passed by ”

“ Reach by reach he raised himself higher, higher, until it was plain to all that he would find it no task to climb where the champion had done.
“He’ll win to it!” cried one and then another of the watchers, and Waldemar himself shouted out encouragement to the climber when once he seemed to falter. At last came a cry from Hansei: “He has it! Hurrah!” and a general shout went up. From the balcony, too, came the sound of applause as Wulf reached the top of the buttress.
“In truth, our tinker hath mounted in the world,” sneered Conradt from the terrace. ”

“ The true light, which lighteth every man that cometh
into the world.
—St. John.
[Pg 80]
View larger image
By Antonio Allegri da Correggio
THE HOLY NIGHT
THE HOLY NIGHT.
[Pg 81]
In the far-off places of the world where men do not pass often, it is nothing to be poor. Little Hansei and his mother were poor, but that was nothing to him. They lived on the side of a great hill, where, save their small black hut with its little gauzy curl of smoke, there was no sign of life as far as eye could reach. And it seemed to Hansei that the whole world was theirs, and they were the whole world. ”

“ He stood there silently for a while; not a sound escaped father, mother, or child; naught was heard but the starlings in the cherry-tree, who were feeding their young. Swift as the wind itself they would fly from their nests and return again. At last, the child, its hunger thoroughly sated, but its lips still softly moving, dropped back on the pillow.
"Come into the house," said Hansei, in a voice far gentler than his rough looks would have led one to expect, "Come in, Walpurga. There's no need of being rude, and there's nothing wrong in what they ask of us. ”

“ The sun rises and sets, the grass grows, the cows graze, and the law of life bids man work and reflect. The world around thee is subject to law and so is thine own life. To man alone is vouchsafed the knowledge of his duty, so that he may learn freely to obey the dictates of his own nature.
This thought illumined her soul with a light as clear as the blue sky above her. It caused her to forget that she had ever lived another life, or had ever erred.
On the fourth Sunday, Irma started out at an early hour and walked as far as the boundary-stone, where she waited for Walpurga and Hansei. ”

“ Hansa showed the world how much commercial relations were facilitated by uniform laws and by just treatment of even the citizens of foreign countries. It is to commerce that we owe the first recognition of the rights of the people of other countries even in time of war. If the Hanseatic League had done nothing else but this, it must be considered as an important factor in the development of our modern civilization and an element of influence great as any other in this wonderful century. ”

“ It is, moreover, not without significance that the Hansa itself was, in a sense, democratic, and that, at a time when Germany, as a national unit, was rendered impotent in the world by her superabundance of Princes, her citizens were able, on their own initiative, and by their own energies, to assert their power and capacity as a maritime people. ”

“ The assertion of Hanseatic influence in the two decades, 1356 to 1377, marks the zenith of the League’s power and the completion of the long process of unification. Under the pressure of commercial and political necessity, authority was definitely transferred from the Hansas of merchants abroad to the Hansa of towns at home, and the sense of unity had become such that in 1380 a Lübeck official could declare that “whatever touches one town touches all.” ”

“ The history of the Hansa towns exhibits the citizens doing everything to dissemble the feelings of disaffection that inevitably came to them as the result of their appreciation of the fact, that they could rule themselves so much better than they were being ruled, and that they could accomplish so much more for themselves by their commercial combination with other cities than had ever been done for them by these hereditary princes, who claimed so much yet gave so little in their turn. ”

“ But in this period of peace I hope that our Hanseatic cities will flourish. Our new Hansa will open new paths and create and conquer new markets for them.
As head of the empire I therefore rejoice over every citizen, whether from Hamburg, Bremen, or Lübeck, who goes forth with this large outlook and seeks new points where we can drive in the nail on which to hang our armor. ”

“ The commercial relations with the North cannot be regarded as an important element in the union of the Hanse towns, but the geographical position of the Scandinavian countries, especially that of Denmark, commanding the Sound which gives access to the Baltic, compelled a close attention to Scandinavian politics on the part of Lübeck and the League and thus by necessitating combined political action in defence of Hanseatic sea-power exercised a unifying influence. ”

“ K. Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte (translated from the German) , volume 4, pages 468-484. "The unmerciful fate which had overtaken the German nation [the 30 years war] , like a storm wind descending upon the land, gave also the death-blow to that proud communal system which when in its prime showed better than any other institution the greatness of the German power in the Middle Ages. He who does not know the history of the Hansa does not know how to estimate the true significance of our people. He does not know that no goal was too distant for it, no task too great ”

“ It rebelled at the authority of the counter at Bruges, and at the time of the war with England (1469–1474) openly defied the League. In the East, the German Order, while enjoying Hanseatic privileges, frequently opposed the policy of the League abroad, and was only prevented by domestic troubles and its Hinterland enemies from playing its own hand in the Baltic. After the fall of the order in 1467, the towns of Prussia and Livland, especially Dantzig and Riga, pursued an exclusive trade policy even against their Hanseatic confederates. ”

“ Such was the commercial league of ‘the Hansa’, formed first of all by a few principal ports, Lübeck, Danzig, Bremen, and Hamburg, lying on the Baltic or North Sea, but afterwards increased to a union of eighty or more towns as the value of mutual support and obligations was realized.
Law in the Middle Ages was personal rather than territorial—that is to say, a man when he travelled abroad would not be judged or protected by the law of the country to which he went, but would carry his own law with him. ”

“ They flooded the German market with English cloths, and when the Hansa resisted, Elizabeth expelled the members of the League from England. In 1601 an Englishman could say of the Hansa towns: “Most of their teeth have fallen out, the rest sit but loosely in their head.” Of the great League soon only three towns remained as Hanseatic members, Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg. ”

“ The war which culminated with the peace of Spralsunde in 1370 raised the League to the rank of a first-class sea Power. Encouraged by its success in crushing and humiliating Denmark, the Hansa had little hesitation in measuring itself against England. The towns became associated through the Victualling Brothers with an active form of corsair warfare on English shipping.
By its triumph over the Danes, the Hansa secured a practical monopoly of the shipping and trade of the Baltic and North Sea, which it held almost unimpaired for nearly two hundred years. ”

“ In fact the nature of the League, the relations of the cities to one another, geographical as well as political, hindered the Hansa from ever becoming a territorial power like Switzerland{495} and the United Provinces. In the history of the Baltic lands it takes for some ages a position at least equal to that of any kingdom. But it is only casually and occasionally that its triumphs can be marked on the map. ”