Shadows of My Father Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Paul Luther’s Foreword

  Editor’s Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Paul Luther’s Foreword

  Death is certain, but uncertain is the hour; therefore, as Matthew says, be watchful, for ye know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man will come. But the dying man, that is certain, appears swiftly before the face of the Most High.

  In preparation for this and in order to clear my conscience, I want now in my sixtieth year to record my life, for one, because I believe that in such a public confession contrition and atonement are included, which as we steadfastly believe are prerequisites for eternal salvation.

  And second, I write for my children and grandchildren, that they may derive benefit from my experiences in good and evil. That is my pious hope, though I cannot be certain, because we know that children will mostly behave stubbornly and not follow their parents’ instructions despite a generously applied rod.

  And third, in the hope of fending off from sinful boredom a larger audience, I have charged my friend, the learned Matthias Dresser, to seek a good-natured printer here in Leipzig. Should, in the end, the quality of my writing art not please, I hope then that my name will be of assistance. The use of my father’s fame and prominence for modest commercial purposes I do not consider a crime.

  Since there are people who will spread rumors throughout the world that I have not been firm in my Christian belief, I confirm before God and man that I will die in the faith that is founded solely on the saving grace of Christ. At times I have had doubts, but this I have learned from my father: a man must not cease from hammering one’s belief persistently into one’s sinful heart in order to remain true to it.

  As this book will show, I have experienced so many changes in my life that I can no longer be confident in all my recollections, since my memory has grown weaker. Diverse sources—my diary, records, letters, narratives, files, and biographies—have served to close gaps in my recall. Excellent have been the tales of my mother and my honorable eldest brother, Johannes Luther, formerly chancery-councilor at the ducal court in Weimar, who in AD 1575 in Königsberg passed away in the hope of Christ. I also heard much from my brother Martin.

  So in God’s name I hope to have recorded everything in a Christian manner and according to the truth. Should anything be distorted or falsely embellished, then certainly the Evil One had a hand in it, which would exculpate me. Nevertheless, I beg your indulgence.

  Editor’s Prologue

  On the 7th of March, AD 1593, I was summoned to the sickbed of my friend Dr. Paul Luther, professor of medicine, the youngest and highly erudite son of Dr. Martin Luther. Most recently, and for a handsome salary, he had been personal physician to the administrator of the Saxon electorate, Frederick William. Also, he had looked after the late elector’s children and before that had successfully worked as a general practitioner in the city.

  As I approached the bed, the famous doctor greeted me in a quiet and friendly manner. Since there were no visible signs of illness, and apparently no fever, I could only surmise that he was simply tired of this life and wanted to join his God.

  With a weak but still-audible voice, he said, “My dear esteemed and learned friend, I thank you for coming. In view of my approaching death” (which occurred on the following day, I, Matthias Dresser, add), “I am entrusting you with my memoirs, which I have only recently finished and committed to paper. After my death, I should like you to have them printed here in Leipzig, perhaps even presenting them at the new book fair planned for next year, 1594. I have waited until now to entrust someone with this task so that they would not appear before my death.

  “I did that for this reason: I feared my father more than I loved him, and I have remained until today publicly obedient to his religious doctrine and especially to his teachings on the Holy Communion. But even as a student in Wittenberg, I was troubled by doubts about the new church of my father, which, after all, seems to me to be lacking the right Christian love and charity. This doubt has grown throughout my life and has greatly pained me, because I have been forced into conflict between the requirement to appear as the obedient son and my conscience, which told me that the love of Christ, which we should follow, demands something quite different than the enraged hate against the Anabaptists, Calvinists, witches, heretics, Jews, and, generally, people of different faith. In short, I feel a new Babylonian captivity of the church looming ahead.

  “And as my inner conflict became greater, so did my doubts, which proceeded so far that the stronger I inwardly questioned the subordination of Christendom under a church organization and the rule of a bishop, the greater zeal for the teaching of my father’s I showed outwardly. During my lifetime, I wanted no one to notice what great differences I had with the now-world-honored reformer. One might call this cowardice or at least weakness, but my rise in the learned and aristocratic world would have been impeded had I, in my lifetime, publicly confessed to the deviations from my father’s doctrines.

  “Even now, in my memoirs, my great doubts have been carefully masked, although the attentive reader will recognize them.

  “When I now give you, my friend, this record of my life to be printed and made public, I believe my death will be easier to bear in view of the experience that every man’s life is full of lies and blemishes.

  “I have already discussed the funeral sermon with Pastor Georgius Weinrich, and it will contain nothing controversial and embarrassing.”

  After these words, Paul Luther, with a shaking hand, took from the table beside the bed a stack of pages written in a small hand and tied together with twine, which he handed to me. I responded that I would faithfully fulfill his instructions.

  Doctor Luther was clearly exhausted. He waved his hand as if to dismiss me and closed his eyes.

  And herewith I follow his wishes and make this book available to the Christian readership.

  Matthias Dresser, Electoral Saxon Historiographer

  Chapter 1

  . . . tells of the fateful journey to Eisleben, and how my father wanted to frighten the Jews but was frightened by them instead.

  It was the third journey to visit the Mansfeld counts, who could not stop quarreling.

  Father’s concern was his new Evangelical church, but he also wanted to assist Uncle Jacob and his brother-in-law Paul Mackenrot and the other foundry masters and merchants, who were being oppressed by Count Albrecht. My father had always held Mansfeld, his beloved fatherland, as he called it on the journey, close to his heart.

  The counts there had long needed more money, so wasteful and foolish were they, as evidenced by thoughtless partitions of estates and pompous courts. They terminated, therefore, the lease of the copper and silver refineries, which were the possessions not of the masters but rather of the nobles. Th
ey felt the old masters, working in their traditional way, had not extracted enough copper and silver from the mines and refineries, and this now had become more and more urgent seeing that the cheaper Spanish silver flooded the markets. The old debts of the masters, however, the nobles did not want to assume, which, to their astonishment and anger, caused great fear and opposition. Other grievances had to do with church matters—who, per exemplum, had the right to appoint ministers at St. Andreas Church at Eisleben or how the school should be ordered and similar issues.

  Father had long suffered from poor health, as we set off from Wittenberg on Saturday, the 23rd of January, 1546, in a covered wagon, which was drafty and jolted us hard. We were, besides my father and myself, my brothers Johannes and Martin; the servant, Ambrosius Ruthfeld; father’s famulus, Johannes Aurifaber; and from Halle Justus Jonas. Master Philippus Melanchthon, our venerated but frail teacher, whom my father with great claims upon his friendship had persuaded to accompany him on both previous trips to Mansfeld, was this time too weak to travel in this cold winter weather. Taking into account his small size—he was not much taller than a twelve-year-old boy—this was understandable.

  Father had become, through copious eating and drinking, very corpulent—“I eat like a Bohemian and drink like a German; therefore, God be thanked,” he said one time—and as a consequence suffered from stones in the bladder and kidneys, gout, buzzing in his ears, and headaches. His blood surged mightily through his body, and his defecation was extremely slow. He often complained that he simply could not shit.

  His bodily sufferings were also accompanied by complaints of the head, which never completely left him, and from time to time were increased with new bouts of dizziness and fainting. And in the mornings, weakness of the head and dizziness were frequent occurrences.

  Earlier an ulcer had appeared on his left leg, which seemed to heal; as a new outbreak seemed to relieve his head, he followed the advice of a friend, the personal physician of the elector, Ratzeberger, to create a fontanel where the ulcer had been and keep it open by means of a caustic. After that, it appeared that the required equilibrium of the juices throughout the body was for a time properly adjusted.

  Because of all this, he was not always reasonable and friendly, and we then had to keep rather quiet. Today I confess I would rather have stayed with our mother in Wittenberg.

  My brother Johannes had, a short time before, shown me how through a certain manipulation of the lower body one could experience a very high pleasure, which was now during the entire journey impossible for me to practice. Not until later did it became clear to me that this handling was not a Christian practice, although I am not of the same opinion as Thomas Aquinas, who decreed that self-pollution is an evil worse than intercourse with one’s own mother. Also, my experience in medicine has taught me that it is nonsense to say that such a practice erodes the spinal cord or causes softening or dehydration of the brain (so extreme a dehydration that, looking at a self-polluter, one could hear the rattling of the brain in the skull).

  One had to concede, though, that the Hippocratists successfully made people suffer from a guilty conscience due to the nasty mixture of self-generated pleasure and fear.

  Unlike with Hippocrates, the advocate of spinal consumption, I agree with Galen of Pergamon, namely, that intercourse between the sexes as well as masturbation helps to preserve good health and protects us against evil poisons arising from decaying semen.

  Reader, I must give a warning here: that I more often than perhaps you might think necessary give in to the impulse to incorporate the medical findings of my later life into my memoirs, because one can never start too early with the instruction of other people.

  So my esteemed father was not feeling well, which was probably why my brothers and I had to accompany him on the journey.

  On the following day, the 24th of January, after passing through Bitterfeld, we entered Halle and were given a friendly greeting from Justus Jonas, preacher in Halle since AD 1541, who was the brave first to offer communion under both kinds, and we lodged in his house south of the market.

  Now enter events in which I can recognize God’s hand only with an effort.

  As we drove off the next morning at eight o’clock going in the direction of Eisleben, the Saale River was so wild with torrents of water and floes of ice that the ferryman, because of the great danger to life and limb, especially his own, dissuaded us from crossing the dangerous waters. Also, a return to Wittenberg had become impossible because the Mulde River at Bitterfeld had now risen even higher.

  So for three days we lingered in Halle, held captive between the waters.

  On the second day in the morning, Father was feverish and completely red and swollen and wanted no breakfast, though on the previous evening he had enjoyed a good measure of the tasty Torgau beer and, consequently, several bowel movements.

  What actually took place my brother Johannes related to me later. Here is his report, in which several Jews appear and accuse Dr. Martinus:

  On the morning of the second day of our stay in Halle, my father called Justus Jonas and myself to his bed, where he lay in a fever, sweating and breathing with difficulty, and told us of the following occurrence. He was uncertain whether it had actually occurred or had only been dreamed.

  Barely had he fallen asleep on the previous night—after drinking a respectable amount of Torgau beer and Rhine wine, which Justus Jonas had liberally poured and of which I, who counted already nineteen years, was allowed to partake—when there appeared in his room an old Jew, who woke him. He introduced himself as a junk dealer, who between the buttresses of St. Marien Church carried on a trade in used books and old manuscripts.

  This man was clothed in a caftan and bade my father to get up and follow him. They went over the market, past the gallows next to the fountain, down to the river Saale. There the old man led my father downriver to Moritzburg Castle, which had been built on the site of the old Jewish village.

  There at the foot of one of the bastions on the east side of the castle, they met eleven men dressed in dark overcoats, standing in a circle. Luther’s guide shoved him into the circle, which he himself joined. One of the men then stepped forward and spoke:

  “Luther, you have so interpreted the Gospel that the Jews stand under God’s wrath and outside his grace and are thus excluded from humanity and the Christian community. ‘Therefore their synagogues and schools should be burned down,’ you have said, ‘their houses razed and destroyed, their prayer books taken away, their rabbis forbidden to teach on pain of loss of life and limb and driven away if they cannot be converted.

  “‘Safe conduct on the highways should be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. They should stay at home.’

  “Luther, you also said that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. ‘A flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle should be put into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses so that they can earn their bread in the sweat of their brow.’

  “Dr. Martinus, where do you obtain the certainty with which you say the Jews desire no more from their messiah than that he should be a ruler and a worldly king, who would slay the Christians, divide the world among the Jews and make them rich lords, and finally die like other kings and likewise his children after him?

  “What, Dr. Martinus, will you reply to God on Judgment Day, when he asks you, ‘How have you dealt with my children, the Jews?’”

  Our father knew not how he got back to the house and his bed. With assurance from Justus Jonas, he declared it all a dream in which the Devil, along with the Jews, had a hand, in order to deter him from his great work. And his many ailments served as proof of it.

  Such was the account of my brother. Today, it seems to me more likely that the Devil and the Jews had less to do with what had happened than the rich Torgau beer of the previous evening. But the af
tereffect of the dream or the experience was soon apparent, as my father called for the expulsion of the Jews from Mansfeld and elsewhere.

  Possibly each Christian will form his own judgment, which is not to be too far from my father’s teaching, or the teaching of the papist church, depending upon which belief the respective local ruler follows. Earlier, I also thought heathens, Turks, and Jews to be the archenemies of Christianity, possessed by the Devil because they refused to be converted. Now, at the end of my life, I am no longer so sure. We know that my father owed his knowledge about the Jews not to his own observation or examination but rather almost entirely to the book The Whole Jewish Belief, with Thorough and Truthful Coverage of All the Rules, Ceremonies, and Prayers by the baptized Jew Antonius Margaritha. This man mercilessly castigates his former fellow believers, and our father had, untested, adopted the evil accusations, as a comparison indicates. Anton Margaritha writes, for example: “The Jews do nothing the entire day. If they need heat, need light, need to milk the cows, etc., they get a poor simple-minded Christian to do these things for them. They famously imagine themselves to be masters, and that Christians are to be their servants, saying they are the true rulers, whom the Christians should serve while they themselves remain idle.” It is exactly the same in Father’s writing, “On the Jews and Their Lies.”

  On the same morning, in spite of all his complaints, without breakfast and with the cauterized leg ulcer exuding moisture, my father went to St. Mary’s Church, which was still surrounded by scaffolding because it was being rebuilt, to preach in memory of the conversion of Paul the Apostle (which is celebrated on January 25th). He gave a vigorous sermon with dark accusations against the depravity of the Jews as well as the wicked business of the papacy and thundered against the damned Cardinal Albert and his collection of relics, although Albert had been dead since September and the relics long since transported to Aschaffenburg. He complained about the Catholic Church: it had become a worldly, superficial, rich, and terrible power, making the people into helpless servants, presenting Christians with rampant wickedness, horribly distorting and polluting the conscience of the lamentable people.