Shadows of My Father Read online

  On the morning of the next day, a message reached us that the Mansfeld counts had sent a hundred and thirteen mounted troops as an honor guard, and they awaited us on the border. Also, the flood and ice drift of the river now allowed us to cross, which we did with three barges lashed together. Our father was, meanwhile, impatient to get to his tasks in Eisleben so that finally, along rough roads, cold and shaken but well protected by riders, we passed through Salzmünde and succeeded in reaching Eisleben.

  Here our father immediately became better, like Antaeus, who always received renewed strength when he touched his mother Gaia. I suppose the medicine made from garlic and horse manure, which was prescribed for him in Halle, was probably less helpful, as in my present view the portion of horse manure did not correspond well with the garlic. There was simply too much muck in it.

  Shortly before Eisleben, he suffered a dizzy spell but recovered quickly, helped by the knowledge that he would soon be in his beloved fatherland and would be able to assist his dear lords, as he called the Mansfeld counts, in overcoming their disputes. In addition, he believed or professed to believe that the many Jews who lived in the village of Rissdorf near Eisleben under the protection of one of the countesses of Mansfeld had, incited by the Devil, caused an icy wind to blow at him.

  “As I drove by the village,” he wrote his wife, Käthe, “there was such a cold wind from behind the wagon through my beret as though it wanted to freeze my brain. Immediately after the mediation of the main issues, I must set about expelling the Jews. Count Albrecht is hostile to them and has already abandoned them. But so far no one has done anything. God willing, I will assist Count Albrecht from the pulpit and expose them also.”

  It seems to me today that in his letter Father was telling Mother what she wanted to hear and thus was cloaking his carelessness, because it has been said that Mother hated the Jews even more than Father.

  For he was, as is apparent from another letter, insufficiently dressed for this cold, at times walking next to the wagon, which he did not write Mother, instead writing this: “But if you had been there, you would have said it would be the Jews or their god who was guilty.”

  On Thursday, the 28th of January, late, we reached Eisleben and took up quarters in the house of the town clerk at the market square, not far from the town castle of the counts. My brother Johannes told me later that it was the home of Dr. Drachstedt and, in any case, the house where our dear father was later to leave this earthly world. That, however, seemed still a while away, for he was feeling well then. He drank the beer from Naumburg and had in the morning three bowel evacuations in three hours, which very much helped his mood. For his entire life, he had had problems with his bowels and constipation, and this was made worse whenever crises in life or faith occurred. When he was at the Wartburg Castle, still not an old man at thirty-eight at the time, he wrote to a friend in Wittenberg: “The Lord has afflicted my ass with great pain. So hard is my stool that I am compelled to use great force to push it out, breaking into a sweat. And the longer I postpone it, the more it hardens. Yesterday after four days I defecated once. Because of that I had the entire night neither slept nor have I until now rested. This is a visitation from God, for he desires that I should not live without a cross.”

  In fact, the longer I deal with medicine, the stronger is my conviction concerning the interconnection between the soul and the body. Today I no longer wonder at my father’s fluctuating physical condition, which accompanied him all his life. For orderly and regular bowel movements are decisive for the balance of the soul and thus for the Christian faith.

  Chapter 2

  . . . speaks of my father’s decease and how I felt at the time.

  My father, so to say, died twice. The first time was in a lying French article about Doctoris Martini Luther’s death in AD 1545, which purported to be a letter from the envoy of His Most Christian Majesty to his monarch.

  According to the vicious article, a terrible miracle took place with the ignominious death of Martin Luther, who was condemned in soul and body. It went on that as Luther saw his sickness was severe and death altogether certain, he asked that afterward his body be placed on an altar and worshipped as a god. But through divine goodness and foresight, a miracle took place, causing the people to abstain from such great error, destruction, and corruption the above-mentioned Luther had loosed in this world. So, as his body was laid in the grave, a terrible rumbling and tumult was heard, as though the Devil and hell collided, at which all those present were in a great horror, terror, and fear. All who were there saw the Blessed Host—which such an unworthy man had been dishonorably allowed to receive—hanging in the air. They took the Host and, with all reverence and devotion, transported it to a suitable place. After that such rumbling and hellish tumult were no longer heard that day. But on the following night the turmoil was even greater; therefore, the people got up and with great fear and horror went to the place where the unholy body of Luther had been laid. In this grave, as it was opened, one saw clearly that neither body nor flesh, neither bones nor clothing were to be found. But it was so full of an awful sulfurous smell that all the people who stood there were made sick. Through this, many people improved their lives by turning to the holy Christian belief, to love, honor, and praise of Jesus Christ, and to strengthening and confirming the holy Christian church, which is the pillar of truth.

  One can see that the Devil is able to make use of the most sacred words in order to confuse the people. On the day the supposed letter was written and sent, my Herr Father had still a good year to live and thus an opportunity to reply in the following ribald manner:

  And I, Martinus Luther, Doctor, confess and testify with this document that I have received on the 21st of March this angry fantasy concerning my death and have very gladly and joyfully read it. I am pleased that the Devil and his followers, the Pope and the Papists, are so heartily my enemies: May God convert them from the Devil. But should my wish be in vain, then let them go to hell; they have deserved it.

  Our father read the letter and his answer aloud at the table and laughed joyfully at the untimely foolishness and blindness of the Papists, which reaction was carefully committed to paper by some of the participants around the table and particularly by Christophorus Silberschlag, who did not fail to add the approving words from some of the students. Silberschlag will speak for himself in chapter 13. By now he is long in the grave.

  As we were now in Eisleben, my father sent us three boys to Mansfeld to our Uncle Jacob, as he wrote our mother: “I don’t know what they are doing in Mansfeld, probably assisting the Mansfelders in freezing.” And signed the letter, “M. Luth. Your old sweetheart.”

  As the negotiations with the counts, after much effort and delay, which my Herr Father met with a bit of cunning by threatening them with his departure (for which he sent a private letter to the elector’s chancellor, Gregor Brück, urging him to order his immediate return to Wittenberg), were a reasonable success (a success that did not last), my father was in a good mood, though he had a premonition of his end when he was unwell. He was firm in his Christian belief, and it took from him the fear of death by promising him eternal life. Thus, once on Sunday Exaudi, the 25th of May, AD 1544, he preached on the resurrection of the dead:

  But there is a winter when we lie in the earth and rot. Though when the summer dawns on the Day of Judgment, our corn will break forth, so that we will not only see merely a blade of green grass or a raised stalk but rather a strong and thick ear. A Christian does not see or taste death; that is, he does not feel it, is not frightened by it, and goes gently and quietly to it as though falling asleep and dying not. But a godless person feels death and is forever afraid of it.

  Toward the end of the negotiations, which lasted about three weeks, my father’s health began to worsen. Swiftly the two of us, my two-year-older brother, Martin, and I, traveled from Mansfeld to Eisleben, as it was said our father might possibly part with us there. Johannes did not accompany us because he did
not believe it was so urgent or simply did not want to undertake the discomfort of the journey.

  It had gone very well for us at our uncle’s, and Martin und I had several times together practiced what Johannes had taught me. Still, we were disheartened. I must confess that I was of two hearts. The presence of my father had often been oppressive, and I had feared him for the thirteen years my life had lasted so far. Not so much fear that I would be beaten with a rod, which happened often, because father took as his guide Proverbs 23, verses 13–14: “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.”

  More awful to me was his dark scowl or when, as a punishment, he banished me from his sight, which one time lasted three days.

  What if he now died? Or if I, or rather we, would from now on live comfortably with our Frau Mother in Wittenberg without him? On our journey from Mansfeld to Eisleben, I remarked carefully about this to Martin and was surprised that he had had similar thoughts. “Yes,” he even said, “we, should the case arise, ought not to be too sad because everything is God’s will, after all, as Father never ceased to instill in us.”

  Martin even confessed to me that the thought of being fatherless had a certain attraction if it were not for the concern—in regard to current events and the warmongering—for poor Mother, a wretched widow without rights and a large family to bring up. There were not just the three boys, Johannes (who at nineteen could hardly be described as a boy, though), Martin, and I. Rather, there was Margarethe, a year younger than I, who as a girl would need to be especially supported until she could be transferred to the care and discipline of, hopefully, an eventual marriage companion.

  Elisabeth was less than a year old when she died in Wittenberg in the year AD 1528. Magdalena, called Lenchen, at thirteen, my age exactly, died in AD 1542. It had been a heavy burden for my parents when little Elisabeth died. “With what troubled hearts had the child left us, oh, how the misery overwhelmed us,” wrote Father for himself and Mother. But especially the death of Lenchen, who to the great pleasure of my parents had been so intelligent and spiritual and had developed a fine Christian sensibility, had been a sorrow to my parents almost to the death. In the end, though, they were ready to accept God’s will. God preserve us from the early death of our children.

  Now, however, came the real death of our father, at which Martin and I; Justus Jonas; Father’s assistant, Johannes Aurifaber; his servant, Ruthfeld; the castle preacher, Michael Coelius; and a few others were present.

  Today I think that Father sensed, or perhaps even knew, that he would not live to depart from Eisleben. His last sermons had a forcefulness as though to leave a legacy, as if he wanted once more to impress in the hearts of the people of his beloved fatherland what he had fought for since AD 1517. With my limited understanding at the time, I was still conscious of how strongly he yearned for the people to remain faithful to the words of God. He sensed that he would soon no longer be there to admonish them and so, accordingly, increased the urgency of his words. Satan and his earthly helpers, all God’s adversaries, must be defeated in view of the threats, always growing stronger, of a once again unified papist church, of the Christians in Hungary threatened by the Turks, as well as of the Jews coming forward again, as could be seen at the Sabbath keeping under the Bohemian Christians.

  It was the Gospel that my father had at his heart, not so much his own person. Should he die, this would matter only because then he could no longer serve his dear Lord Christ.

  So rather than being affected by self-pity, he could even joke, as Justus Jonas in his report to the Most Serene Highness the Elector concerning the death of Martin Luther quoted my father as saying, “After I have helped reconcile my dear lords, the counts, and if by God’s will I am able to travel, I will return home and lay myself in a coffin and give to the worms a good fat doctor to consume.” He had already one time expressed a similarly drastic statement when he was feeling bad: “I am nothing but rotten dirt, and the world is the wide asshole, so we will soon be separated from each other.”

  For his entire life, my father saw himself—such is my opinion—not as a destroyer of the church but rather as a renewer, and he rebuked the pope for justifying his office by invoking Christ’s words as handed down by Matthew in the Gospel: “And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” He meant instead the pope was a hellhound who threatened the Gospel and the church of Christ. And he himself, Doctor Martin Luther, was a modest tool of God: the new church should not be named after him. “How can I, a poor stinking maggot sack, allow the children of Christ to appoint my name to it?”

  On Wednesday after Valentine’s Day, the 17th of February, the prince of Anhalt and Count Albrecht, supported by my brother Martin’s and my own tearful entreaties, begged our Herr Father to take it easy and rest in his little room, which he finally did. The weeks before, as negotiations proceeded, he had, as Herr Justus Jonas told us, always appeared for lunch and dinner, eaten and drunk heartily, and praised the repast and how everything tasted excellent in his fatherland. His rest was peaceful, his pillows were warmed the way he liked, and he had usually bidden Justus Jonas and Michael Coelius a cheerful good-night, saying, “Dr. Jonas and Herr Michl, pray to the Lord that things will go well for him and his church, because the Council of Trent is raging against him. Could one only chop off all Catholic bishops’ tongues.”

  For the young reader, I will add that the Council of Trent, also called the Tridentinum, had begun one year before the death of our Herr Father and even then demonstrated the following ambiguity. On the one hand, it fought against Father’s insistence on justification by grace alone, sola gratia, by faith alone, sola fide, and by the sole validity of the Holy Scriptures, sola scriptura. On the other hand, the council undertook efforts for a renewal of the Roman Church.

  That would have been after my father’s heart, for well to the end he hoped for a reconciliation of the divided church, though under the fundamental criticism of the papacy, whose highest representative, the Pontifex Maximus, was for him more and more the Antichrist and even the cause of murderous thoughts: “If we punish thieves with the gallows, robbers with the sword, and heretics with fire, why do we not throw ourselves even stronger with all our weapons against these men of sin, these cardinals, these popes, and this swamp of Romish sodomy that incessantly defiles the church of God, and wash our hands in their blood in order to free ourselves?”

  During the three weeks, he had enjoyed aquavit and other waters, which he had asked to be sent from Wittenberg, our mother having sent some of it on her own initiative. Now, however, he no longer went to the negotiations, and I was with him in the little room as he, without britches and in his dressing gown, went back and forth and prayed diligently, saying in addition to us brothers and the others present: “I was born and baptized here in Eisleben: What if I should stay?”

  My brother put his arm around me, as I began to cry after hearing these words, and my Herr Father laid his hand on my head. I was fearful of the changes that would come, although I was secretly prepared to accept them, for which I felt ashamed. My father could not know that as he laid his hand on my head, and therefore I cried still more, since I was somehow deceiving him.

  Before the evening meal, he began to complain there was pressure on his chest, but not the heart, then asked to be rubbed with warm towels, in which Martin and I tried to help by dipping the towels in the wooden vat and wringing them out. They were hot and hurt my hands, but I continued for the sake of my father and also in order to atone for my shame.

  Then for three hours he slept peacefully on the daybed. We brothers as well as Justus Jonas, Herr Coelius, the landlord and his wife, and the town clerk from Eisleben watched over him until about half an hour past ten. We then carried him to his chamber and his warmed bed, where we all stayed. After that he slept, br
eathing quietly. Outside, the night watchman sang his little song warning of fire and foe, which sounded like a reminder from God through the mouth of the simple man out there.

  About one of the clock, my father woke up and said to Herr Jonas, “Oh, Lord God, Dr. Jonas, how bad I feel, the pressure is so hard on my chest, oh, I will stay in Eisleben.”

  We all helped him out of bed, he leaned against Martin and me, went back and forth in the small chamber, and once again desired warm towels, which we applied to him. Likewise, both physicians in the town were called, one a doctor, the other a master of medicine, as well as Count Albrecht and the countess, who tried out everything on Father, the aquavit and the doctor’s medicine.

  Then Father began to pray so that cold chills went down my back, so near did I feel God being summoned.

  “My heavenly Father, eternal, merciful God, you have revealed to me your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, whom I have made the center of my teaching and my faith, openly, whom I love and honor as my dear Savior and Redeemer, whom the godless persecute, desecrate, and curse: take my little soul to You.”

  Then he said three times: “In manus tuas commendo spiritum meum, redemisti mi, deus veritatis.”

  My brother confirmed to me that he then fell back into his beloved German and ended his prayer, “Ja, so hat Gott die Welt geliebt” (For God so loved the world).

  Then he became silent, I thought he was dying, and he did not answer to our shakes and our calls. Martin looked at me, and it seemed that his eyes mirrored my own relief. Or was it his?

  As the countess and the doctors rubbed him with aquavit, rose vinegar, lavender water, and other tonics—at which the countess limited herself to the upper part of the body, though also casting a quick look down where the doctors were busy—my father once more began to answer, although only weakly, with yes or no. Dr. Jonas and Herr Coelius shouted at him and asked, “Dearest Father, you acknowledge Christ, the Son of God, our Savior and Redeemer?”