Shadows of My Father

by Christoph Werner

  Now back to the false Anna.

  I want to tell of this because the story will shed light on the court at Weimar and Gotha and the tribulations that already existed and continued to develop. At the same time, it will be seen that my hope to go from a troubled Jena with its zealots to the peaceful climes of Weimar was not very well founded.

  The story of the false Anna, this loose hag, brings to light both the naïveté and the credulity of my lord, Duke John Frederick, the Middle One. Perhaps added to this was a certain mental diminishment, which I unfortunately, through my personal medical activity as well as the best medicines, treatments, and caring conversations, could not remedy. He seemed to me so often needy and childlike and zealous to do everything right and good—at the same time making mistake after mistake—that he quite won my affection, and I decided to serve him truly and if possible to protect him from the worst.

  The false queen, Anna, pretended that she was Anne of Cleve and therefore a relative of our three dukes as well as the fourth wife of Henry VIII of England and that she had not, as one read in the news from England, died anno 1557; rather, she had merely given out that she was dead in order to, as a strict Protestant, avoid the persecution of Bloody Mary. She succeeded, she had said, in bringing tremendous wealth from England to Germany, which she intended to bequeath to the dukes of Saxony but first and foremost to John Frederick, the Middle One, to obtain protection, princely housing, and a decent financial allowance. There would be testimonies describing the treasures. Among them were: England’s crown and sovereign’s orb; a collar with a ruby and other gemstones; 25 tons of gold in crowns; 7 pearl robes; 3 gold pieces; 14 gold chains, which weighed 5000 crowns; 14 girdles and chains weighing 7000 crowns; 24 pairs of armbands, which weighed 2000 crowns; 12 pearl hoods; 14 pearl berets; and 1 necklace with gemstones estimated at 3000 crowns.

  I quote from a file from the years 1558 and 1559, which was sent to me by a friendly archivist in the ducal Secret State Archives in Weimar:

  Report concerning the arch-deceiver who told John Fredrick, the Middle One, of Saxony that she was, first, Frau Anna, born of Jülich, King Henry of England’s widow, then a countess in Friesland, married Countess of Manderscheid, further a born Countess of Rietberg, further an illegitimate daughter of Duke John of Cleve.

  I can still remember what my brother told me of the interrogations of Anna he carried out on behalf of the duke in Gotha and the castle Tenneberg. The duke had finally become wiser after repeated warnings, among them from his brother John William, at the time, in Paris, a general of the French king Karl IX in his campaign against the Huguenots.

  The false Anna told the most adventurous tales and lies, which in many places such as Brandenburg, Nuremberg, Wittenberg, and still others had been believed. The duke even visited her personally in Rossla, where she seemed extremely plausible to him because she knew the situation at the Court of Cleve most accurately, or at least spoke most credibly about it. And she sustained the duke’s hope by describing her treasures, which she promised to bequeath to him after she had only retrieved them from Nuremberg or another location—she dared not specify where because the Devil nightly threatened to strangle her.

  Already on the 3rd of January, 1559, a warning had reached the duke from a clerk, Fritz Ditterich from Leipzig, in which he said that it had been reported by trustworthy people that a woman who had been in Rossla had claimed that she was a born duchess of Jülich and queen of England. She was the same person who already deceived the duke of Prussia, the duke Frederick of Liegnitz, the duke of Mecklenburg, and the elector Joachim of Brandenburg. In Mecklenburg she had stolen silver drinking vessels, and she had cost the Brandenburg elector, where she had been well boarded and maintained, 800 guldens.

  Since the clerk was only a person of lower station, the duke was persuaded by his chancellor, Christian Brück, to ignore him as just a tool of Anna’s enemies.

  As a way to protect her from snares and persecutions, Anna was granted chambers in Grimmenstein Castle in Gotha, where, under the protection of the ducal steward and castellan Bernhard von Mila, she was denied nothing. She secured her position by signing a donation contract with the duke and confirming it through a second contract, in which they both agreed: Duke John Frederick the Middle One should receive 1.5 million crowns; Duke John William, in the event he would become king of England through marriage or otherwise, should receive crown, scepter, and sovereign’s orb of England and several hundred thousand crowns in cash; the youngest duke, John Frederick the Younger, should receive 500,000 crowns.

  Blinded by the brilliance of these promises, the duke and his entourage did not until the summer of 1559 become mistrustful and investigate various locations, such as Brandenburg, Jülich, and Nuremberg. The duke finally ordered the false Anna to be taken prisoner and interrogated. She continually invented new stories and knew how to confuse her interrogators so that the duke, finally, for the eighth interrogation, ordered his executioner to fetch his instruments and go to Tenneberg Castle in Walterhausen, where she was brought and where also the rumor spread that she wanted to betray the Grimmenstein to the duke’s enemies. How she was going to bring that about, however, no one knew.

  As she invented ever-new lies, the executioner bound her to the ladder and stretched her. In spite of the torture, she stayed by her story, invented new ones, and said without being asked that she had not had sexual intercourse with the Devil since his manhood was too sooty for her.

  As she became weak and the executioner declared he could stretch her no farther without danger to her life, she was taken from the ladder.

  It was never determined exactly what or who was behind this woman. But, although Chancellor Christian Brück expressed his confidence in her to the end and repeatedly attempted to convince the duke of her honor and truthfulness, my brother and I soon had a suspicion. We came to the conclusion that the chancellor wanted to establish a lasting influence over the duke through her. And because Brück also had no good opinion of the duke’s wife, Elisabeth, we thought it was possible that Brück wanted to use the false and hypocritical Anna to destroy the marriage, or at least to get Anna into the duke’s bed.

  There was also another theory maintained at the court. Like every prince, the duke had enemies in Saxony and in the empire, who now saw an opportunity to further diminish his already-restricted sovereignty. And because of his strict Lutheran attitude, they wanted to do damage to him and had therefore used the woman Anna to try and ruin him.

  The false queen of England was sentenced to prison for life, but no one knows how long she lived or what she died of. Among the people it is said she was buried alive in the walls of the castle Tenneberg. More serious people believe she was, at the conclusion of the Grumbach Feud, which ended so unhappily for the duke and about which I will write in the next chapter, set free and then vanished without a trace. The whole sad affair was indicative of the avarice, gullibility, and intrigue that an attentive observer could witness at the court.

  Still, in the beginning everything went well for my family in Weimar. My duties to the duke were not heavy, first because Dr. Schröter, taking my youth and limited experience into account, was very careful about introducing me to my work. And second, since the Middle One was my only patient and he had little trouble with his health, not much was required of me at the time. I visited him when he was in Weimar about every second day, checked his pulse, examined his urine and stool, and gave him advice about eating and drinking, which consisted mainly of suggesting less meat, wine, and beer.

  Joyful events in my family drew much of my attention from the court and the many quarrels there. On the 20th of August, AD 1560, our son Johann Ernst was baptized in the castle church, and we celebrated this event thankfully and extensively. The birth had gone quite easily so that Anna seemed to obtain great pleasure from childbirth, and in 1562 our Johann Friedrich and in 1564 our daughter Anna were brought into the world.

  One can see I had time and leisure to lie beside my wife
. But because of an unwanted temporary separation and evil political developments, that time soon decreased.

  The dukes’ father had urgently insisted that the ducal brothers rule their land jointly and harmoniously, which they succeeded in doing only at the beginning.

  The brothers, especially John Frederick the Middle One and John William, quarreled for supremacy after it had been settled, following the death of their father in 1554, that the Middle One should be the sole regent of the Ernestine possessions. But now they decided that the duchy should be divided into Coburg and Weimar-Gotha, and every three years the regentship would change, which my brother told me was a completely senseless and injurious decision. The youngest brother, John Frederick III, who was under the tutelage of the oldest at the time, was by nature weak and abstained from the struggle. He always counseled his brothers to moderate themselves. He studied in Jena and died in 1565 at twenty-seven years old.

  Finally, John William reigned in Coburg and John Frederick II in Weimar-Gotha. At Grimmenstein Castle in Gotha, John Frederick set up his main residence, which for me meant a very frequent separation from my family since I had to follow him there, and where I subsequently became involved in the affair that was summed up under the name Grumbach Feud. More about that later.

  First, I would like to present myself as a physician by reporting a treatment that I carried out on one of the duke’s hunters. During a hunt, Duke John Frederick had mistaken a hunter for a wild boar and had shot him in the leg. He was very sorry because in spite of his headstrong nature he was righteous and good-natured at heart, and he ordered me to assist the surgeon who attended the hunter at the duke’s cost. The left thigh looked very bad, and the lead shot was embedded deep in the wound. The surgeon and his two assistants strapped the hunter down in order to amputate the leg. Just when the saw was about to be used above the wound, I ordered them to pause. The wound was bleeding at a medium strength, which made the thigh look bad.

  I had boiled water procured and the leg properly washed. Then I sent for a wound potion at the chemist’s to which should void the effects of the wound on the body. The wound potion was prepared from juniper, cattails, roots of mugwort, and the root of Dictamnus albus and then was boiled down to half in three jugs of aged beer. I gave the hunter this potion three times, in the early morning, at midday sufficiently long after the meal, and before sleeping at night, three spoons.

  I succeeded in pulling the lead shot out of the wound with my fingers. Now it was customary practice, which I, too, had previously advocated, to clean the wound of the poisons that had invaded it with the shot. This was done with cautery or boiling oils. But I had observed that by doing so, too much healthy flesh was destroyed, the patient was subjected to terrible pain, and the healing process was delayed, if not completely hindered. People knew that and thus said, “Just saw the whole leg off,” a treatment the patient often survived and that brought the surgeon no blame.

  I told the surgeon to treat the leg with boiled chamomile and carefully dress it and thus stop the bleeding. The patch I myself had prepared in the laboratory so lovingly set up by my dear wife. I later could convince quite a number of doctors and surgeons of the usefulness of this patch and could sell it to them for a nice profit.

  To my pleasure and also that of the duke’s, the hunter recovered and enjoyed the use of both legs, and it was to be hoped that on the next hunt the duke’s motto would be amended from “First shoot, then look.”

  Of course, I know today that this method of treating a shot wound was not a discovery of mine. I read that Ambroise Paré, surgeon and physician to three French kings, successfully applied it on the battlefield and thereby saved the lives of many wounded. Nevertheless, even today while I write, wounds are being mismanaged with boiling oil and red-hot iron, may God have mercy. New approaches, especially in medicine, come very slowly because doctors and patients hang on to cherished habits and say: what has helped since Hippocrates and Galen, so for a thousand years and more, cannot suddenly be wrong. And these people do not ask whether it has really helped.

  The case described above was not my only success, and these served to strengthen my position at court and spread my reputation over the duchy and even as far as Brandenburg. Subsequently, I was called more frequently to high ranking and wealthy people, especially when it concerned a serious wound, and my wife was thankful for the attendant money.

  Chapter 18

  . . . reports on the Grumbach Feud, how I acted there and escaped dangerous consequences.

  Reader, in describing what later entered into the history of Saxony and Thuringia and the empire as the Grumbach Feud, I must go back a little. Time goes by so quickly, and much is forgotten, or it is gilded over or darkly obscured depending on the reigning parties’ favor or disfavor.

  As part of the background, keep in mind that earlier in the empire’s imperfect legislation, knights were not only allowed the right of feuding but were actually obligated to fight for their property, their rights, and their reputations as nobles themselves when those values were threatened. There was no question of bringing someone to trial or finding other legal help. The law of the club reigned.

  This, however, created such unlimited excesses and such confusion in the empire that something had to be done to halt the unbridled mischief of the knights. Therefore, in 1495 Emperor Maximilian I established the Perpetual Public Peace at the Imperial Diet of Worms. The imperial estates, clergy, nobility, and townspeople agreed, yet the unwritten law of the strongest remained effectively in place, and it was the task of the territorial princes to keep the knights down and bring them under control. The knights saw this as a curtailment of their rights and regarded the princes, bishops, and towns as their worst enemies. Götz von Berlichingen, Franz von Sickingen, and finally also Wilhelm von Grumbach were the last examples of the rebellion of the knighthood against the growing power of the territorial princes.

  Grumbach came from an ancient noble family held in high esteem and provided with ample lands and possessions. He was educated in chivalry at the court of Margrave Casimir of Brandenburg-Culmbach and accompanied the margrave on almost all his travels and campaigns. From that time stemmed the accusation that Grumbach had, in the war against the peasants, first housed the nobleman Florian Geyer but then in a grove had him attacked and killed by his servants. Even Grumbach’s enemies were silent concerning the accusation; only one, his most embittered opponent, Bishop Frederick of Würzburg, accused him of that murderous deed. This accusation will stay with him forever, because in view of his inglorious end nobody takes the trouble to free him from it.

  As Grumbach in 1540 was again on his estate in Franconia, he successfully used his influence to settle a dispute with the chapter in Würzburg over some estates and forests in his favor and in accordance with the law. In 1544, when a new bishop was elected in Würzburg, Melchior von Zobel, there arose new conflicts caused by the bishop’s intrigues and his desire for vengeance because of previous disagreements. Grumbach, however, hid his grudge and lived several years quietly on his estates. He even complied with the request of the bishop when he later commanded one thousand riders in the Schmalkaldic War on the side of the emperor to spare the bishopric from having troops marching through it. The bishop, however, showed little appreciation and, despite all the attempts of Grumbach at reconciliation, pursued him with angry attacks, with questioning the legitimacy of his lands, with delays in the recognition of Grumbach’s son as vassal, and with other efforts. In the end, after interminable entanglements with the emperor, the Imperial Court of Justice, Margrave Albrecht of Brandenburg-Culmbach, and hostile bishops, and after recriminations, payments of money, compensations, return compensations, and damning writings from both sides, Wilhelm of Grumbach and his family were totally destitute, figuratively speaking, beggars.

  Anno 1558, he decided to regain his rights by force and, with several knights, sought to capture Bishop Melchior von Zobel and force him to surrender what he had unrightfully taken.
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br />   On the morning of April 15th, 1558, they assaulted the bishop in Würzburg, but instead of taking him prisoner, they shot dead the bishop and several of his group. One of the culprits made known later that he had been the one who killed the bishop because he would not pay him a legacy. Grumbach had in this murder no direct part but was considered generally—and not unjustly—to be the instigator.

  On the 4th of October, 1563, Grumbach invaded Würzburg and forced the town to sign a contract that would compensate him for everything. Here at last, as he transgressed against the innocent townspeople, Grumbach left the path of righteousness and took the way of damnable revenge.

  When the emperor in Pressburg heard of this, he declared Grumbach and his followers rebels and breakers of the Perpetual Public Peace and under the ban of the empire without giving them the opportunity to justify themselves according to imperial law by bringing their case before the Imperial Court of Justice.

  Although many bishops, princes, and knights supported the claims of Grumbach, the emperor instituted the ban (which, as I said, was not quite legal), perhaps because he harbored concerns that the German nobles would unite and carry on a general war against the territorial princes. Grumbach himself had often boasted of his alliances with the knighthood of the empire. When Casimir as well as his other patron, Margrave Albrecht, died in 1557, Grumbach had to find a new protector who would help him regain his possessions and his rights.

  What was more natural than to turn to Duke John Frederick the Middle One, whose family had suffered a similar fate in regard to possessions and honor? Both were struggling to regain their previous state.

  As Grumbach personally made his request for protection, the duke at first hesitated because he did not want to go against his duty to the emperor. But at last, because of the duke’s sense of justice and righteousness, he was won over to the cause of the injured, persecuted, and abandoned Grumbach. He appointed him his councillor and provided him with a special letter of protection.