Shadows of My Father

by Christoph Werner

  Soon afterward, an enemy shell flew into the duke’s chambers and passed over the cradle of his half-year-old son, John Ernest, so that it was set in motion.

  The townsmen were especially alarmed and concerned about the four-week absence of their wives and children, of whom nobody knew where they had gone. It was generally and finally believed that the cause of the siege was Grumbach alone and that he only needed to be surrendered in order to gain peace.

  It was also eerie for the townsmen because the ringing of the bells was prohibited in their city, and just one clock was allowed. At the end of March I learned what the duke and Grumbach had decided in view of the impending defeat. It was so monstrous that I felt no longer any need to remain loyal to my master. The two made the desperate decision to take to the castle all the valuables and provisions in the city as well as the fittest men, then to chase the rest of the people outside the walls and set fire at each of the four corners.

  This murderous plan, praise God, could not be executed, but rumor of it soon spread throughout the city so that from then on everybody deserted the duke’s cause. The troops in the city and at the castle began to mutiny, and the local council and the city joined in with them.

  Now things happened in quick succession.

  On the 12th of April, 1567, deputies of the city began negotiations with Elector Augustus, the imperial deputies, and Duke John William. Perhaps negotiate is not quite the right word, because in truth it would be an unconditional surrender of the town with abject begging for forgiveness, turning over of the outlawed, the razing of Grimmenstein Castle, and the promise never again to raise weapons against the emperor and the elector. Munitions, provisions, and all silver were to be confiscated, and the duke himself was to be handed over.

  At almost the same time, troops in the city and castle seized the castle captain, von Brandenstein. Hundreds of soldiers led him from the castle to the city hall, and on the way he was mishandled with arquebus butts. On being led away, he said to the duke, if he, the duke, would have followed his advice ten days ago, he would not be suffering this humiliation today. This seems to point to the plan to set the city on fire.

  One citizen of Gotha told Duke John Frederick, meanwhile, that Brandenstein had planned to sever the castle bridge and burn the armed men in the castle moat with pitch wreaths. After all, they were nothing more than three hundred peasants.

  Now the troops and citizens and peasants in the city, whom my Thomas joined, began to search for Grumbach. In the castle, people broke into his chambers but did not find him. Even the duke’s room was searched. His scriptorium was broken into, and there they found Chancellor Brück.

  “Please,” called Brück, “I am not Grumbach, also no outlaw, rather the chancellor.”

  “That is not a problem, because we want you, too,” shouted the rebels. “Out, out with you!”

  And as he did not want to go at once, a peasant ran behind him, pushed his gun into his side, and shouted, “Move along, Chancellor, move along. Duke Hans Wilhelm will surely tell you what you have done.” And so they took him to the city hall, where he was locked in a special room.

  After a long search, Grumbach was discovered in the bedchambers of the young princes in a trundle bed. He was pulled from there and taken to the castle courtyard and, because he suffered gout, laid on three gun barrels. With the cry, “We’re bringing the hangman his bride,” he was carried to the city hall. On the way, Grumbach became discolored, so that it was believed he had taken poison. “Carry this rogue to the doctor. He has eaten poison and is trying to kill himself.”

  In front of my house at the castle hill below the Grimmenstein, there arose a loud noise, and someone cried, “The doctor needs to come out and stop the culprit from escaping his punishment.”

  I went to the door and looked at Grumbach, who had so often put me in fear. He stared back at me pitifully. I said to the rebels, “Don’t bring him in my house, but loosen his ropes so that he can get enough air.”

  It was my luck that I did not allow the man in my house. It could have meant the noose for me for harboring an outlaw. At the same time, I fulfilled my responsibility as a physician to ensure that he once again got enough air. It is said I would not even come to the door but only looked out the window and shouted, “Don’t bring this man into my house. He may cure him who made him ill.”

  This all took place so long ago that I sometimes lose the memory or attempt to subsequently justify my actions. So perhaps it is true what some people have said and my own memory is the false one.

  At the city hall, Grumbach was bound hand and foot so that he could not himself even get the necessary nourishment to his mouth and had to relieve himself in his pants. That was, after all, a little vengeance on his guards. In his dungeon, the clergy refused to give him Holy Communion because he was the cause of all the misery and misfortune and therefore unworthy to receive the sacrament.

  Wilhelm von Stein, Grumbach’s loyal friend, had hidden himself in the duke’s armory. The duke did not betray him, although he was threatened. Finally he came out on his own and was taken to the city hall.

  Some followers of Grumbach escaped, with luck, right through the enemy camp. They fled to Brunswick and thereby avoided the dreadful fate that awaited the captured.

  The angel seer, Hänschen Tausendschön, was locked in a tower. The faithful secretary, Johann Rudolf, of whom the reader has learned, was freed and had the joyful prospect of being present at the torture of his tormenter, Christian Brück, and, if he had the desire, to lend a hand.

  After the tumult outside my house had ceased, I thought, like Thomas, who in the meantime had returned against my wishes, that I would remain unmolested.

  Then suddenly down below, the door was pushed open and a messenger of Elector Augustus delivered an order to be present at the interrogation of the chief criminals Grumbach and Brück and, if necessary, to prevent by medical expertise too early a death caused by the torture.

  This was for me a terrible situation. How could I as a physician and Christian, who has always been averse to the ordeal of torture, comply with the order? I expressed my doubts to the messenger; however, he replied he had been instructed to tell me that a refusal would be interpreted as an attachment to the outlawed duke and Grumbach but that I could show, by following the command, my obedience to the emperor, Elector Augustus, and Duke John William.

  What should I have done, reader? Now perhaps you accuse me of lack of courage, but my family needed me. I clung to life and was very afraid.

  What then happened to the rebels I can report in all exactness because I was required to be present all the time.

  I was horror-stricken, and compliance with the electoral mandate was made somewhat easier when I discovered the following. In a kind of end-time delusion in which a man, if he himself is going to die, wishes to take as many with him as possible, Brück, Stein, and Grumbach had created a list of about sixty unreliable and disloyal people of the court and citizens from the country who should all be executed by the sword. The executioner had been commissioned, and the graves had already been dug. The list with the doomed persons’ names on it had been found among Brück’s papers.

  My name, Dr. Paul Luther, son of the Reformer Dr. Martin Luther, personal physician to Duke John Frederick, had been included in the list, which had astonishingly not been inserted into the proceedings and which neither I nor anyone else have ever seen.

  I’ll pause here and give the reader time to ponder my situation and to perhaps understand my subsequent actions or, more properly, my inaction.

  Now the reader can continue.

  On Monday the 14th of April, 1567, in the afternoon at four o’clock began the interrogation of the sixty-four-year-old Grumbach, who had been brought to the castle in a wagon because, suffering from gout, he could not walk.

  I insert here that at the wish of the duke, I had previously treated him, although not with much success. My recommendations consisted of warm baths with hay flower additive
and a drink made of plantain juice and honey. But he instead ate meat, and he drank far too much beer rather than the clear spring water I had recommended, so his symptoms did not improve, and both joints of his big toes swelled so much that he was forced to cut holes in his shoes so that he could put something on his feet. I suspect that, because of my treatment’s lack of success, a treatment that had helped other patients, he took a dislike to me and tried to influence the duke against me.

  Count Günther of Schwarzburg as president, two secretaries, two notaries, a clerk, and a collector as well as an electoral finance councillor directed the interrogation. I was present. Elector Augustus, Duke John William, and Duke Adolf of Holstein were present but stayed hidden behind a green curtain. Adjoining the meeting room was the torture chamber, and through the open door one could see the ladder, screws, Spanish boots, the buck, and other tools as well as the torturers themselves.

  Grumbach was initially questioned with kindness but was also shown the instruments through the open door.

  He denied everything. He did not have Melchior von Würzburg on his conscience, and he had not advised the duke to name himself the elector. Now the executioner approached Grumbach and stretched this gouty, sixty-four-year-old man for four hours on the rack.

  Grumbach’s pain was so great that his cries rang throughout the castle. He confessed much and named Chancellor Brück as the cause of his misfortune.

  Brück was brought in, and Grumbach faced him. He blamed all on Grumbach and the duke. All that he had done had been done on the duke’s orders, and he had therefore found himself in a dilemma.

  He eventually fell to the feet of those present, cried, and begged for mercy or at least a quick death in order to spare himself the rack.

  This did not help. He was stretched on the rack. Here the secretary Rudolf was present, who not long before had been placed on the rack by Brück. Feignedly, he stretched out his hand and plucked timidly at the rope with which Brück was stretched.

  There was nothing I could do. The thought of what Grumbach and Brück had intended to do to me let me endure the procedure.

  On the following day Grumbach and Brück were interrogated once more, then Hans Tausendschön, who in spite of great pain insisted that he had spoken with four angels in black hats who had shown him a great treasure of pure gold in Sundhausen, which had been buried by an emperor and was to be raised on Pentecost of this year. Also, the angels had said to him that Duke John Frederick would once again hold the electorate.

  Then the jester Hans Beyer and castle captain Brandenstein were interrogated and on the same day, the 16th of April, with the following culprits were condemned to death: Grumbach, Brück, Wilhelm von Stein, David Baumgärtner, Hans Beyer, and Hieronymus von Brandenstein. Hans Beyer, when he was captured, shook his cap and bells, made grimaces to those who grabbed him, and clowned his way to the Inn Zur Schelle where he was held captive.

  I was required to be present at the execution on Friday, April 18th, on the market square in Gotha. On the day before, a high scaffold had been erected next to the gallows that was already there. At ten of the clock in the morning, the gouty Grumbach was carried there on an old chair. Before him rode the provost and a law clerk. Grumbach was set down on a bench on the scaffold, where for a quarter of an hour he talked with a priest. Here an envoy on a horse once more read the death sentence. The court preacher, Heinrich Schürrup, asked the people in Grumbach’s name for forgiveness and intercession that he might die as a Christian. Then he was undressed, laid down, and tied to a board. Calmly he said to the executioner, “You punish today a scrawny vulture.”

  The executioner cut him into quarters, tore his heart from his body, and threw it in his face with the words, “Look, Grumbach, your untrue heart.” Lastly, the head was cut off from the body. During the torment, Grumbach remained uncomplaining and also did not cry out in pain.

  The process was similar for Brück, whose last plea that before being quartered he wanted to be beheaded was not granted. As he was being executed and his heart ripped from his body, he was heard to scream in a loud voice, “Merciful God, have mercy on me.” And when the executioner beat him on the mouth with his heart, he, as reported, screamed long and horribly.

  The witness report is wrong. I was a witness and know that a man with his heart ripped out can no longer cry out because he is dead.

  Wilhelm von Stein was first beheaded and then quartered.

  Baumgärtner was beheaded. Hans Beyer was hanged. The beheading of Wilhelm Baumgärtner created in me such a scientific curiosity that I went up onto the scaffold for a better look at the severed head. I wanted to see if the patient could still feel anything or was capable of saying a word. I addressed the head but only saw a raising of the eyes, and then all was still.

  Brandenstein and Tausendschön were hanged a few days later. For Tausendschön it was a terrible miscarriage of justice because he had nothing to do with the conspiracy and unknowingly served Grumbach’s purposes. For that, Elector Augustus must justify himself one day before God.

  The executions lasted two hours, and six executioners were involved. A farmer from Hausen bought the scaffold and out of it built himself a living room in his house.

  Baumgärtner and Beyer were buried, while the bodies of the other three who were executed that day, as the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina of 1532 prescribes, were stuck on poles and displayed on the busiest four roads leading out of the town. They remained there until they decayed.

  On the poles were pinned the following words:

  Had Grumbach only stayed on his farm

  And never attempted to do any harm

  To emperor, elector, and his domain

  And with the duke to replace the same

  Had he not had the unbridled desire

  To take for himself a position much higher

  Had land and people not been so distressed

  With robbery, murder, and other crimes pressed

  So would his body not hang before Gothen

  Cut in four pieces to stay until rotten.

  Brück’s head and quarters went missing after a few days but were soon found by a plowman in Freimar in a sack in his field and delivered to the authorities in Gotha. On the orders of Duke John William, who was at the time in Weimar, the remains were once more put in place on the pole.

  Misfortune also met the playmate of my brother Johann and my older siblings in the Black Monastery, Dr. Justus Jonas, son of my father’s friend and helper of the same name, who at the beginning of the siege had been sent to seek assistance. He fled to Copenhagen and had been appointed royal councillor there.

  But after the elector of Saxony had reported him to the king, he fled, was captured, and was beheaded in his forty-second year.

  He was already on the scaffold when he had an exchange with his confessor in Latin, which did not show much repentance.

  Even for the outraged and angry emperor, the atrocities and cruelty began to exceed all bounds and became too much.

  On the report that was given to him, he wrote in his own hand: Excessit medicina modum, which could be translated as “the medicine should not be greater and more hideous than the sickness,” a principle we had learned in our medical studies.

  Chapter 20

  . . . tells how the duke departed Gotha and how I left Saxony with my family.

  Now we all stood before a heap of rubble, both in the abstract and in reality. The rule of my former lord was broken, the court was disbanded, and the duke was going to be taken away.

  The huge amount of supplies found in the Grimmenstein were not passed on to the guilty yet distressed city of Gotha but rather were taken by Duke John William to Weimar. Rumor had it that there were 15,000 measures of wheat; 15,000 measures of corn; 48,000 measures of oats; 10,000 measures of barley; 800 measures of peas; 2,400 measures of flour; 1,500 measures of salt; 5,000 tons of smoked deer meat; 800 tons of salted meat; 3,000 tons of fish; 1,600 cartloads of wine; 500 kegs of beer; 100 live oxen; a f
ew hundred flitches of bacon; and of ordnance: 3,600 tons of powder; several thousand long spears and halberds; several thousand pieces of armor; several thousand iron and stone shot; and much additional war material.

  Of guns, there were 160 in the armory, and 77 stood on the ramparts.

  It was my faithful Thomas who provided these figures. Through the landlord of Zum Riesen, he had forged a connection to the cellarer of the castle. But the amounts strike me as truly incomprehensible. Today, I think they were exaggerated, but even so, the castle was well stocked. So well stocked that one can easily see how long beforehand the duke and his evil friends had prepared their schemes.

  Even as the city of Gotha began to suffer privation from the siege, the duke thought only of indulging his dreams and had no intention of giving up some of his supplies to alleviate the hunger.

  After the transfer of the supplies, the destruction of the castle began immediately without regard to the wishes and desires of Duke John William, who was now sole duke of Saxony (the duchy, not the electorate) and now also of Gotha, which consequently directly belonged to his dominion. A written order from the kaiser regarding the castle commanded: “No stone shall be left on another so that it will serve as eternal memory and example.”

  In August 1567, the Grimmenstein was blown up and completely obliterated. Grass grew on the hill, and butchers pastured their stock where the feared Grimmenstein had stood, and as time went by it was to become theirs through customary law.

  The losses in the city were said to amount to 2,600 people, and outside the walls 4,500. In blowing up the walls, 600 people were killed. May these deaths be held against the guilty at the Last Judgment, also against my guilt-ridden lord John Frederick, whose removal I witnessed or, more correctly, was urgently requested by the elector to attend.