Prophecy, Madness, and Holy War in

Early Modern Europe Leigh T.I. Penman

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/prophecy-madness-and-holy-war-in-early-modern-eur
ope-leigh-t-i-penman/
Prophecy, Madness, and Holy War in Early Modern
Europe
 OXFORD STUDIES IN WESTERN ESOTERICISM

Series Editor
Henrik Bogdan, University of Gothenburg

Editorial Board
Jean-Pierre Brach, École Pratique des Hautes Études
Carole Cusack, University of Sydney
Christine Ferguson, University of Stirling
Olav Hammer, University of Southern Denmark
Wouter Hanegraaff, University of Amsterdam
Ronald Hutton, University of Bristol
Jeffrey Kripal, Rice University
James R. Lewis, University of Tromsø
Michael Stausberg, University of Bergen
Egil Asprem, University of Stockholm
Dylan Burns, Freie Universität Berlin
Gordan Djurdjevic, Simon Fraser University
Peter Forshaw, University of Amsterdam
Jesper Aa. Petersen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

IMAGINING THE EAST

The Early Theosophical Society
Tim Rudbog and Erik Sand

MYSTIFYING KABBALAH
Academic Scholarship, National Theology, and
New Age Spirituality
Boaz Huss

SPIRITUAL ALCHEMY
From Jacob Boehme to
Mary Anne Atwood, 1600–1910
Mike A. Zuber

OCCULT IMPERIUM
Arturo Reghini, Roman Traditionalism, and the
Anti-Modern Reaction in Fascist Italy
Christian Giudice

THE SUBTLE BODY

A Genealogy
 Simon Cox

RETAINING THE OLD EPISCOPAL DIVINITY

John Edwards of Cambridge and Reformed Orthodoxy
in the Later Stuart Church
Jake Griesel

PROPHECY, MADNESS, AND HOLY WAR IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

A Life of Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil
Leigh T.I. Penman
Prophecy, Madness, and Holy War in
Early Modern Europe
A Life of Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil
LEIGH T.I. PENMAN
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing
worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and
certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in
writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under
terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning
reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same
condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022058612
ISBN 978–0–19–762393–0
eISBN 978–0–19–762395–4
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197623930.001.0001
For Olija
 Contents

Figures
Acknowledgements
A Note on Conventions

1. An Unknown Prophet
2. The Sins of the Fathers
3. Crisis and Rebirth
4. The Sword of God’s Vengeance
5. War and Peace
6. The End of Days
7. Spiritual Sons
Epilogue

Notes
Bibliography
Index
 Figures

2.1 Gravestone of Joachim Gifftheil, Pforzheim (1585)

2.2 Abraham Gifftheil, ‘Crypto Calvinismus Wirtembergicorum’
(1622), title page
2.3 Johann Arndt, portrait (ca. 1625)
3.1 Abraham von Franckenberg, engraved portrait (1725)
3.2 Gifftheil, Stimme durch welche der HErr Zebaoth auß Zion also
brüllet (1629, reprint of ca. 1637)
3.3 Lucas Osiander Jr., oil on wood, Conrad Mehlberger (1619)
4.1 Johann Permeier, engraved portrait by Sebastian Furck (ca.
1640)
4.2 Letter of Gifftheil to Nicolaus Pfaff (20 January 1638)
4.3 Gifftheil, Kriegs=Gebeth (1640), title page
5.1 Christian Hoburg, engraved portrait (undated)
5.2 Gifftheil, Die Fürsten und Richter . . . betreffend (1648), title
page
6.1 Joachim Betke, engraved portrait (undated)
6.2 Friedrich Breckling, fictitious portrait (1692)
7.1 Quirinus Kuhlmann, engraved portrait (1679)
7.2 Johannes Rothé’s standard and army, engraving (1673)
 Acknowledgements

The extraordinary story of Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil, the main

subject of this book, first came to my attention during a research trip
to Wolfenbüttel many years ago. For years, as my work continued on
other projects, I kept an eye out for mentions of this barber surgeon
turned prophet and his strange adventures, but it was not until
2012, as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Queensland’s
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, that research for
this book could begin in earnest. Initially I intended to use Gifftheil
and his correspondence to sketch an intellectual geography of
religious dissent in early modern Europe. But as the laborious task of
identifying and collecting sources began, the study transformed into
something very different, particularly as biographical details emerged
which shed a new and personal light on the prophet and his story.
My former colleague at UQ, Mike Zuber, read all or part of this work
in draft on several occasions and offered valuable comments.
Others, including Phil Almond, Peter Cryle, Simon During, Peter
Harrison, Nicholas Heron, Ian Hesketh, Ian Hunter, Gary Ianziti,
Anna Johnston, Simon Kennedy, Henry James Meiring, Tim Mehigan,
Daniel Midena, Charlotte Rose Millar, Knox Peden, Lucia Pozzi, Trish
Ross, and Ryan Walter read and discussed aspects of the work with
me at some point, and offered stimulating feedback.
Many times during this project I benefited from wisdom, advice,
criticism, and information from Jill Bepler, Jürgen Beyer, Henrik
Bogdan, Erik-Jan Bos, Michael Driedger, Peter Forshaw, Carlos Gilly,
Ariel Hessayon, Gizella Hoffmann, Howard Hotson, Tünde Beatrix
Karnitscher, Vera Keller, Hartmut Lehmann, Benjamin Marschke,
Lucinda Martin, Andrew McKenzie-McHarg, Martin Mulsow, Kathrin
Pfister, Larry Principe, Günter Schmeisky, Douglas Shantz, Jonathan
Strom, Márton Szentpéteri, Vladimír Urbánek, Allen Viehmeyer,
Noémi Viskolcz, and Andrew Weeks. My colleagues at the Monash
Centre for Indigenous Studies at Monash University in Melbourne,
Lily Yulanti Farid, David Haworth, Lynette Russell, and Leonie
Stevens, gave me the time necessary to complete this study, and
encouraged me to broaden its conclusions to extend to Gifftheil’s
impact on missionary Christianity. Given that this work was
researched and written (mostly) in Australia, it simply would not
exist without the assistance of librarians and archivists in Europe,
the United Kingdom, Israel, North America, and Australasia, who
cheerfully and patiently fielded questions and supplied photos at
every turn. I am grateful to them all, and must give extra special
thanks to Verena Rothenbühler of the Staatsarchiv des Kantons
Zürich, who kindly spent several days tracking down an errant
Gifftheil manuscript that turned out to be of crucial importance.
Research for this project was supported by funding and
opportunities offered by the University of Queensland, the ARC-
funded Science and Secularization Project, Monash University, the
Forschungszentrum Gotha of the Universität Erfurt, the
Franckeschen Stiftungen in Halle, and the Herzog August Bibliothek
in Wolfenbüttel. It has been a special pleasure to complete this
manuscript in Wolfenbüttel, where the idea behind the study was
born, and to be able to write these very words in Amsterdam, where
Gifftheil’s own adventures concluded.
Finally, I thank my family for the support and love they have
offered throughout the course of this project, which has been
completed amidst moves to places far away, the tumultuous
upheavals and lockdowns of a global pandemic, and very trying
circumstances.
L.T.I.P.
July 2022
 A Note on Conventions

Two calendars were used in Europe during Gifftheil’s lifetime, the

‘new style’ Gregorian calendar, dating to 1584, and the ‘old style’
Julian calendar. The adjusted Gregorian calendar was ten days
ahead of the Julian. Because the Gregorian reform was promulgated
by a pope, many Protestant states were reluctant to embrace it. As
such, the Julian calendar continued to be used in Britain,
Scandinavia, in most Protestant territories of the Holy Roman
Empire, and in Switzerland. The Gregorian calendar, by contrast, was
used in the United Provinces, some parts of the Duchy of Cleves,
France, the Kingdom of Bohemia and its crownlands, the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ducal Prussia, Lusatia, and Silesia. Given
that Gifftheil ranged across all of these territories at various points in
his life, I give the dates as marked in the original documents. Where
there is a conflict, or particular need for clarity about dating, both
‘old’ and ‘new’ style dates are given. The years are taken to begin on
1 January.
Transcriptions follow the original documents, including
capitalisation and spelling, except in cases where punctuation has
been changed for clarity. Editorial insertions are indicated by square
brackets. Abbreviations have been silently expanded. All translations
are mine, unless otherwise indicated.
 1
An Unknown Prophet

Vengeance is mine; I will repay.

Deuteronomy 32:35

For by fire and by His sword will the Lord judge all flesh.
Isaiah 66:16

As the bells tolled in the morning fog on Sunday 19 October 1634,

the streets of Tübingen slowly filled with townsfolk making their way
to the church of St. George. The university town’s most recognisable
landmark, St. George’s gothic belfry rose serenely above the
rooftops overlooking the river Neckar, the lifeblood of this region of
southwestern Germany. But the solemn tolling of the bells could not
hide Tübingen’s misery. A month prior, the Thirty Years’ War had
come to the staunchly Lutheran territory when Catholic troops
commanded by the Duke of Lorraine entered the city. The meadows
beyond the Neckar, once farmland, had been devoured by their
encampments. With the troops came violence, plague, and
resentment. The books of the town council, which registered the
grievances of the populace, quickly became filled with complaints
from townsfolk about the hardships occasioned by the soldiers.
Yet there was a glimmer of hope. On this particular Sunday, Lucas
Osiander Jr., the esteemed theologian and chancellor of Tübingen’s
famous university, was to take to the church’s ornate pulpit to deliver
a sermon. While some may have hoped to find solace in Osiander’s
words on that day—during the sermon the preacher speaks God’s
word, and becomes a true prophet—they were instead confronted by
a blasphemous spectacle. Midway through Osiander’s sermon, a man
stirred from the pews and bellowed ‘why do you not preach God’s
word?’ To the horror of onlookers, he drew a sword and stormed the
pulpit, clearly intending to slay the churchman. Yet by God’s
‘miraculous intervention,’ a contemporary newspaper held, the
stocky Osiander somehow deflected the blow even as the
congregation raced to the preacher’s aid. The attacker was
overpowered and brought into custody.
The shocking incident made news across Germany. Given the
situation in Tübingen, these news bulletins all assumed that
Osiander’s assailant was a ‘simple-minded imperial soldier’ from
among Lorraine’s unruly Catholic troops, who had been upset by
Lutheran doctrine.1 But the attacker was neither a Catholic nor a
soldier. He was instead a native of Württemberg, who had been
raised as a Lutheran—in the house of a pastor, no less. He was also
one of the most notorious anti-war activists in the Holy Roman
Empire. His name was Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil.
Rumour held that Gifftheil had been awoken to his divine mission
by the blazing comet of 1618, an apocalyptic portent that coincided
with the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War.2 Gifftheil was strikingly
tall and powerfully built, wearing a long dark beard and long hair;
those who encountered him were impressed by his imposing stature,
his stentorian voice, his mastery of scripture, his fearlessness in the
face of authority, and his striking resemblance to the Old Testament
prophets. One of many lay prophets who emerged to preach God’s
word during the 1620s, by the second half of the seventeenth
century the mere mention of Gifftheil’s name was enough to instil
contemporaries with fear, awe, or anger. For while many lay
prophets urged the populace to repent or do penance in hope of
avoiding war and its consequences, Gifftheil was different. Motivated
by a conviction that ‘false prophets and Sadducees’—by which he
meant Europe’s clerics—had goaded worldly rulers into the hellish
conflict, and, animated by a compassion for the poor and
downtrodden, from 1624 Gifftheil sought and won audiences with
Europe’s kings, princes, dukes and emperors. He implored them to
abjure the advice of their clerical advisors and institute a godly
peace according to biblical precepts, in which the wellbeing of the
poor would be assured. But this compassionate goal was tinged by a
dark fanaticism. Like the biblical Elijah, Gifftheil’s hopes were
dimmed by blood, and he was fully prepared to ‘slaughter the priests
of Baal’ (2 Kings 10)—to kill pastors and theologians—if Europe’s
rulers refused to listen to his prophetic voice.
Lucas Osiander, an esteemed theologian, chancellor of a Lutheran
university, and a leading figure in the state church of the duchy of
Württemberg, might thus seem a natural target for Gifftheil’s
murderous inclinations on that autumn day in 1634. But despite
being widely reported in the press and retold by contemporaries—
and in later centuries even providing the stuff of novels—there was
more to this sensational incident than meets the eye.3 For Gifftheil’s
attack on Osiander was not merely another of his violent
confrontations with religious authority; it was rooted in a bitter
personal history of familial enmity and lost honour reaching back
generations. Furthermore, while the incident marked the end of
Osiander’s public career, for Gifftheil it prompted a dramatic
transformation. After languishing in prison for six long months before
securing an unlikely release in 1635, he emerged from the womb of
his prison cell reborn as God’s Warrior, a second King David, who
had been chosen to wage an apocalyptic Holy War on Europe’s
battlefields and to institute a divine peace by his sword. Following
Jesus’s words in Matthew 10:34, Gifftheil would exact vengeance on
God’s behalf, both for the fall of his family and for the sake of
Christendom as a whole.

⋆⋆⋆
Although today Gifftheil has fallen into obscurity, an account of the
prophet’s life and exploits has long been a desideratum. His
contemporaries, fascinated by the divisive and tempestuous prophet,
desired such an account as a proof—or refutation—of his godly bona
fides. In the 1640s, one of Gifftheil’s long-time collaborators declared
that ‘a whole Volume could bee written of his strange Life.’4 In the
first decade of the eighteenth century, some forty years after the
prophet’s death, just such a manuscript vita circulated among
Europe’s religious dissenters, which even interested those who were
nominally opposed to his martial doctrines.5 Naturally, modern
historians have seen a different utility in such an account. Since the
nineteenth century, scholars have believed that a biographical
portrait of Gifftheil could furnish ‘deep insight into the religious
undercurrents’ of early modernity.6 In 1934, Ernst Benz, the doyen
of German church historians, declared that a monograph on the
prophet was ‘required urgently,’ both to inform scholarly debates on
the origins of German Pietism and to address the seventeenth-
century legacies of the Radical Reformation.7
This book offers the first full-length account of Gifftheil’s life,
thought, and exploits. From humble beginnings as the offspring of a
pastor’s family in the mountain ranges of the Swabian Jura, Gifftheil
earned his living as a barber surgeon before a succession of tragic
incidents—among them his father’s expulsion from successive
pastorates and his brother’s suicide—pushed him toward the fringes
of society. From December 1624 until his death in Amsterdam in
1661, Gifftheil wandered Europe as a prophet, one who uttered
divine speech. During this time he secured audiences with the great
and the good, certainly. But he also attempted to murder at least
two Lutheran pastors, demanded troops and gold bullion from
diverse authorities to pay for an army of Holy Warriors, escaped
from three prisons, and published at least 130 tracts and pamphlets
in several European languages. After his death, Gifftheil’s writings
were sent to leading Pietists such as Philip Jakob Spener and August
Hermann Francke, and were perused by Protestant missionaries
before they embarked on journeys to the Americas, India, the East
Indies, and Greenland. In the 1730s, Schwenckfelders fleeing
persecution in Europe carried with them to Pennsylvania manuscript
accounts of his adventures. Born from a family tragedy in rural
southwestern Germany, fired by a strange religious and political zeal,
Gifftheil’s ideas ultimately reached people across the world and
played a role, albeit a minor one, in the rise of Lutheran missions
and the story of global Christianity.
 ⋆⋆⋆
Biography and other contingent narratives are a fraught genre in
historiography, especially since the emergence of the ‘biographical
turn’ around 1980. According to critics, the narrative form of a
biographical study lacks partiality; a subject can easily be divorced
from their surroundings, and available evidence and knowledge of
‘what came next’ can be over-determinative. Questions have also
been raised about how representative the lives of extraordinary
individuals—like Gifftheil—can be.8 But the past is made up of a
diversity of voices, all of whose stories are valuable in illuminating
the conflicts and possibilities of the past.9 As a lay prophet, Gifftheil
offers an exceptionally unusual point of departure, for his story casts
new light on the murky underworld of seventeenth-century prophecy
and religious dissent.
Recent studies on prophecy in Lutheran Europe have overturned
prior scholarly opinion about the exceptionality of lay prophets in
early modern confessional culture. Once considered anomalous and
rare manifestations of ‘popular’ religious enthusiasm among the
lower classes, Jürgen Beyer’s indispensable work, in particular, has
demonstrated the seeming ubiquity of lay prophets and the diverse
backgrounds from which they stemmed. They could be found in
almost every territory, came from rural and urban areas, came from
all walks of life, could be young or old, married or unmarried, men or
women. Most were literate, some were educated, and many shared
modes of speech and comportment, often developed by imitating
local pastors.10 Despite their backgrounds, however, the vast
majority of these lay prophets preached messages of repentance
and penance, intended to increase piety within the territorial church.
Most, furthermore, were inspired by visions of angelic intelligences
to share their messages. Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil, however, was
very different. He too was raised in the apocalyptic foment of
Lutheran confessional culture, but ultimately rejected its tenets in
favour of a heterodox spiritualist religiosity.11 He was one of a select
group described by theological opponents as a ‘new prophet,’ a
person who, in the guise of legitimate prophecy, sought to
challenge, not strengthen, the territorial churches.
The crucible of Gifftheil’s dissenting political and religious thought
lay in what Antoine Faivre has called the ‘theosophical current,’ a
central pillar of the esoteric tradition in Europe.12 As Carlos Gilly has
shown, the term theosophia emerged in dissenting religious circles
around 1570 to designate an unmediated godly knowledge, instead
of a knowledge won through study or observation. It was first used
to describe the teachings of the infamous Swiss physician
Paracelsus, whose suppressed theological doctrines encouraged
experimental wisdom and prophetic knowledge informed by the
‘lights of grace and nature.’ In 1580, Johann Arndt, who later
became a Lutheran pastor and an influence on Gifftheil, described
theosophia as the ‘true age-old philosophy,’ a ‘divine and natural
wisdom of the ancients’ which trumped all ‘paper erudition.’13 In the
seventeenth century the term was adopted by Protestant dissenters,
Christian kabbalists, and lay prophets like Heinrich Khunrath, Jacob
Böhme, Paul Nagel, Johann Valentin Andreae, and Abraham von
Franckenberg, to represent a prophetic alternative, sometimes
stridently anticlerical, to institutionalised religious, educational, and
political authority.14
Faivre has identified three characteristics common to most early
modern theosophical works. The first is speculation about the
complex interrelations between God, humanity, and nature. The
second is the primacy of the mythic and mytheme—like the story of
the Fall—as foundations for this speculation; and the third is the
belief that humanity, through creative imagination, can access higher
supernatural worlds.15 Although the canon of theosophical literature
has typically been limited to the works of a handful of well-known
figures—Faivre himself names but eight German representatives—
the reality is that the number of theosophers in early modern
Germany was large, and the diversity of their teachings remarkable.
Unmentioned by Faivre, Gifftheil was both a student and exponent of
this tradition. His earliest tracts were influenced by Paracelsian and
Arndtian thought, and featured sweeping speculations about the Fall,
about spiritual rebirth, and about the interconnectedness of the
created world. Even as Gifftheil’s writings in later years inclined to
more simplistic anti-war rebukes and apocalyptic tirades, his
worldview remained theosophical. Theosophy provides a key to
unlocking his approach to the world, how he understood its failings,
and how he conceived of his own prophetic calling as a remedy to
them.
Gifftheil’s place in this tradition is confirmed by his supporters,
who, to a man, were supporters or exponents of theosophia. They
included followers of Jacob Böhme, Arndtians, and Schwenckfelders.
After his death, Gifftheil’s mission was taken up by figures like
Friedrich Breckling, Johann Georg Gichtel, and Quirinus Kuhlmann,
all of whom were deeply indebted to theosophical doctrines. As
such, Gifftheil’s story sheds considerable light on German
theosophical currents in the crucial period between Jacob Böhme’s
death in 1624 and the rise of Pietism in the 1670s. It casts this
current in a new and sometimes disturbing light. For while in modern
scholarship theosophy is chiefly associated with a gentle
introspective pacifism, Gifftheil’s story shows that several adherents
flirted closely with militarism, and that the theosophical movement
as a whole was forced to navigate a potential martial turn in the
early 1640s.16

⋆⋆⋆
Traditionally, historians have struggled to make sense of Gifftheil.
This is unsurprising for, even in the digital age, evidence concerning
his life and work is difficult to identify and to access. Printed editions
of his many writings, distributed in limited numbers in ephemeral
formats, were and are rare. Given that virtually all were printed
anonymously or pseudonymously, they are all but unidentifiable in
library catalogues whether traditional or modern.17 Similarly, though
manuscript material concerning Gifftheil’s life and writings can be
found in numerous libraries and archives throughout Europe, they
are often incompletely catalogued, or only identifiable by dogged
research and good fortune.
 The struggle for historians to find contexts for Gifftheil has
resulted in two distinct historiographical traditions concerning the
prophet. The first of these represents Gifftheil as a preternaturally
well-travelled and influential religious adventurer, typically described
as a pacifist, whose writings and agitations in England and
elsewhere were an inspiration for English Fifth Monarchism and
Quakerism.18 These remarkable claims, however, have their origins
not in statements made by any of the key figures, but are instead
repetitions and variations of the alarmist heresiographical ‘lumping’
undertaken by some of Gifftheil’s polemical detractors.19 Repeated
by multiple authorities, the prophet’s links to these movements have
assumed a patina of historical verity merely by dint of their
repetition. The result of the cross-pollination of Gifftheil’s obscurity
with associations inherited from early modern religious polemic is
nowhere better demonstrated than in the bizarre tale of Gifftheil’s
supposed audience with a sultan of the Ottoman Empire as a Quaker
missionary. As far as I can determine, this first appeared in a Dutch
scholarly work of 1902, which informed us that:

Gifftheil was so confident in his prophetic mission that he visited the Sultan.
The Sultan willingly listened to him, albeit with bemusement and good
humour, and, thanking him for his words, assured him in the manner of
Alexander’s testimony to Diogenes that he would be delighted to become a
Quaker, if he were not already a Muslim.20

Needless to say, this incident never occurred. While the prophet sent
at least one letter to ‘the Turks’ during his lifetime, the only other
indication that Gifftheil or his exhortations ever reached the Sublime
Porte comes, fittingly, in the pages of a 1691 novel.21 The story is
almost certainly the result of a confusion of Gifftheil with the Quaker
missionary Mary Fisher, who visited Sultan Mehmed IV at Adrianople
in 1658.22 Whether the interpolation of the German prophet into the
tale was the historian’s error, or appeared in an as-yet unidentified
anti-Quaker polemic of early modernity, is less important than the
circumstance that, although not corroborated by a skerrick of
primary evidence, it has been repeated several times, and its echoes
have even found their way into at least one standard reference
work.23
The second historiographical tradition emerged in Germany
around the turn of the twentieth century and was grounded in
archival research in Gifftheil’s home territory of Württemberg.
Between 1894 and 1916, the ordained Lutheran ministers Gustav
Bossert, Christoph Kolb, and Richard Stein all published articles in an
obscure local church history journal which sketched Gifftheil’s first
faltering steps from barber surgeon to prophet, a transformation
shaped by a familial history of heretical accusations and anti-
authoritarian embitterment.24 While based on substantial primary
sources, these articles minimised evidence that Gifftheil’s ideas were
grounded in writings by Paracelsus and Johann Arndt—one author
confidently declared that Gifftheil had ‘clearly never read a word by
Arndt’—and considered him, at best, a local ‘character’ (Original)
emblematic of less enlightened times. The only utility these
historians identified for Gifftheil was as an entry point to the murky
pre-history of Württemberg’s mystical, separatist, and Pietist
religious movements.25
Nevertheless, these tentative first brushstrokes soon found a
broader canvas. In 1922, Ernst Eylenstein published a lengthy study
on Gifftheil in the flagship German journal Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte.26 Eylenstein was the first to analyse Gifftheil’s
thought based on extensive study of the prophet’s writings held in
the library and archive of the Franckeschen Stiftungen in Halle an
der Saale, linking them to the earlier scholarship from Württemberg.
But Eylenstein’s theological focus—the article originated as his
dissertation for the degree of licentiate in theology—meant that his
treatment of the prophet’s life was summary.27 Even as his detective
work revealed Gifftheil’s influence on figures like Quirinus Kuhlmann
and Johannes Rothé, Eylenstein repeated older scholarly canards,
including Gifftheil’s influence on the Quakers and Fifth Monarchists.
Concluding that Gifftheil was best understood in the context of
mystical separatist Protestantism, Eylenstein’s greatest service was
in setting Gifftheil in a pan-European context and enticing others to
continue his work.28
Eylenstein’s scholarship had the desired effect. In 1934 Ernst
Benz devoted some space to Gifftheil’s apocalypticism in a study of
second adventism in Lutheranism.29 Around the same time, the
indefatigable pastor Theodor Wotschke reprinted many letters from,
to, and about Gifftheil in an impressive string of articles, which
linked the prophet firmly to the theosophical milieu of seventeenth-
century Europe. The pastor’s genius for discovery was, however,
rivalled only by his unwillingness to document his finds so that
others could follow in his footsteps.30 Nevertheless, Wotschke was
the first to remark on the militarist change in Gifftheil’s worldview of
1635, a change he cannily, though mistakenly, attributed to the
Peace of Prague.31 In Württemberg, too, Friedrich Fritz returned to
the archives, finding documents that further filled out our picture of
Gifftheil’s early years.32 But while this scholarship was rich in
documentary discoveries, all of it had been undertaken by ordained
Lutheran ministers working as church historians and rarely
recognised the significance of Gifftheil’s life and doctrines for fields
beyond their area of study.
This picture began to change with the cultural turn of the mid-
1960s, when scholars from disciplines like history, literature, the
social sciences, and politics also discovered Gifftheil. In 1965, the
German historians Martin Schmidt and Gerhard Schilfert—one from
each side of the Iron Curtain—contested the entrenched narrative
that Gifftheil had a wide-ranging influence on English religious
movements.33 Shortly thereafter, the cultural historian Richard van
Dülmen opened up new avenues to understanding Gifftheil and
other so-called ‘lone prophets’ (Einzelgänger) in a series of studies
dedicated to tracing the social and cultural history of Weigelianism.
Dülmen’s works drew attention to social dimensions of heresy and
the importance of lived contexts in shaping relations to authority,
communication, and networking.34 Meanwhile, in 1976 Horst Weigelt
argued that the prophet’s writings could contribute to the flourishing
scholarship on early modern peace initiatives, a focus of Cold War–
era academia.35
In the 1980s, further contexts emerged. The American historian
Robin Bruce Barnes showed that, in addition to apocalyptic visions,
Gifftheil was deeply influenced by ‘the teaching and practice of a
personal, everyday piety’ inspired by Arndt. This inclination was
documented by, among other things, Gifftheil’s authorship of at least
one prayer book, and his consistent advocacy of penance and
practical Christianity to his readers.36 Barnes’s findings nuanced prior
opinion and tied Gifftheil more concretely to the increasingly fraught
‘pre-history’ of German Pietism, which was being interrogated by
scholars with ever greater perspicuity. A year after Barnes, the
literary historian Günter Berghaus argued that Gifftheil’s writings,
which mostly comprised scriptural excerpts weaved into new
sentences, were a kind of text that ‘resists categorisation within
traditional literary genres.’37 Gifftheil, in other words, could also be
approached as a pathbreaking literary figure. Nevertheless, just as
these new historiographical perspectives opened other fields of
investigation, they simultaneously underlined Horst Weigelt’s
complaint that not even the most basic research tasks—such as a
bibliographical survey of Gifftheil’s many works—had been
undertaken. This meant that, despite the rich body of evidence and
opinion available to scholars, research on the prophet remained, in
Weigelt’s eyes, ‘faulty and fragmentary.’38

⋆⋆⋆
This book returns to the sources to find new contexts for
understanding and telling the story of the life of Ludwig Friedrich
Gifftheil. The cornerstone is provided by Gifftheil’s own writings. His
more than 130 printed works, issued in German, Dutch, English,
Latin, and French, have been studied alongside the several hundred
manuscript epistles sent by him and his followers to authorities,
friends, and enemies throughout Europe between 1624 and 1661.
This material, located in more than forty different libraries and
archives across the world, has been consulted alongside writings by
Gifftheil’s contemporaries, including personal correspondence,
administrative and judicial protocols, and testamentary and legal
records. This study provides a narrative of Gifftheil’s life that is
informed by concerns cultural, social, intellectual, and, of course,
religious. It seeks to embed Gifftheil in the circumstances of his
times, and, along the way, to shed light on some of the stranger
backwaters of European culture through which Gifftheil moved.
Unlike other once-maligned European occupations and trades—
such as the skinner, the executioner, the folk healer, the grave
digger, or the bandit—Gifftheil’s calling, that of a lay prophet, has
never transcended its historical odium.39 Indeed, Gifftheil’s brand of
prophetic conviction, one tinctured by violence and an unshakable
faith in his own righteousness, is now even more dubious than it was
to many of his contemporaries, evoking associations with political
terrorism and religious extremism. But Gifftheil’s time was very
different to our own. As such, to understand Gifftheil’s life we need
to engage with his prophetic claims earnestly. By this I do not mean
evaluating the truth of his claims, but treating his prophetic identity
and statements seriously, and without undue cynicism, as social and
cultural artefacts. As Willem Frijhoff has shown, prophets capitalised
‘on the current affairs of their religious and secular audiences.’40 In a
Europe upended by religious war, with strange portents appearing in
the sky, audiences were predisposed to hearing the words of
prophets, like Gifftheil, who claimed insight into divine plans for the
future and whose utterances promised the ultimate victory of the
righteous.
Gifftheil’s adoption of a prophetic identity—he once called
prophecy his office (Amt) or occupation—allowed him to transcend
his lowly social rank and to have his message heard by kings and
emperors.41 But to be recognised as a prophet by others, he had to
behave like a prophet. Gifftheil went to great lengths to hone
aspects of his appearance, comportment, and speech to convince
contemporaries that he spoke and acted in accordance with God’s
will. Fulfilling the role of prophet often involved, in the words of 1
Corinthians 4:10, becoming ‘a spectacle to the whole world’ and a
‘fool for Christ.’ Or, in Gifftheil’s own words, ‘a fool sent by God.’42
The result, both to many contemporary observers as well as later
scholars, is a life that seems haunted or even defined by madness.
Madness, real or alleged, plays several roles in Gifftheil’s story. At
times Gifftheil himself admitted to suffering from melancholy, that
condition memorably described by one contemporary as the ‘devil’s
sweat bath.’43 But references to his potential madness occur most
commonly when contemporaries engaged with his claims to
prophecy and impugned his pretence to speak on God’s behalf. As
such, an earnest engagement with Gifftheil’s prophetic claims, and
how they were evaluated by others, allows glimpses into a society
that produced, challenged, and sometimes encouraged the
emergence of figures like Gifftheil.
Despite all this, Gifftheil’s story, at its most basic level, is that of a
man’s attempt to redeem his family’s lost honour. Following a
meteoric rise from menial labourers in Bohemia to clerical stalwarts
in the wealthy Duchy of Württemberg within the space of a few
decades, the honour of the Gifftheil family was squandered in a
harrowing succession of religious scandals at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. While Gifftheil’s attempts to restore the honour
of his family ended in imprisonment and charges of heresy, these
experiences prompted his spiritual rebirth as a divine prophet, the
ultimate confirmation not only of his own rectitude but also a godly
restoration of the status of his maligned family. Even as the horizon
of Gifftheil’s ambitions expanded to encompass holy war in a violent
quest for godly peace, his compassion for the suffering of the
downtrodden never wavered, a circumstance which may well be
rooted in his own experiences of poverty and social rejection.
Gifftheil crossed and re-crossed a continent in a Quixotic and futile
pursuit of inherently unattainable goals. His story casts a dramatic
new light on the culture and society of early modern Germany and
Europe, the theosophical current, the origins of Pietism, and,
through the evangelism of his ‘spiritual sons,’ the stranger
apocalyptic roots of global Christianity.
 2
The Sins of the Fathers

For I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the sons to the third and fourth generation.
Exodus 20:5

Parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children put to
death for their parents; each will die for their own sin.
Deuteronomy 24:16

Where does the story of Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil begin? When the
prophet’s disciples and contemporaries gave their accounts of
Gifftheil’s life, they were concerned not with his worldly origins, but
with the origins of his divine calling. For them, Gifftheil’s story begins
in 1618, when the prophet was supposedly ‘awoken to his godly
purpose’ by the Thirty Years’ War.1 As for Gifftheil himself, who was
also concerned with curating his prophetic identity, he wrote that his
spiritual rebirth was initiated in the 1620s, when Württemberg’s
Lutheran ministers had scorned the doctrines of Johann Arndt in
open print.2 For modern readers, his tale might reasonably start with
the circumstances of his birth. Called Fritz by his family, he was
baptised on 18 October 1595 in the village of Böhringen in the
Swabian Alps, the third son of the local pastor Johann and Anna
Maria Gifftheil.3 But the true roots of our tale, I contend, lie well
before any of these episodes, in the history of the Gifftheil family.
From their modest beginnings in Bohemia through their rise to
prominence in Württemberg, the changing fortunes of this family set
the stage for the tragic and strange story of Ludwig Friedrich
Gifftheil to be played out.
 ⋆⋆⋆
Every summer, on the slopes of the Fichtelberg mountains in the
west of the Czech Republic, there flowers a striking plant once
believed to possess healing properties. Known to botanists as
aconitum anthora, it is distinguished by its yellow flowers which
resemble, with some imagination, a monk’s hood. Since antiquity,
preparations made from the volatile salts and alkaloids in its
tuberous roots were considered a nostrum against a variety of toxic
flora, like the lethal wolfsbane or the dreaded widow killer. Among
German speakers, these qualities lent the plant its popular name,
variously spelt ‘Giftheil’ or ‘Gifftheil,’ which means ‘antidote.’ At the
foot of the Fichtelberg mountains lies Cheb, today a picturesque city
of some 30,000 inhabitants. Once, Cheb was known as Eger, a
Germanic trading town at the western edge of the Kingdom of
Bohemia. It is here, in the late fifteenth century, that the family
Gifftheil is documented for the first time. Local records show that, as
the years progressed, branches of the family spread throughout the
Egerland and as far north as the Erzgebirge, the ore-rich mountain
range on the border with Electoral Saxony. Although the surname
appears in contemporary documents in a variety of exotic spelling
variations, August Vilmar has plausibly suggested its origin is
adjectival, and perhaps lies in an occupation.4 Thus, the patriarch of
the Gifftheil family, whenever he emerged, was perhaps commonly
known within his community as Gifftheiler—the antidotist, or healer.
Perhaps he earned this name because of his use of aconitum
anthora.
In 1516 the discovery of silver in the valley of St. Joachim, on the
southern slopes of the Erzgebirge mountain range, transformed the
economy of the region. Within a few years, an enterprising branch of
the Gifftheil family had relocated to the village of Joachimsthal in
search of their fortune. The settlement—some sixty kilometres east
of Eger—soon grew into a town of several thousand inhabitants. ‘To
the valley, to the valley, with mother, with all’ (Ins Thal, ins Thal, mit
Mutter, mit All) went a contemporary saying, as the roads into
Joachimsthal became jammed by would-be miners and craftsmen
from across Europe in search of their fortunes.5 Europe’s first thalers
—predecessors of the modern dollar—were minted there in 1518,
their name deriving from the argentine valley. In due course, with
the establishment of schools and churches, Joachimsthal attracted
learned humanists and natural philosophers, among them the
mineralogist Georg Agricola, author of De re metallica (On the
Substance of Metals, 1556), who was appointed town physician in
1527.6 But life in the town was hardly paradisiacal. Mine pits and
foundries devoured the countryside, leaving few pastures for grazing
animals. Crops refused to grow in the poor soil. The work was
backbreaking, the conditions were deplorable, and the rights of the
miners were at the whim of the local lord. As such, when the
Peasants’ War erupted in 1524—a series of rebellions across
Germany in which disaffected peasants sought to win rights and
freedoms through conflict—unrest also visited Joachimsthal. The
leader of the local uprising was Wolf Gyftel, who led a platoon of
miner-soldiers against local aristocracy in 1525 when his forces
sacked the town hall.7 Gyftel was captured and executed in Saxony
later in the same year. His is the earliest example we possess of a
member of the Gifftheil family using violence in a compassionate
quest for justice; he would not be the last.
The unrest in Joachimsthal was compounded by the town’s
unstable religious atmosphere. The Reformation came in the 1520s,
after which Catholics, Lutherans, and radical preachers all vied for
Joachimsthal’s souls. The settlement’s first Protestant pastor, Johann
Sylvius Egranus, was a former colleague of Thomas Müntzer—one of
the firebrand leaders of the Peasants’ War—and devotee of the
humanistic teachings of Erasmus of Rotterdam. He was ejected from
his pastorate after a series of polemical battles with Martin Luther
himself. Between 1520 and 1524, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt,
later famed as a spiritualist and radical reformer, attempted to win
support and adherents in Joachimsthal.8 The confessional situation
would not be settled until the 1530s, with the arrival of Johann
Mathesius, one of Luther’s chief disciples and a co-compiler of the
Reformer’s influential Table Talk. Under his careful ministry,
Lutheranism gained ascendency in Joachimsthal, giving rise to the
aphorism ‘behold! Joachimsthal prospers with the gospels!’ (ecce
florent valles cum evangelio).9 Significantly, Mathesius also expanded
the local Latin school.
Accordingly, the reputation of the Joachimsthal Gifftheils was
forged not in its mines and foundries but in its schools. The
humanist education received by the family’s children allowed them to
transcend their lowly social status. We know the stories of two; the
brothers Joachim and Zacharias. Their acuity and zeal for the
Lutheran faith were noticed and fostered by Mathesius, and through
him, the brothers Gifftheil could claim a direct connection to the
founding father of their faith. The eldest, Joachim, was named after
the township’s patron saint.10 Born in the mid-1530s, he studied
liberal arts and theology in Wittenberg from 1551. After being
ordained as a Lutheran minister, he occupied a series of pastorates
in Saxony and Thuringia.11 Although learned, the ‘strong willed’
pastor was a stickler for church discipline and often ran afoul of
authorities. For instance, in Schmalkalden in 1556, he refused to
take a wife, which was otherwise a requirement for the office. In
1574 Joachim was invited to Pforzheim to become court preacher to
Karl II, Margrave of Baden-Durlach.12 There he authored books on a
variety of religious subjects in Latin and German, several of which
appeared on the papal index.13 He died in 1585. The motifs on his
gravestone in St. Martin’s Church in Pforzheim (Fig. 2.1), which unite
the miner’s pickaxe and hammer with Greek, Hebrew, and Latin
encomia, emblematise the improbable, rapid ascent of the Gifftheil
family from menial Bohemian labourers to clerical elite.
Fig. 2.1. Gravestone of Joachim Gifftheil, Pforzheim (1585), Altenstädter
Pfarrkirche St. Martin.
Image courtesy of Stadtarchiv Pforzheim – Institut für Stadtgeschichte, S1-15-7-5-
3, photo: Jürgen Wiesenfarth

Joachim’s younger brother Zacharias was the grandfather of Ludwig

Friedrich Gifftheil. After studying under Mathesius, he matriculated in
Leipzig in the summer of 1556 as a pauper.14 Ordained as a
Lutheran minister four years later, he experienced a similarly
meteoric rise as his brother. Initially serving as a deacon in
Göppingen in rural Württemberg, he was later pastor in Ebersbach
an der Fils, where he collected medical volumes for his library, such
as Hippocrates’ Opera (Basel, 1526).15 In 1573 he became court
preacher to the Count Palatine of Neumarkt in the Upper Palatinate,
but after only a year returned to Göppingen in the senior role of
superintendent. It was there, in the rolling hills of the Württemberg
countryside, that he lived out his days.16
Zacharias’ only son was named Johann.17 Born in Ebersbach an
der Fils around 1562, he studied at a variety of schools before
matriculating at Tübingen University in February 1580.18 Benefitting
from a ducal scholarship—awarded to the most gifted students in the
land—he studied liberal arts and theology, receiving his Magister
Artium in 1585.19 In 1586 authorities in Tübingen sent Gifftheil to
Regensburg to supervise the relocation of Württemberg preachers to
the city.20 He held his first formal office in 1589 as a deacon in
Göppingen, where he served alongside, and came into conflict with,
Lucas Osiander Jr., a figure destined to play a key role in the family’s
misfortunes. Five years later, Gifftheil became pastor in Böhringen in
the Swabian Jura mountain range, before moving to Heidenheim
another half-decade later.21 Like his father, Johann was a ‘lover of
medicine’ (amator medicinae). During his university years he
corresponded with members of the famous Swiss family Bauhin,
those noted botanists and physicians.22 Among his literary
productions we encounter a lengthy paean in praise of medicine as a
‘gift of God,’ the text drawn entirely from passages in scripture.23
 But if Johann inherited his father’s medical interests, he also
acquired his uncle’s divisiveness. In May 1606 Gifftheil preached a
sermon in which he apparently wished death upon the ‘two eyes’ of
the Duchy of Württemberg. The allusion was understood by his
congregation as an indictment of the duchy’s licentious ruler, Duke
Friedrich I of Württemberg.24 On 1 June 1606, in reaction to
complaints by parishioners, the duke ordered Gifftheil’s immediate
imprisonment for a period of three days while the matter was
investigated. Shortly thereafter, Gifftheil was expelled from his
position and asked to leave Württemberg. Communicating his
judgement to authorities in Heidenheim, the duke darkly intimated
that Gifftheil was escaping with a light punishment, a statement
suggesting that he had considered even graver means of retribution.
It must have been quite the sermon.
At a stroke, Johann Gifftheil was deprived of his living, his
income, his home, and his reputation. On 16 June 1606 he
petitioned the consistory court in Stuttgart for support. The
expulsion had left him in ‘great poverty,’ without any hope of redress
for his large family, among them the eleven-year-old Fritz.25 Drawing
attention to his long and distinguished service to the church, and
pointing to his family’s connections to Luther, Gifftheil asked if the
consistory might assist him in seeking an appointment outside of
Württemberg. While the request was met with silence, a reprieve
soon came. Late in the summer of 1606 the pastor was called by the
Baron Heinrich Hermann to be his court preacher at Hochmilchling in
Franconian Wilhermsdorf.26 Gifftheil marked the event by publishing
Christliche Valete oder LetzinPredigt (Christian Farewell, or Final
Sermon, 1606), inspired by Acts 20:1: ‘When the uproar had ended,
Paul sent for the disciples and, after encouraging them, said
goodbye.’27 Dedicating it to Heidenheim’s mayor, city council, and
the members of his former congregation, Gifftheil took his leave with
equanimity, encouraging all to continue the devotional practices of
penance and prayer that he had taught them. The text offered little
hint of the acrimonious circumstances behind his departure, other
than remarking that his path to a new living in Wilhermsdorf had not
been ‘without challenges from the devil.’28 Yet while Gifftheil publicly
affected serenity concerning his banishment, he likely expressed
very different views in private.
In Wilhermsdorf, Gifftheil continued to author polemical and
learned works. Perhaps some reflected his inner turmoil. In 1607, he
vented his anger in a bitter invective against the Jesuits charged
with re-Catholicising Regensburg, where he himself had worked hard
to establish a Lutheran foothold in the 1580s.29 The next year, he
waded into an ongoing Christological debate between theologians in
Württemberg and Gießen.30 His later works, however, were milder in
tone. Perhaps he found some solace in practical Christianity, recently
popularised by Johann Arndt’s Wahres Christenthum (True
Christianity, 1605–1610), a best-selling manual of prayer and
penance that, among Lutherans, was rivalled in popularity only by
the Bible. He combined this enthusiasm with a compassion for the
poor and an interest in social issues, as the volumes he issued in
1614 and 1615 on giving alms, doing penance, and the evils of
hyperinflation show. These books were not only learned works, but
also document the mounting economic and social crises which were
beginning to cripple Germany and set the entire Holy Roman Empire
on a path to war.31 The pastor’s compassion for his fellow man
undeniably left a lingering impression on his many children, several
of whom went on to careers in the Lutheran ministry or in medicine;
fields both that cared for the spiritual and worldly health of the
populace.
But the idyll in Wilhermsdorf did not last long. In 1615 the
Lutheran consistory in Stuttgart, led by court preacher Bernhard
Ludwig Löher, alleged that Johann Gifftheil was secretly authoring a
book promoting an ‘accord’ between Lutherans and Calvinists.32 The
very notion was intensely controversial. Since the sixteenth century,
Lutherans had been hypersensitive to so-called crypto-Calvinists,
members of the faith who followed Melanchthonian or even Calvinist
theological positions on certain subjects, like the sacraments.33 This
sensitivity increased in the decades after 1580, when several
Lutheran territorial rulers converted to Calvinism in a ‘second
reformation.’ Some Lutherans blamed crypto-Calvinists for lighting
the path. By the 1600s, as still more Lutheran rulers converted to
Calvinism, the problems posed by crypto-Calvinism, both real and
imagined, turned into an obsession. Wary of having both a recidivist
and crypto-Calvinist on their hands, authorities watched Gifftheil’s
movements, and post, with special care. Suspicions were heightened
early in 1616, when Gifftheil sent one of his pedagogical books to
the Calvinist Landgrave Moritz of Hessen-Kassel, perhaps in an effort
to secure patronage.34 Finally, that summer, Baron Hermann
received orders to send Gifftheil to Stuttgart and to ‘secure his
library and possessions’ for examination by authorities.35 The
subsequent search apparently provided evidence to substantiate the
long-held suspicions, for in late 1616 Gifftheil was expelled from his
pastorate after pressure from Württemberg churchmen.36 Although
the protocol of the hearing is not extant, the pastor’s troubled
history was almost certainly held against him. Johann Gifftheil and
members of his family lived out the final years of his life in exile
somewhere in the Calvinist Palatinate, where he died in the spring of
1621.37 How he made his living in the Palatinate is unknown.
Perhaps, as the historian Friedrich Fritz suggests, he became a
reformed lay minister.38 More likely he lived in poverty, his shame
and lost honour a yoke around his neck. What is certain is that
Johann’s story—a churchman’s fall from grace in a family of clerics—
impacted disastrously on the fate of his sons. It is to them that we
now turn.

⋆⋆⋆
Sometime in the 1580s, well before his troubles began, Johann
Gifftheil married Anna Maria Schopf, daughter of Johann Schopf, the
Lutheran abbot in Blaubeuren. Together, they had fourteen children.
Several followed their father’s dual interests in healing and religion.
The eldest, Johann Jr., studied theology in Tübingen. In 1611 he was
appointed pastor in Poltringen, before settling in Mehrstetten.39
Another minister was the star-crossed Abraham.40 Born in
Göppingen in 1594, in May 1614 he entered the famous Tübingen
Stift, a training college for Württemberg’s clerical and state elite,
which had been attended in the past by luminaries like Johannes
Kepler, Wilhelm Schickhard, and others. His Magister Artium was
conferred on 7 February 1616, the same day as that of his father’s
former colleague, Lucas Osiander, who had moved away from the
ministry toward an academic career.41 Two other brothers pursued
careers in medicine, albeit not as university-trained physicians but
menial barber surgeons. The younger was Georg Paul, born in
Willhermsdorf in 1616, who later practised his trade in Stuttgart.42
The elder was Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil, who was born in Böhringen
in the autumn of 1595. We don’t know how all these children
reacted to their father’s misfortunes of 1606 and 1616. While few
still lived in the paternal home, all nonetheless had to grapple with
the social stigma that accompanies disgrace and lost honour. Some
family members accepted their lot with dignity. Others bristled
against the perceived injustices, sentiments which gradually grew
into bolder resentments. This volatile mixture of wrongs and slights,
real or imagined, set in train a complex series of circumstances that
would call forth one of the Gifftheil sons as a prophet.
The catalyst was the sad fate of Abraham Gifftheil. On 10
November 1618 Gifftheil sat his final theological exam. Synodal
authorities in Stuttgart were far from impressed by the results.
According to their records, Abraham’s progress had been middling,
his sermons mediocre.43 As such, he was recommended to a
deaconate in the isolated town of Hornberg in the Black Forest.
There, it was hoped, he could hone his talents under the guidance of
an experienced pastor. But like his father before him, Abraham found
himself drawn to controversy. Already by 1620 he had received a
formal warning after members of the congregation in Hornberg had
complained about his comportment. In 1621, a delegation of church
visitors learnt that Abraham was hard-working, but habitually aired
private grievances from the pulpit. As a result, Gifftheil received a
final warning from Stuttgart. Any future transgression would mean
the loss of his position. Although Abraham promised to take more
care, in early 1622 he delivered a coup de grâce in the form of a
letter to Duke Johann Friedrich of Württemberg. It detailed sixteen
accusations about Hornberg’s pastor, Johann Jakob Stuber, and one
of the town’s minor administrators, Cornelius Keller. According to
Gifftheil, both men had embezzled money, while Keller was involved
in immoral activities.44 Gifftheil demanded that the actions of the
pair be investigated.
Befitting the magnitude of his allegations, Gifftheil was
commanded to deliver to Stuttgart the necessary evidence to
substantiate his claims by 5 April 1622. Yet the rancorous deacon
took the stipulation as a personal indictment. When he duly
appeared before the Stuttgart Consistory Court—the chief
administrative body of the state church—on the named date, he
delivered an extraordinary tirade against Württemberg’s Lutheran
establishment. He called the recently appointed director of the
church council in Stuttgart, Ulrich Broll, a ‘new Nero’ who happily
fiddled while the state church went up in flames. Furthermore,
Abraham accused the Lutheran state church of supporting a suite of
heresies, including Pelagianism, Epicureanism, Schwenckfeldianism,
atheism, and crypto-Calvinism.
These bizarre allegations—which authorities classed as ‘atrocious
and injurious’—are all but inexplicable, I suggest, except when
considered in light of the history of the Gifftheil family. Perhaps the
biggest indication of the importance of Gifftheil’s familial past in the
affair was Abraham’s vitriol for the court preacher Bernhard Ludwig
Löher. Ignored by the accuser in the earliest hearings, Abraham
eventually accused Löher not only of adultery, but held him
personally responsible for his father’s expulsion from Wilhermsdorf in
1616.45 This familial dimension, accorded little attention by prior
historians, paints Abraham Gifftheil’s case in an entirely new light: it
is impossible not to notice that his denunciation of Württemberg
authorities as heretics and crypto-Calvinists inverted the accusations
levelled against his father. Consciously or not, Abraham Gifftheil was
fighting for the honour of his family.
Fig. 2.2. Abraham Gifftheil, ‘Crypto Calvinismus Wirtembergicorum’ (1622), title
page.
Courtesy of Stuttgart ELKA, A 26 Nr. 720,7

But this was not a fight he could win. While authorities plotted
their next move, Gifftheil briefly returned to Hornberg, where his
presence became so odious that some of his congregation refused to
accept sacraments from him.46 On 31 May 1622 he was suspended
from his duties and ordered to return to Stuttgart. He duly appeared
before authorities on 16 July, on which date he presented them with
a manuscript tract titled ‘Württemberg’s Crypto-Calvinism’ (Fig.
2.2).47 In it, he clad the bare bones of his accusations with some
theological flesh by contesting Württemberg’s stance on the election
of grace.
The doctrine of an election of grace was the cause of considerable
dispute and anxiety to many Lutherans. An inevitable result of the
split with Catholicism, the question of who would be saved was a
core question for adherents, many of whom wondered if Luther’s
doctrine of faith alone (sola fide) was adequate.48 The unease
deepened in 1619 when double predestination—the doctrine that
some persons were created to be damned—was adopted as an
article of faith by reformed confessions at the Synod of Dort. At the
margins of the faith, in particular, the issue came under renewed
scrutiny. In 1621, the theosopher Jacob Böhme, after several
acrimonious disputes about the doctrine with his followers in Lower
Silesia, remarked that doubts about salvation ‘had distressed a great
many people,’ and had even provoked a kind of ‘madness’ (Wahn).49
So it seems to have been with Abraham Gifftheil. Although the
Lutheran position on election and salvation was articulated in the
Book of Concord (1580), Gifftheil rejected all limitations on
atonement. These, he argued, opened the floodgates to crypto-
Calvinism, Epicureanism, and other ills. The results, he claimed,
were made manifest by Württemberg’s clergy, who, convinced that
they were destined to salvation, delighted in adultery, slovenliness,
and excess. The title page of Gifftheil’s tract included an adaptation
of Jerome’s aphorism that ‘as soon as a scorpion is discovered, it is
to be bruised,’ so that ‘pure faith may suffer no delays.’ His
interlocutors agreed with this sentiment, though not in the sense
Gifftheil hoped.
Over three lengthy hearings held between 16 July and 10 August
1622, Abraham Gifftheil’s arguments were systematically
interrogated for traces of heresy. In these sessions, the Hornberg
deacon insisted that those who did not teach the true doctrine of
predestination were ipso facto crypto-Calvinists. Yet the authorities
heard only statements ‘partially mistaken and blasphemous.’50 By the
end of the second meeting, many of them were convinced that
Gifftheil was a Huberian, a doctrine named for the controversial Bern
theologian Samuel Huber, who argued for universal atonement,
election, and justification.51 The third and final hearing, on 10
August 1622, all but confirmed this. On this day, Gifftheil was
summoned before an extraordinary assembly of the consistory,
which was also attended by theologians from Tübingen, among
them Theodor Thumm and Lucas Osiander; the man who had
bickered with Abraham’s father in Göppingen and received his M.A.
on the same day as Abraham himself. In this meeting, Gifftheil
unequivocally rejected the Lutheran belief that God had created all
people as beings capable of salvation if they sought God and
accepted the true means of grace promoted through Christ’s
suffering. Like Huber, Gifftheil dismissed this as a conditional
‘bungling election’ (Stümpelwahl). He would not be convinced
otherwise. After six long hours of discussion, Gifftheil’s interlocutors
decided that the young deacon was a haereticus simplex, an
obstinately misguided member of the faith who erred in his
theological opinions and posed a danger to others. He was
condemned to gaol in Hohenwittlingen, an infamous prison in Bad
Urach reserved for criminals and heretics, where it was hoped that
he would see the error of his ways during the endless days of
backbreaking labour. In Hornberg, Gifftheil’s possessions were
inventoried. Among them clerics discovered writings—not further
specified—that were ‘more than godless’ in nature. The court’s
decision was justified.52 After a bright start as a prodigy of the
Tübingen Stift, the former deacon now languished in prison.
Abraham Gifftheil had come to Stuttgart accusing authorities of
heresy but left in shackles, accused of heresy himself. It was a final,
ironic inversion in his unwitting quest to banish the ghosts of his
father’s misfortune.

⋆⋆⋆
As the drama unfolded around Abraham Gifftheil in Stuttgart, parallel
developments took place elsewhere in the life of his brother Fritz. In
his twenty-eight years, Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil had already led an
adventurous life, although by all accounts he had accomplished little.
Not as gifted as his brothers intellectually, he had received a basic
education in local schools, so could read and write in German. At
some point, as a youth, he had begun an apprenticeship as a barber
surgeon. This was a trade which, though profitable and necessary,
was in some areas of Germany tainted with dishonourable
associations on account of the close contact that its practitioners had
with the blood and the bodies of others.53 Armed with a bag full of
knives, shears, bone saws, mallets, nails, needles, tongs, and pliers,
Fritz had to become proficient in a variety of procedures before
becoming a master of his trade. In his influential handbook Die
grossen Wundartzney (The Great Book of Surgery, 1536), Paracelsus
detailed many of these operations, from the amputation of limbs to
the removal of rotting flesh and pulling teeth. Elsewhere, however,
the Swiss physician wrote that a surgeon should also take care to
learn the properties of medicinal plants and their effects, and not
shun any knowledge of healing, regardless of whether it derived
from folk wisdom or alchemical alembic.54 In 1616, as a twenty-one-
year-old, Gifftheil seems to have broken off his journeyman years to
follow his father into exile in the Calvinist Palatinate. There he likely
continued to practice his trade, but it is unknown whether he did so
under the formal mentorship of a new master, or if he struck out on
his own as a freelance surgeon and healer.
On 26 August 1619, Gifftheil’s life was thrown into turmoil again
when the Elector Palatine Friedrich V was elected to be King of
Bohemia. Since 1526, the position of monarch had been occupied by
an Austrian Habsburg. But the Bohemian nobility, appalled by King
Ferdinand II’s intentions to revoke freedom of religion in the
territory, had revolted in 1618, their marshal intentions signalled by
the defenestration of two Habsburg diplomats from a tower of the
Prague Castle. The nobility’s subsequent election of a Protestant
monarch drew the Palatinate into the Bohemian Revolt, a conflict
which ultimately sparked the Thirty Years’ War.55 As a result, Gifftheil
enlisted as a soldier and field surgeon in the armies of the Protestant
Union, joining the war against the empire’s Catholic powers.56 While
soldiery was sometimes a lucrative pursuit, the demands placed on
field surgeons were extreme.57 In active service Gifftheil would have
borne arms, accompanied regiments to the frontlines, set bones, and
sawed limbs with gore-caked instruments amidst the hiss of musket
shot, the screams of the wounded, and the roar of cannon.58 While
at least one historian has asserted that Gifftheil was among the
15,000 Protestant troops under Duke Christian of Anhalt who were
routed at White Mountain in Bohemia on 8 November 1620, this is
far from certain.59 In any case, the experience of war was a defining
element of Gifftheil’s life, one that likely shaped his lifelong
dedication to achieving peace. Gifftheil witnessed first-hand the
horror of the battlefield, something not easily expunged from
memory. Unfortunately, he seems never to have written a word
about his traumatic experiences as a soldier, a circumstance that, of
itself, might be a sign of its lasting impact.
In May 1621, only shortly after the armies of the Protestant Union
were dissolved, Gifftheil returned from active duty to Württemberg.
There he lodged with his older brother Johann, pastor of the tiny
village of Mehrstetten, located some twenty kilometres east of
Ulm.60 Here Gifftheil passed his days in comparative tranquility,
wandering the countryside, collecting herbs for unguents, cutting
hair, pulling teeth, dressing wounds, letting blood, and setting bones.
It is uncertain if he was able to earn a living from these services.
After his father died in the summer of 1621 he inherited some
money, but it was not much. In the evenings he browsed his
brother’s books. Despite his practice of medicine in Mehrstetten, one
cannot shake the impression that Fritz, now twenty-eight years old,
was something of a layabout. And perhaps an embarrassment. Other
men of his age were married, had mastered trades, owned property
—or at least owed money—supported families, and occupied
respectable livings. Gifftheil, still a journeyman in middle age, did
none of this.61
Fig. 2.3. Johann Arndt, portrait (ca. 1625), engraving, Jacob van der Heyden
(undated).
© Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, Portrait Collection A-25189

In this regard, surgery was not Gifftheil’s only pursuit in Mehrstetten.

Decades later he claimed to have also worked as ‘a chymicus and
artist,’ or, in other words, an alchemist.62 Given his profession as a
healer, there is little reason to question this claim. Perhaps he used
rudimentary distillation techniques to prepare medicaments, as was
common. But Gifftheil was also familiar with alchemical literature, in
particular the medical and theoretical works of Paracelsus. His
knowledge of this material is important, for several of Paracelsus’
works shaded off into areas of theological speculation that bordered
on the heretical.63 So too did Gifftheil’s other reading. In particular,
he was an admirer of Johann Arndt’s True Christianity, a favourite
book of his father’s (Fig. 2.3). Almost immediately upon publication,
Arndt’s unassuming devotional manual became a lightning rod for
controversy. This was mainly due to its silent incorporation of
passages from suppressed theological works by Paracelsus and the
infamous Zschopau pastor Valentin Weigel.64 Once these sources
were detected, several Lutheran theologians decried the book as a
Trojan horse for heretical doctrines.65 They were not wrong. In
1620, Balthasar Mentzer in Gießen complained that some
Schwenckfelders saw their doctrines confirmed by True Christianity.66
A handful of theosophers even began to see Arndt as a kind of
prophetic figure, or a harbinger of apocalyptic change.67 In the
pages of True Christianity, Gifftheil not only had an exhaustive
manual of practical Christianity that he admired greatly, but access
to several of the sources of the German theosophical tradition. It
encouraged him to seek out volumes of a more mystical bent,
including the Theologia Deutsch (German Theology) and the
sermons of Johannes Tauler.68 Gifftheil’s interest in these works was
clearly distracting him from the time he might have dedicated to
building a life, and his profession, in Mehrstetten.
 Gifftheil’s relationship to this reading material was not merely
passive. It may have been encouraged by first-hand contact with
Württemberg’s Schwenckfelder community. This group lived in
Justingen, less than an hour’s walk east of Mehrstetten, where they
dwelled under the protection of Georg Ludwig von Freyberg. In
addition to offering shelter to religious dissenters, Freyberg had also
corresponded with Johann Arndt himself about practical Christianity,
an exchange cut short only by the churchman’s untimely death in
1621.69 It is thus perhaps no coincidence that, next to Arndt’s works,
Gifftheil’s vade mecum was a worn sixteenth-century edition of
Caspar von Schwenckfeld’s prayer book Deutsch Passional (German
Passional).70 The impact of this reading material, and perhaps also
his acquaintances, soon became apparent.
In 1622, just as news of Abraham Gifftheil’s mounting misfortunes
reached Mehrstetten, the sedulous pastor Johann began to notice
changes in the language and behaviour of his ‘dear brother Fritz.’ At
the vicarage dinner table, his brother made scandalous statements
about the clergy, decrying them as pharisees and complaining loudly
that the Lutheran church was one of ‘mere stone’ (Steinkirchen) that
had no spiritual legitimacy. Alarmed, Johann snooped through his
brother’s papers, discovering among them several controversial
religious writings. Finally, on Laetare Sunday in late March 1623,
Johann Gifftheil summoned the ‘six living brothers’ of the family
Gifftheil to his home, where they urged Fritz to reform his ways. At
the gathering, the siblings used ‘godly and brotherly’ arguments to
help Fritz see the error of the path he had chosen, among them the
sad fate of their father and Abraham’s unhappy state. But Fritz dug
in his heels and, according to the pastor, ‘rejected God’s word and
the sacraments.’ This was the last straw, and he was asked to leave
the village. He took flight, leaving behind ‘the tools necessary for his
surgical, medicinal and barber’s practice.’71 Like his father and
brother before him, Gifftheil had been persecuted for his beliefs and
hounded from his home, but this time by his own family. He was a
vagrant, an outcast. For six months he disappears from view. When
he re-emerges into the historical record, it is to take up the cause of
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 — Niin — sanoi hän miettivästi — siitähän tiedän, että minulla
pienenä on ollut toinen isä ja toinen äiti ja että he ovat kuolleet. —
Enkä sen takia viitsinyt niin paljon huoliakaan siitä, mitä hän oli
jutellut — ensin — mutta sitten muistin hänen sanoneen, ettei
minulla ollut omaa kotiakaan sen takia. Äiti, miksi hän niin sanoi?

— Miksi? — Kai hän niin uskoi. Moni muukin luulee, ettei missään
muualla voi olla hyvä olla kuin luonnollisten vanhempain luona.
Missä on hyvä, siellä on, ja useimmilla kylläkin on hyvä. Mutta tiedän
varmaan, että on paljon lapsia — niitä on enemmän kuin
otaksutaankaan — joiden olisi parempi olla muualla ja jotka muilta
saisivat enemmän rakkautta kuin saavat omilta vanhemmiltaan. Ja
riippuuhan kaikki kuitenkin siitä, kuinka paljon rakkautta saa.

Poika painoi päänsä olkaani vasten.

— Monella on sama käsitys kuin hänellä — jatkoin puhettani —

siksi etteivät ole muuta nähneet tai kokeneet — eivätkä voi muuta
kuvitella. Mutta mitä me muitten uskosta, me, jotka tiedämme! Isä ja
sinä ja minä — me tiedämme enemmän kuin useat muut niistä
asioista — tiedämme, ettemme koskaan voisi pitää kenestäkään
enemmän kuin pidämme toisistamme. Sen takia olemmekin isäsi ja
äitisi, ja sinä olet lapsemme — eikä muu merkitse mitään. Ja missä
isä ja äiti on, siellä on myös koti.

Poika laski kätensä minun käteeni ja katsoi hymyillen eteensä.

— Ja miltä luulet tämän kodin näyttävän ilman sinua? Mahtaisiko

meillä olla tätä huvilaakaan, ellei sinua olisi! Ja olisiko meillä niin
hauskoja suunnitelmia — ja tulevaisuuden tuumia? Emmehän
pelkää vanhuuttakaan! Ei, kyllä asia on niin, että sinua me ennen
kaikkea ajattelemme — ja sinun pitää olla luonamme, kun me kerran
tämän maallisen elämän jätämme. — Sinulle jää silloin kaikki —
kaikki vanhat muistommekin menneiltä ajoilta — koko kotimme, sinä
ainokaisemme! Sinullako ei kotia olisi!

Yrjöltä pääsi syvä vapautuksen huokaus. Hänen surunsa oli jo

kokonaan haihtunut. Tartuin molemmin käsin hänen päähänsä,
suutelin häntä monta kertaa ja katsoin häntä silmiin. Hän vastasi
katseeseeni suoralla, iloisella silmäyksellä.

— Kyllähän minä sen tiesin — sanoi hän — mutta tahdoin kuulla

sinun sen sanovan.

— Ja olet sentakia odottanut minua?

— Olen vain odottanut ja odottanut. Minulla oli sitten niin ikävä

Toivolassa — halusin vain kotiin — ja sitten en ole muuta tehnyt kuin
vartonut sinua tulevaksi.

Hän kyyneltyi hiukan muistaessaan jälleen tätä pitkää ikäväänsä.

— Mikset kysynyt isältä — tai mummolta — hehän olivat kotona

—? Tai olisit jutellut edes Väinölle, joka on seuranasi ollut.

— En, en voinut — tahdoin kysyä sitä sinulta. Ja nythän minä sen

tiedän — tiedän oikein varmaan — enkä ajattele koko asiaa enää.

Niinpä päätimme yhdessä olla välittämättä sydämettömien

ihmisten puheista — eihän meidän tarvinnut olla heidän kanssaan
tekemisissä, me kun voimme turvautua hyvien ihmisten seuraan. Ja
hyvänsuovat ihmiset ovat kaikki samaa mieltä meidän kanssamme
— serkut myöskin, vaikka olivat olleet liian pienet mitään
virkkaakseen. Vihdoin päätimme mennä Pellonpään Ierikka-isäntää
tapaamaan pyytääksemme häntä lähtemään purjehdusmatkalle
saaristovenheellään. Väinö otettaisiin mukaan — isä hoitaisi kaiketi
jalusnuoria — ja Ierikka tietysti tapansa mukaan peräsintä.

Oli kaunis päivä ja hyvä tuuli, ja lähtisimme vaikka Seiskariin asti,

josta niin monta kertaa oli ollut kysymys. Mitä sinä, Yrjö, siitä
arvelet?

Tietysti! Se oli kädenkäänteessä sovittu. Ja portaat jymisivät

hänen jalkainsa alla hänen juostessansa alas — ja samassa kuului
hänen heleä äänensä verannalta.

Mutta sen jälkeen sattui sangen usein, että illoin tartuit käsiini
kuiskaten:

— Et tiedä miten olenkaan iloinen siitä, että minulla on isä ja äiti ja

oma kotini!

— Entä minä, Yrjö! Tuskin jaksaisin elääkään ilman sinua!

15.

Sen vannon ja vakuutan, ettei silloin sumu peittänyt maailmaa, kun

valmistimme tuota pitkää matkaa.

Olimme pariksi viikoksi asettuneet asumaan pieneen

satamakaupunkiin, jossa oli aallonmurtaja. Se oli ylpeytesi, Yrjö. Sen
kylkeen ankkuroivat Ariadne ja Astræa ja muut Itämeren höyrylaivat,
jotka kukin vuorostaan mennä porhalsivat muita maita kohti. Siellä
olimme vuokranneet pienen huvilan meren rannalla vartoaksemme
sitä päivää, jolloin sinä, Yrjö, lähtisit ensimmäiselle
ulkomaanmatkallesi.

Sehän oli meille kaikille merkkitapaus. Ja sitä odottaessamme

päivä paistoi täydeltä terältään, ja tuulen henkäys pani vain
huviksensa veden kalvon väreilemään. Illoin peitti hämärä
taivaanrannan, ja majakan valo vilkkui hetkittäin sumussa. Meillä oli
huvilamme verannalla lamppu, joka valaisi mäntyjen runkoja ja
niiden lomitse rantahiekkaa. Isä istui illan tullen teelasinsa ääressä
amerikkalaisessa keinutuolissaan, ja sinä, Yrjö, verannan kaiteella
katselit merelle päin. Joskus isä umpimähkään kurottautui ottamaan
kirjan verannan pöydältä ja luki siitä jotakin ääneen, tuokion perästä
sen taasen unhottaakseen ja tuijottaaksensa vilkuttavaan majakan
silmään.

Myöhästyneitä kylpyvieraita harhaili ryhmittäin pitkin rantaa ja

hävisi huvila-alueittensa varjoon. Rantaravintolasta kuului
jouhiorkesterin hillittyä soittoa.

»Kuin joki — kuin vuolas virta on aika» — luki isä — »tuskin on

jotakin noussut pinnalle, kun se jälleen huuhtoutuu pois. Ja uutta
kumpuaa esiin vuorostaan jälleen kadotakseen.»

Niinhän kyllä on, ajattelin itsekseni, mutta älkäämme sitä nyt

muistako. Harvoin on näin hyvä olla, uskotelkaamme, että tämä aika
ei lopukaan — ja että jokaisesta tällaisesta hetkestä syntyy uusia
samanlaisia.

»Pian kuolet» — jatkoi isä — »etkä kumminkaan ole vilpitön ja

vapaa intohimoista, vielä uskot ulkonaisten seikkojen voivan sinua
vahingoittaa, vielä et ole lempeä kaikille, menetellä oikein ei ole vielä
ainoa halusi.»
 Sinä käänsit silmäsi isään. Katsoit pitkään hänen valkoista
tukkaansa ja hänen puhdasta profiliansa hänen siinä istuessaan
lampun valossa.

Meri lauloi yksitoikkoista lauluaan ja ilma tuoksui suolaista

kosteutta ja havumetsää. Ilta oli lämmin ja valoisa, ja meri ja taivas
sulautuivat yhteen.

»Älä elä ikäänkuin sinulla olisi tuhat ikävuotta edessäsi» — kuului

taas isän ääni. — »Niin kauan kuin vielä elät, niin kauan kuin vielä
voit, ole hyvä!»

Hän laski kirjan pöydälle ja nosti polven toisen polven yli.

Keinutuoli narisi heikosti.

— Luit itsestäsi, isä — lausuit vakavasti — olet jo sellainen, vaikka

siinä sanot, ettet vielä ole.

Isä katsahti sinuun hieman oudoksuen. Hän oli itse

harvasanainen, ja sinäkin olit häneen nähden tottunut ehkä
pidättyväisemmäksi kuin muuten olit, joten tunteenpurkaukset teidän
kesken kuuluivat harvinaisuuksiin. Mutta jos kohta isä
vaatimattomuudessaan tuskin uskoi sinun todella tarkoittavan mitä
sanoit, tuntui äänensävysi hänestä nähtävästi hyvältä.

Istuin siinä äänetönnä tarkastellen teitä molempia. Ja kummastelin

silloin, kuten niin monesti ennen, teidän keskinäistä
yhdennäköisyyttänne. Oliko se pelkkä sattuma? Kuta vanhemmaksi
sinä, Yrjö, tulit, sitä selvemmin sinä myös ulkonaisissa piirteissäsi
muistutit isää. Eikä se ollut mielikuvitusta, se minun täytyi itselleni
tunnustaa, ja sen sanoivat muutkin. Muistin niitä tilaisuuksia, jolloin
olin nähnyt teidät yhdessä jossakin konsertissa istumassa
vieretysten, tukka ylöspäin kammattuna, samanlainen kaulus
kaulassa, musta kaulaliina samalla tapaa solmittuna molemmilla, yllä
musta verkatakki, kasvot molemmilla käännettyinä orkesteria kohti
— niin, ei voinut olla naurahtamatta aivan ilmeiselle piirteiden ja
ilmeen yhtäläisyydelle. Sinä, Yrjö, olit ruvennut tervehtimäänkin
kuten isä, olit käytökseltäsi käynyt yhä vaatimattomammaksi ja
hienotunteisemmaksi ja omaksunut isän koruttoman ja
hyväntahtoisen seurustelutavan. Niin, niin. Huomasin selvästi tuon
sisäisenkin yhtäläisyyden ja aprikoin itsekseni, mikä lopulta
lieneekään ihmisessä synnynnäistä ja mikä itsetiedottoman
vaikutuksen aikaansaamaa. Miten voimakkaasti kaikissa tapauksissa
kasvattajan persoonallisuus vaikuttaa lapsen herkkään sieluun!

Olimme ottaneet matkalaukkuumme muutamia kirjoja

kesälukemiseksi, ja isä oli juuri sattunut lausumaan kappaleen
Marcus Aureliuksen päiväkirjasta, joka oli ollut esillä pöydällä.
Lieneekö hänellä ollut kirjanmerkki siinä oman itsensä varalta? Ehkä,
ehkei. Hän ei juuri käyttänyt kirjanmerkkiä eikä hän tavallisesti
alleviivannut mitään. Muistin kirjan esipuheen, johon olin
alleviivannut muutamia kohtia, koska minulla on se paha tapa. Siinä
oli semmoista, joka erikoisesti kiinnitti mieltäni — nimittäin mitä siinä
sanotaan kasvatusisän ja pojan keskinäisestä suhteesta Marcus
Aureliuksen oman todistuksen ikuistamana jo tuhansia vuosia sitten.

Tarvitsiko minun mennä niin kauas taaksepäin ajassa, löytääkseni

vertauskohtia?

Ei tarvinnut, mutta tein sen huvin vuoksi. Kun ajattelen, etteivät

kahteenkymmeneen kolmeen vuoteen isä ja poika olleet erillään
päivääkään! Että he kaikesta olivat keskenään neuvotelleet! Siinä
olivat kulkeneet yhdessä pilarikäytäviä pitkin ja loistosaleissa
pehmeillä matoilla orjien palvelemina — nuo sielultaan stoalaiset! —
Eikä cæsarin valta noussut kumpaisellekaan vähääkään päähän,
kuten nousi Nerolle ja muille. Mitä vielä. Ei se sellaisilla ihmisillä
päähän nousekaan. Muistin lukeneeni Caesarin makuuhuoneesta,
että siinä seisoi onnen jumalatar kullasta valettuna. Se kuului sille
cæsarille, joka parastaikaa hallitsi. Mutta oliko kumpainenkaan
kiinnittänyt siihen sen enempää huomiota? Kaikissa tapauksissa —
Antoninus Pius tuntiessaan, että hänen viimeinen hetkensä lähestyi,
kannatti jumalattaren tulevan cæsarin makuuhuoneeseen — niin
kertoi esipuhe — ja hän puhui hänen kanssaan viimeisen kerran,
antaen hänelle perinnöksi tunnussanansa ja elämänviisautensa, joka
oli suurempiarvoinen kuin se valta ja asema, jonka hän samalla
jälkeensä jätti. — Niin, voiko mikään isä tehdä enemmän poikansa
hyväksi? Voiko hän lahjoittaa hänelle mitään kalliimpaa kuin täyden
luottamuksensa ja kokemuksensa varaston? — Marcus Aureliuksella
ei ollutkaan pitkän elämänsä taipaleella mitään sen pyhempää kuin
hänen isänsä muisto. Isän tunnussana oli hänen elämänsä ohjeena.
— Ja niin suuressa määrin oli hän kansansa rakastama, että kaikki
nimittivät häntä joko »isäkseen» tai »pojakseen» aina kunkin
ikäasteen mukaan.

Entä jälkimaailma!

Niin, jälkimaailmaa olimme me kolme tällä verannallamme meren

rannalla.
Miltei kaksi tuhatta vuotta hänen kuolemansa jälkeen.

Sellaista ja vielä paljon muuta tuumin itsekseni lampun palaessa ja

hämärän peittäessä meren rannan.

*****
 Mutta kun aamu valkeni, olivat kaikki syvämietteisyydet häipyneet
itsestänsä. Kahvi höyrysi verannan pöydällä ja uimahousut riippuivat
kaiteella. Ja ulapalla lähtivät ensimmäiset aallot liikkeelle
aamutuulen herättäminä Ensimmäiset purjeet välkkyivät auringossa
ja siellä täällä joku varhainen liikehtijä meloi kanootissaan rantaa
pitkin.

Silloin juoksit alas portaita lakki niskassa ja uimaliina mytyssä

kainalossa.

Se oli sellaista aikaa, ettemme tienneet ihanampaa. Me kolme

kuin kaukaisella merensaarella. Muistatko miten aurinko paahtoi
selkäämme ja miten koetin punaisella päivävarjollani suojella
päätäni, hatuttomana kun enimmäkseen kuljin? Välistä sama varjo
siimesti meitä kaikkia meidän rantahiekalla loikoessamme toistemme
seurassa.

Ja isän silmät räpyttelivät hyväntuulisina panamahatun lierien alta,

ja näin, että aurinko loi pieniä valopilkkuja hänen kasvoihinsa hatun
punoksien lomitse.

Ja sinulla, Yrjö, oli pehmeät ja vielä kehittymättömät piirteet,

ojensit pitkät, laihat sääresi ja valoit hiekkaa niille, kunnes
ainoastaan sandaalien kärjet pistivät esiin kallionkärkinä
hiekkaharjujen päässä. Sinulla oli täysi miehen mitta, matala ääni,
jota itse mielelläsi kuuntelit, mutta joka hypähti diskanttiin, kun et
ollut vanuillasi. Ja sinulla oli jo pientä haituvaa huulten ympärillä,
vaikka olit ainoastaan viisitoistavuotias.

— Katsohan, Yrjö — sanoo isä ja osoittaa pään liikkeellä metsän

rantaa — heillä on siellä tenniskenttä — sinun pitäisi tutustua muihin
nuoriin ja lyödä tennistä heidän kanssaan.
 — Juttelen mieluummin täällä teidän kanssanne.

— Meidän seuraahan sinulla on aina — mutta minun käy sinua

sääli, kun kuljet täällä niin yksin.

— Yksin? — sanot sinä kysyvästi. — Pian eroan teistä.

Matkustanhan pian pois.

— Jos kohta, tulet sitten takaisin ja kaikki on kuin ennenkin, mutta

tennistä sinulla ei ole syksyllä.

Mutta sinua ei haluta. Ajatuksesi askaroivat lakkaamatta siinä,

mikä sinulla on edessä. Kohottaudut istumaan vetäen sääret allesi ja
rupeat puhumaan siitä, mikä nykyään alati täyttää mielesi.

Matkasta. Pian nousisit tuollaiseen suureen höyrylaivaan ja

viilettäisit meren yli vieraaseen maahan, joka ei kuitenkaan ollut
kokonaan vieras. Saisit liikkua melkein omin neuvoinesi, mutta
laivamatkan tekisit yhdessä yhteisen ystävämme kanssa, joka oli
sinua vanhempi ja meitä nuorempi juuri sen verran, että hän oli
molemmille asianomaisille yhtä läheinen. Tämän ystävän
saapuminen läheni päivä päivältä. Ja sinä asuisit samojen
omaistemme kodissa, joiden luona me kerran suuren kaupungin
surinassa olimme toisiamme odotelleet.

Tietysti olit siitä kaikesta jännityksessä. Olihan aluksi kyllin

merkillistä jo sekin, että sait lähteä ulkomaille näkemään kaikkea
sitä, mitä siellä olisi nähtävänä. Mutta sen lisäksi oli tuo vieras maa
synnyinmaasi. Olihan luonnollista, että se erikoisella tavalla
houkutteli puoleensa. Ja siitä riitti puhumista loppumattomiin.
 Voisihan nyt ajatella, että meissä vastoin omaa tahtoamme olisi
herännyt jonkinlainen kateellisuus tai menetyksen pelko. Mutta
omaksi hämmästykseksemme emme lainkaan tunteneet mitään
sellaista. Mikset saisi rakastaa muitakin meidän rinnallamme — ja
mikset muita maita meidän maamme ohella? Toinen ei toistaan
estänyt. Ja jos ehkä näyttäisikin siltä, niin se ei olisi pysyväistä. Tuo
toinen maa oli meille itsellemme sangen tuttu ja rakas, ja meillä oli
se käsitys, että kuta laajempi on ihmisen kiintymys, sitä vapaampi ja
suurempi on hänen katseensa.

Olihan sinulle verraton onni saada viisitoistavuotiaana tehdä

ensimmäinen ulkomaanmatkasi tutustuaksesi maahan, johon
suuresti ihastuisit ja joka erikoisella tavalla olisi sinua muita maita
lähempi. Silloin välttäisit kaiketi myöhemmin ahdasmielisyyden etkä
koskaan salpautuisi erilleen siitä yhteisestä, joka kuuluu kaikille.

Sinä siis valmistauduit matkallesi kirjojen ja karttojen avulla, jotka

levitit eteesi hiekalle. Ja kyselit tuhansia seikkoja kotiutuaksesi siellä.

Mutta kun iltapäivällä ilma viileni, teimme joskus kahden kesken

pienen kävelyretken rantaa pitkin niemelle asti, jonka kärjessä pieni
ravintola sijaitsee. Muistatko sen pienen suippokattoisen
rakennuksen, jota parvekkeet ympäröivät? Isä väsyi astumaan syvää
hiekkaa ja jäi mieluummin istumaan korkeaan rantatuoliinsa ja
katselemaan merta. Sellaisina iltahetkinä puhuin sinulle joskus niistä
asioista, joihin en omasta aloitteestani ollut kajonnut satusohvan
ajoilta saakka. Ajattelin, että sinussa voisi herätä uusia tunteita
tämän ulkomaanmatkan varrella, ja koetin evästää sinua kaiken
varalta. Olit täynnä kiitollisuutta luottamuksestani. Kerroin sinulle
paljon sukuperästäsi, mutta en sittenkään kaikkea. En hennonut.
Etkä sinä kysynytkään. Jäit siihen luuloon, etten viimeisiä
yksityiskohtia myöten kaikkea tiennytkään. Ne säilytti salaisuutenaan
laitoksen johtajatar-diakonissa, ja koulun lopetettuasi saisit häneltä
kaikki tiedustella. Sitten ylioppilaaksi tultuasi. Jos silloin tahtoisit.

Koetin sinua tutkia. Tein kiertäen kaartaen kysymyksiä ja katsoin

sinua silmiin. Mutta katseesi oli rauhallinen ja kirkas. Sinua ei mikään
epämääräisyys näkynyt häiritsevän. Eikä varmaan häirinnytkään.

Mutta minun olisi sittenkin pitänyt sanoa sinulle kaikki. Mitään ei

olisi ollut menetetty, mutta paljon voitettu. Annathan anteeksi, etten
sitä tehnyt? Se olisi estänyt sinua rupeamasta niitä asioita
myöhemmin mietiskelemään ja sureksimaan. Niin, niin. Tiedät hyvin,
mitä tarkoitan. Mutta en sitä silloin ymmärtänyt.

Olimme molemmat silloin huolettomat, seurasimme lokkien

kiertoja ilmassa ja niiden välkettä auringossa ja lasten
hippasillajuoksua veden rajassa. He räpyttelivät käsiänsä kuin
olisivat lokkina kaaressa viiltäneet rantaa pitkin. Ja istuessamme
jälleen verannallamme isän seurassa oli ranta yhä täynnänsä meren
vaahtoa ja värikkyyttä, rattoisuutta ja iloa.

16.

Sitä ilon päivää!

Kun myöhemmin tahdoit osoittaa jollekulle sitä

luottamuksellisuutta, jonka soit ainoastaan harvoille, kerroit joskus
siitä päivästä.
 Kuitenkaan ei silloin tapahtunut mitään odottamatonta tai
merkillisempää. Helle oli painavampi kuin koskaan ja havumetsä
lemusi. Ystävämme Kaima — kuten häntä kutsuimme, koska teillä oli
sama nimi — oli saapunut junalla. Hänellä oli Tapiola niminen
talvihuvila kuusimetsässä, mutta tapiolaisuudestaan huolimatta hän
ilmestyi hienot, ruskeat kengät jalassa ja uusi panamahattu päässä.
Hänessä oli mielestämme jotakin yleismaailmallista, joka meitä
viehätti. Eikä sitä ollut ainoastaan ulkonaisesti. Hän oli todella
monipuolisesti sivistynyt mies. Erikoinen ja hieno ilmiö. Hänen
kanssaan puhuminen vei laajemmille vesille.

Olimme hankkineet matkaliput ja tarkastuttaneet passit ja vielä oli

jäljellä puolisen tunnin odotus, ennenkuin Arcturus lähteä jyskyttäisi
laiturilta. Oli liian kuumaa olla liikkeellä ja matka liian pitkä tavallisiin
olinpaikkoihimme kylpylän puistoon. Istuuduimme sentakia eräälle
laiturin lautapinolle aikaamme kuluttamaan. Miksi tuo hetki tuli meille
niin unohtumattomaksi? Kuorimme appelsiineja ja vertasimme niitä
toisiinsa, kenen oli suurin ja mehevin, olimme kuin lapsia emmekä
puhuneet mitään maailman tärkeitä asioita. Ja punainen
päivänvarjoni suojasi meitä kaikkia auringolta.

Ainoastaan sivumennen ennätimme huomata pitkän murheellisen

siirtolaisjonon, joka vähitellen sai passinsa tarkastetuksi. Vihdoin tuo
toimitus loppui ja oli aika nousta laivaan. Olihan sitä olevinaan jo
puoleksi suuressa maailmassa Arcturuksen kannella liikkuessaan,
kun sai kurkistaa hytteihin ja salonkeihin, nähdä laivan peilit ja
samettisohvat ja kuulla monien vieraitten kielten sorinaa. Pian sitä
mennä viiletettäisiin ulapalle eikä näkyisi maasta siintoakaan.

Olimme jättäneet toisillemme lämpimät hyvästit.

 Juoksit nostosiltaa ylös. Laiva hellitti köysiänsä, ja te seisoitte
vieretysten sen kannella, sinä ja ystävämme, huiskutellen meille
nenäliinojanne niin kauan kuin meidät erotitte.

*****

Niinpä alkoi matkanne meren yli.

Nyt perästäpäin tuntuu minusta kummalta ajatella, että sinä sitten

aloit lähestyä sen toisen maan rantaa, sen maan, josta olit meille
tullut.

Näen mielikuvituksessani, miten seisoit laivankannella ja näit tuon

uuden maan tasaisena viivana kohoavan merestä. Tulit yhä
lähemmäksi, mutta se ei siitä paljoakaan muuttunut.

Miten toisenlaisia ääriviivoja olit tottunut kotona näkemään! Nyt

nousi ainoastaan Marmorikirkon kupu pyöreänä kukkulana esille
tasaiselta rannalta. Sitten alkoi torni toisensa jälkeen sukeltaa esille,
lopuksi suurten rakennusten julkisivut. Kuta lähemmäksi tulitte, sitä
enemmän teitä ympäröi kuhiseva elämä satamassa, laivat
kaikenkaltaiset, huvipurret ja kalastusveneet, hinaajalaivat ja suuret
valtamerentakaiset, jotka kumeasti ulisivat mennessään. Siinä olivat
suuret telakat vasarankalskeineen ja paukkeineen, ja laiturilla oli
kiirettä ja kirjavuutta.

Mitä sinä tunsit sitä nähdessäsi?

Matkakumppanisi tarkasti sinua sivulta päin. Et mitään muuta kuin

iloa.
Vallatonta iloa.
 Näkikö hän oikein, Yrjö? Kyselit, olit ihastuksissasi. Oi, Yrjö, se oli
ihana matka! Ja olitte, ystäväsi ja sinä, kuin kaksi laitumelle irti
laskettua varsaa.

Ennenkuin tiesittekään, olitte keskellä tuoksinaa ja katselitte

ympärillenne kihisevässä ihmispaljoudessa.

Hyvä Jumala, miten hyvällä tuulella täällä oltiin! Kaikki ihmiset!

Ajuri seisoi vaunujensa ääressä ja nauroi, poika vihelsi operettia,
odottaja raitiovaunujen risteyspaikassa kuori banaaneja, herra löi
kupeitaan ja käänsi taskunsa nurin pienen tyttönsä huviksi. Ei
murjottamisen varjoakaan missään. Kaikki vain täydessä touhussa,
mutta miltei kuin huvikseen. Huoleton mieliala tarttui heti teihinkin.
Teidänkin piti heti paikalla keksiä jotakin hauskaa. Ja samaa vauhtia
te hyökkäsitte alas erääseen kellarikerrokseen, joka vanhastaan on
tunnettu parhaimmista hyötymansikoistaan. Minkä niminen? Aivan
niin, »Jacobs kælder» se oli, kirjoitit siitä, kuten kaikesta muustakin,
sitten meille. Teidän eteenne tuodaan vadit kukkuroillaan mansikoita
ja paksua kermaa päälle. Jordbær med flöde! Ja sokeria lisäksi!

Jordbær med flöde!

Osaako mikään tavallinen ihmiskieli ääntää noita sanoja?

Kuitenkin te niitä harjoittelitte, nauroitte toisillenne ja itsellenne ja
harjoittelitte uudestaan.

Sitten te lähditte tavaroinenne siihen huvilakaupunginosaan, jossa

ystävämme asuivat.

Mutta tuskin te olitte ennättäneet lausua terveisenne kotoa ja

hiukan perehtyä asuntoon, kun sinä, Yrjö, hävisit. Muut kyselivät
sinua toisiltaan ja katsoivat ulos ikkunasta. Sinä lähdit yksin ulos,
läheiseen pyökkimetsään.

Mikä sinua sinne veti? Mika kummallinen kaukainen vaisto? Siinä

seisoit ja katsoit ympärillesi.

Tällainen on nyt pyökkimetsä, ajattelit itseksesi.

Sen varjo oli syvä, sen harmaat rungot mahtavat, valotäpliä siellä
täällä, auringon läikät hohtaen läpi lehtiverkon. Ja korkealla latvoissa
oli vaalea, mehevä vihreys.

Suurta ja uhkeata ja rehevää. Ja samalla pehmoista ja ystävällistä.

Niin, tämä oli syntymämaasi.

Ymmärrän, mitä tunsit, Yrjö. Uuvuttava, onnea uhkuva riemu

valtasi sinut, mutta et tehnyt siitä itsellesi selvää. Seisoit vain ja
hengitit ja hymyilit itseksesi. Ja olit valmis täysin aistimin
vastaanottamaan mitä tämä maa sinulle tarjoaisi ja sen itsellesi
omistamaan. Tavallaan.

*****

Ensiksi tutustuit pääkaupunkiin.

Harhailit ympäri polkupyörä toverinasi. Kuta vilkkaampi

ihmishyörinä, sitä hauskempaa oli sinun huomata, miten keskinäinen
hienotunteisuus ja sopuisuus saivat katuelämän miellyttäväksi.
Ainoastaan pieni kädenliike, niin väistyivät polkupyöräilijät toistensa
tieltä. Automobiilit ajoivat hitaasti, vältellen turhaa häiritsemistä, ja
raitiovaunut lähtivät odotussilloiltaan soittamatta. Ja aurinko paistoi
näitten hyväntahtoisten ihmisten yli, jotka omaksi huvikseen koettivat
tehdä elämän mieluisaksi ja hauskaksi toinen toiselleen.

Sillä välin isä ja äiti istuivat parvekkeellaan sisämaan järven

rannalla ja katselivat portille päin, tulisiko sieltä ehkä kirjeenkantaja.
Ja portti narahti tuon tuostakin ja he tunsivat käsialasi kuorella.
Kiireisesti se avattiin, ja he lukivat sinun vielä jonkun verran
lapsellisia kirjaimiasi. Rakas isä ja äiti! He saivat tietää, että olit
kotiutunut »Strögetilla», jossa hieno maailma ennen päivällistä
kävelee, ja olit astunut kukkastyttöjen ohi Amagertorvilla, jossa
Absalonin kuvapatsas korkeudestansa tähystelee maailman
turhuutta. Että sieltä olit jatkanut pitkin Östergadea alas Kongens
Nytorville, istuutunut polkupyörällesi ja rientänyt eteenpäin puistoja ja
katuja pitkin.

Samaa tietä olit kiertänyt, kun kerran eräänä iltapäivänä yhdessä

olimme kulkeneet sanomalehtipoikien kilvan huutaessa,
grammofonien laulaessa kahviloissa, ensimmäisten lyhtyjen
syttyessä palamaan ja pojan painuessa yhä väsyneempänä
rinnalleni. Ehkäpä kertomukseni muisto joskus oli vilahtanut tajuntasi
läpi. Mutta sinulla ei ollut aikaa missään kauemmin viivähtää. Elit
kokonaan hetken elämää. Ja tultuasi ajostasi sekä kuumaksi että
väsyneeksi lepäsit välistä katukulmien käsirattaitten ääressä, syöden
omenia, päärynöitä, banaaneja!

Ei ollut vielä sota-aika.

Tiedän, että tarkastit kaikki nähtävyydet. Taidemuseot, kirkot,

automobiiliasemat, rautatiekonepajat ja telakat. Seisoit Finsenin valo
parannuslaitoksen ulkopuolella ja näit ihmisten, kasvot käärittyinä,
kulkevan siellä edestakaisin. Muistit silloin kuulleesi, miten tämä
Finsen jo poikana talonpoikien tavasta käyttää punaisia uutimia
tarttuvien tautien vastustamiseksi saa ensimmäisen herätteensä
myöhempään keksintöönsä. Minkälainen nero hän oli ollut — ja
miten hän sillä nerollaan oli palvellut muita! Finsen — kas hän se
vasta olikin ollut suurmies! Hänestä kerroit meille vielä
perästäpäinkin — muistatko — säihkyvin silmin!

*****

Pari kolme vuotta aikaisemmin olin kerran kysynyt sinulta, mitä

historiallisia henkilöitä eniten ihailit. — Ja olit vähääkään epäröimättä
heti luetellut nimet: Galilei, Newton ja Edison. Ikäänkuin muut heidän
rinnallaan eivät olisi voineet tulla kysymykseenkään.

Mutta eräänä iltana sullottiin sinut kymmenien muitten poikain kera

laivaan, joka vei teidät kohti kesän suurinta tapahtumaa —
partiopoikien kesäleirille Kalöhön. Sinä yönä saitte puolinukuksissa
väristä vilusta laivan kannella tai sälylaatikoilla, ainoastaan ohut
huopaviltti ympärillänne, tuntien partioelämän kieltäymyksien
esimakua. Mutta aamulla oli edessänne Kalön poukama ja sileä
ranta-alue, jonne jo muutamia telttoja oli pystytetty. Ja aloitte salvaa
ja paukutella täysin voimin.

Kun kuvittelen sinua seitsemänsadan partiolaisen seurassa!

Englantilaisiakin oli saapunut, ja norjalaisia ja kourallinen
ruotsalaisia. Saksalaisia tuskin oli kutsuttukaan, eivät he ainakaan
olleet mukana.

Entä suomalaiset! Silloin oli vielä se aika, jolloin meidän piti istua
kotona harmistuneina siitä, ettemme missään saaneet olla
näkyvissä.
 Eikö totta, Yrjö, sitä oli vaikea sulattaa? Se harmi paisutti mieltäsi
siinä pystyttäessäsi telttaasi. Jospa edes nuo tanskalaiset pojat
olisivat ymmärtäneet panna arvoa sille mikä heillä oli, mutta eivät he
käsittäneet sitä onneksi eikä miksikään. Pitivät sitä vain itsestään
selvänä asiana. Sitä oman maasi kohtaloa ajattelit viikon varrella yhä
enemmän, varsinkin päivän parhaimpana hetkenä, sinä hetkenä,
joka sinut eniten tenhosi.

Se oli heti aamulla. Ensin juoksivat kaikki pojat uimaan, ja siinä oli
polskuntaa ja huitomista ja huutamista. Mutta hetkeä myöhemmin oli
suuri kenttä aivan äänetön. Seitsemänsataa poikaa kiinnitti
katseensa yhteen ainoaan pisteeseen, lipputankoon kummulla — ja
siihen nousi hitaasti Tanskan lippu. Kaikki päät paljastuivat ja tangon
juurella soitettiin kansallislaulu. Ensin Tanskan, sitten Norjan ja
Ruotsin. Viimein Englannin.

Entä Suomen? Niin. Meidän kansallislauluamme ei saanut

missään kuulua.

Seisoit kauemmin kuin muut katselemassa tuota punaista vaatetta

valkoisine ristineen ja kerroit kirjeissäsi niistä hetkistä. Mitä tunsit,
sitä eivät muut aavistaneet. Tuskinpa oikein itsekään selvästi sitä
tajusit.

Siellä lepatteli sitten »Dannebrogen» koko päivän, hohtaen

auringossa, kunnes se yhtä juhlallisesti laskettiin alas illalla.

Mutta sinä punnitsit mielessäsi, mahtoiko kukaan noista toisista

pojista voida aavistaa, minkälaisissa oloissa kotona Suomessa
elettiin. Millaiselta oli tuntunut piilottaa partioveitsi kirjoituspöydän
laatikkoon ja pusero ullakkokonttoriin, jottei niitä keksittäisi, jos
venäläinen santarmi lähetettäisiin kotitarkastukselle. Sillä partioliike
oli Suomessa kielletty!

Punastuit suuttumuksesta sitä muistaessasi. Minnekä olitkaan

pistänyt suomalaisen partiomerkkisi? Kaikkihan siellä kotimaassa oli
kiellettyä ja parhaimmat ihmiset aina jostakin epäilyksenalaisia.
Nytkin niitä oli maanpaossa mikä Venäjällä Siperiassa asti, mikä taas
Euroopan maissa. Olit ainoa näistä pojista, jonka tarvitsi sellaisia
ajatella. Muilla oli kaikki valmiina.

Etkä sentään olisi tahtonut heidän kanssaan vaihtaa osia. Et.

Saavatpa joskus nähdä —!

Sitten otit osaa maastoleikkeihin ja leirielämään,

avustusretkeilyihin ja kaikenlaisiin harjoituksiin. Teidänhän piti
harjoitella monenlaisia kansainvälisiä partiotaitoja. Kerran tuli
kuningas kuningattarensa kanssa tervehtimään poikiaan, jotka olivat
mukana leirissä, ja lähetti sitten poikajoukolle monet kymmenet kilot
mansikoita. Siinä maassa on kaikki korutonta ja herttaista. Siis
mansikoita niin että sai syödä aivan vatsansa täydeltä. Eläköön
kuningas! Hän johonkin kelpasi. Ja eläköön kuningatar, Frederikillä
ja Knudilla oli suurenmoinen äiti!

Ja kun ilta joutui, pidettiin hauskaa suuren nuotion ääressä, ja

silloin oli uljain sankari se, joka oli suulain kokkapuheitten keksijä.

*****

Mutta partioleirin jälkeen tuli vielä eräs kokemus, ja se oli paras

kaikista. Se oli pitkä polkupyörämatka omaistemme seurassa läpi
koko Jyllannin pohjoisesta etelään.
 Jyllanti! Se oli oma maakuntasi. Sieltä olit kotoisin.

Näit hiekkasärkät, Yrjö! Näit meren, kun se hengittää kuin nukkuva

ja soudattaa aallon aallon jälkeen rannalle. Silloin katsahdit
ympärillesi ja huomasit, että tuuli ajaa riuttojen hiekkaa yhtä herkästi
ja vaivattomasti kuin vettä niiden alapuolella. Molemmat aaltoilevat.
Vinha tuuli vinkuu jaloissa, vaikka onkin tyven. Kun se myrskynä
ulvoo, vyöryvät hiekka-aallot korkeana kuohuna kanervikkokankaalle
asti.

Annoit meren huuhtoa paljaita jalkojasi ja muistit, että olit lapsena

leikkinyt näkinkengillä, joita oli tältä samalta länsirannalta poimittu.

Muistatko kanervakankaan, Yrjö? Ja metsäistutukset, tämän

kansan sitkeyden Korkean veisun? Seisoit kukkulalla ja näit viljavan
maan. Tuon suuren herraskartanon, jossa sitten vierailit, sen näin
minäkin perästäpäin eräänä kesänä ohi kulkiessani. Kaukaa
kimalsivat suuret ikkunat sen linnamaisissa julkisivuissa, ja puistossa
ylenivät vanhat puut. Ajattelin silloin sinua ja gobeliinipeitteisiä
salinseiniä, joista olit kertonut, ruokahuoneen vanhoja
kirkkomaalauksia ja puuleikkauksia, mistä lienevät olleet jostakin
muinaisesta luostarikirkosta, puistojen pronssi- ja marmoripatsaita, ja
päivällisiä, joihin tullessa kaikkien oli tapana pukeutua vartavasten
päivällispukuun. Se oli teistä nuorista orjallista. Ajattelin vanhaa
periytynyttä hienostumista ja sen merkitystä sivistyselämässä. Mutta
juuri sieltä kirjoitit kerran kotiin, että välistä ikävöit kesäiltojen rauhaa
kivisellä rannallamme ja koskematonta metsää, missä kasvaa
mustikoita miltei portaille asti ja joita poimiessa kuulee kellojen
kalkatusta lähimmästä viidakosta.

Kaikkein mieluimmin näen sinun istuvan Klaus Klausenin portailla.

Sieltä on laaja näköala. Ruis- ja vehnäpeltoja niin kauas kuin silmä