all-pacas:bemusedlybespectacled: brunhiddensmusings:prismatic-bell:what-even-is-thiss: the-haiku-bot
all-pacas:bemusedlybespectacled: brunhiddensmusings:prismatic-bell:what-even-is-thiss: the-haiku-bot: kathrynduske:nuka-rockit: If anyone else was wondering about the slutty battle pants:The Landsknecht’s Fancy Pants – Veritable Hokum If anyone elsewas wondering about theslutty battle pants:Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up. There’s a guy in the notes calling modern Germany “weak and gay”. I don’t think there’s enough time in one lifetime to fully unpack that. Anyways, my favorite part of German history is where they just decided to replant an entire giant old growth forest and it worked. Lose your local forest? Simply put it back. Want another piece of wild German history that isn’t secret fascist worship?The story of the Pied Piper is at least partially real and documentation of it goes back to the early 1300s.Yeah. The Hamelin town records literally begin in 1384 with the phrase “it is 100 years since our children left.” The first known record, dating circa 1300, was a stained glass window in a local church commemorating the event. It was destroyed in the 1660s, but enough written and even painted records survive that it was possible to make a reconstruction of it:(Credit to Hans Dobberton.) To give you an idea of how accurate this reconstruction might be, by the way, here’s a drawing from 1592 in which the Piper shown is the one from the window:Written references to the story up through the 1500s are astonishing in number. “Astonishing?” Well. This wasn’t London or Rome. These people were not royalty, nobility, or even gentry. They were peasants and working people. And yet we have this commissioned window only sixteen years after the event, plus a further three either surviving or “we don’t have the original original but we have copies or attestations of the original” written records, and also the records of Hamelin itself. All agree on the date–1284–and the number of taken children–130. In 1816 we see the Brothers Grimm documenting the story in their first compilation of folktales*, which drew on eleven different past sources (which is more than the total amount I’ve found in research, meaning they either had more sources in German, some of their sources are now lost, or both). A now-lost choirbook actually contained a written eyewitness account, which we can no longer check against the other surviving records (because it was, you know, lost), but which is attested in other sources. We even know who it belonged to: Johannes de Lüde, whose mother was the eyewitness.The oldest known surviving account–beyond that heartbreaking line at the beginning of the Hamelin town history–dates to 1440-50, and actually used the inscription on that stained-glass window to affirm the exact date–the children left or were taken from the town on 26 June 1284.I would like to pause here to say that the amount of documentation we have for the story is frankly insane, given the time period and the fact that Hamelin was just a town built around a monastery (that doesn’t even seem to have still existed at the time of the story). The earliest record we have of its population is in 1689, when it had just 2400 people; it’s reasonable to assume that at the time of the tale, there were only a few hundred. And there were seven hundred years for these texts to get lost, and many probably did–it’s reasonable to assume the local church had birth and death records that would have told us whether the children died or just vanished, for example, but those records were probably destroyed along with the church in 1660. Hamelin has been invaded due to acts of war several times. Being a German town, there’s literally no telling what records of the place Hitler might have destroyed. That we still have this much record of a single event in a small town speaks to how catastrophic the event truly was, given the time period. Like just so we’re clear, England wasn’t yet fully unified when this was happening and the age of Vikings was only 200 years past. When I say it’s astonishing we have this many records (especially coming out of Europe at the time), it’s fucking astonishing.So what actually happened to the children? Unfortunately, this is the point at which we know it’s nonfiction because fiction would never have such an unsatisfying ending: we don’t know. Some research has been done that suggests the lost “children” were actually teenagers who just…migrated somewhere else, or went on a Children’s Crusade, and there is some evidence to support both these theories. Earlier theories that the children died in a plague don’t hold up–this theory says that the place from which “they were not seen again” would have been their mass grave, but there’s no indication of any such grave existing, and also, let’s not insult the medieval Germans that way, shall we? They knew the difference between “left” and “died.” If it was a mass death (somehow, of only children), they would have said “our children died.” Or, if they were feeling poetic, something like “our children were taken from us by the hand of the Lord.” Any theory that relies on our medieval counterparts being fucking morons doesn’t hold a whole lot of weight. Now.Regardless of whether I was able to give you an actual end to the story, isn’t that a whole fucking lot more interesting than Heinrich Himmler?*I know we think of them as writing fairy tales, but actually they were more in the business of writing them down. The Grimms were actually scholars. see also- Gotz of the iron hand, the man whom all elder scrolls protagonists are based on as he was a ‘warrior poet’ who was banned by the holy roman emperor, twice, punched merchants, kidnapped a bishop, purchased a castle with his quest reward money, declared war on an entire city because it stiffed someone on their prize money for an archery contest, was elected unanimously as the leader of the german peasents revolt without anyone telling him untill later, and is credited with coining the phrase ‘kiss my ass’ (originally ‘lick my ass’, dirrected at an enemy commander { Tell your captain, that for the emperor I entertain, as I have ever done, all due respect; but as for him, he may lick my arse!})also his hand was blown off by a cannon when he was like 21 so the next 20 years of adventure and further 20 years of drunken house arrest were with a full metal alchemist style articulated metal hand, but thats almost minor compared to inventing the phrase ‘kiss my ass’ see also- the holy roman empire. seriously just try and make heads or tails of this map and then guess what life was like living there see also- the weimar period, the bit everyone forgets about nestled between WW1 and WW2 where germany was trying to rebuild, moved its capitol away from berlin as berlin was at the time a crime riddled shithole that was partially on fire, and realized the way to get out of debt was to lean heavier on skills that export well like chemistry and art, becoming the world epicenter of innovation almost overnight. one of the highest points of this development even included an attempt to create a repository of all knowledge, where if you had a question you would mail a 3X5 card to this facility, where a secretary would then look up an answer and mail you back a 3X5 card with an answer about things that may have appeared in hard to find rare books, scientific papers, and the like. so any time people with a reich-boner try and claim the technological superiority of nazi germany what they miss is that the nazis hijacked the already existing steampunk nirvana and claimed they came up with it, often with the scientists responsible at gunpoint. considering they were able to rise from the ashes in about 14 years and it was actively hard for the nazis to take power from this era its quite impressive see also- the defenestrations of prague. how often do you have to throw politicians off of third story window before it becomes a named event in history?see also- Hesse-Kassel and the hessians, where during what many people call ‘the georgian era’ or ‘the american revolutionary war’ there was a germanic citystate (germany as a country would not exist untill the 30 years war) where basically their only export was mercenaries in moderately silly pants and very silly hats. thus not only was a fair portion of the soldiers that were sent to quell the american rebellion technically germans, a lot of them were either stranded on american soil after the english buggered off or were left in a situation where it honestly made more sense to just stay in america. for some reason the only time people remember hessians are that one time yosemmetie sam was dressed like one and his pants explodedsee also- the 30 years war. somehow military history buffs only talk about WW2, vietnam, briefly mention caesar existed, and if theyre brittish mention the 100 years war but never remember the absolute fustercluck that was 219 very tiny kingdoms and principalities that were not yet technically germany serving as a battlegrounds that cost about ¼ the german population and civilian casualtied outnumbered military casualties 7 to 1. its a very messy period of history where basically every european country had its dick in the pie, where pretty much everyone agreed the four horsemen roamed the land and, the poor ate each other as the nobles made money. and is a lesson into why you need to pay your damned mercenaries, a lesson rulers through history have never cared aboutsee also- whatever the fuck prussia wassee also- this fruit loop throwing my hat into the ring for empress maria theresa, the ultimate Gaslighting Gatekeeping Girlboss, because I <3 austria(I’m not joking about the gaslighting and gatekeeping though, she was great in a lot of respects like promoting vaccination and education but she was also bigoted as hell and super controlling of her kids) i just wrote a goddamn essay about my obsession with the habsburgs and the fact that the holy roman empire was less “a country” or “a confederation” and more “the personal owned land of one dude,” but here’s a couple anecdotes to sum up how insane it was: until 1844, the official language of hungary was not hungarian. it was also not german, which might have made some sense as hungary had been pretty firmly tied to austria for centuries at this point. no, the language of government was latin. because there were so many ethnic and social groups and people crammed into hungary that the only language government could be conducted in that would not offend or angry half the country was the language of the roman empire. that’s hungary and not austria, you say? well, consider that when austria was broken up after world war one, five countries were created. consider that austria has always had a pretty embarrassingly lackluster military (after a certain point it felt like their strategy was “go to the hungarian parliament and beg them for cavalry” — worked for maria theresa!), but remained very solidly one of the Great Powers despite losing every war and having no overseas colonies, navy to speak of, or military strength. what gave them this equal political status to the british empire and napoleon? the fact that austria did have eighteen different countries and 547 ethnic groups and languages and was fairly good at juggling them all and not dissolving into civil war and revolution every six years. they were pretty good diplomats. by the 19th century, austria was cultivating for herself a reputation of standing up for smaller countries and defending europe from expansive powers: a smart move in a time of napoleon and prussia, and a smart move as eventually people would notice austria herself was prime absorption material, with them really being 6 countries who hated one another in a trenchcoat. (see: the wars of german unification later in the 19th century.) the thing is that this worked pretty well! there were a lot of peace talks held specifically in vienna for specific reasons! not to mention that austria was the cultural capital of europe for a very long time. nowadays we tend to think of paris as the place where art and culture Exist. that is new. for centuries vienna was where it was at. art, music, philosophy, coffee houses, dancing, culture — vienna was The place to go. just about any famous classical musician you can think of got their start in vienna. it’s frankly intimidating. all of this can be summed up in the incredible flex of a quote: “Other countries may go to war, but thou, happy Austria, make marriages.” why invade and conquer if you can instead marry into the family and inherit land? you don’t need an army if you instead can personally own half of europe, and the habsburgs got really close. and if you inherit all this territory populated by 18 different peoples and ethnic groups, none of whom speak or even like german? why, you become pretty good at managing and diplomacy. and then you leverage it into the national scale. and then you get to boss other empires around. and then — immediately after the napoleonic wars, everyone got together in vienna to try and untangle and return various territories france had steamrolled. they needed to figure out who would rule france and how. britain wanted the dutch to become independent. no one knew what to do about poland. russia wanted saxony and austria was kind of willing to let them have part of saxony but how much? in the middle of it, there was just this one sneaky little moment where they needed to dole out some of northern italy. no one wanted one person or state to control this part of italy, but at the same time, austria really wanted this part of italy. so what did the austrian ambassador do? well, this bit can go to so and so von habsburg. and this bit can be governed by thus and thus von habsburg. and this guy in spain has clear rights to this part of italy and oh what do you know? it’s another habsburg. like five different duchies were given to five different people for five different reasons, and they were all habsburgs. austria was not a country, it was five habsburgs in a trenchcoat. and yes imperialism is bad and yes they were only diverse and multicultural by 19th century standards which meant that it did actually suck to be a romanian ruled over by six layers of non-romanians. but just the mess. the inheritance laws. this incredible german power that was only 20% ethnically german and mostly just one guy who really wanted to be a patron to more arts. i didn’t even mention spain. habsburgssssssss -- source link