the thirty years war

they held some power

xp

the power to spurn dreary lutheran robusto for a full-bodied calvinist arabica

or is it the other way around?

great momus theory

i ordered this book btw, wallenstein is mentioned in the book on weber i just read

Fwiw coffee shop world is after 30yw. Only getting underway in the 50s iirc.

hipsters make some sense in late c17th/early 18th. Younger sons of Norfolk squires who have written a play and know someone who knows Addison.

mad jack mytton, regency rake -- he's a bit late, but i will pass up no opportunity to acquaint the world with his works

oh man that guy is a hero

Worth looking up Radio 4, Misha Glenny series "The invention of Germany", which begins, appropriately enough, in the 30 years war. Some interesting tidbits:

In memory of Gustavus Aldophus German children are still chastised with the threat of the Swedes. eg. "If you don't go to sleep the Swedes will get you"

Fredrick I of Prussia was more Polish than German, Prussian nationalism's affinity for germany was, in part a move to distance Prussia from feudal obligations to Polish Kings.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016btb4

Berlin gets its name from a slavic word for lake.

Fwiw coffee shop world is after 30yw. Only getting underway in the 50s iirc.

DAMMIT

totally want the relatable everyman character in the HBO series to be a fledgling reporter

or barista, obv

he should be a courier obv

and a potman

He can invent the exposé - just a thuringian broadsheet-writer-for-hire who's meant to be covering the birth of a two-headed lamb, but uncovers a Bavarian secret treaty with France.

when i get back to the smiley project, i should add in a bit about the writer smiley is doing a monograph on, who seems to be a german diplomatic envoy, from around this time, who writes up his travels (i'm on a train at the moment so can't look it up) (or even move, the student beside me is lolling in his sleep)

lolling or lol-ing?

the copy i'm reading is a 1961 penguin (v.early pelican imprint): it has a callot collage on the cover, in blue and pink, and the pages are nice and old and furry-feeling

it is very funny

The Death of Wallenstein, by Fredrich Schiller -

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6787

The Piccolomini

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6786

I think I voted already: Frederick V - he thought he could win, with magic.

SPOILERS

just reached the bit where one of the many christians* gets thrown from a horse 80 feet down from the battlements and another dies aged 28, his "vitals gnawed by a giant worm"

END SPOILERS

*name not denomination

"If one considers the expense on this occasion and wants to reduce it so that it can be afforded for a long time, it should be replied that great emergencies have no rule; that it is not a question of an expense that will last for many years; but that if, in order to remedy the present evil, one fails to make an extraordinary expenditure now, it will be necessary to make one in the future -- though it would not then produce any result, nor prevent our ruin."

-- Cardinal Richelieu to Louis XIII, Sept 6 1634

voted john george

John George... has been known to sit at table gorging homely foods and swilling native beer for seven hours on end, his sole approach at conversation to box his dwarf's ears, or pour the dregs of a tankard over a servant's head as a signal for more.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

oh no I haven't read this all the way through yet!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Disappointed this poll didn't run for 29 more years.

so is wedgwood definitely a better bet than wilson?

i think so

if wilson is at your library give it a try but it's dry. he just isn't an engaging writer imo

Piet Pieterszoon Hein was robbed u cocks.

we have this book in our library! *borrows book*

Great thread, this one...

this is pretty breezy reading, considering

it was a pretty breezy war

it was a helluva war

some called it the "war of a lifetime"

for some, their lifetime WAS the war of a lifetime, because they were born after 1618 and died before 1648

legend has it that the phrase "put up your dukes" was coined during the thirty years war, after one nobleman, after hearing tell of the maiming of an enemy duke, said "gather anew thy dukes of replacement, for we shall battle again as soon as it stops raining"

re: economics and bottom-up social business upthread, she does start after protestantism has been firmly entrenched across parts of europe. my thumbnail understanding was that war broke out right away after the reformation but duh there was a generation or two in between. it's during the period of protestant emergence when socio/demo/economic type questions are really interesting imo.

interestingly she does touch -- breezily! -- on intersecting questions of demographics, money and technology when explaining why most of the armies of this period were mecernaries

retroactively it was briefly named "world war -I", and historians referred to it as such for a time in the late 1940s to mid 1950s, until the popular re-release of the wedgwood book returned the name "thirty years war" to popularity

elector frederick, whatta dope!

rereading right now: seems all too grimly apt suddenly :(

i actually think she does touch on the element tracer was missing, abt the cultural dimension, in the first chapter -- if only to say that its salience was small relatively small (i'll go back and have a closer look)

Can't believe Wallenstein got only one vote.

fans of both the 30 years war and The Sot Weed Factor (and indeed Don Quixote) may want to dip into this. Written in 1669 about a naif who wanders about the horrors of the 30YW.

http://rbsche.people.wm.edu/teaching/grimmelshausen/

The officer bade them dig on stoutly. And presently they came to a cask, which they burst open, and therein found a fellow that had neither nose nor ears, and yet still lived. He, when he was somewhat revived, and had recognized some of the troop, told them how on the day before, as some of his regiment were a-foraging, the peasants had caught six of them. And of these they first of all, about an hour before, had shot five dead at once, making them stand one behind another; and because the bullet, having already passed through five bodies, did not reach him, who stood sixth and last, they had cut off his nose and ears, yet before that had forced him to render to five of them the filthiest service in the world* . But when he saw himself thus degraded by these rogues without shame or knowledge of God, he had heaped upon them the vilest reproaches, though they were willing now to let him go. Yet in the hope one of them would from annoyance send a ball through his head, he called them all by their right names: yet in vain. Only this, that when he had thus chafed them they had clapped him in the cask here present and buried him alive, saying, since he so desired death they would not cheat him of his amusement. ...

george smiley reads grimmelshausen!! (i think his academic studies were in medieval german)

rereading

p certain he comes up in wolfgang kayser’s v good the grotesque in art and literature, which is v strong on the “german” 17th century groteske.

see ask adam tooze’s powerpoint for the thirty year’s war, a lecture in his current series on germany and war

battle of the white mountain not how i imagined it from wedgwood

Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria

He banned dancing and anyone under the age of 55 from using a horse and carriage, paid his servants a pittance, "his meanness a byword in Europe". lol, I couldn't vote for this one in good conscience.

that PowerPoint is fabulous but ironically I'm too wrapped up in China this year to have time for Wedgwood or Wilson

I like Tooze's books on the Nazi economy and the tumultuous "Deluge" of the interwar period. His twitter is always good value as well.