Georgica curiosa
The "Georgica curiosa" are an encyclopaedic textbook on all aspects of house and agriculture according to the understanding of the 17th century, a high point of the so-called house fathers literature . Its author was the Austrian nobleman Wolf Helmhardt von Hohberg (1612–1688).
general requirements
Anyone who wrote down advice for the target group of "housefathers" at the time - mainly for the aristocratic estates and for large-scale farms - had to take into account a number of other factors in addition to the purely economic aspects. Martin Luther used the term “housefather” . In his usage the word “house” had a comprehensive character, it denoted the basic social unit of premodern society. As a rule, all other people involved in housekeeping were grouped around a nuclear family consisting of a married couple and unmarried children - servants and maidservants, old people, unmarried relatives. The functions of this house community were: economic production, procreation and child-rearing, caring for the elderly and the sick, conveying the norms prescribed by the church and secular authorities. The householder ruled as patriarch over everyone else in the house. Through his mediation, the group had a share in the overarching social structures - in the parish, the village or the city.
Hohberg's "Georgica curiosa"
Planning and execution
The author Wolf Helmhardt von Hohberg managed some smaller estates in Lower Austria . He spent most of his time in this activity, but he also had strong literary ambitions. Around 1660 he began a project that would combine both interests: he was planning an agricultural didactic poem, which adhere to the " Georgica the" Virgil oriented, an ancient seal of the highest literary quality. Friends of Hohberg, to whom he presented his experiments, were of the opinion “that such Scripta Didacta (Latin: instructive writings) might be better and more gracefully given in freer than bound speech; so that I should necessarily add comments in prose . ” Hohberg then postponed his project for a long time, in the meantime he studied the existing agricultural literature and practice on the estates in his vicinity. Because of the persecution of Protestants in Austria, he had to leave the country and settled in Regensburg . Here he found time to continue the great work. In 1682 it appeared under the title “Georgica curiosa”, in the large quarters format (large 4 °; a book format 35 to 40 cm in height) and with a volume of 1400 pages. A new edition, expanded by 400 pages, followed in 1687 under the title "Georgica curiosa aucta". The book contains 277 copperplate engravings and numerous woodcuts in the text.
The original concept of a didactic poem in classical verse, which should be "addressed" comments in prose , was now reversed: The large manual, two parts of six books each, is written in prose. But at the beginning of each of the 12 books there is a multi-page, programmatic poem in Latin , admittedly in rather awkward verses. In the foreword, Hohberg gives an extensive list of his literary sources. He hardly goes into the writers of antiquity and justifies this with the fact that "such authors, who are directed towards old times and customs, are of little use to the uneducated builders". In contrast, he names numerous authors from contemporary European literature. He knew that the agricultural methods he proposed could not be used in every climate , but he said that his book " can be used in all of Germany and the neighboring countries". The popularity of the work at the time is borne out by the fact that three further editions appeared in 1695, 1701 and 1715, the last was even expanded by a third volume of 600 pages by its Nuremberg publisher, which also contains a cookbook.
Structure and content
Part 1. House and garden. Book 1: General questions, trade, cultural studies. - Book 2: The householder. - Book 3: The House Mother. - Book 4: Viticulture and Fruit Growing. - Book 5: The kitchen and medicinal garden. - Book 6: The Flower Garden.
Books one to three, in which general aspects of family and country life are discussed, are of particular interest in terms of cultural and social history . At the very beginning of the first book, Hohberg calls the basic condition of good economic activity "God's blessing, without which nothing can be used or done well." In the following chapters, very different topics are dealt with: roads, schools, hospitals, churches, courts, ban , forced labor , Land register , surveying, taxes, breweries, malthouses , brickworks, lime kilns, gypsum, glassworks, drying rooms, ice pits, bridge building, mills, quarries, Jews, gypsies, beggars, Anabaptists , salt mines, ore mines, metals, smelting , sulfur, saltpeter, alum , Animal enclosures, small animal husbandry, inns, markets, description of Austria. - Hohberg notes about the Jews that there is often no agreement as to whether they should be tolerated or “abolished” as blasphemers and enemies of the Lord Jesus . One must beware of gypsies, they are thieves and magicians and must be driven out through joint action if, as usual, they want to “break into a region”. Wandering beggars are a nuisance because they often harassed the poor peasants so outrageously that they ultimately have to be given something. About alchemy and the conversion of base metals into gold, Hohberg expresses himself cautiously: "But I do not want to make enemies of the true true philosophers, nor deny the possibility of Metalla transmutandi utterly."
The second book deals with: the behavior of the householder towards God and his own passions, towards his wife, towards the children and towards the servants; the upbringing of children and their marriage; special emergencies such as high prices, epidemics and war; the annual routine in housework and field work; Questions of health, body and soul. - About the relationship of the patriarch to his wife, Hohberg thinks: just as one cannot cultivate even the most fertile field according to the regulations, "where an unequal, stubborn and disgusting pair of oxen is harnessed together in the plow", so housekeeping is also bad , "if the spouses helffen not peacefully carry each other, one there, and the other as getting at." Compared to its married woman must of the house had "more lenient than scharff, more seriously as a tyrannical and more wolgewollt than feared to Being itself befleissen". The rule of the man over the woman is, as it were, in small ways an image of the rule of God over man. - About the servants: it is unproblematic if you have your own subjects and frugal orphans, who are not allowed to quit at will, receive less wages and also have to work more carefully; but everyone should be careful not to bring "strangers, ... drunkards, whores and boys and the like, unhealthy, contagious and suspicious people, they are images of men or women, into his house."
The third book is about the housemother and her duties - entertaining guests, baking bread, the correct use of salt, oils, sugar, spices, fish, meat, game and poultry, preserving in salt or vinegar, making candles, making soap and Canning, the production of jams, confectionery, candied fruits, beverages, juices and musts. Moreover, the housewife should as a family doctor to act - all body parts, their diseases and the appropriate remedies are described in detail in the book - it should establish itself even cure, so the alembic can work around. - While Hohberg emphatically emphasizes the primacy of men in other books, this attitude is now at least partially relativized. It is true that here too he demands that the woman should go by the hand of the man as her God-given head, “not rebelliously against his wise and sensible advice and proposals, but with a quiet spirit and gentle patience do his will and, if so ... you a better opinion comes to mind (as can often happen), suggesting such a subtle, modesty… ” But he also writes that housekeeping without women is like a day without sunshine, a garden without flowers or water without fish. Especially later in life "they are most necessary for us to come to the aid of those weaknesses of our old age that we cannot discover ... with such confidentiality ..." One section deals with the question of whether women should study; Hohberg judges that “... that more harm than good should arise from it if women generally wanted to go to study; But one cannot deny that they are as much in God's image as the men and that they ... have wonderful ideas among them ... "
Books four to six also contain some general considerations in addition to the presentation of factual questions. In connection with viticulture , Hohberg talks about the disadvantages of alcohol consumption : “The vice of drunkenness is so common in our countries that women and children can testify to it ...” and this is all the more to be lamented, “... because not only good reason drunk through it, the job prevents, the health spoils, but also life itself shortened and the bliss of souls in danger and eternal ruin willingly overthrown ... "
Part 2. Field, cattle, forest and hunting. Book 7: From agriculture. - Book 8: From horse breeding: - Book 9: Cattle, sheep, pig and poultry husbandry. - Book 10: Of Bees and Silkworms. - Book 11: Water supply, fish farming, etc. - Book 12: Forestry and hunting.
The six books of the second part deal with agriculture in the strict sense. But here too there are interesting cultural and historical considerations that go beyond the narrow framework. For example, in the preface to the second part, Hohberg writes about the honorable profit made by agriculture and animal husbandry, and the dishonest profit made by trade, which is often associated with fraud and usury - a subject that was already discussed by Aristotle . - Another problem that was already controversially discussed in antiquity was the fear that the fertility of the earth would decrease over time. Hohberg thinks first of all that such a thing cannot be foreseen in God's plan; but that a lot of damage in this direction is caused by leaving agriculture to clumsy and poorly trained workers who, "... it advises as it may, stumble on their fields". - Elsewhere he explains why the subjects were usually forbidden to hunt; if hunting and fishing were allowed, “the young, witty fellow would rather do this duty… and thus harm the common good. Just as idleness does not bring any good, people would lose the desire to work and, for their own ruin, would do all kinds of sin and vice. "
literature
- Otto Brunner: Noble country life and European spirit. Life and work of Wolf Helmhard von Hohberg. Salzburg 1949.
- Julius Hoffmann: The "Hausväterliteratur" and the "Sermons on the Christian household". Doctrine of the Home and Education for Home Life in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries. Beltz Verlag Weinheim, 1959.
Web links
- Digitized by the ULB Saxony-Anhalt in Halle
- Website of the Deutsches Museum about Hohberg's "Georgica curiosa" and "Hausväterliteratur"
annotation
All quotes in the article are taken from the website of the Deutsches Museum about Hohberg (see web link).