Engraving by Matthaus Merian, The Sack of Magdeburg, Wikia, 1632
Peter Hagendorf, translated diary entry, 1631
“We set ourselves up in the local villages and blockaded the city [of Magdeburg] for the entire winter, staying encamped in villages until the spring of 1631. There we captured several entrenchments in the forest in front of Magdeburg. There our captain, along with many others, were shot dead in from of an entrenchment. One day we captured seven of their entrenchments. Then we moved in close and built up the whole area with our entrenchments and saps [trenches used by besieging forces to approach closer to an enemy fort], but it cost us a lot of men.
The 22nd of March Johann Galgart was brought in as our captain; the 28th of April he too was shot dead in the saps. The 6th of May Tilge Neuberg was then brought in. He had our company for ten days, after which he resigned.
The 20th of May we attacked and stormed in earnest and also conquered. There I entered the city by storm without incurring any injury. But once in the city, at the Neustadt Gate, I was shot twice through my body — that was my booty.
This happened the 20th of May 1631, in the early morning at nine o’clock.
Afterward I was taken to the camp and bound up, for I had been shot once through the stomach (shot right through from the front), and a second time through both shoulders, so that the bullet was caught in my shirt.The army doctor bound my hands behind my back so he could use the gouge on me. Thus I was brought back to my tent, half dead.
Nevertheless, I was deeply saddened that the city had burned so horribly, both on account of the city’s beauty and because it was my fatherland.
As I was now bandaged up, my wife went into the city, even though it was completely on fire, since she wished to fetch a cushion and cloth for me to lie on and for the dressings. I also had our sick child lying with me. But then there came a great outcry in the camp that the house of the city were all collapsing on top of each other so that many soldiers and their wives who wanted to loot were trapped. But I was more concerned about my wife on the account of the sick child than on the account of my injuries. Yet God protected her. She got out of the city after one and a half hours with an old woman from the city. This woman, who had been the wife of a sailor, had led her out and helped her carry bedding. My wife also brought me a large tankard of four measures [approximately four liters] of wine and had, in addition also found two silver belts and clothes, which I later redeemed for twelve thalers at Halberstadt. That evening my companions came by, each honoring me by giving me something, a thaler or half thaler. (283)“
Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage Act 5 TWO YEARS HAVE PASSED. THE WAR COVERS WIDER AND WIDER TERRITORY. FOREVER ON THE MOVE, THE LITTLE WAGON CROSSES POLAND, MORAVIA, BAVARIA, ITALY, AND AGAIN BAVARIA. 163 I. TILLY’S VICTORY AT MAGDEBURG COSTS MOTHER COURAGE FOUR OFFICERS’ SHIRTS. The wagon stands in a war-ravaged village. Faint military music from the distance. Two SOLDIERS are being served at a counter by KATTRIN and MOTHER COURAGE. One of them has a woman’s fur coat about his shoulders.
MOTHER COURAGE: What, you can’t pay? No money, no brandy! They can play victory marches, they should pay their men. THE FIRST SOLDIER: I want my brandy! I arrived too late for plunder. The Chief allowed one hour to plunder the town, it’s a swindle. He’s not inhuman, he says. So I suppose they bought him off.
Blog Post #3
During the Thirty Years War – a war spurred by religious and political turmoil – soldiers laid siege to the German city of Magdeburg. Historical accounts are always subtlety or intensely influenced. History cannot be directly transmitted to the audience unless it is witnessed by the audience first hand immediately. Even then, the events witnessed are not history but immediate and accurate events. History passed down through many different mediums (pictures, writings, plays, poems, etc.), or mediated, and each medium provides a new perspective. Different perspectives of history, such as viewing history from above or from below, can drastically change the meaning and events of the event. History from above provides a grandiose and glorified view of history that omits the gore or brutal details. History from below usually demonstrates the gritty and gruesome details of life behind the grand concept. For example, history from below shows the brutality of war and the banality of cruelty in humanity. The above documents are different accounts of the Sack of Magdeburg. They each provide a unique point of view and skew the events of the siege to fit their perspectives.
The engraving of the Sack of Magdeburg by Matthaus Merian in 1632 is a secondary source that provides a history from above. As a side note, the engraving was published a year after the battle. Merian mediates the history of the battle, illustrating it in a glorious fashion. Similar to the Star-Spangled Banner, the American anthem, the “bombs [are] bursting in [the] air”, demonstrating the power of the attackers and the magnificence of war. History from above allows the audience to view the events of history, like the Sack of Magdeburg, in a more positive light. The representational choices of this engraving reveal the cost of mass human life upon further inspection. A cross in the lower right hand corner of the image symbolizes death witnessed near the site.
Peter Hagendorf, a Swiss soldier in the troop attacking Magdeburg, wrote a diary entry after the Sack of Magdeburg in 1631 which provides us with insight into the effects of the Thirty Years’ War. This account, although written from the perspective of the attacker, mediates history with a view from below. As a lowly soldier, Hagendorf accounts the multiple captains that were killed and replaced throughout the duration of the siege alone and the horrible suffering and injuries he and many other soldiers suffer in war. Injured and impoverished, Hagendorf and his wife are forced to loot the city for cloth to bandage his wounds and for supplies to redeem for money. His account demonstrates the cost of human values for respect and property ownership and furnishes readers and historians another perspective into the battle, allowing us to gain a deeper and more well-rounded understanding of the battle.
Another mediation of history is given by playwright Bertolt Brecht many years after the Thirty Years’ War. As a mechanism to help the German people learn to change in order to stop war, Brecht wrote his famous play, Mother Courage and Her Children, and portrayed war in all of its inelegance. The Sack of Magdeburg, a large event that caused much devastation according to all other accounts, is written about in a single stage direction in the play. Brecht employs the subtractive effect to emphasize the history from below. Brecht gives us an overdramatized version of history from below, undermining the devastation and scale of the battle. By using this technique, he actually emphasizes the cost of war. Although the soldier complains they only received one hour for looting, this apparent lie emphasizes the cost of human life, the cost of property, the cost of morality, and the cost of humanity itself in war.
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