The Adventurous Simplicissimus: being the description of the Life of a Strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von FuchshaimGrimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoph von
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The Adventurous Simplicissimus: being the description of the Life of a Strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim
Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoph von
German fiction -- Translations into English; Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 -- Fiction
Besides his military expeditions, it is pretty clear from his works
that he had visited Amsterdam and Paris and knew them fairly well; but
for nineteen years we have no further trace of his career, till he
suddenly appears as Schultheiss, under the Bishop of Strassburg, of
Renchen, now in the Grand Duchy of Baden, a town of which he
deliberately conceals the name exactly as he does his own, by anagrams,
calling it now Rheinec, now Cernheim. In October 1667 he appears as
holding this office and issuing an order concerning the mills of the
town, which is still in existence. His wife was Katharina Henninger,
and entries have been found of the birth of two children, a daughter
and a son, in 1669 and 1675. A curious episode in the first part of the
"Enchanted Bird's-nest," quoted hereafter, seems to indicate a grave
family disappointment. In 1676 he died, aged fifty-one only, but having
reached what may almost be called a ripe age for the battered and spent
soldier of the Thirty Years War. The entry of his death is peculiarly
full and even discursive, and tells how though he had again entered on
military service--no doubt on the occasion of the French invasion in
1674--and though his sons and daughters were living in places widely
distant from each other, they were all present at his death, in which
he was fortified by the rites of Holy Church. A final touch of
uncertainty is added by the fact that we do not even know whether
Grimmelshausen was his true name: it is more likely to be that of some
small estate which he had acquired, and of which he assumed the name
when, as we learn, he was raised to noble rank.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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