Bartholomew Sastrow: Being the Memoirs of a German Burgomaster

The Greifswald magistrates, who had the opportunity of seeing me daily at work, gradually arrived at the conclusion that I could not be altogether devoid of merit, considering t...

On July 27, 1547, I dismounted at an inn in the wine market at Augsburg. The host was a person of consideration, and endowed with good sense; he was a master of one of the corpo...

I trust my children may be enabled to read the following attentively and remember the same as my justification. They will learn that I devoted every moment to my work, and avoid...

Having acquired the certainty that the Hartmanns would never consent to my father's return to Greifswald, my parents, like the conscientious married couple they were, desired to...

My parents recalled me in 1538, having discovered that at Greifswald I more often accompanied my grandfather in his strolls than sat over my books. I attended school during the...

Showing the Ingratitude, Foolishness and Wickedness of the People, and how, when once infected with a bad Spirit, it returns with Difficulty to Common-Sense--Smiterlow, Lorbeer...

I started from Mayence on April 8, 1546, and after crossing an unknown country by bad roads, I reached Kempten, an ancient imperial city at the foot of the Alps, and the see of...

My father was born in 1488, in the village of Rantzin, in the inn close to the cemetery, on the road to Anclam. Even before his marriage, my grandfather, Johannes Sastrow, excee...

As soon as my nomination was drawn up, I was dispatched with it to Chancellor Citzewitz, at his estate of Muttrin, near Dantzig. The principal personages of the land had come to...

When I had recovered from the fatigue of my travels, I came to the conclusion that a life of monotony and frequent visits to the tavern were not at all to my taste. The day woul...

On the morning of July 6, 1546, in my twenty-sixth year, I left Rome with my faithful companion Nicholas. My gold was sewn up in my neck collar, the chain in my small clothes. I...

Stay at Pforzheim--Margrave Ernest--My extreme Penury at Worms, followed by great Plenty at a Receiver's of the Order of St. John--I do not lengthen this Summary, seeing that bu...

If we wish to understand the pedestrian side of German life in the sixteenth century, I know of no better document than the autobiography of Bartholomew Sastrow. This hard-heade...

I reached Greifswald on January 1, 1551, at nightfall. I was thirty years old. After I had written to Stralsund for my parents' consent, and had conferred with my Greifswald rel...

Stay at Pforzheim--Margrave Ernest--My extreme Penury at Worms, followed by Great Plenty at a Receiver's of the Order of St. John's--I do not lengthen this Summary, seeing that...

Showing the Ingratitude, Foolishness and Wickedness of the People, and how, when once infected with a bad Spirit, it returns with Difficulty to Common-Sense--Smiterlow, Lorbeer,...