For ordinary Germans caught up in the impending conflict that would engulf Europe and the world, 1938 was hardly an insignificant time. That year Gertrud von le Fort – a member of the Prussian gentry, a convert from Protestantism in 1925, Nobel nominee, scholar, poet and novelist – wrote a compelling historical novel that fused poetic and spiritual insights with historical truth. This account of a crucial event in the Thirty Years’ War – the siege and destruction of Magdeburg in 1631 – is now available in English translation for the first time.
Ferdinand II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, in 1629 issued an Edict of Restitution requiring the Protestant city of Magdeburg to return to the Catholic faith. The city’s burghers, wrongly trusting in military support from Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, made a fateful decision to resist, thus leading to the city being laid waste and two-thirds of its citizenry killed. Nevertheless, as the author carefully describes, this outcome was not inevitable: it was the result of pride and stubbornness, among Catholics and Protestants alike, alongside a keen desire for military glory on both sides.
Count Tilly, leader of the imperial forces, an old soldier and devout Catholic, understands the horror of war. After a long conversation with a young citizen of Magdeburg, Willigis Ahlemann, who has come to Tilly’s headquarters at Hameln to plead for a stay of execution, they agree that an envoy be sent to the Emperor “to advise that the Edict be postponed for another forty years or so… in order to forestall a general rebellion”. The Emperor refuses. Yet Tilly – “a soldier is not a blind destroyer!” he declares – delayed as long as he dared before executing the imperial order, sending Ahlemann back to Magdeburg to offer mercy if the citizenry surrendered within 24 hours. The councillors of the city refused – despite being reminded of the slaughter of children, the rape of women, the pillage and sacking that would result.
With wisdom beyond his years, Ahlemann understands that Magdeburg “must render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, for otherwise the Faith will perish; but Caesar must render to God the things that are God’s, for otherwise the Empire will perish.” His prediction came true: a general insurrection of the Protestant peoples in German and Czech lands erupted that led to the end of Catholic Christendom and an impaired Body of Christ.
The central drama of the novel is the encounter between General Tilly and Ahlemann. For Tilly “the Empire and the Holy Catholic Faith are one!” For Ahlemann, “It is not possible for faith to command one thing and the Empire to command another,” followed by his sad question: “A faith that drives one to rebellion is not faith at all, is it?” Both men, reasonable, just and respectful of each other’s position, become inevitably swept up in a tragic course of events that led to the scandal of Christians engaging in violence against each other.
Yet von le Fort’s deeper purpose is a poetical and allegorical one. The “wedding” alluded to in the book’s title is related on two levels: at one level the city is depicted as a virgin bride, to be captured by the victor of battle, a reference to the statue of a young girl over the city’s main gate with a virgin’s wreath in her hand and the device ‘Who will take it?’ At a personal, romantic level the novel tells the tragic story of Willigis Ahlemann and his intended bride, Erdmuth Plogen, to whom he has been betrothed in youth. Yet, just as the city betrays its loyalty to the Empire by plotting with the Protestant Swedish king, so Erdmuth, proud rather than humble and unworthy of her suitor, chooses to betray Ahlemann when he leaves her to plead with General Tilly for his city’s survival. He sees her treachery as one with Magdeburg itself: she won’t “wait for him”, the city won’t “wait on His Imperial Majesty” and the citizens “won’t wait on the Council”.
Within this densely textured narrative there are other vivid characters: Colonel Falkenberg, commander of the Swedish forces, a cynical career soldier who would rather see the city reduced to rubble than agree to its capitulation; General Tilly’s young Jesuit chaplain, fanatical for the honour of the Church, who comes to realise that “this victory is a dreadful defeat”; Doctor Bake, the Protestant pastor of Magdeburg, triumphantly preaching war in the cathedral but with the strange sensation “that Christ was turning to him and looking at him from a great, great distance – with a look of unfathomable pain”.
Born in 1875, von le Fort witnessed the slaughter of the Great War and lived through the appalling events of the Third Reich, and eventually died age 95 in 1970. In her own mind, the determined, unrestrained movement towards war on the part of Nazi Germany in 1938 would have drawn imaginative parallels with these historical events 300 years earlier depicted in her fine novel.
