Leseprobe

The Horrors of War in Seventeenth-Century Art and Literature 130 Hence, on the left a soldier is shown killing a woman, while on the right a woman is gnawing on a bone, accompanied by her child. In the lower section of the title page, death is again depicted as a skeleton. This representation corresponds to the experiences described in the chronicle, especially with mercenaries marauding through towns and villages.Although this document again has the character of a sober chronicle, omitting detailed descriptions of the events it records, it is clear from the cover picture what impressions nevertheless inform this relatively dispassionate account. Violence against women as a topic in the experience of war In a multitude of ego-documents from the period of the Thirty Years’War, there are descriptions of attacks on women and rapes, as has been demonstrated, for instance, by Karin Jansson using Swedish examples18 and Petra Grubitzsch on the basis of an example from Saxony.19 In some cases, very explicit accounts of such acts of brutality have survived, such as in the diary of the mayor of Rüthen, Christoph Brandis,20 who described the rape of a person he knew.21 His vehement language clearly shows his disapproval of the injustice com- mitted as well as his incomprehension that the perpetrator was not punished. Assaults against women are also common- place among the images found in print series concerning the Thirty Years’ War.22 Such acts were perceived not only as offences against women per se, but also as a consequence of a war that has deviated from its intended course, and thus as a violation of the established order. In his Articles of War , Gustavus Adolphus, for example, had imposed the death penalty for the rape of women;23 hence, there was certainly a sense of injustice among the military leadership regarding the atrocities committed by their soldiers. Indeed, there are some recorded cases in which attempted rape actually did result in the death penalty.24 sion of the Thirty Years’War.15 A remarkable example of the interpretation of the events of the war as divine punishment is the Oberländische Jammer und Straff-Chronic published in 1669 by the administrator ( Lehnskommissar ) Gabriel Furtenbach.16 He reconstructed the events of the war from 1618 onwards in and around his native town of Leutkirch in the Allgäu region, drawing primarily on the recollections of members of his own family17 and interpreting them in the aforesaid way. The title page of this small publication sum- marises the content of the chronicle in pictorial form, with no holds barred as regards brutal depictions of the conse- quences of war (fig. 7). The events shown are programmati- cally described by the caption: Kriegesnoth / nimbt das brodt / bringt den Todt (War takes bread and brings death).The war and the horrors it unleashed are portrayed on the title page as divine punishment, as “God’s rod and Heaven’s arrow”. FIG. 5 Hermann tom Ring, Death as an Archer , 1550s, pen with brown ink, brush with grey-brown wash, h. 9.9 cm, w. 6.9 cm, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett, inv. no. C 2304 FIG. 4 Death on Horseback, Germany, 2nd half of the 17th century, limewood with traces of pigment, h. 30.8 cm, w. 29.2 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 17.190.729