Judith J. Hurwich - Noble Strategies

In the mid-1560s, the Swabian Count Froben Christoph von Zimmern sat down to write a chronicle of the history of his family, which had made a remarkable comeback from political and economic disaster. Looking back over generations of happy and unhappy marriages and extramarital affairs, births (both legitimate and otherwise), family honors and family scandals, he left a remarkably frank and detailed account of the Zimmern family. Largely unknown for two centuries, the Zimmern Chronicle, or Chronicle of the Counts of Zimmern, came to light in the late 1700s. Since that time, it has been regarded as a unique and valuable source of cultural history in Germany in the sixteenth century. It has a well-established reputation for being one of the most colorful representations of Swabian noble culture and for giving an unparalleled glimpse into the minds, habits, and bedrooms of the premodern nobility.

The Zimmern Chronicle is unique among the chronicles of German noble families not only for its great length (1581 pages of manuscript, of which three-quarters are devoted to the period from the 1480s to the 1560s) but also for its inclusion of a large amount of incidental material drawn from popular culture, including many Schwnke, or bawdy merry tales. It is this incidental material, rather than the narrative of the Zimmern family itself, that has made the Zimmern Chronicle famous since the eighteenth century as a source for the study of German literature, popular culture, and law. The Zimmern Chronicle helps to fill this gap through its inclusion of much material that was either autobiographical or handed down orally within the family.

Froben Christoph von Zimmerns richly detailed account of his own marriage negotiations, for example, demonstrates that a young nobleman did not merely acquiesce in a candidate selected by his elders, but could manage the negotiation process himself and reject a candidate he disliked. The Zimmern Chronicle is remarkably candid about tensions within the family, portraying fratricidal quarrels over the inheritance, estrangements between fathers and sons, and separations between husbands and wives. The chronicler has more than one occasion to echo Ovids lament that love or unity between brothers is a rare bird (ZC 2:329; similar sentiments are expressed at 2:134, 3:29192). While warnings against the damage quarrels between brothers could inflict on the wealth and reputation of the lineage can also be found in other noble house chronicles of the period, the Zimmern Chronicle stands alone in its emphasis on emotional relationships within the nuclear family and especially in its condemnation of the extramarital sexual relationships noblemen took for granted. Their wives had to see it, live with it, and keep quiet, even if it stabbed them to the heart, exclaims the chronicler (