It was in those same years that a stout young fellow, Conrad by name, far off in the southern parts of Germany, set out from the old Castle of Hohenzollern, where he was but junior, and had small outlooks, upon a very great errand in the world.  From Hohenzollern; bound now towards Gelnhausen, Kaiserslautern, or whatever temporary lodging the great Kaiser Barbarossa might be known to have, who was a wandering man, his business lying everywhere over half the world, and needing the master’s eye.  Conrad’s purpose is to find Barbarossa, and seek fortune under him.

This is a very indisputable event of those same years.  The exact date, the figure, circumstances of it were, most likely, never written anywhere but on Conrad’s own brain, and are now rubbed out forevermore; but the event itself is certain; and of the highest concernment to this Narrative.  Somewhere about the year 1170, likeliest a few years before that, [Rentsch, Brandenburgischer Ceder-Hein (Baireuth, 1682), pp. 273-276.-See also Johann Ulrich Pregitzern, Teutscher Regierungs-und Ehren-Spiegel, vorbildend &c. des Hauses Hohenzollern (Berlin, 1703), pp. 90-93.  A learned and painful Book :  by a Tübingen Professor, who is deeply read in the old Histories, and gives Portraits and other Engravings of some value.] this Conrad, riding down from Hohenzoliern, probably with no great stock of luggage about, him,-little dreams of being connected with Brandenburg on the other side of the world; but IS unconsciously more so than any other of the then sons of Adam.  He is the lineal ancestor, twentieth in direct ascent, of the little Boy now sleeping in his cradle at Berlin; let him wait till nineteen generations, valiantly like Conrad, have done their part, and gone out, Conrad will find he is come to this!  A man’s destiny is strange always; and never wants for miracles, or will want, though it sometimes may for eyes to discern them.

Hohenzollern lies far south in SCHWABEN (Suabia), on the sunward slope of the Rauhe-Alp Country; no great way north from Constance and its Lake; but well aloft, near the springs of the Danube; its back leaning on the Black Forest; it is perhaps definable as the southern summit of that same huge old Hercynian Wood, which is still called the SCHWARZWALD (Black Forest), though now comparatively bare of trees. ["There are still considerable spottings of wood (pine mainly, and ‘black’ enough); HOLZ-HANDEL (timber-trade) still a considerable branch of business there;-and on the streams of the country are cunning contrivances noticeable, for floating down the article into the Neckar river, and thence into the Rhine and to Holland.” (Tourist’s Note.)] Fanciful Dryasdust, doing a little etymology, will tell you the name ZOLLERN is equivalent to TOLLERY or Place of Tolls.  Whereby HOHENZOLLERN comes to mean the HIGH or Upper TOLLERY;-and gives one the notion of antique pedlers climbing painfully, out of Italy and the Swiss valleys, thus far; unstrapping their pack-horses here, and chaffering in unknown dialect about TOLL.  Poor souls;-it may be so, but we do not know, nor shall it concern us.  This only is known :  That a human kindred, probably of some talent for coercing anarchy and guiding mankind, had, centuries ago, built its BURG there, and done that function in a small but creditable way ever since;-kindred possibly enough derivable from “Thassilo,” Charlemagne, King Dagobert, and other Kings, but certainly from Adam and the Almighty Maker, who had given it those qualities;-and that Conrad, a junior member of the same, now goes forth from it in the way we see.  “Why should a young fellow that has capabilities,” thought Conrad, “stay at home in hungry idleness, with no estate but his javelin and buff jerkin, and no employment but his hawks, when there is a wide opulent world waiting only to be conquered?” This was Conrad’s thought; and it proved to be a very just one.

It was now the flower-time of the Romish Kaisership of Germany; about the middle or noon of Barbarossa himself, second of the Hohenstauffens, and greatest of all the Kaisers of that or any other house.  Kaiser fallen unintelligible to most modern readers, and wholly unknown, which is a pity.  No King so furnished out with apparatus and arena, with personal faculty to rule and scene to do it in, has appeared elsewhere.  A magnificent magnanimous man; holding the reins of the world, not quite in the imaginary sense; scourging anarchy down, and urging noble effort up, really on a grand Scale.  A terror to evil-doers and a praise to well-doers in this world, probably beyond what was ever seen since.  Whom also we salute across the centuries, as a choice Beneficence of Heaven.  Encamped on the Plain of Roncaglia [when he entered Italy, as he too often had occasion to do], his shield was hung out on a high mast over his tent; and it meant in those old days, “Ho, every one that has suffered wrong; here is a Kaiser come to judge you, as he shall answer it to HIS Master.”  And men gathered round him; and actually found some justice,-if they could discern it when found.  Which they could not always do; neither was the justice capable of being perfect always.  A fearfully difficult function, that of Friedrich Redbeard.  But an inexorably indispensable one in this world;-though sometimes dispensed with (to the huge joy of Anarchy, which sings Hallelujah through all its Newspapers) for a season!

Kaiser Friedrich had immense difficulties with his Popes, with his Milanese, and the like;-besieged Milan six times over, among other anarchies;-had indeed a heavy-laden hard time of it, his task being great and the greatest.  He made Gebhardus, the anarchic Governor of Milan, lie chained under his table, like a dog, for three days.  For the man was in earnest, in that earnest time :-and let us say, they are but paltry sham-men who are not so, in any time; paltry, and far worse than paltry, however high their plumes may be.  Of whom the sick world (Anarchy, both vocal and silent, having now swoln rather high) is everywhere getting weary.-Gebhardus, the anarchic Governor, lay three days under the Kaiser’s table; as it would be well if every anarchic Governor, of the soft type and of the hard, were made to do on occasion; asking himself, in terrible earnest, “Am I a dog, then; alas, am not I a dog?” Those were serious old times.

On the other hand, Kaiser Friedrich had his Tourneys, his gleams of bright joyances now and then; one great gathering of all the chivalries at Mainz, which lasted for three weeks long, the grandest Tourney ever seen in this world.  Gelnhausen, in the Wetterau (ruin still worth seeing, on its Island in the Kinzig river), is understood to have been one of his Houses; Kaiserslautern (Kaiser’s LIMPID, from its clear spring-water) in the Pfalz (what we call PALATINATE), another.  He went on the Crusade in his seventieth year; [1189, A.D.; Saladin having, to the universal sorrow, taken Jerusalem.] thinking to himself, “Let us end with one clear act of piety :-he cut his way through the dangerous Greek attorneyisms, through the hungry mountain passes, furious Turk fanaticisms, like a gray old hero :  “Woe is me, my son has perished, then?” said he once, tears wetting the beard now white enough; “My son is slain!-But Christ still lives; let us on, my men!” And gained great victories, and even found his son; but never returned home;-died, some unknown sudden death, “in the river Cydnus,” say the most. [Kohler , and the Authorities cited by him.  Bunau’s Deutsche Kaiser-und Reichs-Historie (Leipzig, 1728-1743), i., is the express Book of Barbarossa :  an elaborate, instructive Volume.] Nay German Tradition thinks he is not yet dead; but only sleeping, till the bad world reach its worst, when he will reappear.  He sits within the Hill near Salzburg yonder,-says German Tradition, its fancy kindled by the strange noises in that Hill (limestone Hill) from hidden waters, and by the grand rocky look of the place :-A peasant once, stumbling into the interior, saw the Kaiser in his stone cavern; Kaiser sat at a marble table, leaning on his elbow; winking, only half asleep; beard had grown through the table, and streamed out on the floor; he looked at the peasant one moment; asked him something about the time it was; then dropped his eyelids again :  Not yet time, but will be soon! [Riesebeck’s Travels (English Translation, London, 1787), , Busching, Volks-Sagen, &c. (Leipzig, 1820), , &c. &x.] He is winking as if to awake.  To awake, and set his shield aloft by the Roncalic Fields again, with :  Ho, every one that is suffering wrong;-or that has strayed guideless, devil-ward, and done wrong, which is far fataler!

CONRAD HAS BECOME BURGGRAF OF Nürnberg (A.D. 1170).

This was the Kaiser to whom Conrad addressed himself; and he did it with success; which may be taken as a kind of testimonial to the worth of the young man.  Details we have absolutely none :  but there is no doubt that Conrad recommended himself to Kaiser Redbeard, nor any that the Kaiser was a judge of men.  Very earnest to discern men’s worth and capabilities; having unspeakable need of worth, instead of unworth, in those under him!  We may conclude he had found capabilities in Conrad; found that the young fellow did effective services as the occasion rose, and knew how to work, in a swift, resolute, judicious and exact manner.  Promotion was not likely on other terms; still less, high promotion.

One thing farther is known, significant for his successes :  Conrad found favor with “the Heiress of the Vohburg Family,” desirable young heiress, and got her to wife.  The Vohburg Family, now much forgotten everywhere, and never heard of in England before, had long been of supreme importance, of immense possessions, and opulent in territories, and we need not add, in honors and offices, in those Franconian Nürnberg regions; and was now gone to this one girl.  I know not that she had much inheritance after all; the vast Vohburg properties lapsing all to the Kaiser, when the male heirs were out.  But she had pretensions, tacit claims; in particular, the Vohburgs had long been habitual or in effect hereditary Burggrafs of Nürnberg; and if Conrad had the talent for that office; he now, in preference to others, might have a chance for it.  Sure enough, he got it; took root in it, he and his; and, in the course of centuries, branched up from it, high and wide, over the adjoining countries; waxing towards still higher destinies.  That is the epitome of Conrad’s history; history now become very great, but then no bigger than its neighbors, and very meagrely recorded; of which the reflective reader is to make what he can.

There is nothing clearly known of Conrad more than these three facts :  That he was a cadet of Hohenzollern (whose father’s name, and some forefathers’ names are definitely known in the family archives, but do not concern us); that he married the Heiress of the Vohburgs, whose history is on record in like manner; and that he was appointed Burggraf of Nürnberg, year not precisely known,-but before 1170, as would seem.  “In a REICHSTAG (Diet of the Empire) held at Regensburg in or about 1170,” he formally complains, he and certain others, all stanch Kaiser’s friends (for in fact it was with the Kaiser’s knowledge, or at his instigation), of Henry the Lion’s high procedures and malpractices; of Henry’s League with the Pope, League with the King of Denmark, and so forth; the said Henry having indeed fallen into opposition, to a dangerous degree;-and signs himself BURGGRAF OF Nürnberg, say the old Chronicles. [Rentsch, (who cites Aventinus, Trittheim, &c.).] The old Document itself has long since perished, I conclude :  but the Chronicles may be accepted as reporters of so conspicuous a thing; which was the beginning of long strife in Germany, and proved the ruin of Henry the Lion, supreme Welf grown over-big,-and cost our English Henry II., whose daughter he had married, a world of trouble and expense, we may remark withal.  Conrad therefore is already Burggraf of Nürnberg, and a man of mark, in 1170 :  and his marriage, still more his first sally from the paternal Castle to seek his fortune, must all be dated earlier.

More is not known of Conrad :  except indeed that he did not perish in Barbarossa’s grand final Crusade.  For the antiquaries have again found him signed to some contract, or otherwise insignificant document, A.D. 1200.  Which is proof positive that he did not die in the Crusade; and proof probable that he was not of it,-few, hardly any, of those stalwart 150,000 champions of the Cross having ever got home again.  Conrad, by this time, might have sons come to age; fitter for arms and fatigues than he :  and indeed at Nürnberg, in Deutschland generally, as Official Prince of the Empire, and man of weight and judgment, Conrad’s services might be still more useful, and the Kaiser’s interests might require him rather to stay at home in that juncture.  Burggraf of Nürnberg he continued to be; he and his descendants, first in a selective, then at length in a directly hereditary way, century after century; and so long as that office lasted in Nürnberg (which it did there much longer than in other Imperial Free-Cities), a COMES DE ZOLRE of Conrad’s producing was always the man thenceforth.

Their acts, in that station and capacity, as Burggraves and Princes of the Empire, were once conspicuous enough in German History; and indeed are only so dim now, because the History itself is, and was always, dim to us on this side of the sea.  They did strenuous work in their day; and occasionally towered up (though little driven by the poor wish of “towering,” or “shining” without need) into the high places of Public History.  They rest now from their labors, Conrad and his successors, in long series, in the old Monastery of Heilsbronn (between Nürnberg and Anspach), with Tombs to many of them, which were very legible for slight Biographic purposes in my poor friend Rentsch’s time, a hundred and fifty years ago; and may perhaps still have some quasi-use, as “sepulchral brasses,” to another class of persons.  One or two of those old buried Figures, more peculiarly important for our little Friend now sleeping in his cradle yonder, we must endeavor, as the Narrative proceeds, to resuscitate a little and render visible for moments.

OF THE HOHENZOLLERN BURGGRAVES GENERALLY.

As to the Office, it was more important than perhaps the reader imagines.  We already saw Conrad first Burggraf, among the magnates of the country, denouncing Henry the Lion.  Every Burggraf of Nürnberg is, in virtue of his office, “Prince of the Empire :”  if a man happened to have talent of his own, and solid resources of his own (which are always on the growing hand with this family), here is a basis from which he may go far enough.  Burggraf of Nürnberg :  that means again GRAF (judge, defender, manager, G’REEVE) of the Kaiser’s BURG or Castle,-in a word Kaiser’s Representative and ALTER EGO,-in the old Imperial Free-Town of Nürnberg; with much adjacent very complex territory, also, to administer for the Kaiser.  A flourishing extensive City, this old Nürnberg, with valuable adjacent territory, civic and imperial, intricately intermixed; full of commercial industries, opulences, not without democratic tendencies.  Nay it is almost, in some senses, the LONDON AND MIDDLESEX of the Germany that then was, if we will consider it!

This is a place to give a man chances, and try what stuff is in him.  The office involves a talent for governing, as well as for judging; talent for fighting also, in cases of extremity, and what is still better, a talent for avoiding to fight.  None but a man of competent superior parts can do that function; I suppose, no imbecile could have existed many months in it, in the old earnest times.  Conrad and his succeeding Hohenzollerns proved very capable to do it, as would seem; and grew and spread in it, waxing bigger and bigger, from their first planting there by Kaiser Barbarossa, a successful judge of men.  And ever since that time, from “about the year 1170,” down to the year 1815,-when so much was changed, owing to another (temporary) “Kaiser” of new type, Napoleon his name,-the Hohenzollerns have had a footing in Frankenland; and done sovereignty in and round Nürnberg, with an enlarging Territory in that region.  Territory at last of large compass; which, under the names MARGRAFDOM OF ANSPACH, and of BAIREUTH, or in general MARGRAFDOM OF CULMBACH, which includes both, has become familiar in History.

For the House went on steadily increasing, as it were, from the first day; the Hohenzollerns being always of a growing, gaining nature;-as men are that live conformably to the laws of this Universe, and of their place therein; which, as will appear from good study of their old records, though idle rumor, grounded on no study, sometimes says the contrary, these Hohenzollerns eminently were.  A thrifty, steadfast, diligent, clear-sighted, stout-hearted line of men; of loyal nature withal, and even to be called just and pious, sometimes to a notable degree.  Men not given to fighting, where it could be avoided; yet with a good swift stroke in them, where it could not :  princely people after their sort, with a high, not an ostentatious turn of mind.  They, for most part, go upon solid prudence; if possible, are anxious to reach the goal without treading on any one; are peaceable, as I often say, and by no means quarrelsome, in aspect and demeanor; yet there is generally in the Hohenzollerns a very fierce flash of anger, capable of blazing out in cases of urgency :  this latter also is one of the most constant features I have noted in the long series of them.  That they grew in Frankenland, year after year, and century after century, while it was their fortune to last, alive and active there, is no miracle, on such terms.

Their old big Castle of Plassenburg (now a Penitentiary, with treadmill and the other furnishings) still stands on its Height, near Culmbach, looking down over the pleasant meeting of the Red and White Mayn Rivers and of their fruitful valleys; awakening many thoughts in the traveller.  Anspach Schloss, and still more Baireuth Schloss (Mansion, one day, of our little Wilhelmina of Berlin, Fritzkin’s sister, now prattling there in so old a way; where notabilities have been, one and another; which Jean Paul, too, saw daily in his walks, while alive and looking skyward) :  these, and many other castles and things, belonging now wholly to Bavaria, will continue memorable for Hohenzollern history.

The Family did its due share, sometimes an excessive one, in religious beneficences and foundations; which was not quite left off in recent times, though much altering its figure.  Erlangen University, for example, was of Wilhelmina’s doing.  Erlangen University;-and also an Opera-House of excessive size in Baireuth.  Such was poor Wilhelmina’s sad figure of “religion.”  In the old days, their largest bequest that I recollect was to the TEUTSCHE RITTER, Order of Teutonic Knights, very celebrated in those days.  Junior branches from Hohenzollern, as from other families, sought a career in that chivalrous devout Brotherhood now and then; one pious Burggraf had three sons at once in it; he, a very bequeathing Herr otherwise, settled one of his mansions, Virnsperg, with rents and incomings, on the Order.  Which accordingly had thenceforth a COMTHUREI (Commandery) in that country; Comthurei of Virnsperg the name of it :  the date of donation is A.D. 1294; and two of the old Herr’s three RITTER sons, we can remark, were successively COMTHURS (Commanders, steward-prefects) of Virnsperg, the first two it had. [Rentsch, .]

This was in 1294; the palmy period, or culmination time of the TEUTSCHES RITTERTHUM.  Concerning which, on wider accounts, we must now say a word.