Like in 1802, when Seume made his famous hike to Syracuse, he again chose a relatively peaceful year. However, in 1805, Austria was preparing to battle Napoleon for a third time, trying to lure Russia into the adventure. Napoleon crowned himself emperor in 1804, and war eventually broke out in the fall of 1805. When, in the Battle of the Three Emperors on 2 December, Austria suffered a crushing defeat at Austerlitz, Seume was already back home in Leipzig.
Starting from there in April 1805, Seume visited Dresden, Breslau, Warsaw, Kowno, Riga, Reval, and Saint Petersburg with a detour to Moscow. Most of the time, he did not hike but instead used the stagecoach. Following a more extended stay in Saint Petersburg, he continued to Turku, Uppsala, Stockholm, Helsingborg, Copenhagen, Kiel, and Hamburg before returning to Leipzig.
Actually, he visited only five countries: Saxony, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. Poland ceased to exist in 1795 when Prussia, Austria, and Russia occupied the rest of what was left of the kingdom following the first and second partitions of Poland in 1772 and 1793. Seume participated in the third partition of Poland as a Russian officer and adjutant of General Igelström in 1794.
Finland's situation occupied by Sweden and Russia was ethnically even worse than Poland's, for the border Seume crossed split a homogeneous population speaking neither a Slavic nor a Germanic idiom, posing the risk that the Finnish language might become extinct.
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| A page of Uppsala's Codex Argentus (Wikipedia) |
Already in the 4th century, Bishop Ulfilas (Wulfila) had the Bible translated into Gothic. The Bible text of the Codex Argenteus kept in Uppsala was written in Italy in the 6th century with silver letters on parchment. Of the original 336 folia, the former Benedictine abbey of Werden (near Essen, Rhineland) had 187 remaining. Emperor Rudolph II, interested in scholarship, bought the pages and kept them at his imperial seat in Prague.
When the Swedes occupied the city in 1648 at the end of the Thirty Years' War, they took the pages to Sweden as war booty, from where they found their way to Uppsala rather than to Gothenburg.
Below is the Lord's Prayer in Gothic that English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish-speaking people are still able to understand at least in parts:
atta unsar þu in himinam,
weihnai namo þein.
qimai þiudinassus þeins.
wairþai wilja þeins,
swe in himina jah ana airþai.
hlaif unsarana þana sinteinan gif uns himma daga.
jah aflet uns þatei skulans sijaima,
swaswe jah weis afletam þaim skulam unsaraim.
jah ni briggais uns in fraistubnjai,
ak lausei uns af þamma ubilin;
unte þeina ist þiudangardi jah mahts jah wulþus in aiwins.
amen.
Note that the letter þ stands for the "th," which is frequently changed into "d" in German.
Overall, Seume's diary about his travel around the Baltic Sea is less entertaining than his book about his hiking tour to Syracuse. Was this the reason that no publisher wanted to print the manuscript? No, the reason was that the keen observer Seume had well noticed the misery of the peasants during his travels and had written it down. Throughout his text, he criticizes the feudalistic society, and outspoken passages like the one below about the superiority of the Napoleonic soldier compared to his German counterpart were politically dangerous:
Without distinction, a Frenchman fights for his country, which has become his love. It not only keeps him and his family all the advantages but also offers real benefits. In France, a man is taken for what he is. In our country, a man is estimated according to his entry in the Church register, the weight of his father's moneybag, or what Lord Stewart's office prescribes. For whom should a German grenadier throw himself on batteries and into bayonets? He stays what he is, carries on his knapsack, and hardly earns a nice word from his grumpy ruler. He shall look death in the eye while in drudgery at home; his old, weak father is plowing the fields of a merciful Junker, doing nothing, paying him nothing, and rewarding him with maltreatment. The sweating old man brings in the harvest of the Court and has often let rot his own crop outside. However, he has the miserable honor of being the only coolie of the State, a better not recognized reputation! Why should a soldier fight courageously only to enjoy such happiness later himself? He shall be brave while his sister or girlfriend are forced to serve at Court for eight Gilders annually, year by year, without any perspective in their lifetime, and his old, sick aunt barely living on dry bread must spin her allotted pile of flax for the Court lest she is forced to live on alms. His little brother must serve as a messenger boy running for a dime, day in, day out, in cold and heat. The small peasant drives, pulls, and gives; on the large farms, no hoof will stir, and no wheel will turn without him. That is what you call State, good order, and justice. Are you still wondering where public unhappiness comes from?
I hope my translation has retained a bit of Seume's emotional style.
Below is the Lord's Prayer in Gothic that English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish-speaking people are still able to understand at least in parts:
atta unsar þu in himinam,
weihnai namo þein.
qimai þiudinassus þeins.
wairþai wilja þeins,
swe in himina jah ana airþai.
hlaif unsarana þana sinteinan gif uns himma daga.
jah aflet uns þatei skulans sijaima,
swaswe jah weis afletam þaim skulam unsaraim.
jah ni briggais uns in fraistubnjai,
ak lausei uns af þamma ubilin;
unte þeina ist þiudangardi jah mahts jah wulþus in aiwins.
amen.
Note that the letter þ stands for the "th," which is frequently changed into "d" in German.
Overall, Seume's diary about his travel around the Baltic Sea is less entertaining than his book about his hiking tour to Syracuse. Was this the reason that no publisher wanted to print the manuscript? No, the reason was that the keen observer Seume had well noticed the misery of the peasants during his travels and had written it down. Throughout his text, he criticizes the feudalistic society, and outspoken passages like the one below about the superiority of the Napoleonic soldier compared to his German counterpart were politically dangerous:
Without distinction, a Frenchman fights for his country, which has become his love. It not only keeps him and his family all the advantages but also offers real benefits. In France, a man is taken for what he is. In our country, a man is estimated according to his entry in the Church register, the weight of his father's moneybag, or what Lord Stewart's office prescribes. For whom should a German grenadier throw himself on batteries and into bayonets? He stays what he is, carries on his knapsack, and hardly earns a nice word from his grumpy ruler. He shall look death in the eye while in drudgery at home; his old, weak father is plowing the fields of a merciful Junker, doing nothing, paying him nothing, and rewarding him with maltreatment. The sweating old man brings in the harvest of the Court and has often let rot his own crop outside. However, he has the miserable honor of being the only coolie of the State, a better not recognized reputation! Why should a soldier fight courageously only to enjoy such happiness later himself? He shall be brave while his sister or girlfriend are forced to serve at Court for eight Gilders annually, year by year, without any perspective in their lifetime, and his old, sick aunt barely living on dry bread must spin her allotted pile of flax for the Court lest she is forced to live on alms. His little brother must serve as a messenger boy running for a dime, day in, day out, in cold and heat. The small peasant drives, pulls, and gives; on the large farms, no hoof will stir, and no wheel will turn without him. That is what you call State, good order, and justice. Are you still wondering where public unhappiness comes from?
I hope my translation has retained a bit of Seume's emotional style.
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