My Travels 1805-1812

At 10:00 in the evening of the 22nd, I, along with five other comrades, was hauled out of bed by soldiers who wanted to press us into service. They escorted us to the stockade, where we remained until the next evening at 6:00. Then we were taken by military escort to the city hall. I managed to get free, but my good traveling companion, Gottlieb Tscheppen from Bojanowa, and four others--three of whom were also foreigners--were forcibly pressed into military service. On the 2nd of May, however, at 2 o’clock at night, those of us who had been released earlier were rounded up again and locked up until 6:00 in the evening. This time I was almost lost, but after vehement protests, I was released again. However, I had to remain and work here until May 24th. By then it was high time for me to get out, because if I had stayed only two weeks longer I would surely have been lost.

Chapter 5: Customs of Hospitality (pp.65-66)

The following must be said in praise of the French: even when we lodged in a large tavern where there were many prominent travelers, we all ate at the same table and were treated with respect by them as well as by the innkeeper and his wife. This is not the case in Germany, where a craftsman, even a properly dressed one, gets pushed into a corner.

One thing really pleased me on this trip: the abundant eating of grapes. As luck would have it, we continually encountered ripe grapes from Paris all the way into Switzerland. During the day we ate nothing but a pound of bread and otherwise only grapes. Also on this count the French have a humane aspect which does not exist in Germany. If someone in a vineyard is asked for grapes, he doesn''t just give you a bunch of grapes, but instead says, "Come and help yourself!" We once walked into a vineyard where the grapes were rather sparse. There were three men there to whom we talked. Since their grapes were bad and very sparse, we were modest and took very little for ourselves. The men took that badly. "Take some, gentlemen, for heaven''s sake!" they said. We absolutely had to take more because there was a superstition among the common people that if they shared their grapes freely with travelers then God would bless them all the more in the coming year.

I must mention an incident of how one meets good people everywhere. On the next to the last day outside of Grenoble we entered a beautiful, charming valley. Grapes grew so high there that the grape pickers had to use little ladders. From the right side of the road a man and two young girls, each with a basket, approached; they had been picking grapes. My comrade was walking a little distance ahead of me. When I met these three people, I asked them for a bunch of grapes, of which they had very few in their baskets. Each of the girls gave me a small bunch. Then I called to my comrade to wait. "Is that your comrade?" said the man. Then he scolded the girls soundly for giving me such bad grapes, reached into his basket and picked out for my comrade and myself two of the most beautiful bunches, and apologized--saying that he would have given me still better grapes but unfortunately this had been a bad year in his vineyard. To the girls he said, "To a traveler you must give the best, not bad ones." It is with great pleasure that I always think about this beautiful valley and its good people.

Appendix:3: Wanderschaft (from the Essay, pp229-231)

On the whole, however, travel accounts left by journeymen tell us more about personal, social, and cultural matters than about craft-related ones. They also suggest that the personal growth and development of the young craftsman during the ''Wanderschaft'' may have been of far greater overall value than his gains in professional skills and expertise. This ''Scola Migrationis'', as Rainer Elkar calls the ''Wanderschaft'', gave Scholtz, for instance, the opportunity to come to terms with major social, political, cultural, religious, and linguistic concerns of his time. Rudolf Wissels’ well known observation applies perfectly to Scholtz: "Formerly the travel years of the journeyman were an instrument of higher education for the work force, a type of university study in the free school of life, regulated and guided into areas of specialization by the various professional organizations (guilds); this stage in life provided the opportunity for universal education, something denied today not only to our skilled work force, but also to the majority of all professionals." 1

Today we marvel at this institution which provided an extensive, flexible, self-directed learning period to a large segment of its population. The future craftsman looked forward to the journey period of his life with similar expectation and tribulation as today''s youth anticipates college or military service. With only a few basic requirements, each journeyman could design his journey according to his personal interests and his own spirit of adventure. Scholtz’s Wanderschaft provided him with a sound practical education in fields which today would be studied formally in college courses such as geography, sociology, foreign languages, agriculture, arts, and architecture. For example, a journeyman faced daily such challenges as communicating in foreign languages and interpreting maps; converting foreign money and measurements of distance and weights into the familiar value used “at home”. It was essential for his survival to face myriads of challenges which other cultures, religions, customs present. Thus the Scholtz journal indicates that those formative years furthered not only craft-related growth, but personal maturity. It encouraged tolerance in the young man, and led to a better understanding of peoples, countries, and world views......