Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. In our most recent installments
Speaker 1: of Unearthed, we talked about a hand prosthesis that had
Speaker 1: been discovered in Bavaria that dated back to sometime between
Speaker 1: the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in reading about this,
Speaker 1: articles mentioned various other prostcees that had been found in
Speaker 1: archaeological sites and a mention of Gutfried von Berlisingen, also
Speaker 1: known as Goods of the Iron hand. What really caught
Speaker 1: my attention and that this mention was that his prosthesis
Speaker 1: sounded a lot more complex than I really would have
Speaker 1: imagined for the time that he was living in. I
Speaker 1: want to stress upfront that more complex prostses are not
Speaker 1: inherently better than less complex ones. So much depends on
Speaker 1: what the person actually using the prostsis needs and wants
Speaker 1: and can find most comfortable and can access and afford,
Speaker 1: and some people don't want to use one at all.
Speaker 1: We also live in an age in which there are
Speaker 1: a lot of very well meaning engineers designing very complex
Speaker 1: prosthetic limbs without the involvement of the people who would
Speaker 1: actually be using them. That has started to shift a
Speaker 1: little bit, but the prosthetics industry is still really not
Speaker 1: being led by prosthetics users, which is something that applies
Speaker 1: to adaptive technology more broadly. Also, so I don't want
Speaker 1: to give the impression that the prostsis there's two of
Speaker 1: them that the process we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: today were like automatically better than ones that were a
Speaker 1: little simpler, like what we talked about on on Earthed. Also,
Speaker 1: some aspects of this research were complicated because a lot
Speaker 1: of what is out there about him is in German.
Speaker 1: Some of the more recent English language work has been
Speaker 1: written or published by white nationalists. Aside from his own story,
Speaker 1: which is a story about you know, historic German figure.
Speaker 1: There was an ss Panzergnadier division named after him during
Speaker 1: World War Two, So he's somebody that white nationalists have
Speaker 1: kind of appropriated in some ways. We'll talk about this
Speaker 1: more in the Friday Behind the Scenes, but it did
Speaker 1: mean that there was some stuff that was off the
Speaker 1: table as research material because I'm not buying a book
Speaker 1: from a white nationalist publisher for the podcast What all Right?
Speaker 1: So Guttfried von Berlishingen lived during the transition from what
Speaker 1: we think of as the Medieval period to the Renaissance.
Speaker 1: Most historians frame the Medieval period in Europe as starting
Speaker 1: with the end of the Roman Empire in the fifth century,
Speaker 1: although there are various arguments for earlier and later events
Speaker 1: and dates. In terms of the start of the Renaissance,
Speaker 1: different scholars cite different years, stretching all the way from
Speaker 1: the thirteen hundreds to the fifteen hundreds. So we've talked
Speaker 1: about on the show before. These historical periods are a
Speaker 1: framework that scholars have created to help us understand and
Speaker 1: conceptualize the past. And one reason that the end of
Speaker 1: the Medieval period and that transition to the Renaissance can
Speaker 1: seem a little fuzzy, maybe more so than the beginning
Speaker 1: of the Medieval period, is that a lot of the
Speaker 1: changes involved were really gradual. It was not like somebody
Speaker 1: flipped a switch and Europe was suddenly in the Renaissance.
Speaker 1: There were changes in political, religious, and economic structures that
Speaker 1: took decades to really develop. A lot of the time,
Speaker 1: you can point to various pretty clear cut historical moments
Speaker 1: like the Black Death from thirteen forty seven to thirteen
Speaker 1: fifty one, or Martin Luther writing his ninety five THESS
Speaker 1: in fifteen seventeen. But these more discrete moments were part
Speaker 1: of these ongoing, overlapping changes, and some of these gradual
Speaker 1: changes from the Medieval period to the Renaissance were happening
Speaker 1: over the course of Gutfried's lifetime. They affected him directly,
Speaker 1: and this included the Protestant Reformation and a military shift
Speaker 1: from knights to professional military forces. Gutfried von Berlishingen was
Speaker 1: born in fourteen eighty or fourteen eighty one in the
Speaker 1: Duchy of Wurtemberg, presumably at Jagdousand Castle also called Gutzenburg,
Speaker 1: which was the Berlishingen family home today. This is in
Speaker 1: the German state of Baden Wurtemberg, and at the time
Speaker 1: it was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Guttfried's father,
Speaker 1: Killian von Berlishingen, was a reich Ritter or an imperial
Speaker 1: knight of the Holy Roman Empire, meaning his fealty was
Speaker 1: to the Holy Roman Emperor, not to the Duke of Wurtemberg.
Speaker 1: This was both a military and administrative role. Reichs Ritter
Speaker 1: were typically both warriors and landlords. Killian had been married
Speaker 1: twice before marrying Gutfried's mother, and Gutfried was the youngest
Speaker 1: of all of his children. So Gutfried had a lot
Speaker 1: more wealth and influence than say, people in the peasant
Speaker 1: class and even some of the members of the more
Speaker 1: provincial nobility, but being the youngest son of a minor
Speaker 1: noble put him at a disadvantage compared to people like
Speaker 1: his older brothers and a lot of other men in
Speaker 1: the same class. Much later in his life, his autobiography
Speaker 1: would frame this as having pulled himself out of just
Speaker 1: total poverty through his valorous service as a knight. When
Speaker 1: he was young, Gutfried went to school for about a year,
Speaker 1: but he was far more interested in horsemanship than in studying.
Speaker 1: When he was fourteen, he became a page to a
Speaker 1: knight named Konrad von Berlishingen, who was one of his
Speaker 1: father's cousins. Conrad died in fourteen ninety seven, at which
Speaker 1: point Gutfried was sent to serve in the court of
Speaker 1: the Margrave of Ansbach, which was another principality of the
Speaker 1: Holy Roman Empire. This apparently did not go well. Gutfried
Speaker 1: was described in terms like wilful, hot headed, and headstrong,
Speaker 1: and he also doesn't seem to have been at all
Speaker 1: interested in what was going on at court, so he
Speaker 1: was squired to another knight, Vite von Leedersheim, who was
Speaker 1: in the service of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian the First.
Speaker 1: In fourteen ninety nine, at the age of about nineteen,
Speaker 1: Gutfried was considered to have completed his training as a knight,
Speaker 1: and at first it seems like he wanted to follow
Speaker 1: in his father's footsteps as a reichsch Ridder, but it
Speaker 1: also seems like he decided he wanted a life that
Speaker 1: had more excitement and less responsibility instead, so within a
Speaker 1: year he had left the service of the empire and
Speaker 1: joined up with a robber knight known as Hans Talliker
Speaker 1: von Messenbach. Earlier, we mentioned a shift in the way
Speaker 1: that militaries worked, with knights being replaced by soldiers. Knights
Speaker 1: typically went through a lengthy training period with other knights,
Speaker 1: like Gutfried's time as a page and a squire, but
Speaker 1: soldiers were being recruited from outside the nobility, and they
Speaker 1: were trained more quickly by professional military instructors. Knights had
Speaker 1: been sworn to serve members of the nobility and they
Speaker 1: were typically of noble birth themselves. So this shift meant
Speaker 1: that knights and nobles had progressively less power and influence.
Speaker 1: Some of them then turned to other means to try
Speaker 1: to gain power and wealth. The term robber knight could
Speaker 1: encompass anything from a landlord who was treating his tenants
Speaker 1: unethically to try to bring in more money to knights
Speaker 1: who literally robbed people or kidnapped them and held them
Speaker 1: for ransom.
Speaker 2: Hans Talliker von Messenbach was apparently more of the latter.
Speaker 2: One of the sources that was used in this episode
Speaker 2: described him as notorious. He and his men attacked trading caravans,
Speaker 2: and they ransacked villages, and they did so much of
Speaker 2: this that the Swabian League took up arms against them.
Speaker 2: The Swabian League was an alliance of cities, states, and
Speaker 2: individual nobles who mutually agreed to defend one another from
Speaker 2: this kind of rating and to band together against things
Speaker 2: like imperial tax increases and land seizures. Gutfried von Berlishingen
Speaker 2: and the Swabian League had a lot of encounters over
Speaker 2: the course of his life. One of Gutfried's cousins decided
Speaker 2: that he was going to get himself killed if he
Speaker 2: didn't find something else to do with his life, and
Speaker 2: he convinced Gutfried to leave Hans Talliker. After this, Gutfried
Speaker 2: became a mercenary during the Lanschut War of succession, which
Speaker 2: we will get into after we pause for a sponsor break. Briefly,
Speaker 2: the Landshad War of succession was a dispute within the
Speaker 2: House of Vittelsbach, which ruled Bavaria. In thirteen twenty nine,
Speaker 2: Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Fourth, who was a Vittelsbach,
Speaker 2: had signed the Treaty of Pavia, which divided Bavaria into
Speaker 2: two portions, with each of those portions ruled by one
Speaker 2: of his brother's sons. Under the terms of this treaty,
Speaker 2: if the family line that was ruling either one of
Speaker 2: these regions came to an end, meaning if somebody died
Speaker 2: without a male heir, the other one would take possession
Speaker 2: of it. More than one hundred and fifty years later, George,
Speaker 2: Duke of Bavaria Landshut, had no son and tried to
Speaker 2: name his daughter Elizabeth as his heir.
Speaker 1: Instead. Duke Albert the fourth of Bavaria Munich, who was
Speaker 1: supposed to inherit Bavaria Lanshut. If George died without an
Speaker 1: heir went to war over this. Gutfried von Berlishingen fought
Speaker 1: on Albert the fourth side, working as a mercenary. In
Speaker 1: this case, Gutfried and the Swabian League were on the
Speaker 1: same side, but he was fighting against two of his
Speaker 1: brothers who had sided with Bavaria Lanschut. Another of Albert's
Speaker 1: allies was the Imperial city of Nurnberg, and on July fourteenth,
Speaker 1: fifteen oh four, Gutfried was injured when a cannon fire
Speaker 1: from Nurnberg's forces hit their allies lines and a cannon
Speaker 1: ball struck his right hand. Goodfried was fully armored, but
Speaker 1: the impact of this cannon ball forced the pommel of
Speaker 1: his sword in between his gauntlet and his arm piece,
Speaker 1: and it crushed and nearly severed his hand. His injured
Speaker 1: hand had to be amputated at the wrist. He was
Speaker 1: lucky to survive this injury. We've talked on the show
Speaker 1: before about the work of surgeon Amboise Parret, who made
Speaker 1: huge advances in European methods for performing amputations. We're going
Speaker 1: to have that as an upcoming Saturday Classic, and some
Speaker 1: of the techniques typically involved in amputation before Parrey did
Speaker 1: his work actually damaged the tissue and made it harder
Speaker 1: for people to recover. Parret's work included things like the
Speaker 1: reintroduction of ligatures to control bleeding, and this work was
Speaker 1: still about forty years away when Gutfried was injured. Joseph
Speaker 1: Lister's antiseptic surgical techniques and even developments like the turn
Speaker 1: kit disclosevere bleeding, those were all still centuries away. Gutfried
Speaker 1: spent more than six months recuperating, barely leaving his bed
Speaker 1: until February of fifteen oh five.
Speaker 2: Even given the state of medicine and surgery at this time,
Speaker 2: there were, of course other people who had also survived
Speaker 2: these kinds of injuries and amputations, And while Gutfried was recovering,
Speaker 2: he remembered another Knight who had used a prosthetic hand.
Speaker 2: He decided that he would have one made for himself,
Speaker 2: so once he was well enough, he went to a
Speaker 2: blacksmith to commission one. This prosthesis was made of sheet
Speaker 2: iron about a millimeter thick and painted to resemble his
Speaker 2: skin color. It was attached to a cuff to fit
Speaker 2: it to the wrist. The fingers moved in pairs, so
Speaker 2: the index and middle finger moved together, and the ring
Speaker 2: and pinky finger moved together, and the thumb could move
Speaker 2: as well. Using the other hand, Gutfried could move the
Speaker 2: fingers and thumb into different positions and lock them into place,
Speaker 2: and he could release those with a button.
Speaker 1: For a long.
Speaker 2: Time, it was assumed that this prosthesis allowed Gudfried to
Speaker 2: wield a sword with his right hand, and he may
Speaker 2: have held a sword with this prosthesis, but he probably
Speaker 2: did not fight with it. It wouldn't really have been
Speaker 2: strong enough for that kind of movement and impact, so
Speaker 2: he learned to fight left handed.
Speaker 1: But he could have.
Speaker 2: Used this prosthesis to hold like the reins of his
Speaker 2: horse or the strap of a shield or other similar objects.
Speaker 2: And this prosethsis also had a more cosmetic function. Wearing
Speaker 2: it meant that he still looked like people expected a
Speaker 2: knight to look. Soon he was being known as Goods
Speaker 2: of the iron hand or the Knight of the iron hand.
Speaker 2: Gufried's return to combat involved a lot of feuding over
Speaker 2: the years. Historians within and outside of Germany have offered
Speaker 2: different interpretations about the feuds that were such a big
Speaker 2: part of life among the nobility the Holy Roman Empire.
Speaker 2: Some have framed feuds as a way for the nobility
Speaker 2: to preserve their rights going into battle against other nobles
Speaker 2: or cities or states that threatened them in some way.
Speaker 2: Others have viewed feuding more as an almost ritualized way
Speaker 2: for nobles to try to preserve their honor or to
Speaker 2: seek retribution after being wronged. There were also some connections
Speaker 2: to the world of robber knights that we talked about earlier.
Speaker 2: Aside from all these nuances, though, feuding overall was a
Speaker 2: way of using violence to resolve conflicts. Unsurprisingly, this caused problems,
Speaker 2: and it caused enough problems that in fourteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian the First issued the eveger Landfrieda,
Speaker 2: translated as the Perpetual Public Peace or Eternal Domestic Piece.
Speaker 2: This outlawed feuding. After this, disputing nobles were supposed to
Speaker 2: resolve their problems through legal channels, not through fighting. A
Speaker 2: lot of nobles, though, they just ignored it and kept
Speaker 2: feuding with one another anyway.
Speaker 1: It's a way of life. In fifteen eleven, the Electorate
Speaker 1: of Cologne demanded that Guts repay a debt. He refused,
Speaker 1: and he raised a mercenary company to fight a years
Speaker 1: long feud about it. Then, in fifteen twelve, he in
Speaker 1: about one hundred and thirty mounted mercenaries attacked a merchant caravan,
Speaker 1: leading to feuds with multiple cities who either had merchants
Speaker 1: or travelers in that convoy or sent forces to try
Speaker 1: to deal with the attack. After the caravan attack, Maximilian
Speaker 1: the First placed Goots under an imperial ban and tried
Speaker 1: to seize all of his estates, but he managed to
Speaker 1: transfer them to family members. Before that could happen, the
Speaker 1: Swabian League demanded he pay reparations, and ultimately the imperial
Speaker 1: ban was lifted in May of fifteen fourteen after Guts
Speaker 1: paid fourteen thousand guilders. Also in fifteen f fourteen, peasants
Speaker 1: in the Duchy of Wurttemberg rose up with members of
Speaker 1: the poorer urban classes and they rebelled against the duke.
Speaker 1: This was an uprising that came to be known as
Speaker 1: the Poor Conrad movement. Guts was one of the people
Speaker 1: who was hired to suppress this uprising, and he also
Speaker 1: kept feuding and captured nobles to hold them for ransom.
Speaker 1: He made a lot of money through these various feuds
Speaker 1: and kidnappings and mercenary work. In fifteen seventeen he bought
Speaker 1: Hornberg Castle as his personal stronghold in residence. In fifteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: Gutz was hired by Duke Ulrich von Wurttemberg to fight
Speaker 1: in a war against the Swabian League, during which he
Speaker 1: was captured. He was held at an Inn for three years.
Speaker 1: In fifteen twenty two, he finally negotiated a settlement for
Speaker 1: his release, including taking a vow not to participate in
Speaker 1: any more feuding.
Speaker 2: Goods basically retired at this point, and it seems that
Speaker 2: he also converted tot Stanism. He doesn't spell that out
Speaker 2: in his autobiography, but reading between the lines, this seems
Speaker 2: to have been. When this happened, he went back to
Speaker 2: Hornberg Castle. He spent some time with his family, but
Speaker 2: a few years later he was drawn into another conflict
Speaker 2: that took him out of retirement. We will get to
Speaker 2: that after a sponsor break. The Poor Conrad movement that
Speaker 2: we mentioned earlier was one of a series of peasant
Speaker 2: uprisings in the sixteenth century. Another is known as the
Speaker 2: German Peasants War of fifteen twenty five. Like the Poor
Speaker 2: Conrad movement, this was a response to taxes and duties
Speaker 2: that had been imposed upon the peasant class by the
Speaker 2: Swabian League. The Peasant's War was also connected to the
Speaker 2: Protestant Reformation and the idea of a person's individual faith
Speaker 2: and relationship with God rather than the supremacy of the
Speaker 2: Catholic Church. The peasants involved in this uprising drafted a
Speaker 2: set of demands to present to the Swabian League, known
Speaker 2: as the Twelve Articles. These included the right for each
Speaker 2: community to choose its own pastor, and provisions for how
Speaker 2: tides given to the Church should be used. Some of
Speaker 2: the demands really highlight how few rights the peasant class had.
Speaker 2: They included things like the freedom to own property and
Speaker 2: the freedom to hunt fish and cut wood. These are
Speaker 2: things most peasants could not do since nearly all the
Speaker 2: land was owned by the nobility, who did not allow
Speaker 2: anyone else to use it. There were also articles about
Speaker 2: fair rent and an end to oppression by the nobility. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a pretty interesting human rights document. By late
Speaker 2: April of fifteen twenty five, the Protestant Fraternity of Peasants
Speaker 2: had a fighting force numbering about twelve thousand, known as
Speaker 2: the Bright Shining Band, led by George Metzler and vandel Hips.
Speaker 2: Their numbers and the fact that about a quarter.
Speaker 1: Of them had firearms meant that they had successfully attacked
Speaker 1: some nobles estates, but it was clear that they needed
Speaker 1: somebody more experience to lead them. In some accounts, this
Speaker 1: was motivated by an incident in which the peasants had
Speaker 1: massacred the nobles in a city they had attacked. That
Speaker 1: had caused reformer Martin Luther to denounce them, So they
Speaker 1: decided they needed to find a leader who would not
Speaker 1: let something like that happen again. Regardless of the exact motivations, though,
Speaker 1: they went to Hornberg Castle and they lay siege to it,
Speaker 1: demanding that Gutfrid Vaughan Relishingen joined them. According to his
Speaker 1: later court testimony and his autobiography, he really did not
Speaker 1: have a choice in this, and he probably could not
Speaker 1: have withstood an ongoing siege at Hornberg Castle against a
Speaker 1: force that large. While he probably wasn't all that moved
Speaker 1: by the Peasants' situation or their demands, aligning with them
Speaker 1: did pit him against Thisabian league and against a lot
Speaker 1: of nobles he'd previously had feuds or other disputes with.
Speaker 1: So while some of the more modern accounts kind of
Speaker 1: paint him as kind of an early Renaissance robin Hood
Speaker 1: rising up with the poor against the nobility, he really
Speaker 1: had his own reasons to participate, which seemed pretty self serving.
Speaker 1: He signed an agreement to take command on April twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: fifteen twenty five. He and the Bright Shining Band then
Speaker 1: went around to other estates recruiting, that is, forcing other
Speaker 1: nobles to join them. This meant that there were progressively
Speaker 1: more and more people with the bands who had experience
Speaker 1: in combat and tactics, and it also meant that Goods
Speaker 1: had more people to back up his story that he
Speaker 1: had been forced into this as well. On May fifth,
Speaker 1: Goods and Vendall Hipler issued a declaration that significantly weakened
Speaker 1: the demands made in the twelve articles. Goods had already
Speaker 1: faced criticism from within the band, since there were people
Speaker 1: who knew about the role that he'd played putting down
Speaker 1: the poor Conrad rebellion, but this weakening of their demands
Speaker 1: made people dislike him even more. On May eighth, the
Speaker 1: Bright Shining Band lay siege to Wurtzburg, and eventually Marienberg
Speaker 1: Fortress was the only thing there they hadn't captured. The
Speaker 1: band tried to lay siege to it, but this was
Speaker 1: not nearly as effective as their earlier attacks on other
Speaker 1: towns and estates had been. This fortress was up on
Speaker 1: top of a hill, and it was very well fortified,
Speaker 1: and the land around it had been entirely cleared of
Speaker 1: trees and other cover as a precautionary measure as word
Speaker 1: had spread about this advancing peasant army. So if they
Speaker 1: wanted to attack, it was up a hill. There's plenty
Speaker 1: of like line of sight from the people being besieged,
Speaker 1: and like nowhere to hide on the way to get
Speaker 1: up there. The Peasant's army assaulted the walls of the
Speaker 1: fortress on May fifteenth, which was something else. The force
Speaker 1: inside had already taken steps to get ready for. Although
Speaker 1: the nobles were vastly outnumbered, they had prepared things like
Speaker 1: boiling water and pitched to dump on the attackers. This
Speaker 1: whole thing sounds like it was a truly gruesome battle,
Speaker 1: and the Peasants army faced heavy losses. They didn't give up, though,
Speaker 1: and after this they got some miners who had joined
Speaker 1: their cause to try to tunnel under the walls. Eventually, though,
Speaker 1: reinforcements arrived from the Swabian League and Goots and the
Speaker 1: peasants withdrew. Morale started to fall in the Bright Shining
Speaker 1: Band after this, and people started deserting. On May twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: Gutz said he was going out to do some recon
Speaker 1: and he left and he never came back. In some accounts,
Speaker 1: he then led a force that destroyed another branch of
Speaker 1: the peasant's army. Ultimately, whether he was involved or not,
Speaker 1: the peasant armies were defeated and a lot of the
Speaker 1: people who had joined them were killed. Guts was subpoenaed
Speaker 1: to answer for his role in all of this in
Speaker 1: fifteen twenty six. He argued that he had been forced
Speaker 1: into helping the peasants, and he said he'd strategically tried
Speaker 1: to minimize the damage that they were doing without them
Speaker 1: realizing it. He was exonerated by the Imperial Court that October,
Speaker 1: but the Swabian League, who at this point had a
Speaker 1: very long and checkered history with Gutz van Berlishingen, they
Speaker 1: were not satisfied. They either lured him to a meeting
Speaker 1: by saying that they were going to clear him of
Speaker 1: some charges related to an earlier war, or they just
Speaker 1: captured him while he was traveling. Either way, he was
Speaker 1: imprisoned for two more years and only released in thirteen
Speaker 1: fifty after he paid reparations and swore an oath that
Speaker 1: he would not go far from home or even mount
Speaker 1: a horse. His second prosthesis was probably made some time
Speaker 1: after he was released. This one was more complex than
Speaker 1: the one that he'd had made in fifteen oh four.
Speaker 1: It went up to his elbow, and each of the
Speaker 1: fingers had three articulated joints, while his thumb had two
Speaker 1: ratchet Mechanisms inside the fingers and thumb meant they could
Speaker 1: individually be locked into position and a button released them.
Speaker 1: The wrist could also be rotated fifteen degrees in either direction,
Speaker 1: changing the angle of the hand. This allowed him to
Speaker 1: use the prosthesis to grip things that needed to be
Speaker 1: held at different angles, like the angle needed to hold
Speaker 1: a quill versus the angle needed to hold playing cards.
Speaker 1: There were pros and cons with this prosthesis Compared to
Speaker 1: the earlier one. The fingers could be moved individually, and
Speaker 1: the joints could be locked into more positions. In general,
Speaker 1: the second prosthesis could also be used to grip smaller,
Speaker 1: more delicate objects, but it wasn't as sturdy as the
Speaker 1: older prostsis had been, and at the same time, it
Speaker 1: was a lot heavier. It weighed about fifteen hundred grams
Speaker 1: while the older one was only about six hundred that's
Speaker 1: about fifty two ounces or three point three pounds, as
Speaker 1: compared to the smaller prosthesis, which was only about twenty
Speaker 1: one ounces or one point three pounds. It's possible that
Speaker 1: he used both both prostises for the rest of his
Speaker 1: life for different purposes, like one for combat and the
Speaker 1: other one for leisure and sundays. I don't know why
Speaker 1: the idea that one is for leisure cracks me up,
Speaker 1: but it does, especially because it's heavy. Like if it's heavy,
Speaker 1: but you can hold your playing cards with it, maybe
Speaker 1: better than the other one. Yeah, presumably your year also
Speaker 1: supporting it with maybe a table, because yeah, if you
Speaker 1: carry around three point three pounds, that sounds like not much,
Speaker 1: but over the course of like a day or even
Speaker 1: a couple hours, it starts to feel really heavy. Well,
Speaker 1: and this is one of the criticisms of like today's
Speaker 1: increasingly complex pristisis like made without input from prosthetics users
Speaker 1: of This is so much heavier than the other one
Speaker 1: that I had before. This does not help me. We
Speaker 1: mentioned that he might use one for combat, and that's
Speaker 1: because in spite of the that oath he took, he
Speaker 1: did return to combat. In fifteen forty Charles the Fifth
Speaker 1: released him from his oath so that he could fight
Speaker 1: against the Ottoman Empire. In fifteen forty four. He was
Speaker 1: also part of Charles's campaigns against the French. He did
Speaker 1: finally really retire sometime after the French campaign, and he
Speaker 1: really spent most of the rest of his life living
Speaker 1: at Hornberg Castle. He had been married twice, and over
Speaker 1: the course of his life he had ten children. He
Speaker 1: died in his sleep on July twenty third, fifteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: at the age of eighty two, which I just find
Speaker 1: incredible given that he spent so much of his life
Speaker 1: at combat. He spent a lot of his time in
Speaker 1: deadly situations and lived until the age of eighty two.
Speaker 1: His tomb is at Chantal Abbey in Baden Wurttemberg. In
Speaker 1: the last years of his life, good to become blind,
Speaker 1: and a year or so before his death, he narrated
Speaker 1: an autobiography to a scribe. Tracy has not read this since,
Speaker 1: she said earlier. The only English language version that she
Speaker 1: could find was published by a white nationalist publisher, but,
Speaker 1: based on critical commentary on older German language versions, is
Speaker 1: a pretty self aggrandizing work which often does not match
Speaker 1: up with the historical record. Like we said, it makes
Speaker 1: it sound like he pulled himself up from poverty through
Speaker 1: knightly valor. This autobiography stayed within the family in manuscript
Speaker 1: form until the eighteenth century, and then about twenty years
Speaker 1: after it was first published, Johann Wolfgang von Goutte used
Speaker 1: it as the basis for his first play that was
Speaker 1: called Gouts Fund Bernish Gent, which debuted in seventeen seventy three.
Speaker 1: Guts had not really been a well known figure in
Speaker 1: Germany before that, but Gutta's play framed him as a
Speaker 1: freedom fighter and it turned him into something of a
Speaker 1: national hero. And then he became a character in multiple
Speaker 1: other German works, including operas, poems, and novels, and then
Speaker 1: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart referenced him in at least two musical works,
Speaker 1: one of them being a cannon called lechmia marche or
Speaker 1: lick my arse. This title is a reference to a
Speaker 1: quote attributed to Gutz Vanderlishingen, which was popularized in various
Speaker 1: fictional works about him. The story is that in one
Speaker 1: of his encounters with the Swabian League, he was besieged
Speaker 1: in order to surrender, and he refused, calling out the
Speaker 1: window quote, tell your captain that for his imperial majesty
Speaker 1: I entertain as ever all due respect, but for himself
Speaker 1: he may kiss my arse. Sometimes that epithet is known
Speaker 1: as the Swabian salute.
Speaker 2: Gouts von Berlishingen's two hand prostthecees have gotten a lot
Speaker 2: of attention over the years. In eighteen fifteen, engraver Christian
Speaker 2: van Mechel produced detailed diagrams of the second prosthesis and
Speaker 2: its inner workings. He had the actual prosthesis, or what
Speaker 2: we believe may have been the actual prost thesis, and
Speaker 2: he had permission from the family to take it apart
Speaker 2: for this purpose. Much more recently, in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 2: Guncher Quasi Crook worked with the same prosthesis, although without
Speaker 2: dismantling it, concluding that it had not been used for
Speaker 2: actual sword fighting. In more recent years, there have also
Speaker 2: been a number of projects to build three D recreations
Speaker 2: of both prostses and computer aided design reconstructions. There are
Speaker 2: two Prosses in the collection of Yaks Thousand Castle Museum today.
Speaker 2: They are generally described as the ones that actually belonged
Speaker 2: to Goods of the Iron Hand, but it is not
Speaker 2: one hundred percent certain that they actually were the ones
Speaker 2: used by him.
Speaker 1: Oh Goods. Oh Goods. That'd be a great name for
Speaker 1: a cat. By the way, Yeah, except that it has
Speaker 1: now weird associations. Yeah, a little bit. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: them more Friday. Do you have unweird association email? I do.
Speaker 2: This is from Kathy and Kathy wrote, Dear Holly and Tracy.
Speaker 2: I'm a longtime listener of Stephi misson history class and
Speaker 2: a proud Philadelphian. I was just listening to the behind
Speaker 2: the scenes on Rebecca Crumpler when you mentioned an archive
Speaker 2: collection at Drexel University about early black doctors, compiled by
Speaker 2: Margaret Jaredo. I thought to myself, that has to be
Speaker 2: the same collection. Let me explain. Two years ago, I
Speaker 2: was privileged enough to take a special section of the
Speaker 2: course Web du Blois and Philadelphia's seventh Ward for Philadelphia
Speaker 2: Teachers with doctor Amy Hiller at the University of Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: through the Teachers Institute of Philadelphia. The next year, doctor
Speaker 2: Hiller taught this course again for penn first year students.
Speaker 2: She invited the teachers who had taken her class previously
Speaker 2: to watch her current students present their final projects. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna pause from the letter to say the next Kathy
Speaker 2: describes this project by these two first year students at Penn.
Speaker 2: I listened to this podcast that they made. I thought
Speaker 2: it was very good. I don't want to like direct
Speaker 2: people to it. It makes me uncomfortable to like send
Speaker 2: a big podcast listenership toward first year college students school project, uh,
Speaker 2: because I know what can happen when things escape the
Speaker 2: sphere you made them for on the internet, right right.
Speaker 2: It was a very good episode of the podcast, though,
Speaker 2: And you know, if I were to hear from either
Speaker 2: of them that they were totally comfortable with me sharing
Speaker 2: it with the entire world, I would do that, but
Speaker 2: I don't want to do that without their permission. Back
Speaker 2: to the email, you will hear in it that the
Speaker 2: collection was not easy to access. So don't feel bad
Speaker 2: that you did not go to it on your last trip.
Speaker 2: But maybe one day you'll have the time to return,
Speaker 2: search through it, and do a podcast on several on
Speaker 2: what you found out. I loved the podcast the two
Speaker 2: students made, but it left me wanting to learn more.
Speaker 2: Thank you for all that you do has a history
Speaker 2: nerd and history teacher, I appreciate your podcast both professionally
Speaker 2: and personally. PS I am allergic to shedding animals, but
Speaker 2: as a pet tax here is a picture of some
Speaker 2: of the beautiful snails in our fish tank. Sincerely, Kathy.
Speaker 2: These snails are beautiful in the fish tank. It looks
Speaker 2: like there are two of them, and the shell of
Speaker 2: one of them has this very lovely pink tone on it,
Speaker 2: and what I think is the snail's face is also pink.
Speaker 2: This is a very beautiful picture. So yes, as I said,
Speaker 2: I listened to this podcast episode that these students made.
Speaker 1: I really like it.
Speaker 2: What Kathy is referencing regarding the collection not being easy
Speaker 2: to access is they make a point that the library
Speaker 2: facility that it is in is open in sort of
Speaker 2: a Monday through Friday nine to five situation, and it's
Speaker 2: also not at the main library branch. It's in a
Speaker 2: residential area. So like, personally, had I been in Philadelphia
Speaker 2: with a day off during the week, that would have
Speaker 2: been something that I could have dealt with. But like,
Speaker 2: having your collection only open from nine to five Monday
Speaker 2: through Friday means that it's like out of bounds for
Speaker 2: a lot of researchers, especially since another point that's made
Speaker 2: in the interview with Margaret Jaredo, like there's just not
Speaker 2: a lot of funding and there's especially not a lot
Speaker 2: of funding for black historians trying to research black history,
Speaker 2: and so a lot of people are doing this work
Speaker 2: in addition to other jobs. So having a collection that
Speaker 2: is only opened during the week in quote business hours
Speaker 2: and is not like with the rest of the library
Speaker 2: facility just makes it harder for people to access that.
Speaker 2: So thank you so much, Kathy for this email. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for sending me the link to the
Speaker 2: podcast episode that the students did. Thank you for snails
Speaker 2: and the snail picts are really really pretty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will take a snail. I'm telling you, I
Speaker 1: can't think of an animal that's off limits, even if
Speaker 1: you have a pet, roach, tarantula, scorpion, I love tarantula there.
Speaker 1: My brother had a tarantula when we were kids. He
Speaker 1: sort of inherited the classroom tarantula. I don't. There was
Speaker 1: a whole story of like how this tarantula came to
Speaker 1: live in the classroom. Tarantulas can live for a very
Speaker 1: long time. We had to keep crickets in the basement
Speaker 1: to feed to the tarantula. There are still crickets down there.
Speaker 1: I had lots of tarantulis as a kid because we
Speaker 1: lived in Arizona, and I would scoop them up off
Speaker 1: the street like a dummy. Oh fun, Okay, then, uh so,
Speaker 1: if you'd like to write to us about this or
Speaker 1: any other podcast, we're a history podcast at iHeartRadio dot
Speaker 1: com and we're on social media at miss and History.
Speaker 1: It's where you'll find our Facebook and whatnot, mostly just
Speaker 1: where we put notifications. The new episodes are live.
Speaker 2: You can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app
Speaker 2: and wherever else you want to get your podcasts. Stuff
Speaker 2: you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,