8. “Morning Star of Wittenberg”: At Work Before Dawn
If you want someone to make a speech,” quipped the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, “ask a man; if you want to get something done, ask a woman.” While this has often been said of the political realm, the same might also be said of the religious realm in general and of the Luthers in particular. Martin was known for his words, Katie for her work. In fact, Katie simply took for granted her role as a working mother—working both inside and outside the home.
Katie’s daily work schedule, considering the lack of modern conveniences, is difficult to fathom. “Such a woman, who can find?” asks the author of Proverbs. The obvious answer is that she cannot be found—unless we time-travel to the Black Cloister in sixteenth-century Wittenberg. The woman is none other than Katharina von Bora, as the writer of Proverbs describes:
She selects wool and flax . . .
She considers a field and buys it;
out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks.
She sees that her trading is profitable,
and her lamp does not go out at night . . .
She opens her arms to the poor . . .
Her husband is respected at the city gate . . .
She makes linen garments and sells them . . .
She watches over the affairs of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her.
Proverbs 31:13, 16–18, 20, 23–24, 27–28
The passage, however, seems altogether unreal, almost unnaturally clean—especially for what we expect to find in the Bible. Where is the pain in childbearing and the death of darling little ones? Where are the dirty diapers and the deadbeat boarders, the sharp words and sulking silences? In the real world of dirt and death, Katie matched the Proverbs 31 woman, and more. True, her lamp went out at night, but only for a few hours.
With six children of her own besides several orphans, motherhood, as we have seen, had become a full-time job. Add to that the adult relatives, students, and strangers, and it would seem as though she would have had no time for anything else. But she did. Truly Katie was a workaholic, in part because she could not depend on her husband for financial security. He was heading for old age when she had married him, and it would be left to her to provide for her children’s future.
For most of her married life, Katie ran a boardinghouse. Except when her husband canceled their bill, young men paid her for room and board in her Black Cloister home. A bed-and-breakfast of today is no comparison. A term that best describes the general state of affairs is bedlam. Prince George of Anhalt, traveling to Wittenberg, was warned against staying at the Black Cloister, then “occupied by a motley crowd of boys, students, girls, widows, old women and youngsters.” The writer lamented this primarily because of the “much disturbance” that interfered with the work of “the good man, the honorable father.” The three-story structure had “forty rooms on the ground floor alone” and “was at times so chaotic that it is a wonder Luther was able to work.” In the midst of this bedlam, Katie soldiered on through the day as though it were normal.
She was in charge of all meals, housekeeping, bookkeeping, and laundry. When I was growing up, I had heard of old-time boardinghouses, and I now wish I would have asked more questions. Sharon Hunt offers insights:
Boarding houses these days are indeed a relic. Their heyday was during the 19th and early 20th centuries . . . Many boarding houses in working-class areas were filthy and offered no privacy; sleeping in the same bed with strangers was not uncommon. Men with more money to spend could secure clean and private rooms, better food, and even hot water for shaving . . . [My grandmother] reluctantly opened her house to boarders when my grandfather injured his back and couldn’t work for a long period. With five children under six, two sisters-in-law, and a mother-in-law as well as her husband and herself to feed, she had no choice.
Katie’s situation probably was not so different from that of Sharon’s grandmother. Soon after she married Martin, she became pregnant—and then five more times in the next seven years. Martin could not claim a back injury for lack of funds, but as a matter of fact, he had no regular salary. Complicating the situation further was the run-down condition of the Black Cloister. But Katie, the skilled household manager, was able to stretch a small amount of money and at the same time curb her husband’s fiscal carelessness.
That Martin referred to her as the “morning star of Wittenberg” was fitting. As in her convent days, she rose at 4:00 a.m. or soon thereafter, though not for corporate worship. She rose before dawn to work, and she often kept at it until after dark. Six hours of sleep was a luxury. Most of the daily duties involved tiring manual labor, but there is no evidence that Katie would have considered the work disagreeable drudgery. In fact, at times we suspect we catch a glimpse of her merriment as she oversees the work in kitchen and garden.
It is reasonable to assume that her work ethic was shaped in the convent. In fact, since the age of five until her death, Katie had lived in a cloister—all but two years when she lived in private homes prior to marriage. Her marital home was the old red brick Black Cloister, named for the monks’ black outerwear. But while living in this cloister, she was anything but cloistered. What kept her inside the walls was an ever-expanding workload. As she supervised the large household, she might have felt as though she had little more authority than did an abbess over a convent out of control. Like an abbess, she could not simply walk away, except for business trips out of town—though sometimes perhaps as much to get away from the grind. She most enjoyed the country air at her farms.
Martin Treu points out that Katie was far more than simply a housewife, that she was what we would consider today a “manager of a mid-sized business with low intensity production.” Surely she was far more than the sixteenth-century hausfrau, but a “mid-sized business” is misleading as well. Apart from nonprofits, there are few comparable businesses today that require such a diversity of skills and knowledge. But like many businesses, her boardinghouse and farms were not always money-making ventures. Nor is boardinghouse a truly accurate term because many of the residents did not pay for room and board.
Perhaps the best way to describe the staggering complexity of her work is as the corporate manager of a farm, garden, and monastery-medical hostel that housed extended family, travelers, and a significant number of hangers-on. All this while giving birth and taking in orphans. In fact, there were at times as many as thirty students boarding at the Black Cloister, paying for their keep in varying degrees.
Her workday was filled with a wide variety of specialized tasks, some not typically regarded as proper duties for a minister’s wife. She was by all accounts one of the best brewmeisters in Wittenberg, a skill for which her husband was most appreciative. “I must remain longer here on account of the pious Prince,” he lamented, while away for extended meetings. He missed her, but it was more than that: “Yesterday I had to take a nasty drink, and I do not like what is not good. I keep thinking what good wine and beer I have at home, as well as a beautiful wife, or shall I say lord? And you would do well to send me over my whole cellar of wine and a bottle of thy beer, or else I shall not be back before the new beer is ready.”
The farmwork in itself is a fascinating aspect of her life, though again she would have had farmhands working for her. And Luther himself enjoyed gardening and often helped in the planting and harvesting of large vegetable plots. She was no hobby gardener. Her garden supplied the family and residents with a variety of produce, including cucumbers, melons, squash, lettuce, cabbage, peas, beans, various herbs, and more. She was also in charge of the fields of grain needed for animal fodder, as well as wheat and barley fields critical for her brewing production. Beer was a staple at meals.
Besides the gardens, vineyard, orchard (apples, peaches, figs, and almonds), and fields, the complex included sheds and pastures. Katie kept chickens, ducks, goats, cattle, horses, swine, and honeybees, and she also oversaw a fishpond (stocked with perch, pike, trout, and carp). She was involved in every aspect of the work—even butchering livestock. We glean this information from various sources, including the letters of her husband. In a 1535 letter, Martin wrote that his lord Katie was busy planting crops, preparing pastures, and selling cattle. In late May 1538, after a heavy rain, Luther commented to those at table how his abundant farm produce was a gift from God, as though God were raining down coins from heaven—coins in the form of cabbage, corn, onions, wine, and milk. And how do we show our gratitude, he sarcastically wondered—by crucifying God’s only Son?
It may have been raining corn and cabbage, all acquired for nothing—except, of course, for Katie’s backbreaking work. And according to Martin, she worked circles around the servants. What her husband did not say in his letters was how absolutely furious she was when she realized that students were raiding her gardens or fruit trees during the night. Her farming enterprises would continue to grow over the years, and by 1542, according to a tax statement, among all her other livestock, the farm boasted several sows and piglets, a goat and two kids, and fourteen head of cattle, yearling calves included.
With rain and good weather, we can imagine this as a quaint Winslow Homer farm scene where Katie reigned supreme. But droughts and storms and harsh winters could quickly turn upside down all she had worked to accomplish. Marauding bandits and devastating plagues also wreaked havoc. Did she ever daydream about being back in the convent, disturbed only by predawn calls to prayer?
Some writers have suggested that Katie was known for the gift of hospitality. However, this would not likely have been the phrase she would have used. She welcomed people into her home in her often-abrupt manner, while efficiently caring for their needs. Noting her vitality, ingenuity, and hard work, writer and herbalist Sara Hall rightly sizes her up as “impossible to dismiss” with an aura of “sheer energy.” Indeed, sheer energy, perhaps more than any other phrase, sums up Katie von Bora.
Her generosity was probably most appreciated by those who had taken ill. She was “a master of herbs, poultices, and massage.” Son Paul, a medical doctor, regarded his mother not a full doctor like himself, but better than many as a half one. Luther, by some accounts, was the sickest patient of the Reformation, and she was his primary caregiver. Among her other ministrations, “she kept Luther from wine and gave him beer, which served as a sedative for insomnia and a solvent for the stone . . . When he was away from home, how he appreciated [and missed] her ministrations!”
She was a proficient gardener, writes Steven Ozment, “gaining a reputation as an herbalist.” However, there is no record of herbal recipes or which plants she used from her garden and how she utilized them in healing. Herbal healing was widely practiced in the sixteenth century, even as early scientific medicine was gaining credence. Her gardening capabilities were no doubt drawn from the “great traditions of Monastic medicine,” writes Sara Hall. Indeed, German nuns were familiar with Hildegard von Bingen, whose writings included herbal recipes for virtually all identified ailments of the day. Outside the convent, most towns boasted of a healer—a woman specialist in folk medicine. Katie served in this capacity to her family and boarders, as well as to neighbors. “It is likely,” writes Hall, “that she also cultivated the same herbs that were commonly cultivated in convents and monasteries: rue, sage, parsley, mint, wormwood, borage, aloe, rosemary, mugwort, pennyroyal, calendula (known as pot marigold), gladioli and basil.”
For those who love gardening, it is not difficult to imagine her flower beds in full bloom—including asters, roses, carnations, primrose, and lilies of every hue. She took pride in her ability to grow saffron, a pricy spice that was difficult to acquire locally.
With more acquisitions of land, Katie’s oversight of farming expanded, but all the while, her primary responsibility was inside the Black Cloister. Between pregnancies, she was burdened with household duties, which included procuring firewood to keep the large dwelling warm in the winter months. Some of the firewood came from her Zöllsdorf property. At this location (as well as others), she sometimes had conflicts with neighbors. Firewood was just one issue. The best timber was cut but was quickly snatched away by another buyer before Katie had sealed the deal. Some of this timber was to be sawn into planks for her renovations of the Black Cloister.
The original structure was expanded in the late 1530s to accommodate the ever-growing household, and Katie, not surprisingly, was the general contractor for the large addition and the renovations that now included a bathhouse, brewery, and cattle stalls. Correspondence, according to Martin Treu, indicates that Katie was clearly in charge of decision making regarding renovations and use of space. She was the one who apparently situated the family’s living space at the back of the building, where she could watch over the livestock and hired hands.
A footnote to this expansion project sounds all too modern, though in this case there were no inspectors’ surprise visits looking for code violations. Whether because of shoddy construction or failure to warn the residents with proper signage, the excavation for the new cellar collapsed. Word was that it might have killed both the Reformer and his wife. The death date for both would have been July 12, 1532.
Throughout the 1530s, students and supporters continued to vie for a space at table to listen to and record the words of the great teacher. But the house was also sometimes packed nearly to the rafters with those who simply needed lodging. Some stayed on for lengthy periods of time, including several of Martin’s nieces and nephews. Those on Katie’s side included not only her aunt who helped out with household management, but also Florian, her nephew. The numbers fluctuated, due to guests who arrived, often without warning, but Katie could count on around forty residents on a regular basis.
There was no way the Black Cloister could be self-sufficient with so many residents, thus the continual increase of gardens and fields purchased and leased. This was not what Luther desired, but Katharina did what she had to do. She argued and won him over to her point of view, he reported, by “begging and crying.”
Yet even with the increase of gardens and fields, this land-hungry hausfrau was still not content. She contacted a distant relative about renting his much more expansive farm for only a year or two. She emphasized that she did not wish to purchase the farm, apparently to quash the town gossip that she would do virtually anything to increase her acreage. She was a hard bargainer, and apparently she was able to negotiate a low-cost lease. Although Martin had been required to sign off on the previous garden purchases, in this case, she did the letter writing and finalized the deal on her own.
But this lease had not satisfied Katie. She had long had her eye on a farm some two-day’s distance away. The previously mentioned Zöllsdorf farm was a property she knew well, having long been in the family and most recently owned by her brother. Had she been one of her father’s sons, she might have held ownership years earlier. But now her brother was financially unable to keep it. We can only imagine how desperate she was to purchase the land for herself before strangers grabbed it up, even though she knew very well that the property (which included buildings in disrepair) would require significant improvements. But more than that, how could she be serious, considering the distance and the high price? The idea was preposterous. The year was 1540. She had a houseful of kids, her youngest being five years old.
This time, however, her husband was on board. He had begun to feel as though Wittenberg was no longer his home. Enemies seemed to be multiplying by the month. Here on this farm south of Leipzig, he might be able to find some peace and quiet. That this acquisition of property would keep his wife away from Wittenberg for long periods of time, however, was not his concept of the ideal marriage. But Katie was persistent.
While it is true she wanted the family land in part for sentimental reasons, she was also motivated by a belief ground into her genes from ancient times that land ownership is to be equated with financial security. Whether her various transactions were all equally wise is a matter debated by historians. But considering the times, marked by bad weather, war, and repeated plagues, security was not easily attained—not even with land. Yet the Luthers, at least while Martin was alive, were far more stable financially than were other families in Wittenberg. The primary difference was that the other families had no hardworking wheeler-dealer to turn poverty into prosperity. “The credit for their economic expansion,” writes Martin Treu, “is finally due to Katharina alone.”
One would imagine that building up the family estate with land acquisitions would be enough for a woman overseeing the household and farms. But if Katie appears self-serving in acquiring land that her husband is less than enthusiastic about, we dare not forget her efforts on his behalf in dealing with publishers to see that his works were printed and widely circulated. On one occasion, when he was away, Luther sent word home. “Katharina was ordered to march into the [print] shop, remove the manuscript, and reassign it to Rhau,” another printer. It was an assignment, we can imagine, she might have relished. More than her husband, she made a conscious effort to acquire rightful remuneration even for her husband’s spoken words. On one occasion, when Katie learned that students were selling their notes taken at table while her husband was speaking, she insisted that he should start charging them. He retorted that he had been teaching for no remuneration for three decades, and he was not going to start asking for money now.
Martin’s opposition to Katie’s selling his spoken words seems to have been settled, but she nevertheless continued to fight for his financial rights. She also was keen on serving him in his work as professor, always prepared to throw a party if his profession required it. A typical occasion is apparent from one of his letters acknowledging newly awarded doctorates to two of his friends. Katie is presumed to be head cook, who will be prepared to stir up a fine stew, sparrows and all. And if the stew is less than tasty, who cares while consuming steins of her best-brewed beer:
I hope you have received the letters and disputations, with the directions, sent from a very incompetent person, to teach you what to say at the ceremony of conferring doctors’ degrees; and now our head cook, Kathie, begs you will . . . send us birds and what you can find in your region of the air . . . But send us no ravens, but sparrows in any number . . . and if you can get a hare, or shoot anything for nothing, or purchase some vegetables, then send these also, for the principal thing is that you all get something to eat, for one must not depend on beer alone, of which my Kathie has brewed fourteen tuns, in which she has put thirty-two bushels of malt to suit my taste.
Luther continues by giving an overview of the dismal political situation and then concludes with his standard optimism and good humor about his “head cook”:
But Christ lives, so let us rejoice even amid the rage of devils and men, enjoying the good things of life, till they come to a miserable end, especially if you confer your delightful society upon us, with your captives, who, under the sway of the head cook, will be consigned to the captivity of the pot. My Kathie and all greet you respectfully.
Katie’s brewing has caught the attention of many modern-day microbrewers. And German brewers are particularly proud of having her as a part of their heritage and include that fact in their advertising for light beers: “Who would have believed that light beers have a 450-year history?” the Würzburger Hofbräu commercial description reads. “The beer brewed by [“the health-conscious” and “gifted brewer”] Katharina von Bora was very light, under two percent . . . The reduction in alcohol content means . . . easily digestible 40% less alcohol and calories compared to . . . Pilsner Full beer flavor.”
While hosting large gatherings amid all her other work, Katie found time for informal counseling. She was no therapist—or even a self-appointed life coach—but she did counsel guests who were in need of her advice. In fact, as early as 1528, she had opened the Black Cloister to a runaway nun, Duchess Ursula of Munsterberg. Like Katie, Ursula was of noble heritage and had been placed in a convent as a young child—in her case, as an orphan. Although the Magdalen convent was a three-day journey away, and Ursula had frail health, she was determined to find her way to Wittenberg, where she and two other runaway nuns would find a safe house with Katie and the great Reformer. Ursula, accompanied by Dorothy and Margaret, had simply slipped out of the convent gate and walked to a nearby town—no horse-drawn herring wagon in the dead of night. Soon after they arrived in Wittenberg, Martin Luther left to attend meetings.
The four former nuns would have had a lot in common, all of them having escaped the territory of the much-feared Duke George. What a conversation it must have been—a satisfied, settled, and celebrated runaway nun encouraging three others who must have felt out of place in the world outside. It is not difficult to imagine Katie putting them at ease and enjoying some insider grievances and jokes.
Unlike Katie, Ursula was a writer and was eager to tell her story in a tract—her story of why she could no longer live under the rule of a convent. Although a convent life that required fasting and disruptions in sleep had taken a toll on her health, she framed her arguments for leaving in theological terms. Her words resonate with Martin’s, whose tracts had influenced her to escape. Here she insisted that faith in Christ was one’s only hope for salvation and that the claim that monastic vows, like baptism, cleanse from sin was nothing short of blasphemy.
Duke George, still stung by the escape of Katie and eleven other nuns from a convent under his rule five years earlier, was furious about the escape of Ursula, particularly because she was a duchess from a prominent family. No less angry was he about what he considered vile propaganda published in a tract with Luther’s postscript. What was he to do? Send troops to Wittenberg and arrest her? Ursula bided her time, and after two months, she and her sister nuns sought shelter elsewhere, where they were provided a more permanent safe haven. Ursula’s poor health, however, persisted, and she died in 1534, leaving all her worldly goods to her dear sister nun Dorothy.
Ursula, Dorothy, and Margaret were certainly not the only ones who profited from Katie’s ministry of kindness. Like the Proverbs 31 woman, Katie opened her arms to the poor and sick—and not just to runaway nuns. Katharina could be counted on in times of need, but she never lost her focus in life. Her first priority was her husband—a teacher, preacher, writer, conversationalist who drew students by the dozens to the Black Cloister. There was no competition between Katie and him. She supported him wholeheartedly, knowing that students were certainly not gathering around to hear her “table talk.” Her husband was the draw—a valuable commodity. As such, her home was a for-profit business. Students would not be freeloaders under her watch. Katie knew her place. She was wife, mother, and breadwinner.
Amid all her relatives, friends, and boarders, Katie maintained a tight ship. “She often seems grasping and even petty in her quest for money, and we have many hints that Wittenbergers did not like her,” writes Richard Marius. She was a hard taskmaster, not only with servants but Luther as well. He was known for his generosity, while Katie “kept her eye on the bottom line.”
There’s an ancient folktale I learned as a child about a husband who complains because his work in the fields is much harder than his wife’s work around the house. So one day she suggests they switch chores. She finishes all the work in the fields, and when she arrives home late in the day, she discovers everything has gone awry. What a mess, including her husband who has, through a series of mishaps, fallen headfirst down the chimney into a pot of porridge!
Katie might have laughed at such a tale, but it hardly related to her daily routine. She did the work of both husband and wife: feeding the pigs and chickens, milking cows, churning butter, grinding meal, cleaning house, washing clothes, preparing meals as well as working the fields—all this much appreciated by the husband, who spent his days preaching, teaching, debating, attending meetings, writing books, playing with children, and talking at table. Is there another German folktale to be found in this story? If so, it needs to be recorded for posterity.