Table Of ContentGermany and Adjoining Territories, 1620
J Habsburg: Lands of the Wenceslas Crown
] Habsburg
] Brandenburg
] Wittelsbach Bavaria
Hamburg
Electorate of Saxony
Boundary of the German i Be of Bre
part of the Empire 1 Munster
Brunswick
Boundary7 of the Empire
United
outside Germany Provinces Han
Boundary of the Lower
Saxon Circle
Lands that became
Munster
Wallenstein’s
Ghent
Cologne
Brussels
Lte of Hesse
Frankfurt
Lower Palatinate R Uppei
Stuttgart
Strasburg \yur^ern^erg
FRANCE
¡SundgauV
BaseL?
Branche
Comté y
SWITZERLAND
Lyon
Dy of Savoy
Mantua'
300 km K
Dy of ^yýDy of
Parma Modeně
Danzig Dy of Prussia
• Rostock
•Güstrow Wolgasr
^Dyof
(Mecklenburg ) f^omerania
El of Brandenburg
Warsaw
Berlin
POLAND
Sagan
GIogai
Lusatia
El of Saxo .
Dy of Siles\
fS'L)y of .
> Friedland
••••Gitschii Cracow
Prague
Olniütz
nate < Kingdoms f Bohemia
Mte of Moravia
Coding
Znaim.
HUNGjARY
Austria Gollersdorf
avaria^^y^ ? v
Vienna
MunichS ” "'''"f
,s^bur®
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Dy of Styria Abbreviations
Be = Bishopric
Dy of
Abe = Archbishopric
y Carinthia
Dy = Duchy
REPUBLIC 'Gdy of
Dy of
OF VENICE yGorizia Gdy = Grand Duchy
Carniola
Mte = Margravate
Lte = Landgravate
El = Electorate
ties
WALLENSTEIN
WALLENSTEIN
his life narrated by
GOLO MANN
Translated by Charles Kessler
HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON
NEW YORK
Original German title: Wallenstein.
Sein Leben erzählt von Golo Mann
Copyright © 1971 by S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main
English translation © 1976 by
André Deutsch Limited, London, and
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York.
All rights reserved
Published simultaneously in Canada by Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada,
Limited.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Mann, Golo, 1909-
WaUenstein, his life narrated.
I. Wallenstein, Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von,
Herzog zu Friedland, 1583-1634.
D270.W19M313 943’.O4’O924 [B] 76-4721
ISBN 0-03-091884-7
First published in the United States in 1976
Designer: Robert Eames
Printed in Great Britain
10 987654321
Contents
Foreword to the English-Language Edition 7
Childhood: A Mosaic with Many Stones Missing 9
The World in which he will have to Live 29
He Seeks his Course and Finds Help 60
He Observes the Ways of the World and Cautiously 88
Obtrudes
The Bohemian Revolution 107
Bílá Hora 128
Victors? Return 146
Major Matters 169
Europe’s Feeble Resistance 193
Duke and Duchy 211
The Offer 253
The First Generalate 278
Germany’s Subjugation 331
An Adversary 382
Stralsund 401
Mecklenburg 418
Dialectics of Victory 438
Belief in The Stars 488
The Dismissal 496
Restless Retirement 537
The Duel 582
6 WALLENSTEIN
The Labyrinth 666
The Camp at Pilsen 746
Piccolomini 790
Wallensteint Death 813
A Final Chapter 845
Postscript on Annotation 884
Bibliography 885
Index 887
Foreword
to the English-Language Edition
he English-language edition of my book has had to forgo the
T
scholastic backing found in the original. Instead I would like
briefly to comment here on what my method of work has been.
I have used the sources. All published ones - there are over twenty
volumes of letters by Wallenstein, to Wallenstein, about Wallenstein -
as well as unpublished ones located in the Prague State Archives. These
would indeed have provided much else which is now being gradually
disclosed, but hardly anything that could materially affect my delinea
tion. My ambition was to write the definitive Wallenstein biography. A
number of German critics have remarked that the book is also literature.
To that I raise no objection. Should it however be claimed that it is
simply literature, then I must protest. Literature lets the reader off more
lightly than I can. This is a true story, not an invented one. In the
original there is one annotation for every five sentences. The two
“Nocturnal Fantasies”, attempts at the art of interior monologue, are the
exception. They amount to not half a per cent of the whole.
The historian has always to try to do two different things simul
taneously. He must swim with the stream of events, allowing himself to
be carried along as though he had been present. He must from outside
converge on his subject from various directions, a later, better-informed
observer, and catechize it, yet never quite have it in the hollow of his
hand. How to combine these two methods so as to yield a semblance of
homogeneity and without the narrative falling apart, that would be a man
of letters’ concern.
In this book the first approach preponderates. It even colours the
language, which dallies distantly with that of the seventeenth century.
In the text I have abstained from argument with my precursors. Illusion
would have been destroyed. A few “discoveries” were made. That, for
example, Wallenstein’s famous “Contract with the Emperor”, in 1632
and the all too favourite subject of donnish investigation, never existed
but, like so much in the case of this life, is sheer legend. The kind of
thing said as in an aside. Amidst the flow of facts it did not play the part
8 WALLENSTEIN
which lay within the scope of the abstract personality elaborated by its
proud detector. Another instance. During the last year of his life
Wallenstein, aware of the great war imminent between France and Spain,
wanted to keep Germany out of those hostilities. Nevertheless this
strand of motivation was in his mind so entangled with others that I
allowed it only discreet reverberation. At no point have I portrayed
Wallenstein’s character. His career, as he dealt and was dealt by, his
actions and reactions, constitutes his character. Of course that holds
good for every historical figure. For this one in particular, though,
because the issue is an individuality at once very strong and exuberant,
eventually erupting into forfeiture of his own identity. I have given no
summing up, no final verdict. Reality knows none.
Marx, I am convinced, was in error. There is no single secret gist
behind, nor due to, historical phenomena. Words and deeds show what
men are and how events take shape. Narration and eluddation synchron
ize.
Should my book leave the English-language reader discontent, the
responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of the author, not the
translator. The latter has performed a difficult task in a way that could
neither have been bettered nor more happily accomplished. I wish to
thank him for it.
GOLO MANN
