The Discourse on Money in Early Modern Literature. The Case of Hans Wilhelm Kirchhof's Wendunmuth (1563)

Since the thirteenth century at the latest, the role of money had become increasingly important in the wake of growing national and international trade, which also found vivid expression in many literary texts. These texts often serve well as mirrors of social and economic transformations, such as the Schwank (jest narrative), in which the various poets made fun of many different people and laughed about ordinary situations both in the village and in the city, in a monastery or in a castle. Hence, the explicit thematization of money in these Schwänke (plural) does not really surprise us, but scholars have not paid enough attention to this phenomenon. Turning to the voluminous Wendunmuth by Hans Wilhelm Kirchhof (1563), we have an excellent opportunity to identify the ubiquitous presence of money in all human relations and the trouble which it has always created. In his short prose texts, we encounter some of the most explicit comments about the huge impact of money on early modern German society.