Matheus Miller's Memoir

Some time in the second half of the seventeenth century, a merchant by the name of Matheus Miller began to write his life story. He was not unusual in this. Autobiography had become a commonplace exercise and a common genre among the nascent bourgeoisie of early modern Europe. Yet the way in which Miller reshaped and reconstructed his story was unique. He did not record events in a larger world, as were often included in memoirs of his day. Rather, he recaptured his particular world, that of the German Imperial city of Augsburg, and his individual worldview. He told of his struggle to establish himself within a sharply critical family and a highly conservative community. At the same time he revealed his hopes and fears, his expectations and experiences, his values and his actions. Miller created not only a window on early modern Europe but a mirror for the history of it. He exposed the workings of such global institutions as patriarchy, hierarchy, office, honour, community, friendship and confession in his own life and the shortcomings of modern theories and interpretations of them. No vector of inhuman forces, his is a human story of flesh and blood, of success and failure, of dignity and despair.