Purpose and Ambition
Writing or ordering a genealogy was a rather common form of representation for Germany's noble families of the time. However, the Zimmern chronicle surpasses other contemporary texts in both volume and scope. It is a compilation of many types of texts, including simple genealogical information, psychologically rich biographies of ancestors and members of other noble families, fables, schwanks (droll stories) and facetiae (comic and/or erotic short stories).
The purpose of the work is probably twofold: Firstly, Froben Christopher wanted to prove the nobility of his family and to preserve that knowledge to posterity. Secondly, the chronicle was a means to educate future family members. The author does not only tell the stories of shining examples of nobility, but he also gives proof of bad examples. He clearly condemns some of his more spendthrift ancestors for selling family goods and hence giving away economic and political power.
Read more about this topic: Zimmern Chronicle
Famous quotes containing the words purpose and/or ambition:
“There are a sort of men whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,
And do a willful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,
As who should say, “I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!””
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The aphorism, the apothegm, in which I am the first among the Germans to be a master, are the forms of “eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book—what everyone else does not say in a book.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)