Georg Friedrich of Hohenlohe-Neuenstein-Weikersheim

What people wore

Class-based clothing regulations and currency limits

Strict regulations controlled social class appearance; for example, commoners were forbidden from wearing gold, silver, pearls, or silk. A wife of a commoner could wear a simple gold ring worth no more than five or six guilders, without gemstones.

Daily life

Cooking with embers and kettles

Kitchens often featured a large metal kettle for boiling, while smaller quantities were baked in bowls placed on a grid and covered with glowing embers.

Work

Daily wages for city laborers

In 16th-century cities like Zwickau and Nuremberg, skilled tradespeople such as carpenters and masons earned between 15 and 26 pfennige per day, while simple daily tasks like weeding paid about 8 pfennige with food provided. Additional benefits sometimes included bathing money, as guilds often mandated regular time off for hygiene.

Music

Professional city musicians, the Stadtpfeifer

Stadtpfeifer, or city pipers, were professional musicians employed by councils to perform on towers, in dance halls, and at public festivities using instruments like shawms, sackbuts, and slide brass.

At the table

Rare Festive Pastries

For ordinary families, sweet pastries fried in fat, known as Nonnenfürzle, were rare festive delicacies served on special occasions like church festivals. They were made from choux pastry and, according to local tradition, were named for the hissing sound they made as steam escaped in the hot fat.

Getting around

Fast river travel downstream

Travelers could use rivers to move faster, sometimes reaching up to 150 kilometers in 24 hours when traveling downstream.

What it cost

Grain price surge during early 1570s famine

During the severe food crisis of the early 1570s, grain prices in Augsburg and Nuremberg soared to five to ten times their usual level.