Excerpt from Poetry in the Limburger Chronik
Travelling through the romantic valley of the Lahn, we meet about half way between Wetzlar and the Rhein the beautiful ancient city of Limburg. Situated in one of the most fertile parts of Germany, commonly called "der goldne Grund," and chiefly inhabited by a Catholic population, the city with its surroundings, especially during festive days, still bears a mediaeval appearance. Its cathedral, with an abbey founded in the tenth century, belongs to the master-works of the thirteenth century, and is said to contain the tomb of the German emperor, Conrad I, who died in 918. Limburg, however, has become still more celebrated in the history of German literature by reason of the chronicle which was written there in the latter part of the fourteenth century.
Not only containing numerous accounts of events which are of great value for the local history of the city and the bordering principalities, but also giving highly interesting descriptions of the costumes, as well as the manners and customs of the fourteenth century, of music and painting, and, above all, preserving many songs of that period, our chronicle must very early have enjoyed a great popularity, as we may see from the number of manuscripts in which it is preserved to us. When later, during the time of the Reformation and under the influence of the humanists, an interest in the study of German antiquities was awakened, a rich patrician of Frankfort-a-M., Johann Friedrich Faust, for the first time published it in 1617. Two years later a second edition was necessary. This edition, brought out under the unsuitable name of "Fasti Limburgenses," has, in spite of its many defects, until recently been the main source of information concerning the chronicle. The succeeding generation, having lost through the Thirty Years War its national self-consciousness, did not know how to appreciate the value of the book. One editor, in 1747, even complains: "dass der Historicus sich hie und dort mit Kleinig-keiten aufhalte, zum Exempel mit der Kleider-Mode, mit der Witterung, mit einfaltigen Liedgern."
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