[4] _Vom Alten Pommerlande_ (of old Pomerania), book v.




INTRODUCTION


The origin of our biographer cannot be traced with any degree of
certainty, owing to the loss of the first part of his manuscript. It is,
however, pretty clear that he was not a Pomeranian, as he says he was in
Silesia in his youth, and mentions relations scattered far and wide, not
only at Hamburg and Cologne, but even at Antwerp; above all, his south
German language betrays a foreign origin, and he makes use of words which
are, I believe, peculiar to Swabia. He must, however, have been living for
a long time in Pomerania at the time he wrote, as he even more frequently
uses Low-German expressions, such as occur in contemporary native
Pomeranian writers.

Since he sprang from an ancient noble family, as he says on several
occasions, it is possible that some particulars relating to the
Schweidlers might be discovered in the family records of the seventeenth
century which would give a clew to his native country; but I have sought
for that name in all the sources of information accessible to me, in vain,
and am led to suspect that our author, like many of his contemporaries,
laid aside his nobility and changed his name when he took holy orders.

I will not, however, venture on any further conjectures; the manuscript,
of which six chapters are missing, begins with the words "Imperialists