Mobility in the Sixteenth Century: Narrative Evidence about Travel and the Discovery of the World in Early Modern German Literature

The topic of mobility contributes in multiple ways to a deeper understanding of cultural history. The degree of mobility has much to say about the development of any society, both in the past and in the present. This paper examines the situation in sixteenth-century Europe through the lens of literary documents in which we can find comments on travel, mobility, and world perspectives. While it might not be possible to identify explicit documents from that period reflecting on mobility itself (technologies, modes of transportation, hospitality, healthcare, finances, etc.), many authors actually included valuable references to this phenomenon, if we only look more closely. The literary narrative thus emerges as an important source of information about social, emotional, economic, religious, and also travel aspects, such as shipping, use of a coach, a horse, or mule, staying in early-modern ‘hotels,’ roads, and bridges. As the analysis will demonstrate, early modern society was highly mobile, with representatives of many different social classes on the move for a wide range of reasons. Whereas the authors consulted here did not specifically signal their interest in reflecting on mobility as such, they commonly reveal that the narrative framework mirrors events on the road, on a ship, or at meetings where many people attended, such as a Church council, an imperial diet, and the like. The need to travel grew tremendously in the sixteenth century, and this for many different reasons. One of the consequences was that poets increasingly engaged with a highly mobile society.