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Tischreden Nr. 4690 — the printers' offer#

The primary source for the film. Everything Luther says in the refusal scene is drawn from this entry, and so is the sum the whole short is built to withhold until the last shot — it sits in the entry's third line, so mind what you paste out of here into anything the audience will see.

Citation. Luther, Tischreden, WA TR 4 (Weimar 1916), Nr. 4690, pp. 431–432. From Anton Lauterbach's diary for 1539 (WA's manuscript Ser., in the ducal library at Gotha — the entry's leaf is Ser. 136, turning to 136ᵇ mid-sentence).

Date: 1–9 July 1539, and WA does not narrow it further. The volume's own date index (introduction, p. 22 of the PDF) reads "Juli, 1.—9.: 4688—4696" — nine entries assigned to a span, not to a day. June in that index ends "30.: 4686, 4687", so Nr. 4687 is the last dated June entry and our entry begins the July run. Three refinements, in descending order of authority:

• What the entries themselves suggest: the evening of 1 July. Nr. 4688 opens 1. Iulii fiebat mentio de coelibatu; Nr. 4689 opens Illa vespera; ours opens Deinde dicebat — "then he said." Read as a chain, all three are one evening. This is an inference from the sequence, not WA's verdict; WA had the chain in front of it and still printed a nine-day span.
• The only date any source states outright: 3 July 1539. Bindseil's parallel heads the piece Anno 39. 3. Iulii dixit (WA's note 24). Bindseil also moves Nr. 4689 to 2 July, so that tradition spreads across days what Lauterbach runs together.
• Pettegree says "around the end of June" (Brand Luther, p. 290) — his approximation, consistent with any of the above.

Do not read the page's running head as the date. WA's header over pp. 431–432 says "Nr. 4687–4690 — 26. und 30. Juni, 1. Juli 1539," which looks like three candidate dates for our entry and is not: it is a page header listing every date the page touches. 30 June belongs to Nr. 4687, 26 June to footnotes carried over from Nr. 4685 on the previous page, and 1 July is where the July run starts.

For the film: late June to the first days of July 1539. If a single date is ever needed — a credit, a caption — 3 July 1539 is the only one a source states flatly, but it is Bindseil's and not Lauterbach's, and it should be said that way rather than presented as the date.

How this text was obtained. The WA volumes are Fraktur and their OCR is unusable (`resources/README.md`, Pending work). This transcription was made by eye from `books-pdf/luther-wa-tischreden-04-1916.pdf`, pp. 431–432 rendered at 400 dpi — not from the OCR. WA's superscript footnote markers are dropped from the text below and their readings collected in the apparatus.

The entry#

4690. (Ser. 136) Deinde dicebat, quomodo Deus eum paterne cum suis

educasset; omnia gratis sine mercede dedisset. Es hetten ihme buchdrucker

jerlich 400 fl. wollen geben, das er ihnen seine exemplaria zustellet, noch

hette ers nicht wollen thuen; wolde sein gnade nicht vorkeuffen. Gott hette ihn

wunderlich wider den greulichen wurm, den babst, gefuret; ob sie ihn wol

gekratzet hetten, so hette dennoch der babst auch nicht gantze haut dauon

(Ser. 136ᵇ) bracht. Er wehr auch zimlich getroffen. Ich habe gantz gnug vnd

saat, Gott sey lob, qui mihi dedit uxorem et liberos, pulcherrimam

benedictionem, et electorem, qui sponte mihi obtulit 200 fl. annuatim. Alias

hoc decrevi ducta uxore me lecturum pro pretio, aber da mir Gott zuuor kam per

electorem, so habe ich mein lebenlang kein exemplar vorkaufft noch lection pro

pretio gehalten, wil auch den rum, wils Gott, mit mir ins grab nehmen. Habens

victum et amictum contentus ero.

[WA marginal reference: 1 Tim. 6,8]

[WA's parallels: Math. L. (295) = Math. L. 696; Math. N. 591; B. 3, 186.]

Note the seam: the entry begins as a third-person report (dicebat … educasset) and slips into Luther's own voice at Ich habe gantz gnug vnd saat. The German draft converts the whole thing to first person, which is a defensible reading of a Tischrede but is an editorial act — flag it as such where it matters.

Apparatus#

WA's sigla, as used in this volume: B. = Bindseil's Colloquia; Math. L., Math. N. = two manuscripts of Johannes Mathesius's notes; Text: = the reading of Ser. itself where WA has emended it.

The two rival headings. Bindseil heads the piece *Lutherus alienus ab avaritia noluit suos libros vendere. Anno 39. 3. Iulii dixit.* — "Luther, a stranger to greed, would not sell his books. He said this 3 July '39." Mathesius heads it Quomodo Deus Lutherum aluerit — "How God fed Luther." The first is the film's logline; the second is the scene Luther thinks he is in.

Translation#

Fresh translation, made for this project from the WA text above — not taken from any published English Table Talk, and not to be cited as one. Latin is italicized so the macaronic seams stay visible.

4690. (Ser. 136) Then he spoke of *how God had raised him like a father,

him and his household, and had given everything freely, without payment.*

Printers had been willing to give him 400 gulden a year for him to hand his

copy over to them, and still he would not do it; he would not sell his grace.

God had led him wondrously against the horrible worm, the pope; and though

they had scratched him well, the pope for his part had not carried away a

whole skin either. He was hit fairly hard himself. "I have quite enough and

more, God be praised, *who has given me a wife and children, the loveliest

blessing, and an Elector, who of his own accord offered me 200 gulden a year.*

Otherwise, once I had married, I had resolved to lecture for a fee — but

since God got there ahead of me by way of the Elector, I have in all my life

never sold a single copy, nor held a lecture for a fee, and I mean to take

that boast, God willing, with me into the grave. *Having food and clothing, I

shall be content.*"

[1 Tim. 6:8]

Reading notes — the words the film rests on#

• `400 fl.` — 400 Gulden (florins), annual. Luther's own stipend from the Elector is given three lines later as 200 fl., so the offer doubles his income in the source and (per Pettegree, p. 290, who takes the salary as never above 200) roughly triples it against his other figures. Nothing in the entry stages the number as a reveal; that is the film's device, not Lauterbach's.
• `seine exemplaria zustellet` — exemplar is the print-shop word for the manuscript a compositor sets from, not "a copy of a book." The offer is for first access to Luther's copy-texts, exactly as the film has it. Do not render it as "his books" in any draft that claims to follow the source.
• `wolde sein gnade nicht vorkeuffen` — "he would not sell his grace." The possessive is Luther's own: sein gnade is the gift given to him, not grace in the abstract. The English draft's "His gift of grace" tips it toward God's grace; the German draft's meine Gnade is closer. The Mathesius witnesses read wolt er here, which makes it a reported intention rather than a flat refusal.
• `gekratzet` — scratched, clawed. The image is a fight with a worm: the papists scratched Luther, but the pope did not walk away with an unbroken hide either. Confirmed against the page image (WA TR 4, p. 432, line 3); the German draft's open flag on this word can be closed.
• `gnug vnd saat` — satt, sated: enough and full. B. reads sat.
• `den rum … mit mir ins grab nehmen` — Ruhm: the boast, the credit. Not fame; the thing he refuses to cash is the thing he intends to be buried with.
• `Habens victum et amictum contentus ero` — in the source this closing clause is Latin, quoting the Vulgate of 1 Tim. 6:8. Any German rendering of it in a draft is a translation of a translation, and the draft's claim to "follow Luther's 1545 wording" is a separate editorial choice, not a quotation of this entry. (See open check 1 in `README.md`.)

Appendix — Nr. 5151, and a warning about its 400#

The repository cites WA TR 4, Nr. 5151 as the "parallel recollection of the salary" (`PLAN.md`, and the German draft's header). It is a parallel, but its number is a different 400 and the two must not be merged.

WA TR 4, Nr. 5151, p. 535, from Mathesius's notes, headed Matrimonium, dated by WA's running head to 7–21 August 1540:

*Ego item nihil habebam, sed volui posthac gratis scribere et docere, et Deus

obtulit mihi 400 aureos. Tum temporis habebam ex officio 9 alte schock, et

visitatores mihi denegarunt, sed non recompensarunt.*

"I too had nothing, but I resolved to write and teach for nothing from then on,

and God offered me 400 gold gulden. At that time I had 9 old Schock from my

office, and the visitors refused me, and did not make it up."

[Variants: Dink., Math. L. read elector for Deus. *WA's own note: "In

Nr. 5131 Luther speaks only of 300 fl.; but Melanchthon too received 400 fl.

from 1541" (Hartfelder, Melanchthon 97).]*

So the 400 in Nr. 5151 is the Elector's provision to Luther, not the printers' offer — the same sum, the opposite transaction. Luther's memory of his own stipend runs 200 fl. (Nr. 4690), 300 fl. (Nr. 5131) and 400 gold gulden (Nr. 5151) across three tellings. Nr. 4690 is the only source for the printers' 400, and the film should keep citing it alone for the offer. Nr. 5151 is useful for one thing only: it shows the gratis scribere et docere resolve stated flat, in Luther's own mouth, a year later.

What this settles#

1. `gekratzet` is correct. Verified on the page image. The German draft's header flag ("uncertain in our transcription … must be checked against the WA TR 4 page image") is discharged. 2. Nr. 5151 really is in Bd. 4 (p. 535), which closes open check 2 in `README.md`. Bd. 4's numbering runs past 5188 even though Bd. 5's title page advertises 1540–1544; WA's volumes are divided by collection, not by year. The existing citation "WA TR 4, Nr. 5151" needs no change — but its description as a salary parallel needs the caveat above. 3. Small divergences in the draft's inline citations. The German draft quotes bapst, gefüret, wehre, ruhm, satt, und; WA prints babst, gefuret, wehr, rum, saat, vnd. Consistent with the draft's stated policy of light spelling normalization, but a quotation marked "Quelle:" should probably be verbatim. Reconcile at lock.

Re-checking any of this#

The volume is page images; grep will fail. Render and read:

``` pdftoppm -f 485 -l 486 -r 400 -png \ resources/books-pdf/luther-wa-tischreden-04-1916.pdf /tmp/tr4 ```

PDF pages 485–486 are printed pp. 431–432 (Nr. 4690); PDF page 739 is printed p. 535 (Nr. 5151).