nly for the
"_Macherlohn_" (pay, for the making) that nobility was given.

In the larger cities, which were not the residence of princes, the
position of the nobility was very different. In Hamburg, Luebeck, and
Bremen, the nobles had no political weight; on the other hand, at
Nueremberg, Frankfort-on-the-Maine, Augsburg, and Ulm, the old race of
nobility lived in proud isolation from the rest of the citizens. Worst
of all were the Nuerembergers, who considered it even degrading to carry
on commerce. Of two noble societies of Frankfort-on-the-Maine, one, the
house of Alten-Limpurg, required of every member who presented himself
for admission, eight ancestors, and that he should keep out of trade;
the other society, of the house of Frauenstein, consisted mostly of
newly-ennobled merchants "of distinction." In Augsburg, the old
patricians were more indulgent to merchants: he who had married the
child of a patrician family, could be received into the noble society.
The remaining commercial cities of note, Prague and Breslau, were most
amply supplied with newly ennobled merchants. There was bitter
complaint that, under the Emperor Leopold, even a chimney-sweeper,
whose trade was then in particularly low esteem, could for a little
money procure nobility, and that frequently tradesmen, with patents of
nobility in their pockets, might be found packing up herrings for their
customers in old paper.

After the Thirty Years' War, officers also sought for patents of
nobility, and they were often granted to them for their services, as
also to the higher officials and members of the city administration in
the larger cities.

It was through families who had taken part in the literary and poetical
culture of the time, that patents of nobility in this and the following
century entered into our literary class. Many poets of the Silesian
school, nay, Leibnitz, Wolf, and Haller, were placed among the
privileged of their time by patents of nobility, which they themselves
or their fathers had acquired.

Wholesale traders were never esteemed in Germany, nor held in that
consideration by the privileged classes of the people, which the great
interest they frequently represented deserved. They had of old been
mistrusted and disliked; this originated, perhaps, in the time when the
astute Romans exchanged, among the simple children of Tuisko, the
foreign silver coin, for the early products of the country. The feudal
system of the Middle Ages