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wherever I will, in the whole of Nature I find only harmony, and where harmony is, there must be love too.

I see the stars in heaven kiss one another, see the little flowers and grasses in the meadows stand close and lovingly together, I see the cattle in the pastures lick one another, see the young ones of all beasts dance and spring about together in love, see the little doves and lambs sit close together as if drunk on happiness and sunk deep in love, I see little worms and snails cling to one another in love, midges like dust in the sunshine rejoicing in whole troops together in their love.

We human beings love too, we must love. For Love is our Father of All. All other creatures love in such harmony, so in accord with nature, only us human beings shall not, may not, must have rules about how and where and what we shall love. Hence, you deluded human beings, hence you love mist, smoke, shadows, because you must love. For your Father is Love. I love Him and everything that He has made is sacred to me. No priest or Levite shall make unclean for me what He has created to be clean. God is love, in spite of them who would have all things ordered according to their self-centred ideas!" [Voellmy, v 2 pp 207-208]

13th Feb. Bräker continues to think about love, and how, after his marriage and after moving on from Pietist reading to philosophical, theatrical and other works he resolved to "pick the flowers by the wayside before they faded", but this only led to further disappointment. [Chronik, p 319]

22nd Feb. Business is going badly and many people are unemployed or going bankrupt. Bräker fears this will bring an increase in crime. [Chronik, pp 319-320]

24th Feb. The diary includes a plan of Bräker's novel "Jaus der Liebesritter [Jaus the knight errant]" about which Bräker wrote (Voellmy does not specify if it was here or in a later entry of the diary):

"I might have written a novel, truly one of the drollest of novels. But then I gave up the plan. Writing novels is not my affair any more. Some time ago I wrote a little satire about a gallant knight of today and let a few of my friends read it. That was occasioned by one of them telling me yesterday a whole heap of similar stories of love. I knew that he himself had played a part in them in secret, but would willingly disentangle himself from them. I represented to him how foolish and imprudent such frivolities invariably are, how fear, disgust, loss, vexation, remorse and all such unpleasantness far outweigh the pleasure." [Voellmy, v 2 pp 82-83]

2nd-4th Mar. Bräker rejoices that the winter has been mild, the streams did not freeze and wild creatures did not need to seek food near the houses. And the first bees are already flying about. Even the cats feel that it is spring, so do Bräker's children and even he himself "for my soul finds peace only in distractions". By the 16th the weather has changed again and Bräker is suffering from toothache and headaches. [Chronik, p 320]

17th Mar. At Lichtensteig Bräker sees five members of the same family flogged and an old woman and a boy branded. He feels sympathy for them being exposed to the mockery of the crowd, and knows that two of them may well receive the death penalty. Next day he speculates about how such occasions bring out the worst in the spectators. In a later entry for 26th April he reports that two men aged 20 and 73 were in fact executed. [Chronik, pp 321-322, 325]

23rd-24th Mar. At Eastertide Bräker considers how people form an image of God according to their own needs. He himself belongs to the handful of people who believe in a God that they can

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