Johan Parum Schultze (or Schultz) (baptised Sep 30, 1677, buried April 25, 1740) was, for over 40 years, the Schultze, that is “village head” of Süthen in the so called Hanover Wendland. His father, Jürgen Niebuhr, came from the village of Karmitz to the north of Süthen. Starting in 1720 Johan began writing a chronicle of the local Slavic life that came to be known as the Chronicle of Wendland. The original manuscript disappeared in 1856 but the chronicle survives in a copy and has been published a few times. Schultze wrote with the intention of preserving stories of the local events and people but he also wanted to preserve the language of the Wends which at that time was dying out. He wrote: “I have undertaken in this 1725th year to record something of the Wendish language for posterity… I am now 47 years old. When I and three other people are gone from our village, no one will likely know what a ‘dog’ is called in Wendish (local Slavic).” He was right to be concerned – the last speaker of local Wendish passed away in 1750.

Of interest to this blog, Schultze describes an interesting (probably fertility) custom previously followed in the village:

“Before the year 1690 there was a custom, wherein those young women who had married the prior fall, were required the following Easter to hand out cooked and painted eggs, going house to house around the village. To each person they gave two. Did not matter whether the recipient was young or old.”

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