| abstract
| - Marcus Grünwald was professor of theology at the University of Jena. A man of strong Protestant conviction, he was ardent about his faith and his position. Despite his rigid mind, he was neither unkind nor unfair. After joining the university, Grünwald became the protégé of the strongly orthodox Lutheran Professor Johann Gerhard. Despite this association and his own faith, Grünwald married Catherina, a devout Catholic, and allowed her to raise their only son Martinus in her faith. For all his aloof behavior, he loved his wife more than his faith. However, after his wife passed away from a fever which had also killed his brother Lucas and his family, Grünwald became more cold and dogmatic than before. Grünwald continued to raise his dutiful son in the Catholic faith. With the arrival of the Thirty Years' War, Martin Grünwald and his new wife, Louisa, posed as Protestants. However, the time approached when their son Johann was to be baptized. Martin Grünwald had intended a Catholic baptism in private at their family estate, using his late mother's wishes as an excuse. But Marcus Grünwald overruled his son and arranged a Protestant ceremony in Jena, even asking Johann Gerhard to witness and permit his grandson his name. This caused a rift between father and son. When Johann was baptized a Protestant, Martin Grünwald decided to joined the Catholic side of the war in the service of Count Tilly. When the war had cost one of Martin's leg and forcing him and his family to sought shelter in Jena to be with his father, Martin learned that Johann was left with Louisa's sister Anna. Marcus sent a messenger to Anna's husband Helmuth in Tilly's army to bring Johann to Leipzig, and from there a friend of Professor Gerhard would arrange an escort to Jena. But the messenger brought back only a short letter. Helmuth had been killed in a skirmish near Magdeburg, and Anna had died from a fever shortly afterward. The group of soldiers Martin and Helmuth had commanded was no longer a part of the main army, and nobody knew what had happened to Johann. Tracing that group of soldiers, and especially those camp-followers Anna had hired, seemed to be the only chance for finding Johann. Marcus asked his estate keeper Frank Erbst to use his Catholic contacts to locate the soldiers. They were tracked to Grantville after surviving the Battle of the Crapper. Marcus Grünwald took an immediate dislike toward the Americans, even after they saved Jena from a mercenary company, as he saw them and their technology as having "Satanic" origins. He did not wish ask them for help in finding his grandson, and forbade Erbst and Martin from consorting with the "devil spawns". When the Americans offered Jena a exchange of knowledge between the university and Grantville, Marcus Grünwald was involved in the furious debates among the university's theologians. Infamously, Marcus lost his temper - and dignity - after he angrily threw an inkwell at one of Professor Gerhard's favorite students, Peder Winstrup, who was defending the contact with the Americans with the argument that any knowledge about the world would lead to a better understanding of God. Marcus continued to harbor his dislike for the Americans in which by then hardened to considering them anathema. Despite Marcus's orders to the contrary, Louisa, and later his brother Johannes, found Johann in Grantville.
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