Three years after the end of the 30-Year War died Bartholomaus’ first wife and later that same year he married 16-year-old Maria Horn. The war had laid vaste to Germany and had been particularly hard on the northern lands where Swedish landsknechts still held sway, leaving only women and old men the survivors. So serious was the situation that a law had been passed allowing for polygamy, a statute that remained on the books for nearly another 100 years. Any man throughout the realm was allowed to marry up to 10 women, the only stipulation being that he ‘treat them all well’. Thus, Bartholomaus, who already had fathered eight children, added three more young ones to the family.

Bartholomaus graduated in 1624 with a doctorate from the University of Koenigsberg. He had also attended universities at Rostock and Greifswald. His paternal grandfather had been a school superintendant at Wismar in Mecklenburg and from that city other branches of the family spread out to Lubeck, Wittenburg, Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. Many individual members of the family were churchmen and teachers, while others were merchants and senators (city councilors) and a few military men.