Katerina Lemmel

[3] In her years in Nuremberg, Katerina Lemmel became a successful businesswoman holding investments in profitable enterprises ranging from real estate and metal production to agriculture and viticulture.

Katerina Lemmel may have wished to profess as a Birgittine because these houses were ruled by abbesses and the administration remained largely in the hands of the nuns themselves.

Katerina Lemmel's ongoing efforts to solicit donations of stained glass panels for the glazing of the cloister continued throughout much of her correspondence.

Finally by 1519 a narrative cycle focusing on the Passion of Christ was completed by the famous Hirsvogel workshop of Nuremberg and installed at Maria Mai.

By that time many of the merchant cities of South Germany, among them Nuremberg, had adopted the Lutheran Reformation thus depriving the nuns of one of their major sources of support.

The primary purpose of the missives was clearly financial: Imhoff administered funds that remained in Nuremberg, and Lemmel regularly informed him how to use the interest income.

Beyond financial decisions, the topics discussed in the letters ranged from practical difficulties in transportation, communication and banking, to medical matters, to family events and gossip (births and marriages, illness and death, controversies and misunderstandings), to local Nuremberg news, to major religious and political issues of the day.