Thesaurus philopoliticus
Thesaurus philopoliticus (also Thesaurus Philo-Politicus , German title "Politisches Schatzkästlein" and after 1638 Sciographia cosmica ) is a collection of copperplate engravings and etchings with city views ( vedute ), which Daniel Meisner as Poeta laureatus and Eberhard Kieser as copper engraver and publisher from 1623 published in Frankfurt am Main.
content
intention
The full title of the first edition from 1623 reads - in Latin and German: “THESAURUS PHILO-POLITICUS. That is: Political treasure chest of good gentlemen and steadfast friend. ” In contrast to the collective works with historical cityscapes known at the time, the author and publisher attached particular importance to the emblem scenes in the foreground of each illustration and to the associated sayings in verse. The cityscapes were just a decorative background. It was the idea of Daniel Meisner, who died in the middle of work in 1625, to combine these two components.
With these sayings and emblematic representations, they wanted to "teach the reader, edify and lead to a better change" . P. 86 These documents belong to the genre of emblems or allegorical prints with moralizing purposes. This genre originated in Italy around the mid-sixteenth century and was very popular in the Netherlands and Germany in the seventeenth century.
At the same time, the contemporaries were to be informed about the views of important European cities, for which a realistic copper engraving and brief explanations were used. Meisner denied a connection between the emblem and the respective city, but on closer inspection there is one in a few cases.
The volumes of the first editions by Meisner and Kieser also contain a “Brief Explanation and Meaning of the Emblematic Figures” for a better understanding for those viewers who, despite the verse translation into German, still had difficulties interpreting the Latin emblem.
Structure of the prints
The approximately 10 cm × 15 cm sheets of the Thesaurus philopoliticus combine an illustration and a text part according to a uniform concept.
The text part consists of: above the picture (1) a motto or motto (mostly in Latin) and below (2) a two-line verse in Latin ( distichon ) next to each other and (3) a corresponding translation into German in a four-line stanza. The verses explain the meaning of the motto and the emblem.
The illustration in turn consists of two elements: (4) in the foreground are symbolic figures or objects that illustrate the theme (motto) and (5) in the background there is usually a city - sometimes a castle or a monastery.
With the latter feature, the series follows on from the collections of city images popular at the time, such as the Cosmographia by Sebastian Münster , which appeared in Basel in 1544 and was later reprinted several times.
Illustrated examples
Examples illustrate the artistic and compositional peculiarities of these cityscapes with emblem scenes and sayings.
Freyburg in Breißgauw
The copper engraving, printed in 1625, contains an unequal pair placed in the center of the picture in the foreground as an emblem. It depicts a bearded man in the clothing of a contemporary philosopher, who holds a sun symbol in his right hand and a wall clock in his left. Behind him is death as a grim reaper, who is just pulling out his scythe for mowing . The texts belong to this emblem for the transience of everything earthly:
" OMNIS DIES, OMNIS HORA, QUAM NIHIL SUMUS, OSTENDIT "
“ Quam nihil in vita sumus hac, quam turba misella /
Unus quisque dies, quaelibet hora probat. "
“ That we are nothing in this life,
a misery people, surrounded by death:
Such is proven, finely clear and rounded,
every day, yes every hour. "
In the explanation of the 2nd part of Book II it says:
" The old Philosophus, who has the sun in one hand / but a clock in the other / behind which the dead man removes the grass with a scythe / gives to understand / that every day and hour / shows pleasantly / like us but nothing at all on earth. "
Brugk in Flanders
The print of the Flemish city of Bruges carries the motto: SALUTEM EX INIMICIS or salvation comes from the enemy .
The Latin and German verses below explain that the poison of the scorpion is fatal to humans, but that scorpion oil (olive oil in which scorpions are dissolved under heating) relieves the pain of the stung and has healing properties .
“ The Scorpion with his poison,
kills the people he meets.
His oil is dangerous and does not hurt,
salvation often takes care of the enemy. "
The magic is represented in the foreground of the picture by a round table with a scorpion and a medicine bottle on it. In the background there is a panorama view of Bruges (hardly recognizable).
Origin of the cityscapes
From the point of view of Meisner and Kieser, the cityscapes were not the main topic, but were only intended to loosen up the emblems as additional background information. Since the cities depicted were scattered all over Europe and some were even outside of the old continent, it was neither feasible nor affordable to send the engravers on trips and to record original information on site. It should also be taken into account that while the Thesaurus philopoliticus was being produced and published, large parts of Germany were affected by the Thirty Years War (1618–1648). Kieser therefore preferred existing sources.
This led to the earlier opinion that practically all cityscapes in the thesaurus are copies from the work Civitates Orbis Terrarum by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg . Fritz Hermann and Leonhard Kraft, the editors of the facsimile edition from 1927, however, showed in a study that of the 830 prints of the thesaurus only 272 images by Braun & Hogenberg served as a template, 167 were demonstrably based on other publications such as the Cosmographey by Sebastian Münster and the The origin of the remaining 391 could no longer be determined. Some of these sources were undoubtedly loose prints that must have been generally available in the Frankfurt printing, publishing and book trade center at the time. Only for a number of German cities and a few smaller towns and castles in the vicinity of Frankfurt did the publisher have new cityscapes produced with considerable difficulty and expense .
Recent research has shown that the prints from Descrittione di Lodovico Guicciardini patritio fiorentino di tutti i Paesi Bassi altrimenti detti Germania inferiore by Lodovico Guicciardini from 1567 were used as a source for a number of cities in the Netherlands .
expenditure
First editions
The publication of the Thesaurus philopoliticus began in the spring of 1623, when a first part of the book with 52 prints appeared on the occasion of the Frankfurt fair. The sale was an instant hit, prompting the editors to regularly publish new parts of the book, each containing 52 prints (with one exception, which contained only fifty prints). The June 1624 edition already had 416 views. The so-called Book I summarized the first series of the eight book parts published between 1623 and 1626. This was followed by Book II , which also consisted of eight parts, which appeared between 1627 and 1631, each about six months apart. In addition to the German editions, work began on a Latin edition from 1625.
In total, the thesaurus contains no less than 830 prints. Each part of the book begins with an illustrated title page, a dedication to a well-known personality and an explanation of the cities and emblems dealt with in this part.
Later editions
Interest in emblem books declined as the seventeenth century progressed, but the thesaurus prints remained popular because of the cityscapes .
Soon after the death of Eberhard Kieser (1631) the art dealer and publisher Paulus Fürst from Nuremberg bought the printing plates and published the work again in the years 1637–1638 under the title Sciographia Cosmica . This edition consisted of eight parts of a hundred plates each, dispensing with thirty prints from the original series. The prints were given a sequence according to geographical criteria with a letter (A to H) for each of the 8 parts and a consecutive number from 1 to 100. Previously, the coats of arms had been added to the copper plates for some of the cities shown . The text pages with the explanation of the emblems were omitted: in Fürst's opinion, these were now secondary and the cityscapes became essential. For unknown reasons, Fürst only named part 1 (A) with “Sciographia Cosmica” and from part 2 (B) decided on the name Libellus Novus Politicus Emblematicus Civitatum Pars
The Fürst's widow (Paul Fürst Witwe und Erben) had a comparable success with a new publication in 1678, which was printed under the title Daniel Meißner's PLC Sciagraphia Cosmica .
After the publishing house of Paulus Fürst was closed, the Nuremberg bookseller Rudolf Johann Helmers reprinted the plates again in 1700 in a doubled format with two city views on each sheet. The title of this issue was Politica politica / Statistical Cities Book .
Modern reprints
Complete volumes of the Thesaurus Philopoliticus or of later editions are rare today. However, single prints are regularly offered by second-hand bookshops and at auctions. Fortunately, the complete works are easily accessible through two facsimile editions from the twentieth century. The first was published in Heidelberg in 1927 by F. Hermann and L. Kraft. The reproduced originals were kept in the Prussian State Library in Berlin and in the Hessian State Library in Darmstadt, but were lost during the Second World War.
In 1972 K. Eymann published the second facsimile edition, based on a copy of the thesaurus from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. This publication was printed for the fourth time in 1992. Both facsimile editions come with a thorough introduction.
In 1992 the publishing house Dr. Alfons Uhl in Nördlingen published a reprint of the editions (Frankfurt am Main 1625–1626 and 1627–1631) as a facsimile .
Authors, engravers and publishers
Daniel Meisner
The concept of the Thesaurus philopoliticus and the initiative to publish the work apparently came from Daniel Meisner (* 1585; † 1625), a poet from Bohemia who lived and worked in Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen after completing his training. Meisner provided the texts, designed the emblems and laid down the guidelines for the images.
Meisner carried the title of Poeta Laureatus Caesareus (PLC). In his preface to the first book he describes that over several winters he put together over 50 emblemata and moralia politica with the intention of using them for a genealogical and memorial book; he had also started to add an “elegant city inside and outside of the H. Röm. Reichs Teutscher Nation right to indicate contrafacturally ”.
Meisner died in 1625 when the fifth part of the first book was being printed. In the following 6th part a portrait of Daniel Meisner was probably taken for this reason; it is a high quality copper engraving made by Sebastian Furck, which shows the Poeta Laureatus in front of his hometown Komotau .
However, his partner, the publisher Eberhard Kieser, was able to continue the publication because he still had a supply of Meisner's texts. When this was used up, he commissioned Johann Ludwig Gottfried , pastor in Offenbach am Main, to write the Latin and German verses. For the second book, Kieser won over his brother-in-law, the lawyer Heinrich Kornmann .
Despite Meisner's early demise, the series continued to bear his name. He was also mentioned as an author in later editions. Even today, the prints from the thesaurus are conveniently ascribed to him as the spiritual father, although he did not provide any of the copperplate engravings and the texts for only some of the prints.
Eberhard Kieser
The engraver and publisher Eberhard Kieser (* 1583; † 1631) took care of the production and sale of the work . Kieser came from Kastellaun in the Hunsrück ; his father Stanislaus was a pastor and came from Alsace. After training as a goldsmith and copper engraver, Kieser became a Frankfurt citizen in 1609. He ran his publishing business, in which several engravers were also employed, in Sachsenhausen. In addition to portraits of Frankfurt citizens, his etchings on a dance of death (after Hans Holbein the Younger ) are particularly well known. Eberhard Kieser died in 1631; a portrait of him can be seen on the view of his hometown Kastellaun.
Engraver
Kieser probably engraved some of the prints himself, but he usually commissioned other well-known engravers to produce the copperplate engravings or etchings. These worked partly from nature and partly from models from the older collections of cityscapes known at the time, in particular from the Cosmographia by Sebastian Münster and from the collection Civitates orbis terrarum by Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg (Cologne from 1572).
Many copper engravings bear the artist's personal logo. Nevertheless, the assignment of individual engravings to certain draftsmen, engravers and erasers is still difficult today. Proven to have worked on the work, among others:
- Sebastian Furck (* approx. 1598; † approx. 1655), Signum: “S. F. fec. ";
- Georg Keller (* 1576; † 1640), sign: “G. Cellar figuravit “;
- Matthäus Merian (* 1593; † 1650), sign: “M. Merian fe. ”Or“ M. ”;
- Johann Eckard Löffler , Signum: "JEL" or "IEL", "EL" and "L" or also "Löffler senior" or "Joes Eckart Löffler fecit" or "Joan Eckart Löffler fecit".
The sales success of the Thesaurus philopoliticus encouraged Matthäus Merian (who had worked on this work as a draftsman and engraver) to publish his Topographia Germaniae from 1642 , a large-scale complete work of a comprehensive topography with over 2,000 city representations.
literature
- Daniel Meisner: Thesaurus philopoliticus (political treasure chest ); newly published and introduced by Fritz Herrmann and Leonhard Kraft; Heidelberg 1927.
- Daniel Meisner and Eberhard Kieser: Thesaurus philopoliticus or political treasure chest ; Facsimile reprint of the Frankfurt a. M. 1625–1626 and 1627–1631 with an introduction and a complete register of townscapes by Klaus Eymann. Unterschneidheim 1972 and 2nd edition 1974.
- Daniel Meisner and Eberhard Kieser: Thesaurus philopoliticus or political treasure chest ; Facsimile of the Frankfurt a. M. 1625-1631. Introduction by Klaus Eymann. 4th edition. Publishing house Dr. Alfons Uhl, Noerdlingen 1992, ISBN 978-3-921503-51-5 . Details
- Hans Georg Wehrens: Freiburg in the "Thesaurus philopoliticus" by Daniel Meisner and Eberhard Kieser : in: Freiburg im Breisgau 1504–1803, woodcuts and copper engravings; Herder Verlag, Freiburg 2004, p. 99 ff. ISBN 3-451-20633-1 .
- Stephan Prinz: Legal emblems; Legal motifs in the emblemata from the 16th to 18th centuries , LIT Verlag, Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-643-10133-4 online excerpt
Web links
- Ortelius: Thesaurus Philopoliticus in the blog "cavendum a meretricibus"
- Thesaurus philo-politicus, he emblemata s. moralia politica ...: accessit civitatum et urbium vera delineatio . Kieser, Francofurti ad M. 1624 - 1626 ( digitized version )
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e see web link Ortelius: Thesaurus Philopoliticus
- ↑ see literature Stephan Prinz: Juristische Embleme
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l see title of the same name nl: Thesaurus philopoliticus in the Dutch-language Wikipedia
- ↑ Info oldworldauctions point 717 table Constantinople (PDF; 651 kB)
- ↑ Among other things from the description of the picture Zwolle in "Alte Stiche Joseph Steutzger - Stadtansichten"
- ↑ see references to the 1992 Fakimilie edition