‘Das Grosse Stammbuch’: The Facebook of the medieval times

BN Goswamy

“Books of this kind (‘Alba Amicorum’) grew out of university culture in Germany in the sixteenth century, but by the seventeenth century had become a form of social networking used by people of all professions and stages in life — the seventeenth-century Facebook… Through these inscriptions, they built relationships, documented their worldliness, and created an image of who they were through the people they had gathered.”

— Lynley Anne Herbert, Baltimore

“No other work of art (referring to Philipp Hainhofer’s ‘Das Grosse Stammbuch’) better reflects the deeply challenging political tensions that were being navigated in Europe at this time… It provides unparalleled insights into the early modern political culture of trade and commerce in art.”

— Christie’s catalogue, 2006

As I settle down to write this piece, I realise suddenly that nothing, virtually nothing at all, would be familiar to the general reader: neither names of persons, nor places, nor objects that figure in it. It might even be an effort to come to terms with them: personal names like Phillip Hainhofer; or Hoefnagel or Herzog August; place names like Wolfenbuttel or Augsburg; or objects like ‘Alba Amicorum’ or ‘Grosse Stammbuch’. But I write all the same because I cannot resist it, so drawn am I to the thought of sharing some wonderful images that were born out of an uncommon idea. The uncommon idea was that of putting together ‘Books of Friendship’ — the Latin name for those was ‘Alba Amicorum’ — which became a rage among university students in Germany from the mid-16th century onwards and prevailed for several decades. Interestingly, the trend was supported by students of the Wittenberg University, the alma mater of Martin Luther. The whole idea of assembling ‘Books of Friendship’ must sound, I might add, so bizarre to the jaded, over-exposed ears of the young generation of today — the very notion of friendship itself having become de-monetised and expelled from the social or familial sphere to land in the grossly political — and yet it was real at one time. Friendships and bonding were valued once, and the fragrance of memories lingered in the air for years, sometimes decades.

What occasions my turning to this theme is that one of these ‘Books of Friendship’ — one of the most sumptuous in existence — going back around 400 years, surfaced recently and was acquired at a very steep price by a famous library located at Wolfenbuttel in Saxony, Germany. It bore the name ‘Das Grosse Stammbuch’, the ‘Great Stammbook’, the word Stammbuch making a reference to the German tradition of people meeting in pubs, year after year, at a table called Stammtisch that was meant exclusively for ‘the regulars’: an adda, if you like, in Bengali terms. The person who had put it together, was Philipp Hainhofer (1578-1647), an internationally influential figure who started, after having studied at prestigious universities, as a cloth merchant in Augsburg, his native city. ‘He expanded his trade beyond the Italian silks that were its mainstay to encompass all luxury goods,’ as had been noted. ‘His princely clients were quick to recognise the wider service that his education, charm and intelligence could offer. He was soon employed not only as an art advisor and supplier but as a political agent’.

He travelled widely to carry out diplomatic and ceremonial duties: the contacts he made with the princes of Europe are recorded in the signatures in the manuscript that we talk about here. As many as four ‘Stammbuchs’ are known to have been assembled by him but this, the ‘Great Stammbuch’, was distinguished since it contained signatures by European figures of note, including Cosio de’ Medici, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria, Elizabeth Stuart, Princess of England, and Christian IX, the King of Denmark and Norway. At each place, or court, that Hainhofer visited, his ‘client’ would commission an artist to create a painting accompanying his or her signatures. The names of many artists have survived, the most significant among them being that of Joris Hoefnagel. Some superb images were thus created, many of them leaning towards the coats-of-arm of notables, or other heraldic images, for inspiration. In the ‘Grosse Stammbuch’ are to be found as many as 100 images, created over a period of half a century. In all, 227 pages with signatures of dozens of princes, kings, generals, and diplomats.

This is not the end of the story, however. Phillip Hainhofer died in 1647. In 1648, Duke Augustus of the House of Welf, who was then collecting hundreds of thousands of precious book to build a great library at Wolfenbuttel, tried to acquire Hainhofer’s precious work, but did not succeed. After that, for years — centuries in fact — the work disappeared from sight only to surface, briefly, in 1931 when it was acquired by a private individual. And then, the great book appeared again in 2006 or thereabouts, and landed with Christies, the auction house where it was sold for a fancy price, far, far above the estimated price. A few years later, Sotheby’s, the other famous auction house, facilitated its acquisition by the Herzog August Library — one of the world’s oldest libraries — at Wolfenbuttel, the very place where Duke Augustus had wanted it to be originally. It had taken a little more than three centuries and a half.

Celebrations at Wolfenbuttel were in order. The money to purchase the ‘Stammbuch’ had been raised from different sources, including the state of Lower Saxony, the federal government, the Volkswagen Foundation, the Siemens Art Foundation, the Oetker Foundation. Jubilant statements were made by the Minister of Culture about the acquisition; a plan was announced to digitise the album, make it accessible to the public; and a three-year research project was launched for putting together its origins and history.

I add all this to raise a question. Can we see anything like this happening in our own blessed land: the commitment to culture, the raising of enormous funds from diverse sources, the celebrations, the initiation of a long-duration research fund devoted just to a single album? More likely, an acquired work such as this by a museum here would have disappeared into the dark, gurgling bowels of the ‘reserve collection’; each step of digitisation, if taken at all, would have been tortuously long; and access to it would have been virtually impossible, since the next curator would perhaps have denied all knowledge of its existence.

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