Sabine Jagodzinski’s Das Große Stammbuch Philipp Hainhofers addresses one of the most significant extant alba amicorum (friendship albums) collections of signatures, inscriptions, poems, drawings, engravings, coats of arms, popular from the sixteenth century. Around 400 years after Hainhofer’s patron, Duke August the Younger of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, attempted to acquire the album, his namesake library, the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, purchased the volume from Sotheby’s in 2020. The work is an outcome of the Herzog August Bibliothek’s substantial project, digitizing manuscripts relating to the prolific Augsburg merchant, agent and diplomat, Philipp Hainhofer (1578-1647). This includes several volumes of his travelogues and a complete open-access digital edition of the Große Stammbuch. Hainhofer’s Große Stammbuch comprises 107 pages, containing 94 entries. The decorative sheets are rich with botanical, allegorical, and heraldic illustrations, coats of arms, coronation scenes, and the names of some of the most prominent actors of the seismic Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). Though a relatively brief exploration of an inestimably rich album, Jagodzinski, in the first dedicated volume on the Große Stammbuch, skilfully introduces readers to a wide range of avenues for investigation, from the relationship between artists and patrons to the material, economic and confessional significance of such albums. Crucially, Jagodzinski demonstrates how Hainhofer’s album is a valuable art object that explicitly communicates his successful work as cultural and political broker in an age of intense confessional division.

Jagodzinski begins by exploring what is meant by the term Stammbücher. Moving away from a more literal understanding of the term as referring to a genealogical record, she directs readers toward the genre of alba amicorum, which flourished from the 1530s among Wittenberg students, collecting entries from fellow students, professors, and travel acquaintances. The genre soon expanded its circle of users, appealing to elites undertaking grand tours, soldiers, and ambassadors. Jagodzinski then introduces readers to Philipp Hainhofer, providing light biographical details: a member of the merchant Hainhofer family, Philipp Hainhofer began to collect entries in his album in his youth, expanding the ‘form and function’ of his volume as he progressed in his mercantile activities to include miniatures from eminent artists, including the renowned engraver Lucas Kilian (1579-1637) and painter Johann Matthias Kager (1575-1634) [p.12]. The artists who contributed images to the Große Stammbuch are typically drawn from Hainhofer’s circle of Augsburg artisans who worked on many of his artistic commissions, such as his well-known art cabinets [Kunstkabinette]. Here, readers are introduced to the vast networks in which Hainhofer, as a merchant, diplomat, and agent, was deeply embedded.  

Following this contextual introduction, Jagodzinski carefully reveals Hainhofer’s Große Stammbuch to readers in close and dazzling detail. Beginning with the manuscript’s binding, she describes the artisanal techniques employed, from the laced metal eyelets to the comb-marbled paper. Although the binding of the manuscript dates from ca. 1900, these techniques, Jagodzinski suggests, were likely inspired by the original binding. All aspects of the volume’s construction hold artistic and cultural significance. The pages of the volume are comprised of many different paper types, collated loose-leaf before being bound. Alongside the marbled paper, “likely produced in Europe, following Middle Eastern models,” was white paper from the Middle East and Ottoman silhouette paper, decorated with delicate floral motifs. The watermark of these pages reveals that the paper was likely produced in northern Italy in the 1570-1580s [p.18]. The materials of the Große Stammbuch’s production evidence Hainhofer’s link to networks of global exchange (of materials, goods, and knowledge). Jagodzinski then examines the ordering scheme of the work and the different artistic techniques employed, ending the section with a comprehensive list of signatories, where Jagodzinski concludes that the album was ordered not chronologically, but in accord with the social position of the signatory (ranging from the Archbishop and Elector of Mainz, Johann Schweikhardt of Kronberg, to the imperial doctor, Fernando Mattioli).

In an introductory note to the volume, Markus Hilgert (Secretary General of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States) expresses the aim of communicating the album’s artistic and cultural significance as well as its regional and national value [p.9]. The discussion of the various artistic techniques employed certainly achieves this goal: from technical descriptions of the commonly employed gouache miniatures (91 entries) to pen drawings (8) and a copperplate engraving [p.26]. In particular, Jagodzinski explores the implications of the one extant piece of silk embroidery, accompanying the signature of Count Palatine August of Palatinate-Sulzbach, who features in many of Hainhofer’s travel reports, and who in 1616 was one of three godparents for Hainhofer’s daughter, Augusta. Discussing the glaze embroidery technique, whereby golden threads, laid out individually or in pairs, were fixed with overlay stitches of colored silk threads, Jagodzinski lays out the tension between the popularity of the technique and its implication of exclusivity. Above all, the inclusion of this item (and likely others, lost) of silk embroidery pieces in the Große Stammbuch, speaks to the elements of “surprise and aesthetic pleasure, both visually and haptically,” that would engage and enthral readers [p.27]. Jagodzinski demonstrates how artistic and artisanal techniques, plus Hainhofer’s ability to engage a wide range of eminent Augsburg and Italian artisans in his Stammbuch projects, reinforced his cultural and political agenda. Through collecting signatures of eminent princes, potentates, and courtiers, Hainhofer sought to elevate his own position. The Große Stammbuch evinces his close connection to important political players in seventeenth-century Europe, spanning confessions, from the staunch Lutheran – and namesake of the library where the album is now housed, Duke August the Younger of Braunschweig-Lüneburg – to the Augsburg Catholic Markus Fugger. The great artistry and eminent names collected in his album appealed to potential patrons, who themselves could later become signatories. Hainhofer hoped that by collecting illustrious signatures, orders for art objects and diplomatic commissions would follow.

Another entry highlighted by Jagodzinski is the micrograph portrait of Duke Philip II of Pomerania-Stettin, by the Augsburg doctor, Simon Toelmann. Introduced in 1610, Duke Philip soon became Hainhofer’s first, and one of his most dedicated, princely patrons, and the pair spent several years in close correspondence, as Hainhofer worked on compiling the most significant artistic commission of Duke Philip’s reign, the Pomeranian Art Cabinet (1610-1617). The micrography genre, which flourished in the seventeenth century, again emphasized the ingenuity involved in the production of Hainhofer’s volume. The portrait, befitting of one of Hainhofer’s most valued clients, would surprise and engage viewers. Detailed examination of the portrait “meant immersing oneself in the work,” contemplating the relationship between, in this case, the Lutheran Duke Philip and the religious text from which his likeness was composed [p.27]. One of the great successes of Jagodzinski’s work are the high-quality color images, filling forty-two pages of the volume, which closely correspond to the preceding or following text. For Duke Philip’s micrograph portrait, the quality of image is particularly revealing for the reader, showing in close detail Toelmann’s minuscule script and shell-gold embellishment [p.31].

In the latter half of the book, a more thematic approach is adopted by Jagodzinski in order to “shed light on the characteristic aspects of the book,” that of female subscribers, female iconography, and female-oriented artisanal techniques [p.38]. Jagodzinski uses her analysis of female subscribers to explore the position of women at early modern German courts as important intermediaries for merchants and art agents such as Hainhofer. Often deeply involved in “art and culture,” elite women served as “important referees for the quality and exclusivity of [Hainhofer’s] wares.” [p.48] Close analysis conducted on the Große Stammbuch at the Herzog August Bibliothek has revealed that many of its original pages have been removed for the volume, thereby making it impossible to obtain a truly comprehensive understanding of whose signatures filled the volume at the time of Hainhofer’s death. However, Jagodzinski skilfully navigates the potential problems that this incompleteness may pose, by selecting to compare the volume to other Stammbücher produced by Hainhofer, particularly his Augsburg and Kleines Wolfenbüttel volumes. In doing so, Jagodzinski reinforces her more general points: whereas Hainhofer’s smaller album contained the signatures of only two women out of a total sixty-one entries, Sabine Rem and Barbara Barnet, both Hainhofer relatives, his Große Stammbuch contained the signatures of fifteen women [p.39].

The discussion then turns to female iconography, as Jagodzinski continues her quantitative analysis to comment that, on the pages with depictions of females, fifteen of those figures are from ancient mythology, eleven are personifications of the virtues, and ten result from biblical and saintly histories. [p.66] After this a brief note on the costume images included in Hainhofer’s Stammbücher includes the playful depiction of a lady whose dress lifts up to reveal a child on stilts in Hainhofer’s “little” album. Though speaking to notions of ingenuity, wit, and haptic engagement with the albums, as with the embroidery and the micrograph portrait, here the reference to costume books is comparatively underdeveloped, perhaps due to the extensive literature on costume books already available (though not referenced). Finally, Jagodzinski turns to her most speculative area of enquiry: female artisans and “feminine techniques.” [p.77] While Jagodzinski refrains from making larger claims of female dominance in the field of textile production, her exploration of references to female artisans in Hainhofer’s albums and correspondence is one of the several rich avenues for further research indicated in this accessible and explorative work.

Das Grosses Stammbuch Philipp Hainhofers is not only an essential read for scholars working on the wealth of sources relating to Philipp Hainhofer, but also for historians and art historians interested in statecraft, mercantilism, artisanal production, and cultural exchange in the early modern German lands.

Amelia Hutchinson
Wadhurst, Sussex