0613 Eblj Article 2 2005

A Collection of German Occasional Verse, 1701-1743, Mostly from East Frisia Susan Reed In early 2003 the British Library was able to purchase a fine collection of 421 pieces of German occasional writing, overwhelmingly verse but with a handful of prose pieces, printed between 1701 and 1743 and bound into a single large volume (shelfmark RB.23.c.522). Most are from East Frisia or relate to individuals from the region, then an independent principality;1 many have not previously been recorded. An eighteenth-century manuscript index at the front of the volume lists the poems in the thematic order in which they are bound, while at the end is a manuscript author index. (One of the poems in the collection (no. 386) is also in manuscript; all the others are printed.) The collection forms a fascinating resource for the study of occasional verse and its writers, as well as for the history and genealogy of East Frisia, and the history of printing in Northern Germany. The following description is intended as an introduction to the collection and to some of its particular points of interest, based on preliminary examination.2 The work of some forty-four different printers in fifteen different towns can be identified in the collection. Items printed in Aurich, then the capital of East Frisia, predominate, the majority being the work of the court printers Samuel Böttger and Hermann Tapper, but there are also two items (numbers 132, 133) printed in 1701 by another Aurich printer, Matthias Huber, who is not listed in either Josef Benzing’s or David Paisey’s directories of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German printers.3 Other items in the collection which add to or amend Paisey’s list are a work printed by the Institutum Judaicum in Halle in 1737 (no. 389), some ten years before the date given by Paisey, and one printed in 1722 by a Gottfried Winter in Ronneburg (no. 308), where no press had been recorded, although a printer of the same name was active in nearby Gera from 1724 to 1726. The manuscript index is of considerable interest in itself. It appears to date from the time when the collection was put together in this form since it is bound into the same contemporary binding, its thematic arrangement matches the order of the poems as they appear in the volume, and it is apparently written in the same hand that numbered the individual items. German poems (nos. 1-353) are listed first, divided into seven categories reflecting different types of event: Verlobniss-Gedichte (betrothals), Vermählungs-Gedichte (weddings), Geburths-Carmina (births), Auf dem 1 Since East Frisia was annexed by Prussia in 1744 the collection covers the last decades of this independence. 2 The full and well-researched details of the collection originally provided by the bookseller, Armin Jedlitschka of Eichstätt, identify several such points of interest and have been of indispensable help in writing this piece. I am particularly indebted to Herr Jedlitschka’s information in the following paragraph on printers. 3 David Paisey, Deutsche Buchdrucker, Buchhändler und Verleger 1701-1750, Beiträge zur Buch- und Bibliothekswesen, xxvi (Wiesbaden, 1988); Josef Benzing, Die Buchdrucker des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts im deutschen Sprachraum, Beiträge zur Buch- und Bibliothekswesen, xii (Wiesbaden, 1963). 1 eBLJ 2005, Article 2 A Collection of German Occasional Verse, 1701-1743, Mostly from East Frisia Kirch-Gang (churching, i.e. a mother’s first church attendance after a successful childbirth), Gratulations-Carmina auf Geburths-Tage (birthdays), Leichen-Carmina (deaths) and Miscellanea. Numbers 354-400 are Latin poems, similarly divided into: Hochzeit Gedichte (weddings), Auf die Geburth (births), Auf die Geburths-Tage (birthdays), Leichen-Gedichte (deaths) and Miscellanea (fig. 1).4 It is interesting to note that this arrangement takes betrothal and marriage rather then birth as a starting point, suggesting a concern with the social concept of family life rather than with the whole biological human lifespan. Six French pieces (‘Carmina Gallica’) and one Italian work complete the collection;5 these also come from German printers, the French items from Aurich and Emden, the Italian one from Hamburg. Most categories are sub-divided into pieces addressed to members of royal or noble houses Fig. 1. First page of contents list. BL, RB.23.a.522. 4 These linguistic divisions are not watertight since some items contain both German and Latin verses, and there are some items wholly in Latin within the German sequence. There is also one item in Dutch among the German poems (no. 91); this was reprinted in: H. Deiter (ed.), Niederdeutsche Gelegenheitsgedichte auf die ostfriesische Fürstenfamilie aus dem 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, Beilage zum Jahrbuch des Königlichen Gymnasiums Aurich, Ostern 1899 (Aurich, 1899), pp. 47-8. On the language of this poem see Joachim Böger, Die niederdeutsche Literatur in Ostfriesland von 1600 bis 1870 (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), p. 93. 5 Although the numbers given in the index do not add up to the total of 421 items cited above, several numbers are in fact repeated, with letters added to distinguish between the different items. 2 eBLJ 2005, Article 2 A Collection of German Occasional Verse, 1701-1743, Mostly from East Frisia and those commemorating private individuals. Within these sub-categories the works are grouped under the names of the dedicatees. There seems to have been some attempt at setting works in a chronological order of the events commemorated, but this is not always consistent. For example, the first four deaths remembered in the ‘Leichen-Gedichte’ for private individuals were in 1728, 1739, 1743 and 1724 respectively. Several items in the collection are of particular interest in terms of their typographical presentation. Most striking are two pattern poems (nos 14, 15), where the text itself forms a picture.6 Both commemorate the marriage of Prince Georg Albrecht of East Frisia and Princess Christiane Luise of Nassau in 1709,7 and were printed by Samuel Böttger and written by Johann Samuel Böttger, presumably either a relative of the printer or the same man. The more typographically adventurous of the two pieces is number 14, Der Seegens volle Rauten-Krantz (fig. 2). In a double-page spread, the words of a celebratory verse are formed into the figures of two winged beings, male and female, holding a wreath between them. Further verses are conventionally laid out below and on the verso of the second page. In number 15, Pflicht-schuldigste Ehren-Pforte the text is again spread across two pages, but is in the less complicated (but easier to follow) pattern of a triumphal arch, a Fig. 2. Item 14 6 On pattern poetry see Jeremy Adler and Ulrich Ernst, Text als Figur: visuelle Poesie von der Antike bis zur Moderne, Ausstellungskataloge der Herzog August Bibliothek, lvi (Weinheim, 1987); Dick Higgins, Pattern Poetry: Guide to an Unknown Literature (Albany, N.Y., 1987), especially pp. 71- 88; Piotr Rypson, ‘Seventeenth-century Visual Poetry from Danzig’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, lxvi (1991), pp. 269-304. 7 Christiane Luise died in April 1723, an event commemorated by ‘Leichen-Carmina’ nos 144-56. Despite these elaborate rhetorical descriptions of princely grief, the next five works in the ‘Vermählungs-Gedichte’ section are verses celebrating Georg Albrecht’s re-marriage in December of the same year. 3 eBLJ 2005, Article 2 A Collection of German Occasional Verse, 1701-1743, Mostly from East Frisia common design for works of this kind (fig. 3). Again there is conventionally laid-out text on the verso of the second page. Clearly Böttger the printer did not believe in wasting an inch of space, even when aiming primarily at a dramatic visual effect. A less decorative typographical game, but one just as typical of the period, is the chronogram, where letters with Roman numerical values (M, D, C, L, X, V, I) are highlighted in a line or lines of text, often in verses. When added together, the Fig. 3. Item 15 4 eBLJ 2005, Article 2 A Collection of German Occasional Verse, 1701-1743, Mostly from East Frisia numbers give the date of a work or of the event it commemorates.8 This device naturally lends itself well to anniversary poems, and chronograms feature in several of these. Although there are some examples of chronograms in German verses (e.g. no. 368; fig. 4), they are more commonly found in the Latin and French pieces or as Latin appendices to German poems, probably because they were easier to create in those languages. Number 385b, Chronosticha Consolatoria, contains five Latin epigrams on the death of Prince Georg Albrecht in 1734, all of them chronograms. Three of the six French-language pieces contain chronograms; one of them, a birthday ode for Prince Carl Edzard, Georg Albrecht’s successor and the last of the ruling line, also includes an acrostic on the Prince’s name, although the initial letters CHARLES EDZARD are rather curiously followed in the next four lines by the initial letters P D O F, presumably a somewhat strained bilingual attempt at the title, Fig. 4. Item 368 8 For discussion and examples of chronograms in occasional literature see Veronika Marschall, Das Chronogramm: eine Studie zu Formen und Funktion einer literarischen Kunstform, dargestellt am Beispiel von Gelegenheitsgedichten des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts aus den Beständen der Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Helicon: Beiträge zur deutschen Literatur, xxii (Frankfurt am Main, 1997). 5 eBLJ 2005, Article 2 A Collection of German Occasional Verse, 1701-1743, Mostly from East Frisia ‘Prince D’Ost Friesland’ (no. 403; fig. 5). A more accomplished example of the acrostic is a Latin ode to Prince Georg Albrecht, the initial letters of which spell out: GEORGIUS ALBRECHT DEI GRATIA PRINCEPS FRISIÆ ORIENTALIS.9 Another minor typographical curiosity worth noting is number 123, a birthday ode for Carl Edzard’s wife Sophia Wilhelmina from 1736.10 The piece is printed entirely in green, although there is nothing in the verses to suggest why this might have been considered particularly appropriate, such as the anniversary falling in spring, a fact which is emphasized in some other pieces.

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