The Evolution of the Frankfurt and Leipzig Book Fairs and Their Catalogues, 1564–1700

Chapter 1 The Evolution of the Frankfurt and Leipzig Book Fairs and Their Catalogues, 1564–1700

Those wishing to study analytically the catalogues of the twice-yearly Frank- furt book fair up to 1700 or wishing to chart their evolution (which cannot be understood outside the context of the closely related Leipzig Fair catalogues), have two principal aids at their disposal. The first of these are the surviving catalogues themselves, most of which have now been brought together in two places: the five-volume collection for the years 1564 to 1600 of privately produced catalogues entitled Die Messkataloge Georg Willers (Hildesheim: Ohms, 1972–2001), and www.olmsonline.de/en/kollektionen/messkataloge (for the years 1594–1860).1 The website includes only one catalogue for each half-year (there are gaps, conflations, and a small number of New Year catalogues2); to see all the available versions of any given half-yearly catalogue, one may con- sult the records of the Union Catalogues VD16 and VD17 which list all surviving

1 For a review of the Messkataloge, see Oliver Duntze, ‘Die Frankfurter und Leipziger Messkata- loge als buchgeschichtliche Quellen’, Buchhandelsgeschichte, (2002), Heft 1, B10–B18. On re- dacted versions of the fair catalogues, see below, pp. 29–31. The Fair also saw the production of newssheets or Messrelationen, on which see John L. Flood, ‘Omnium totius orbis empori- um compendium: the Frankfurt Fair in the early modern period’, in Robin Myers, Michael Harris and Giles Mandelbrote (eds.), Fairs, Markets and the Itinerant Book Trade (New Castle, Del.: The Oak Knoll Press, and London: The British Library, 2007), pp. 1–42 (20); This article provides a very useful general account of the Frankfurt Fair, especially its early years (pp. 11– 14). See also David Paisey, ‘German Book Fair Catalogues’, The Library, 4.4 (2003), pp. 417–27; Esther-Beate Körber, Messrelationen. Geschichte der deutsch- und lateinischsprachigen “messentlichen” Periodika von 1588 bis 1805 (Bremen: Edition Lumière, 2016); ead., Messrela- tionen. Biobibliographie der deutsch- und lateinischsprachigen “messentlichen” Periodika von 1588 bis 1805 (2 vols, Bremen: Edition Lumière, 2018). I am very grateful to Dr Mona Garloff for providing me with much bibliographical information, for her careful reading of this paper, and for sending me her article “Bücher für Leibniz – Wissenszirkulation, gelehrte Netzwerke und die Organisation des Buchmarktes im Alten Reich um 1700”, in Friedrich Beiderbeck and Markus Friedrich (eds.), “Wissen” in der Leibniz-Zeit. Konzepte -Formen-Funktionen-Kontexte (Stuttgart : Studia Leibnitiana, forthcoming). 2 Leipzig had also a New Year Fair, but in almost all cases, books were only exhibited at the spring and autumn fairs. Catalogues survive for the Neujahr 1703, 1705, 1706, 1708, and 1709.

The Evolution of the Frankfurt and Leipzig Book Fairs 7 copies known to reside in German libraries (there are, for example, three versions of the catalogues of spring and autumn 1600).3 The second source is Gustav Schwetschke’s Codex nundinarius Germaniae literatae bisecularis (Halle: Selbstverlag, 1850–77). This has a useful introduc- tion on the history of the catalogues of both Frankfurt and Leipzig4, followed by annual synoptic tables. Schwetschke added the declarations of the two sales catalogues of spring and autumn together (except in the rare cases where only one sales catalogue survives for a given year), and extracted quantified data from the contents in various ways. The first of these are subject areas – Protestant and Catholic theology, law, medicine, history and geography, phi- losophy, “poesie” and music – with totals for Latin and German declarations at the fairs. Declarations of “Libri peregrino idiomate scripti”, of which the largest component is in French, followed by Italian, are many fewer in number, and not subject to analysis by Schwetschke.5 Below this, there are two lists, one of

3 In the following notes, the spring catalogue will be marked by an S before the year, and the autumn catalogue by an A. 4 Schwetschke, Codex nundinarius, vii–xxxiv. He charts the complicated history of the privi- leges relating to both catalogues from the 1590s onwards. Between 1594 and 1598, the Leipzig catalogues were excerpted from the three or four non-official Frankfurt catalogues; thereaf- ter they rely on the official catalogue published by order of the Frankfurt City Council. All others were banned from being printed in the City, but the Council had no jurisdiction be- yond its walls, and there was an excerpted version, suitable for distribution in Catholic coun- tries, produced by the Willer bookshop of Augsburg until about 1627, as well as some English- produced catalogues in the 1610s. See below, pp. 29–31. On Schwetschke, see Monika Estermann, ‘Buchhandelsgeschichte in kulturhistorischer Absicht. Johann Goldfriedrich und Karl Lamprecht’, in Monika Estmann, Ernst Fischer and Ute Schneider (eds.), Buchkulturen. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Literaturvermittlung. Festschrift für Reinhard Wittmann (Wies- baden: Harrassowitz, 2005), pp. 1–36. 5 The latest and most comprehensive record of these is in Georg Draut’s Bibliotheca exotica, sive catalogus officinalis librorum peregrinis linguis usualibus scriptorum, videlicet Gallica, Italica Belgica, Anglica, Danica, Bohemica, Vngarica, etc omnium, quotquot in Officinis Bibli- opolarum indagari potuerunt, et in Nundinis Francofortensibus prostant, ac venales habentur. La Bibliotheque universail, contenant le catalogue de tous les livres qui ont estè imprimes ce siecle passè, aux langues Françoise, Italienne, Espagnole, et autres, qui sont auiourdhuy plus communes, despuis l’an 1500 iusques à l’an present m dc. xxiv. distribuée en certain ordre selon les matieres y contenues, et les surnoms des Autheurs (Frankfurt: par Balthasar Ostern, 1625). This was preceded by the 1611 edition by Nicolaus Hoffmann, which itself followed a number of other compendious bibliographies based on the data of the fair catalogues inter alia: Col- lectio In unum corpvs, Omnium librorum Hebraeorum, Graecorum, Latinorum Necnon Ger- manice, Italice, Gallicè, et Hispanicè scriptorum, qui in nundinis Francofurtensibus ab anno 1564 usque ad nundinas autumnales anni 1592 partim noui, partim noua forma, et diversis in locis editi, venales extiterunt: desumpta ex omnibus Catalogis Willerianis singularum nundi- narum, et in tres tomos distincta (Frankfurt: Nicolaus Bassaeus, 1592); Elenchus seu Index gen- eralis in quo continentur libri omnes, qui ultimo, seculi 1500, lustro, post annum 1593, vsque ad