German Popular Literature As Seen in Some Recent Antiquarian Acquisitions
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Edward, Author of'The London Spy\] Ward's writings in Ned Ward of Grubstreet Apollo's maggot in his cups: or, The whim- (1946). The title-page with the imprint as sical creation ofa little satyrical poet. A lyrick given above was probably intended for cancella- ode, etc. London: printed and sold by the book- tion; another issue is recorded which is identical sellers of London and Westminster, 1729. 8°: except that the title-page has T. Warner's name A-G* H*. included in the imprint. The copy listed here includes this second title-page bound at the An attack on Pope's Dunciad. Ward's author- ^"*^ ^"'^ apparently conjugate with H4. ship is revealed in the postscript, and H. W. Foxon W 47, 48. Cup.403.bb. 12. Troyer includes the title in his bibliography of Guerinot, pp. 177-9. Department of Printed Books German popular literature as seen in some recent antiquarian acquisitions By D. L. Paisey Systematic acquisition of foreign literature for the British Museum library began in 1834 with regular Government funding, and, particularly under Panizzi, the attention paid to current material was extended also to supplementing the existing holdings of older books on as wide a scale as possible. His declared aim to make this the best library for foreign literature outside the countries concerned was to an extent achieved as an intel- lectual manifestation of British imperial dominance at its Victorian zenith. Under his direction, antiquarian purchasing, limited only by what came on to the market, was vigorously pursued, and so-called 'popular' literature was acquired as readily as the products of high culture, a necessary development in view of the fact that the foundation collections had represented overwhelmingly establishment interests. For literature, though mostly only for the literate, has from the beginnings of printing catered for various audiences, not merely for the ruling class and its clerical and scholarly servants. The other classes, as they joined and scaled the ladder of literacy, have had books directed at them, in accordance with what society at any time has seen as their needs, more par- ticularly when they became a substantial market, and they also produced their own authors. Thanks largely to Panizzi, therefore, the earlier foreign collections in the British Library have an extraordinary depth. Generations of scholars have had reason to be grate- ful to him, and his modern successors recall that the quality of the historical scholarship in all disciplines which can be carried on here is conditioned to an important degree by the range and representative nature of the collections. 91 We are still able to make important additions to our holdings, though modern market conditions and the richness of what we already have combine to reduce the scale of the operation. In recent years we have acquired early editions of works by some of the 'big names' of the German-speaking world (Luther, Melanchthon, Opitz, Zesen, Gessner, Schiller, Fichte, Kleist, and Keller, for example), but these represent only a small part of our range of accessions of German antiquarian material, as indeed they represented only a small corner of the written culture of their time. I choose instead to describe twelve items either directly from, or reflecting and influencing the opposite end of the social scale, listed chronologically to illustrate the proposition that literature should be seen, not in isolation, but as part of social dynamics. In so doing, I intend both to draw attention to the depth of our collections, which provide a rich context for all these works, and to pay a personal tribute to our greatest librarian in the year of his centenary. ALTHAMER, Andreas. Catechismus. Das ist Vnderricht zum Christlichen Glauben. Nurmberg: getruckt durch Kumgund Hergotin, 1530. 8^A-C8. This was the first German catechism to be so called, though there were earlier ones not called Catechismus, and earlier works with that name ©as lit \noerricbt (or Catechesis) which were not catechisms. In requiring individual reading of the Bible, the Reformation had a profound effect on popular education, and reading, writing, and the cate- chism were the staples of general schooling for Ounu centuries. The present text was composed as £t\ichc a result of an ecclesiastical inspection carried CoUccteit ot»«c gc out under Margrave Georg of Brandenburg- Ansbach, as an officially approved version intended for use by less learned pastors unable to write their own. Althamer (born c. 1500) was an active literary supporter of Luther, and at this time a preacher in Ansbach. His co- I inspector Hans Rurer collaborated with him on the text, and in their joint preface they enjoin, in the most lively language, that the first in the British Library's collection, children be educated, in the interests of seems to be otherwise unrecorded: it was religious and social conformity: 'He who learns unknown to Ferdinand Cohrs, who in Die nothing can do nothing; a goose swimming off evangelischen Katechismusversuche vor Luthers across the sea comes back a goose.' Enchiridion (Berlin, 1901, Bd. 3, pp. 12-13) The work was first printed in 1528 by lists five editions of 1528 and 1529, and one of Friedrich Peypus of Nuremberg, and all early 1543- editions are of the greatest rarity, because they The Hergot press in Nuremberg was an were presumably read to pieces. This edition. unusually striking witness to the dangers for 92 booksellers and printers of too close an identifi- cation with non- or anti-establishment ideas. Hans Hergot, Kunigunde's first husband, was a bookseller, who also printed from 1524 to 1527. He was a supporter of the Reformation (though Luther objected to Hergot's unauthor- ized reprints of some of his vernacular pamphlets, whose tone was, incidentally, deliberately cast in a popular mode for pro- paganda purposes), as well as of more radical developments of the time. His distribution of Von der newen wandlung eynes Chrtstlichen lebens, a Utopian communist pamphlet which he may or may not have had a hand in writing himself, dangerously soon after the conclusion of the Peasants' War, was considered so revo- lutionary an act that he was publicly executed in May 1527 in the Leipzig market-place. German printing history is not full of such severe penalties, particularly in peacetime, but it is full, for legal reasons, of printers' widows carrying on their dead husbands' businesses (early examples of female economic emancipa- and Low German elements in the language. tion), and often entering into dynastic re- There were a number of earlier printed versions marriages with other printers. Kunigunde (see Die Katharinen-Passie, ed. Hermann therefore carried on printing until 1538 (under Degering and Max Joseph Husung, Berlin, her own name, though she married the printer 1928, pp. 42 ff.), but the British Library had Georg Wachter soon after her first husband's hitherto only modern editions. death), also producing vernacular works of Margaret was the patron saint of women in Luther and many small popular items such as childbirth, and the text ends with two rhymed songs. Our new catechism, meant for the prayers to be addressed to her. The work is widest possible audience, fits logically into such thus aimed at a broad audience of Catholic a programme. women. The old-fashioned text is here matched by a strikingly old-fashioned woodcut, which is in fact a close, if coarsened, copy of blocks used by earlier Cologne printers, first the incunable MARGARET, Saint, Virgin and Martyr. Senct printer Johann Koelhoff the younger, passing Margrate Passie. [Cologne:'\ gedruckt durch to Ulrich Zell in 1503 (see Albert Schramm, Anthonium Keyser, [c. 1550?]. 4": A B+. Die Bilderschmuck der Friihdrucke, Leipzig, A popular version, in verse, of the legend of 1920, etc., Bd. 8, nos. 835 and 81) and then to St. Margaret. The poem probably dates back Heinrich von Neuss, who printed from 1505 at least to the early fourteenth century, to the to 1522. Tbe bottom right quarter of the block lower Rhine region (see Oskar Schade, Geist- was interchangeable to allow the representa- liche Gedichte des XIV. und XV. Jahrhunderts tion of different female saints by the substitu- vom Niderrhein, Hannover, 1854, pp. 71-99), tion of attributes (a wheel for St. Catherine, for and its origins are apparent in the archaisms example). 93 Anyone familiar with German books printed the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which for a popular audience cannot fail to have must have been sold in quantities at fairs and noticed an archaizing tendency in the pre- markets and by itinerant hawkers. The newness sentation of the whole genre, most obviously of the songs proclaimed in so many cases on the in the style of the woodcuts with which so title-pages cannot always be taken for granted, many popular works are illustrated. Whether but real or apparent novelty has always been a the conservatism of taste implied is a true spur to sales. A minority contain music (this reflection of class culture in its audience, or one does not), but most have small woodcuts how far it was imposed by the producers of this on the title-page, woodcut illustrations being literature, is a question which demands much cheaper than the engravings which in the investigation. seventeenth century were being increasingly C used to illustrate books for a higher-class market. Though the attractive and simple cuts here are probably new enough, the typography ZwEY sch6n newe Lieder . Das erste: O and layout are by this date more traditional than angst vnd not, o kummernuss gross . Das contemporary, and seem unchanged from ander: Schons Annelein, mein Annelein. printed songs of fifty years before.