Blog

Claire Bolton, with a History of the Library by Christoph Engelhard
The Antonierhaus, Memmingen
16 May 2023 at 18.30

A new Catalogue of the 603 incunabula held in the Memmingen Stadtarchiv has been a long time coming, partly due to my not living nearby (but in the UK and Australia) and partly due to Covid travel restrictions. However the work is now finished and will be published in May this year, along with the opening of a small accompanying exhibition showing some of the incunables, at the Antonierhaus in Memmingen.

The town, in southern Germany, was an important Reichstadt in the fifteenth century. It was close to Augsburg and Ulm and on busy trade routes. Apart from trade, Memmingen also housed a scholarly network which might explain many of the early printed books in the collection.

Provenance inscriptions are rare, but despite this, almost 60 of the 603 editions belonged to one person, bibliophile Petrus Mitte de Caprariis (1416 – 1479), the Praeceptor, and builder of the Memmingen Antonierhaus.

He included a library with a row of windows over the gateway, to house his collection of books. Other owners include priests from various religious orders in the town, the town doctor Ulrich Ellenbogen, theologian Jacob Wimfeling, and Protestant reformer Christoph Schappeller from the early 16th century.

It has been an interesting journey, finding and identifying the different editions. They vary from multi-volume editions to multi-edition volumes, to single editions, to broadsides, and to fragments. As might be expected the majority of the editions are on religious and legal subjects. There are also some highlights and unique editions. A surprise was some of the editions being rubricated by the Swiss itinerant artist Konrad Blochinger

It has been possible to identify the bindings of almost half the volumes, and of those identified, almost half (166) were bound in Memmingen by one of the six binding workshops – 65 each from two of the workshops and 31 from a third, plus a few others. This number of local bindings suggests owners who purchased books and had them bound in their home town.

The number of bindings, all from the same local workshops, has led me to further extend my researches, by studying these bindings in much closer detail to see what similarities and differences, of both the forwarding and finishing, can be found. Watch this space.

For more information about the collection do come and view the exhibition and perhaps buy a copy of the Catalogue?  The exhibition runs at the Antonierhaus from 16 May until 18 June, from Tuesday to Sunday, from 11.00 to 1700.

Claire Bolton