The First Edition of the Great German Tournament Book with Hundreds of Woodcuts in a Contemporary Pigskin Binding

Rüxner, Georg. Anfang, ursprung, unnd herkommen des Thurnirs in Teutscher nation […]. Simmern, Hieronimus Rodler, 1530.

The great printed monument to the culture, mythology, and self-image of the German knightly nobility, issued in 1530 at the court of Duke Johann II of Palatinate-Simmern and illustrated with hundreds of woodcuts depicting tournaments, heraldry, dynastic ceremony, and aristocratic spectacle.

Printed in the monumental Neudörffer Dürer-Fraktur typeface associated with the artistic world of Emperor Maximilian I and the Theuerdank, Rüxner’s Turnierbuch attempted nothing less than a complete history of German tournaments from their legendary origins under Henry the Fowler to the final great tournament at Worms in 1487. The work became one of the foundational visual and genealogical books of the German aristocratic imagination.

Edition & Physical Description

Large folio (approximately 319 × 208 mm).

Illustrated with a large historiated title initial, full-page imperial arms, a double-page folding plate, 135 mostly half-page but occasionally two-thirds-page and full-page woodcuts, approximately 247 heraldic woodcuts, and the printer’s device, all executed in woodcut. Numerous large blank initial spaces remain unfilled, preserving the appearance of the original issue.

Contemporary sixteenth-century pigskin binding over wooden boards on six raised bands, richly blind-tooled with roll stamps and fillets, retaining engraved brass cornerpieces and clasps. The present copy survives in exceptionally fresh condition overall and remains one of the finest preserved examples of this notoriously rare first edition.

A Final Self-Portrait of Chivalric Germany

By the time Rüxner’s book appeared in 1530, the great age of medieval tournaments already belonged increasingly to memory.

The last documented tournament described in the volume had taken place at Worms more than forty years earlier, and the social foundations of the old tournament nobility were beginning to fracture under the pressures of territorial politics, urban expansion, bureaucratic government, and new forms of aristocratic legitimacy.

Rüxner’s response was to preserve the entire world ceremonially in print.

The book does not merely recount tournaments. It defines who belonged to the aristocratic order itself. Through genealogies, heraldic sequences, participant lists, coats of arms, and elaborate historical narratives, the Turnierbuch attempted to stabilize noble identity at the very moment when that identity was becoming historically unstable.

In this sense, the volume functions simultaneously as chronicle, heraldic archive, aristocratic theatre, and social manifesto.

Duke Johann II and the Court at Simmern

The project emerged directly from the artistic ambitions of Duke Johann II of Palatinate-Simmern, known as “Hans vom Hunsrück.”

Although ruler of only a relatively small territory, Johann II descended directly from King Rupert of the Palatinate and maintained close political and dynastic connections to the Habsburg world of Maximilian I. Like Maximilian, he cultivated literature, print culture, genealogy, and knightly representation as instruments of political prestige.

At Simmern he established a court printing press under the direction of his secretary Hieronymus Rodler. Between 1530 and 1535 the press produced several lavishly illustrated works devoted largely to aristocratic and chivalric subjects, of which the Turnierbuch was the first and most celebrated.

The typography itself consciously evokes Maximilian’s great propaganda books. The text is printed in Neudörffer’s Dürer-Fraktur, among the earliest major Fraktur types developed in the wake of the Theuerdank.

Georg Rüxner and the Invention of Tournament History

Rüxner introduces himself proudly as “Georg Rüxner genannt Hierusalem Eraldo und Khündiger der Wappen” — herald and knower of arms. He claimed to have translated and corrected earlier tournament traditions from older Low German sources allegedly supplied by Johann Kirchberger of Magdeburg.

Modern scholarship has shown that the earliest tournaments described in the book are largely fictional constructions. Yet from the fifteenth tournament onward the material becomes considerably more historically reliable. This mixture of invention and documentation was entirely characteristic of Renaissance aristocratic historiography, where genealogy, memory, prestige, and political legitimacy often mattered more than strict factual accuracy.

Rüxner’s larger purpose was clear: to demonstrate continuity between the medieval tournament nobility and the aristocratic order of the sixteenth century.

The Woodcuts

The extraordinary visual richness of the volume was central to its prestige.

The double-page folding plate presents the theatrical chaos of a tournament melee unfolding across a crowded city square, while the remaining woodcuts depict combats, feasts, processions, heraldic ceremonies, mounted encounters, and aristocratic festivities. The illustrations are generally attributed to Duke Johann II himself and remain of major importance for the study of Renaissance tournament culture, costume, armour, and ceremonial life.

Although many cuts are reused repeatedly throughout the book, this repetition itself mirrors the ritualized and codified nature of tournament culture. Heraldry becomes a visual language of aristocratic continuity.

The approximately 247 coats of arms further transform the volume into a printed heraldic theatre of the Holy Roman Empire.

Provenance

From the collection of Hans Dedi (1918–2016), chairman of the Quelle-Schickedanz group, acquired at the Tenner sale in Heidelberg, 6 May 1980, lot 829. The present binding appears originally to have belonged to a work by Melanchthon, traces of whose name remain partially legible on the spine.

Literature

BM STC German 760; Brunet IV, 1471; Ebert 19557; Fünf Jahrhunderte 79; Graesse VI/1, 188; Muther 1783; Neufforge 425; Rahir 625; VD16 R 3541; Vinet 2037.

For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 43:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I