The First German Book Edition of the Great Strasbourg Preacher, in Its Original Binding
Geiler von Kaysersberg, Johann. Predigen Teütsch: und uil gütter leeren. Augsburg, Johann Otmar, 1508.
The first German book edition of the sermons of Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg, the most celebrated German preacher of the late Middle Ages, printed in Augsburg in 1508 without the author’s knowledge and illustrated with three large woodcuts by the young Hans Burgkmair.
The present copy is especially remarkable for preserving the woodcuts in contemporary hand-colouring and surviving in its original blind-stamped binding over wooden boards. Formerly in the celebrated Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica of Joost Ritman, it remains one of the most attractive surviving examples of early German vernacular printing on the eve of the Reformation.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
Folio (approximately 281 × 196 mm), printed in double columns with paragraph marks and passages in red.
Illustrated with four Evangelist medallions on the title page and three full-page woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair, all contemporary coloured by hand. The volume further contains four large woodcut initials, numerous Lombard initials supplied in red, and rubrication throughout.
Contemporary blind-stamped half pigskin over wooden boards on three broad raised bands with intact brass clasps. The binding preserves its original sixteenth-century structure and decoration and remains unusually well preserved despite old repairs to the boards.
The “Trumpet of Strasbourg”
Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg (1445–1510) was the most influential German preacher of the late medieval period.
Contemporaries called him the “helltönende Posaune von Straßburg” — the “resounding trumpet of Strasbourg.” From his specially created position as cathedral preacher in Strasbourg, Geiler became famous for sermons that combined theological learning with vivid popular language, satire, allegory, proverbs, humour, and direct moral criticism aimed not only at ordinary believers but also at political and ecclesiastical authorities.
Unlike Luther a generation later, Geiler published almost nothing himself. His sermons circulated primarily through listeners’ notes and manuscript transmission. The present volume contains sermons delivered partly in Augsburg and partly among the Penitents in Strasbourg, recorded by pious listeners and finally printed in Augsburg in 1508 “without his knowledge or participation,” as the colophon itself explicitly states.
The anonymous sponsors of the publication even refused to have their names printed, declaring that worldly fame should be avoided so that all praise might belong to Geiler himself.
Hans Burgkmair’s Early Woodcuts
The three large woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair belong to the artist’s earliest independent book illustrations.
Executed shortly before Burgkmair’s mature Renaissance style fully emerged, the cuts still preserve something of the directness and clarity of late medieval devotional imagery. Their simplicity is in many ways perfectly suited to Geiler’s vernacular preaching style.
The title verso presents the “Mountain of the Contemplative Life,” a great allegorical ascent toward salvation. Pilgrims climb upward toward the church at the summit beneath the words Sursum corda — “Lift up your hearts.” The image visualizes Geiler’s central moral theology: salvation requires active spiritual striving rather than passive belief alone.
A second woodcut introduces the Christian pilgrim through scenes of travel, devotion, and moral instruction. Burgkmair signed the block prominently beside a roadside cross. The third major illustration depicts the tax collector Zacchaeus climbing the tree to glimpse Christ, transformed into an elaborate allegory of spiritual ascent in which the trunk itself represents hope and the branches become virtues leading upward toward divine love.
The contemporary colouring remains especially attractive. Earth appears in brown and yellow tones, vegetation in green, and clothing predominantly in red. The palette is restrained but carefully handled throughout, extending also to the large initials.
Geiler and the Eve of the Reformation
The volume occupies a fascinating position immediately before the Reformation.
Like Luther after him, Geiler emphasized justification and the transformative power of Christian life. Yet unlike Luther, Geiler remained fully within the late medieval sacramental framework of the Church. Grace, he argued, could not simply be accepted passively; believers were expected actively to pursue moral improvement through prayer, devotion, confession, sacraments, and disciplined spiritual effort.
The result is a work that simultaneously belongs to the world of late medieval Catholic devotion and anticipates many of the spiritual anxieties that would soon erupt into the Reformation itself.
Provenance
With the bookplate of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica of Joost Ritman, Amsterdam. Sotheby’s London, 6 December 2000, number 55. Contemporary scholarly marginal annotations in Latin throughout.
Literature
BM STC German 336; Dodgson II; Ebert 8246; Geisberg 827–829; Goedeke I, 399; Graesse III, 41; Panzer I, 287f.; Proctor 10671; VD16 G 790; Wetzer/Welte V, 194; Zapf II, 32ff.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 35:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I
