The First Illustrated Chronicle of Switzerland and the Earliest National Atlas of the Swiss Confederation
STUMPF, Johannes. Gemeiner Loblicher Eydgnoschafft Stetten/ Landen vnd Völckeren Chronic-wirdiger thaaten beschreybung […]. 2 volumes. Zurich, Christoph Froschauer, 1548.
One of the great monuments of sixteenth-century historiography and book illustration: the first comprehensive printed history of the Swiss Confederation, the first illustrated Swiss chronicle, and the earliest atlas devoted to a sovereign state, preserved here in magnificent contemporary Dresden bindings dated 1561 and executed by the important court binder Brosius Faust.
Johannes Stumpf’s monumental chronicle transformed the historical self-understanding of Switzerland. For centuries it remained the foundational printed history of the Confederation and played a decisive role in shaping a distinct Swiss national consciousness independent of both German and French identity. At the same time, its vast cycle of maps, city views, battle scenes, genealogies, coats of arms, and historical illustrations established one of the most ambitious illustrated books of the entire German Renaissance.
Edition & Physical Description
Large folio in two volumes (approximately 390 × 241 mm).
The work contains 23 maps, including eight full-page maps and five double-page maps mounted on guards, together with approximately 3,900 woodcut illustrations printed from around 2,500 blocks, among them more than 1,900 coats of arms. Numerous genealogical tables, chronological diagrams, and decorative initials further enrich the monumental visual programme. The title is printed in red and black.
The volumes are preserved in splendid blind-stamped calf bindings over bevelled wooden boards by the Dresden binder Brosius Faust. The covers display elaborate roll-tool decoration together with the initials “T V D” and the date 1561 stamped on the rear boards. The bindings retain the imposing visual authority characteristic of major German Renaissance workshop bindings associated with princely and courtly circles.
Although a few signs of use remain visible, including some finger-soiling to the opening books and scattered worming largely confined to the margins of the second volume, the set survives as an exceptionally handsome and historically important copy.
The First National Chronicle of Switzerland
Published in 1547–48, Stumpf’s chronicle was the first printed history to describe all regions of Switzerland systematically and with equal attention. Earlier chronicles had focused on individual cantons or local traditions, but Stumpf instead attempted nothing less than a total historical, geographical, political, and cultural portrait of the Confederation itself.
The result became what contemporaries and later historians alike regarded as a kind of “Swiss Bible.”
The thirteen regional maps issued with the chronicle were especially revolutionary. Together they formed the first atlas ever devoted to a single state and one of the earliest visual expressions of a sovereign Swiss political identity freed from imperial domination. The work therefore occupies a pivotal place not merely in Swiss historiography, but in the broader history of nationalism, cartography, and the printed image of the state.
Linguistically, the chronicle is equally significant. The text stands at the transitional moment between Alemannic dialect and emerging New High German literary language, making the work one of the major monuments of sixteenth-century Swiss prose.
Johannes Stumpf and the Invention of Swiss Identity
Johannes Stumpf (1500–1577/78) arrived in Zurich from Germany and became closely associated with the circle of Huldrych Zwingli during the Reformation. Originally intending to continue the chronicle work of his father-in-law Heinrich Brennwald and to defend Zwingli’s historical reputation after his death, Stumpf gradually expanded the project into a vast national history shaped by humanist historiography and Protestant civic identity.
The structure of the chronicle reflects this ambition. The opening books treat Europe, Germany, and France before turning toward Swiss history itself, beginning with Roman antiquity and continuing through the medieval Confederation into Stumpf’s own contemporary world. Unlike earlier annalistic chronicles, the work is built upon a consciously geographical and topographical foundation. In 1544 Stumpf personally travelled across Switzerland on foot, visiting monasteries, studying manuscripts, copying Roman inscriptions, and gathering oral traditions and historical evidence firsthand.
The chronicle therefore presents Switzerland not as a peripheral part of German history, but as an ancient, sovereign, and culturally distinct nation. The victories of the Swiss Confederates in the Burgundian and Swabian wars become foundational moments in the emergence of a specifically Swiss political identity. Yet Stumpf simultaneously advocates moderation in confessional conflict and repeatedly warns that internal religious division threatens the unity and strength that once defined the Confederation.
Christoph Froschauer and Zurich Printing
The project would have been impossible without the Zurich printer Christoph Froschauer.
Froschauer was one of the central printers of the Reformation and played a decisive role in establishing Zurich as a major centre of European printing, illustration, and publishing. After the political setbacks following the Battle of Kappel and Zwingli’s death in 1531, Froschauer increasingly shifted his press toward large scholarly and scientific publications. Stumpf’s chronicle became the culminating achievement of that transformation.
To execute the enormous illustrative programme, Froschauer established the first dedicated drawing and woodcut workshop in Zurich and recruited Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder in 1544.
Heinrich Vogtherr and the Illustrations
The artistic achievement of the chronicle is extraordinary.
Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder, trained in Augsburg under Hans Burgkmair, produced around 400 illustrations for the chronicle before leaving Zurich in 1546. His work includes the famous heart-shaped world map placed near the beginning of the volume as well as the thirteen major regional maps. Vogtherr’s illustrations combine Renaissance spatial organization with extraordinary narrative vitality, realism, and dramatic energy.
Particularly striking are the scenes of warfare, executions, public punishments, battles, and civic ceremonies, rendered with remarkable psychological and social immediacy. Paul Leemann-van Elck described Vogtherr as among the most gifted illustrators of the mid-sixteenth century, praising the dynamism, plasticity, and compositional intelligence of the images.
After Vogtherr’s departure, the Zurich painter Hans Asper assumed primary responsibility for the second half of the illustrations. Asper’s style differs noticeably from Vogtherr’s more dramatic approach. His images possess a more restrained, sober, and distinctly Zurich Protestant character, emphasizing clarity, order, and documentary precision over theatricality. Together the two artistic programmes create a fascinating visual dialogue within the chronicle itself.
The Dresden Bindings of Brosius Faust
The present bindings are themselves of major importance.
The dated calf bindings were executed in Dresden in 1561 by Brosius Faust, one of the most significant German binders of the period and a founder of the Dresden bookbinders’ guild. Roll-tool evidence permits precise attribution of the bindings to his workshop. Faust also worked for Elector Augustus of Saxony, strongly suggesting that the original owner of this chronicle belonged to courtly or administrative circles associated with the Saxon court.
The initials “T V D” stamped on the covers likely include an abbreviation for “Dresdensis,” further reinforcing the Dresden connection.
Particularly fascinating are the contemporary red underlinings appearing only within the sections devoted to Europe, Germany, and France. The annotations emphasize names and concepts such as “Francken,” “Tacitus,” “Attila,” nobility, and Charlemagne, revealing the interests of an educated German Protestant reader more concerned with broader European history than with the specifically Swiss cantonal sections.
One marginal note provides a charmingly revealing cultural misunderstanding. Reading Stumpf’s enthusiastic description of marmot meat consumed in Alpine regions, the Saxon owner reacted with visible horror, especially when misunderstanding the verb “schmöckt” (“smells”) as “tastes.” Beside the passage he added the dry comment: “Nec gustavi, nec gustabo” — “I have not tasted it, nor shall I.”
Provenance
The bindings bear the initials “T V D” and the date 1561.
By the seventeenth century the chronicle belonged to Johann Jakob Brottwolf, syndic of the imperial city of Weißenburg in Bavaria, who recorded ownership on the title page. Later owners included the Erlangen historian and university librarian Johann Paul Reinhard (1722–1779) and, probably in the nineteenth century, Dietrich Kleber, Hofmeister to the Counts of Schönborn at Wiesentheid.
More recently the set appeared at Christie’s London on 4 June 2008 before entering a European private collection.
Literature
Not in Adams; Barth 10216; BM STC German 839; Brunet V, 572; Ebert 21872; Feller/Bonjour 180ff.; Graesse VI/1, 516; Leemann-van Elck 1940, 106ff.; Lonchamp, Suisse 2819; Schottenloher, Bibliographie III, 33570b; VD16 S 9864; Vischer C 376; Weisz; Wyss 193ff. For the illustrations: Leemann-van Elck 1935; Shirley 86. For Brosius Faust: Haebler I, 110–113; Schunke 1943, 60ff.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 50a:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I
