The First Edition of the Theuerdank on Vellum in a Dated Binding of 1718
[Pfinzing, Melchior, and Maximilian I.] Die geuerlicheiten und einsteils der geschichten des loblichen streytparen und hochberümbten helds und Ritters herr Tewrdannckhs. Nuremberg, Johann Schönsperger, 1517.
One of the great monuments of Renaissance self-fashioning and among the most celebrated illustrated books of the German Renaissance: the first edition of Emperor Maximilian I’s Theuerdank, printed in 1517 in the rare deluxe issue on vellum with 118 monumental woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair, Hans Schäufelein, Leonhard Beck, and others.
Often described as the first truly bibliophile masterpiece in German book history, the Theuerdank was conceived not merely as a book, but as an instrument of imperial memory. This extraordinary copy preserves that function across the centuries in especially revealing form through its magnificent dated binding of 1718, created exactly two hundred years after publication and shortly before the bicentenary of Maximilian’s death.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
Printed on vellum in royal folio format (approximately 340 × 222 mm), illustrated with 118 large woodcuts by Leonhard Beck, Hans Burgkmair, Hans Schäufelein, and other artists associated with Maximilian’s imperial projects.
Early eighteenth-century calf binding over boards with elaborate blind tooling and a large gilt supralibros of Joseph Anton Eusebius von der Halden dated 1718. Preserved in a modern red morocco case.
The title leaf, already missing by the nineteenth century, was replaced with an accomplished calligraphic facsimile on vellum imitating the orthography of the second edition of 1519. The blank leaf P5 at the conclusion of chapter 117 was removed, as often encountered in surviving copies.
Maximilian I and the Invention of Imperial Memory
The Theuerdank occupies a singular position within the cultural history of Renaissance Europe.
Commissioned directly by Emperor Maximilian I, the work transforms the emperor’s own life into an allegorical chivalric narrative in which the hero “Theuerdank” undergoes trials, adventures, and moral tests on his journey toward marriage and imperial destiny. The book formed part of Maximilian’s immense program of dynastic self-mythologizing that also produced projects such as the Triumphal Arch and the Weißkunig.
Everything about the production was conceived as imperial spectacle.
The specially designed Theuerdank typeface, the monumental cycle of woodcuts, and the luxurious vellum copies elevated the work beyond ordinary printing into a new form of bibliophilic statecraft. The imagery remains among the supreme achievements of German Renaissance illustration.
The Vellum Deluxe Issue
This copy belongs to the small group of luxury vellum copies produced for elite circulation.
Approximately forty such copies are thought to have existed originally. Like most surviving examples, this one preserves several pasted correction slips inserted during production, revealing the unusually complex editorial process behind the edition.
Unlike later coloured examples, the woodcuts here remain uncoloured, allowing the extraordinary graphic power of the designs themselves to dominate the page. Burgkmair, Schäufelein, and Beck each contribute to the visual language of imperial heroism, combining theatrical movement, military detail, landscape invention, and courtly symbolism.
A Binding Made Two Hundred Years Later
What makes the present copy especially fascinating is not only the book itself, but the historical afterlife embodied in its binding.
In 1718, exactly two centuries after the appearance of the first edition and just before the bicentenary of Maximilian’s death in 1719, Joseph Anton Eusebius von der Halden, Baron of Autenried, acquired the volume and commissioned its imposing new binding.
Von der Halden had risen from relatively modest Vorarlberg nobility into the service of major ecclesiastical and Habsburg authorities, eventually becoming diplomat, privy councillor, and Reichstag envoy. Through the acquisition of the Theuerdank in its rare vellum form, he symbolically attached himself to Maximilian’s imperial legacy and to Habsburg memoria itself.
The binding therefore represents far more than ownership.
It is a conscious act of historical identification.
The gilt supralibros surrounded by the owner’s extensive initials and titles mirrors Maximilian’s own theatrical language of dynastic prestige. The book effectively became a baroque continuation of the emperor’s original project of self-fashioning.
The Survival of the Maximilian Myth
The timing of the rebinding is especially revealing.
By the late seventeenth century the Theuerdank was no longer widely available in worthy editions. Inferior later printings had appeared in Ulm in 1679 and 1693, but the grandeur of the original had largely disappeared from circulation. Von der Halden’s decision not merely to acquire a copy, but specifically to obtain the rare vellum first edition, demonstrates how powerfully Maximilian’s image as the “last knight” still resonated two hundred years later.
The book thus preserves two historical moments simultaneously:
the original imperial propaganda project of 1517 and its remarkable revival within eighteenth-century aristocratic Habsburg culture.
Provenance
Joseph Anton Eusebius von der Halden, Baron of Autenried, binding dated 1718. Later George John Warren Venables-Vernon, 5th Baron Vernon (1803–1866). Per Hierta (1864–1924), inscribed “1918,” exactly two hundred years after von der Halden’s binding. Bernard Quaritch. Cornelius J. Hauck, sold 2006. Later a distinguished German private collection.
Literature
Adams P 962; BM STC German 690; Brunet V, 767; Cicognara 1116; Dodgson; Graesse VI/1, 106f.; Hollstein; Laschitzer; Panzer; Proctor 11180; VD16 M 1649; Van Praet IV–V; Weale/Bohatta.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 21:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I
