Westphalian Peace Commemorative Album

[mouseover for date/caption and click to enlarge to full size]


'Sammlung aller Denkmale des Westphälischen Friedens' contains 140 engravings and was assembled between 1650 and 1789. The book is online at the University of Augsburg (click on 'anzeigen' for the complete thumbnails)

It was a very odd experience looking through this extraordinary album on the first occasion from a point of complete ignorance. I saw 'Westphalia' and 'pax' around so I guessed it had something to do with the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. I originally thought it was a kind of regional chronicle, but for every depiction of what I guessed was a local building or town meeting, there were these eccentric allegorical engravings, packed full of emblematic puzzles and otherworldly motifs.

The further you go further through the book the more the images become demonstrably biblical (probably not as well represented above), but even then, they're often associated or seem to be associated with regional Germany. That's not always true - there are a fair number of more naturalistic illustrations obviously set in the middle east but it was still quite weird; if I hadn't had some background christian religious knowledge I'd swear everything in the bible took place in the Westphalian region of Germany. {What is Jesus doing in a pharmacy?!}

And of course, now that I've recounted my own strange meeting with this work, you'll be able to go through and see how unfounded or foolish were my initial reactions. They have a lot to do with the way I stumble across oddities accidentally and the evolving response that follows before I start trying to search/translate my way out of a {happy} state of dazed curiosity.

Even now I'm only vaguely aware that some sort of young person's evangelical religious group commissioned or assembled or contributed to this century and a half of commemorative imagery and it's not altogether certain that each piece of work was completed in the stated year.

I'm hoping that a benevolent german speaking visitor to this site will be able to provide a bit more background via a comment or email. Title pages: I, II. Each of the images above is worth enlarging to see all the baroque accoutrements and complex allegorical tropes, with the occasional monster and star wars jet fighter thrown in to compound the intrigue. This is the bread and butter of a satisfying BibliOdyssey.