In 2012, the city of Stralsund faced a storm of outrage after it came to light that the grammar school's collection of historical books, kept at the city archive and having suffered years of neglect, had been sold to a rare books dealer. The deal was swiftly reversed and most of the sold volumes were returned or bought back. The memory has not yet faded, however, and it is with a note of thanks to those who helped to rescue the collection that this book opens. Stralsunder Bücherschätze emphatically asserts that the city's historical collections of books and other documents are part of the rich historical and cultural fabric of this erstwhile member of the Hanseatic League that was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002.
After a short overview of the history of the city's collections and archives, the volume presents twenty-four objects: twelve manuscripts and twelve incunables illustrated with woodcuts, some selected for their lavishness, others for their original content or historic significance. Together, they represent the various collections that have been consolidated at the city archive: the city council's library (Ratsbibliothek), the libraries of the city's monastic institutions, and the bequests of wealthy individuals.
The objects are grouped together in four sections, each receiving a short general introduction. The first, “The Holy Scriptures,” assembles Bible manuscripts and rare incunables. The second section, “Liturgical Books,” presents a selection of local and regional books from several different institutions, handwritten and printed, that survived the Reformation. The somewhat anachronistically named third section on “Sciences and Humanities” (Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften) assembles a wide range of books for scholars, teachers, preachers, and educated lay readers, as well as chronicles and annals. Among these are some of the most precious items of the collections, including a twelfth-century manuscript of Priscian's Institutitiones grammaticae and Francesco de Mello's lavish presentation copy of his commentaries for King Manuel I of Portugal. The objects included in the final section, “Fragments,” offer an overview of the fates and afterlives of books that had fallen out of use or that had been damaged beyond repair, parts of which were recycled by bookbinders or mounted by collectors.
While the volume seeks to contextualize each object, its main focus is clearly on the aesthetic value of the objects, on the book as a work of art. Each book is introduced with a photograph of the opened object and half a page of introductory text underneath, followed by several pages of full-page or even double-page photographs. Beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated, this book is aimed at a wider interested public, who will find the accompanying texts helpful, clear, and informative. Volkmar Herre's photographs, which take center stage, revel in the aesthetic and material qualities of the objects, the surface texture of the parchment, the gleaming gold leaf, the minute details of drawings, woodcuts, and calligraphy. Yet some of these also offer tantalizing hints to codicologists and book historians: there is a plethora of historical bindings, and many of the book fragments presented in the last section of the volume have not been separated from the bindings in which they were reused, as has been the case in many other libraries.
While this sumptuous publication will not meet a manuscript researcher's needs, it does succeed in throwing a spotlight on a little-known historical collection and will hopefully stimulate more scholarly interest both in individual objects and in the as yet insufficiently studied late medieval and early modern book culture of the region.
