Three men in a car ...

View from my hotel room in Fuschl Don't you worry! There is much more to tell about the fate of the Emser, which will be done in several more blog posts. For the moment, however, I feel the urge to let you participate in a present predicament of mine, and this in real time at that. I am sitting in my hotel room just now, snowed in, with nothing else to do but writing this blog post. Yesterday, after four days of intensive explorations , I have been abandoned by my two brothers at Klagenfurt Airport. They hastened back home towards the East, whereas I took a more leisurely trip North, to the Salzkammergut, close to Salzburg on he border to Bavaria. Old friends have reserved a room for me at a nice hotel in Fuschl , alongside one of the lakes the region is full of. Last evening, they gave a great party in the countryside, at an old mill converted to restaurant and banquet hall. The König family (isn't it a fitting name, considering the topic of our trip?) had reason to ...

We are looking here at a delicate specimen for bibliophiles. None other than the title and frontispice of the first book ever printed in Vorarlberg and, indeed, in all of the Alpine Rhine region. It is commonly known under the name of “Emser Chronik” and was produced by Bartholome Schnell, the bookprinter who had been brought to Hohenems by Count Kaspar ( Der Landesherr ). This beauty of a book was the first oeuvre produced by Schnell, right after he had established his printshop in Hohenems in 1616. It can be safely presumed that the Count’s main goal with inviting the printer to Hohenems was to promulgate the noble stature of his House in a worthy publication.  In fact, Kaspar had initiated work on this book already before 1613, concurrent with his negotiations to acquire the domains of Vaduz and Schellenberg. He had engaged his scribe (secretary) Johann Georg Schleh with the task to put his thoughts on paper, including carrying out the necessary basic research with the help of ...

An Imperial Count with his spouse Excerpts from painting by unknown artist   Source : Palace of Hohenems The title of this post, Landesherr, can hardly be expressed in English. We come close by translating it as “sovereign of his territory”, but this does not convey its full meaning. In Kingdoms like England and France of the Baroque times, there was only one sovereign, that is, the King. Not so in the (then) only Empire in Christianity, Sacrum Imperium Romanum,  the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. This Empire was not a coherent state, like the above mentioned Kingdoms. Rather, it was a loose collegium of semi-independent territories, with an Emperor as figurehead, not unlike the European Union of present times, but more loosely knit together than even that modern conglomerate of semi-independent States.  A professor in jurisprudence,  Johann Jacob Moser,  put it succinctly, when he stated the following: “ Teutschland wird auf teutsch regiert, und zwa...

The Obrister      Artist: Erhard Schön     Inscription : Hans Sachs Source : Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig We are looking here at a Chief Commander of Landsknechte regiments (Oberster Feldthauptman, also called Obrister). He was the backbone of the mercenary war machine in Renaissance times. As prime mover and shaker, his role was to recruit Landsknechte, to organise them and to lead them to battle. But, why not let Hans Sachs , the “Meistersinger”, explain this to us in his own words (in rough translation): I am the Landsknechte Chief Commander. I recruit men free of bonds,  muster them and pay them gold. Then lead them, well equipped with armour, to war, to meet the enemy. Fierce attacks I plan for them, fire them on with words of God, to do their best on the field of war. To show my rank above them all,  my pay per month is a hundred doubloons!  It was during the Renaissance wars that Imperial mercenary infantry, the Landsknechte , ...