Artifact of the Moment: Reflections on Nativity Scenes in Two Eighteenth-Century German Bibles

I am more behind than usual in sending traditional paper/print holiday greetings. For a variety of reasons, I didn't manage to get out any Christmas cards, as such, in time for the holiday. But I did at least manage to reflect briefly on some of the iconography associated with the occasion.

Here is an image that I've customarily used on one of the greeting cards that I send. It comes from my research into German book history.

The Nativity: Vignette from the Gospel according to Saint Matthew

(enlarge)

The unsigned copper engraving (approximately 10 x 19.5 cm) is from my battered but treasured copy of: Biblia, Das ist: Die gantze Heilige Schrifft Alten und Neuen Testaments : nach der Übersetzung und mit den Vorreden und Randglossen D. Martin Luthers ... / ausgefertiget unter der Aufsicht und Direction Christoph Matthäi Pfaffen, der Heil. Schrifft Doctorn, Professorn, Cantzlern und Probsten zu Tübingen, auch Abbten des Closters Lorch. - Mit Censur des Hochfürstl. Würtemberg. Consistorii und Löbl. Theologischer Facultät zu Tübingen, auch Allergnädigsten Privilegiis (Tübingen: Verlegt und gedruckt von Johann Georg und Christian Gottfried Cotta. Im Jahr Christi 1729).

The massive folio volume, illustrated, and edited with commentary by Professor Christoph Matthäus Pfaff (1686-1760) of the University of Tübingen, was at once a bibliophile production, thus a representative declaration of Christian faith (simply owning such a large and expensive work was a statement of sorts), and a pragmatic attempt to bridge theological differences in an age in which Lutheran orthodoxy contended with pietist challenges in the Duchy of Württemberg, which remained a bastion of hard-core Evangelical Protestantism in the otherwise largely Catholic German south.

The iconic scene of the Holy Family in the stable stands at the beginning of the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, thus introducing the New Testament as a whole (the other Gospels are not similarly graced with vignettes).

The Gospel of Matthew, as such, of course, mentions none of this. Instead, after a long genealogy establishing Jesus' necessary descent from King David, and the story of the Annunciation, it leaps right to the birth of Jesus. But there is no mention of the details, or of a location more specific than the messianically mandated Bethlehem. Instead, we suddenly read of Herod's concern over the birth of the King of the Jews when the three Wise Men, having followed their star, arrive in Jerusalem. Only after Herod interrogates the "chief priests and scribes" do he and the Magi learn that the goal of the latter should be Bethlehem. And even then, the gospel refers only to "the house" in which they find "the young child with Mary his mother." That's all. They present their gifts. Then warned in dreams by God and an angel, respectively, the Wise Men and the Holy Family flee the wrath of Herod.

Our cozy and canonical image of the Nativity, as depicted in many a work of art, comes from the Gospel according to Saint Luke, (The Gospels of Mark and John do not even deal with the Nativity and instead leap right into the career of the mature Jesus.)

And even then, there are no details. Luke contains the familiar assertion that Mary "brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn" and that the shepherds, having heard the message of an angel and the heavenly host, "came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger." That's it. And a manger, contrary to popular opinion and my childhood impressions, is not a stable, and rather, as the etymology implies, something that one finds inside a stable: a trough or feeder for livestock, thus suitable to act as a sort of ersatz crib for the baby Jesus. (For that matter, the whole Nativity narrative is historically problematic; most recently, archaeologists have suggested that the actual birthplace was Bethlehem in Galilee rather than Judea.)

The rest, with its familiar regiment of barnyard fauna, is the accretion of tradition, though quite understandable as something that would appeal to the lifeworld and sensibilities of a largely agrarian Europe in the coming two millennia and to us now conveys a kind of nostalgic Gemütlichkeit.

The image in this Bible therefore embellishes the scene in that vein. Within the Baroque frame of sinuous and symmetrically curving curling acanthus leaves is a barn or stable, though a rather artificially neat and clean one. And, although there are hay racks for the livestock all around the perimeter of the structure, the little manger holding the baby Jesus stands at the center: unrealistic and out of place in a practical sense but theologically exactly where it needs to be. To the left are Mary and Joseph (the latter depicted, according  to tradition, as elderly—perhaps in order to downplay any suggestion of sexuality). To the right are the shepherds (identifiable by their staves) in their customary poses of obeisance, from kneeling to respectfully standing in contrapposto. In a sense, they pull our attention to the right, and in emphasizing the miracle and message that brought them hither, seem to violate the symmetry, but the presence of the larger livestock in the left foreground (those at the right are depicted as smaller and in the background) exercises a countervailing weigh so that visual balance seems to be maintained in the aggregate.

Embodying as it does the most popular conception of the Nativity, the scene from Luke thus serves as a visual introduction to the New Testament as a whole. Emphasizing this, the frame bears in its corners the traditional iconographic representations of each of the four Gospels, reflecting the chief attribute of each book: the bull (Luke), the lion (Mark), the angel (Matthew), and the eagle (John).

The sophistication of this image, from its complex composition to the refinement of the figures and the elegant cross-hatching, is all the more apparent when we compare it with a later and and more humble counterpart. The 1729 Cotta Bible, as noted, was a luxury work, for the theologian and scholar, or for the patrician elite. The ordinary folk purchased something a good deal simpler and cheaper.

Both the Cotta firm and its competitors also published budget Bibles in the more common octavo format. (Think of a book with covers whose dimensions are akin to those of a typical modern paperback, or somewhat smaller than those of a Kindle, but which in this case is, of course, a good deal thicker: some two to three inches/5 to 7.5 cm.) In 1793, the young Johann Friedrich Cotta (1764-1832), who would become the greatest scion of the family, earning it world renown as the publisher of the German Classicists and Europe's leading liberal newspaper, brought out out 5,000 copies of one such volume (by contrast, new titles in his catalogue at that time typically appeared in pressruns of only 500-1000 copies). It contained no illustrations, as such, only a few modest standard printers' ornaments or vignettes to mark the transitions between sections.

Meanwhile the Tübingen printer and notorious pirate publisher Wilhelm Heinrich Schramm (who also worked for Cotta on other projects ) had brought out a revised version of his own cheap edition of the Holy Scriptures:

BIBLIA, Das ist: Die ganze Heil. Schrift Alten und Neuen Testaments, nach der Teutschen Uebersetzung D. Martin Luthers ... (Tübingen, drukts und verlegts Wilhelm Heinrich Schramm, 1791

The common title page for both Testaments in my copy is dated 1791, but the separate title page for the New Testament bears the year 1794:

Das neue Testament unsers HErrn und Heylands JEsu Christi, verdeutschet durch D. Martin Luther... 

 (Tübingen, drukts und verlegts Wilhelm Heinrich Schramm, 1794)

The illustrations in this volume are fewer and simpler (and of course smaller) than in the Cotta folio Bible. To begin with, they are woodcuts rather than copper engravings, and thus allow for less detail. Even taking that into account, though, they are cruder in composition as well as line.

The elaborate Baroque frame of the engraving in the 1729 folio gave the scene an almost theatrical appearance, so that we had the sense of being privileged observers, looking in on a scene in which the holy actors go about their sacred business unaware of us.  (Not for nothing did nineteenth-century critics liken the proscenium stage, with its sharp separation of audience and players, to the Guckkasten—peep show, or peep box—of the village fair.) It was thus at once realistic and unrealistic.

Nativity Scene: c. 3.5 x 1.25 inches/ 9 x 3 cm

Here the frame has been reduced to a bare minimum, and the effect also differs in other ways from that of its more elegant counterpart. Indeed, the four Evangelists seem imprisoned rather than framed by the stark black border. (St. Matthew, at upper left, looks absolutely desperate to escape its confines, which in the meantime seem to be crushing poor St. Luke at lower right.) Within the frame, there is no attempt to produce a realistic perspectival architectural setting: instead, the background consists mainly of an undifferentiated series of vertical lines. There is a sort of flatness to the whole. The human forms are similarly simplified and flattened. It is tempting to call them cartoonish. Certainly, they are not particularly elegant or accomplished. From the standpoint of both composition and execution, then, the Schramm woodcut may seem clumsy. The frame is simple, the background is simple, the figures are crude.

That said, there is a kind of naive charm and rustic vitality to the whole.

Mary's devotion is apparent, even though the head of the baby Jesus looks like one of those schematic skulls on a Puritan gravestone. Although somewhat obscured by the forequarters of the horse or donkey in the background, the bull at left turns his head to the right, captivated by the array of figures paying homage to the infant. Further drawing our attention to the mother and child is the outstretched arm of Joseph (for we assume that the commanding gesture identifies him, even though the staff might otherwise suggest one of the shepherds) above, despite (or because of?) his lobster claw of a hand.

And even the compositional clumsiness may ironically work to the artist's and reader's advantage: although the figures awkwardly fill the space to the extent that we fear they will bump their heads on the solid black border, there is somehow a sense of immediacy lacking in the more polished engraving of the 1729 folio. As a result, we feel ourselves to be not voyeurs, but participant-observers in the miraculous scene.

Upon reflection, then, one might just conclude that this print brings us closer to that presumed stable and the lifeworld of Judean peasants some two thousand years ago than does its more elegant Baroque counterpart. In any case, it was by means of simple images such as these that the average Christian in Central Europe formed a picture of the Nativity some two centuries ago.

New Leaders at Hampshire College Library: Library Director Jennifer Gunter King and Archivist Jimi Jones

Good news really deserves full and proper coverage, but since I am (for a variety of reasons) unable to give it that at the moment, I'll take solace in the fact that it also speaks for itself:

In the interval since my first mention of our library search, Hampshire College has made not one, but two outstanding hires, the first for the position of Director of the Library, the second for College Archivist. I was a member of the search committee for the former and attended the candidate talks and offered feedback for the latter. As it happens, I was personally acquainted with the successful candidate in the former and was familiar with the work of the latter. I could not be happier.


Welcome, Jennifer Gunter King and Jimi Jones!

Our new Library Director is Jennifer Gunter King, whom I have known for five years, since we worked together on the "Bookmarks" events of Museums 10, the consortium of Pioneer Valley Museums. Arranging book-related exhibitions and programs engaging institutions from the Emily Dickinson Museum (obvious) and Five College art museums (logical enough) to the Amherst College geological museum (now, that was a tough one) was no mean trick, and it is no understatement to say that Jennifer's energy and creativity were a driving force behind the series, its intellectual conception, and its success. (program site here; I posted a few brief descriptive reports on the first half of the program here; Roger Mummert of the New York Times wrote about the exhibition and the general book culture of the area: "In the Valley of the Literate.")

Jennifer, until now head of Archives and Special Collections at Mount Holyoke College, has many talents. Trained to work in traditional rare print and manuscript sources, she is also passionately committed to doing the work of the present using the tools of the present, and geared to the distinctive needs of Hampshire College. For example, given that we do not have traditional "special collections" involving internationally famous rarities, and rather, documents mostly associated with the personae or general mission and values of the young college, she sees the need to highlight student and faculty work, to digitize and publicize our current cultural production.

I'll let her explain her approach herself in this profile, published at the time of her hiring in March. Among other things, it said, "At Hampshire, she believes it is essential to showcase the intellectual output of the Hampshire community past and present. Because of the preponderance of work done in new media, King wants to make sure that, from an archival and research perspective, work isn’t lost due to a lack of ability to preserve and showcase those materials."

This philosophy meshes perfectly with that of our new archivist, Jimi Jones. He comes to us fresh from a prestigious position at the Library of Congress, with equally impressive credentials and an equal commitment to both cutting-edge practices and the distinctive mission of the College. Although I had not met Jimi before his campus visit, I was familiar with his regular blog posts on "The Signal," the digital preservation blog of the Library of Congress. What impressed me was not just his expertise in these specialized (though today becoming the norm) areas, but also his historical perspective and breadth of vision. Like Jennifer, he understands the role of digital media.

Like Jennifer, he also has multiple talents and varied interests, extending, for example, to art, and in particular, the book arts, with which he was involved at the University of Utah. Book arts, perhaps because students have a new appreciation for the physical and the tangible in an increasingly "virtual" age, have become very popular since we founded the Center for the Book here at the end of the last century (sorry, can't help myself: just like to use that phrase). The two worlds came together recently just around the time of Jimi's arrival with our very successful "Pulp to Pixels" program and exhibit (blog here), funded by a Five College Mellon grant for digital humanities. Jimi hit the ground running, and his energy, approach, and talents can be appreciated from this report, which he posted on our Hampshire Media Tumblr.

Not only do these hires bring to us two talented leaders of their respective departments or domains. They will also be a wonderful stimulus to all aspects of our Center for the Book, which understands "the history of the book" as the study of the technologized word, thus embracing the entire sweep of development from the origins of writing to today's "new" media.

Obviously, great hires such as these are good for the College in a direct and practical sense. More generally and perhaps more important, though, the decision of these two highly qualified professionals to come here when they could be highly competitive and sought-after candidates anywhere, is a real vote of confidence for the accomplishments and prospects of the institution. These days, Hampshire College, under the leadership of new President Jonathan Lash, is feeling a new sense of energy and collective purpose as it continues to fulfill its mission of preparing students to learn and live in an ever more complex world in which the liberal arts must retain their value even as the nature of knowledge and information are changing at an unprecedented pace.

Overbooked

Hard to believe (well, maybe not) that I have been so inactive in this domain, but many things came my way this year, and when I had time to write, it was mainly for other venues or purposes.

But if all goes well, this site will now be more regularly updated. Not promising anything, of course.

Meet New Hampshire College Library Director Jennifer Gunter King

From the Hamphsire College web site:

There are clichés that tend to define the idea of a library: Unbreachable quiet that stretches through long, dark expanses of book stacks. The smell of old paper and dried ink. Quiet corners and carrels where solitary work plods slowly along.

Jennifer Gunter King, Hampshire College’s new director of the Harold F. Johnson Library, isn’t a huge fan of that vision. 

“The library today is in the process of evolving from a repository into a center that functions as a hub and gateway to all sorts of resources,” she said. “The library director position in a place like Hampshire, which already embraces a philosophy of pushing the envelope, is well poised to figure out what the library of today and tomorrow looks like.”

To King, that means looking beyond the paper foundation most libraries are built on. With master’s degrees in library science and history from the University of Maryland, College Park, King understands that the fundamental shift from paper to digital means restructuring the library to be as robust virtually as it is physically.
[read the rest]

Positions in the Pioneer Valley: Library Director, Hampshire College

Director of the Library
Hampshire College

Hampshire College, an independent, innovative liberal arts institution and member of the Five College consortium with Amherst, Smith, and Mount Holyoke Colleges and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, seeks a highly accomplished professional for Director of the Library. Hampshire College, founded in 1965, offers approximately 1500 full-time students a full range of liberal arts programs through an interdisciplinary, inquiry-based curriculum. Hampshire students have access to more than 6,000 courses, 8 million library volumes, and the academic facilities of all five campuses. The institutions collaborate in many ways, including joint faculty appointments and the sharing of certain facilities and administrative functions. The College is located in the beautiful Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts and contributes to the rich cultural environments of the college towns of Amherst, South Hadley and Northampton.

The Director of the Library is the chief academic and administrative officer of the library. Reporting to the Dean of the Faculty, the director holds responsibility for coordinating programs, scholarship, and service activities within the Hampshire Library as well as within the Five College consortium, one of the oldest and most successful consortia in the country. The mission of the college library is to provide information resources and services in an exciting academic environment that supports Hampshire students in the development of innovative research and critical inquiry skills. The director will provide leadership in developing programs, services, collections, and digital/media asset management; provide leadership in evaluating and assessing library programs, facilities, space utilization, and construction projects, as well as collections, archives, and services; and ensure excellence in linking library information resources and information technology. The qualified candidate will set the library's fiscal priorities and direction consistent with strategic use of resources; foster a collaborative approach to managing the library and its personnel; and participate in fundraising, grant writing and developing donor relations to benefit the library. In addition, the director will be expected to develop collaborative relationships with the National Yiddish Book Center and the Eric Carle Museum for Picture Book Art. Built directly adjacent to the campus (and on land originally belonging to the campus), these two institutions comprise Hampshire’s “Cultural Village” and add to the richness and attractiveness of our corner of South Amherst.

An MLS degree from an ALA accredited (or an international equivalent) program is required; a second master's degree or a doctorate is preferred. A minimum of five years progressively responsible academic library experience in a supervisory/administrative capacity is required. The selected candidate must be a highly skilled leader able to respond to the emerging teaching, learning, and research needs of the College community; have an understanding of the academic process and trends in higher education, and a strong commitment to excellence in library service in support of the College's mission; and demonstrated commitment to fostering the library's essential role in the academic program. This position requires a strong background in emerging technologies as they relate to academic libraries; an understanding of issues related to scholarly communications and intellectual property; proven financial and personnel management skills; excellent interpersonal, communication, presentation, and negotiation skills; and a strong record of scholarly and professional achievement. The qualified candidate will possess the capacity to lead and manage a dedicated library staff; foster open communication and cooperative relationships in the college community, and have a commitment to working with a diverse constituency.

Review of applications will begin November 1, 2011. Hampshire College offers a competitive salary and excellent benefits program. Please submit your cover letter, resume and names/phone numbers of three professional references via our website at http://jobs.hampshire.edu/. Hampshire College is an equal opportunity institution, committed to diversity in education and employment.

The history of our institution and its library is a fascinating one, as we were pioneered many concepts and practices that have since become commonplace. Applications should of course be addressed to the above, but I am happy to share any historical background and insights that I have derived from my service to the institution.

Hench Post-Dissertation Fellowship

In recently discussing the awarding of the SHARP DeLong Book Prize to John B. Hench, I referred to his great service over many years at the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), a service recently honored through the creation of the Hench Post-Dissertation Fellowship.

It is now time for a new round of applications.  From the press release by the AAS:

Scholars who are no more than three years beyond receipt of the doctorate are invited to apply for the Hench Post-Dissertation Fellowship, a year-long residential fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society. The purpose of the post-dissertation fellowship is to provide the recipient with time and resources to extend research and/or to revise the dissertation for publication. Any topic relevant to the Society's library collections and programmatic scope, and coming from any field or disciplinary background, is eligible. AAS collections focus on all aspects of American history, literature, and culture from contact to 1876, and provide rich source material for projects across the spectrum of early American studies.

The Society welcomes applications from those who have advance book contracts, as well as those who have not yet made contact with a publisher. The twelve-month stipend for this fellowship is $35,000. The Hench Post-Dissertation Fellow will be selected on the basis of the applicant's scholarly qualifications, the appropriateness of the project to the Society's collections and interests, and, above all, the likelihood that the revised dissertation will make a highly significant book. Further information about the fellowship, along with application materials, is available on the AAS website. Any questions about the fellowship may be directed to Paul Erickson, Director of Academic Programs at AAS, at perickson@mwa.org.

The deadline for applications for a Hench Post-Dissertation Fellowship to be held during the 2012-2013 academic year is October 15, 2011.

What G.I. Joe Read

As I recently noted, John Hench's excellent study of Books as Weapons, on the US harnessing of publishing for political purposes in the World War II era, just won a well-deserved prize for best book of the year from the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP).

Most of us were previously unaware of this colossal effort, particularly as it concerned the attempt to promote American books among the European population. More of us may have come across the cheap editions produced for US soldiers. Still, as even these latter are probably unfamiliar to the average reader, I thought it might be useful to present one of them here. The images are no substitute for the object itself, but they, along with John's excellent research, help to give some impression of what the books were actually like.

As the book explains, the first concerted attempt to provide US soldiers with reading material proved unsuccessful. The "Victory Book Campaigns," a joint effort of the USO, Red Cross, and American Library Association, failed because they "depended on the voluntary contribution of used books by civilians at home," an approach that "proved to be both inefficient and ineffective." (pp. 51, 84). As many a modern librarian or organizer could have told them: volunteer efforts can be unwieldy, the more so when it comes to book donations, which tend to attract precisely the sorts of things that neither donor nor recipient really wants. The weight and wide variations in the size and shape of the books also complicated the logistics of what was to have been a massive undertaking.

The Council on Books in Wartime (CBW), a collaboration among trade book publishers, librarians, and booksellers, therefore decided to make its own selections and produce its own editions, which could be sold to the military. The result was the spectacularly successful Armed Services Editions (ASE). The effort was as noteworthy for its approach and production methods as its results. It was prescient in that it took as its model the still-young paperback revolution and sought to take advantage of the distinctive characteristics of the wartime economy.

Standardization and a creative approach to design proved to be as important as the content:

In contrast to the widely differing sizes and formats of the Victory Campaign, the ASEs were lightweight, mostly oblong paperbacks, printed ‘four up’ and then thrice guillotined to create four books with the series’ characteristic, nonstandard orientation. They were printed on roll-fed rotary presses used in peacetime for magazines and catalogs, which had capacity in excess of the demands of civilian life. They appeared in two different trim sizes—6 ½ by 4 ½ inches (i.e. half the size of a magazine like Popular Mechanics) and 5 ½ x 3 ½ inches (i.e. half the size of a Reader’s Digest and similar periodicals)—which made packing and shipping comparatively easy. The text was printed in two columns on these oblong pages, a design, it was claimed, that did not exhibit the crowded effect that vertical two-column pages displayed. It also held the lines to legibly short lengths. These various design and technical innovations made the production and distribution of the ASEs feasible, even little short of miraculous. (p. 52)

ASE produced 122,951,031 copies of 1,322 titles from 1943 through 1947.

It so happens that I had one such edition in my own library, an item that I picked up for a few cents a good many years ago (I believe: at the League of Women Voters' book sale here in Amherst). It's by Ernie Pyle, the most famous US combat journalist of World War II. Killed by a sniper in 1945, Pyle, as the Indiana University School of Journalism puts it, was "An early "embedded journalist," who "worked alongside the troops, experiencing much of what they did, placing himself in danger as they did. His columns captured the scene and his reporting humanized the war for many of his readers." Pyle produced two bestselling collections of his writing, Here is Your War (1943) and Brave Men (1944-45), which were also issued together under the title, G.I. Joe.

The ASE edition of Here is Your War is in the larger of the two formats:

cover

inside cover

title page

first page, showing the unusual double-column horizontal orientation

back inside cover, with list of selected other titles in the series

back cover

The success of the program was measured not only in copies, but also in consequences. As John summarizes:

In setting up the ASEs, council members were confident that the series would contribute to the ‘mass reading of books in the world to come.’ They were right. Historians have generally credited the ASEs with introducing books to the GIs who had read little before the war, for helping fuel the paperback boom in the postwar years, and for creating a new pool of customers. (p. 53)

Not bad for an improvised response to a national emergency. One wonders what equivalent efforts could be undertaken today to enrich the lives of our soldiers and better equip them for the return to the United States and, eventually, civilian life in the age of the information economy.