Freund Heins Erscheinungen Holbeins Manier, Musaus 1785
This rare emblem book is titled Freund Heins Erscheinungen in Holbeins Manier, which means Apparitions of Death in the Manner of Holbein, and it is a first edition written by Johann Karl August Musaus, illustrated by Johann Rudolph von Schellenberg, and published by Heinrich Steiner in Winterthur (Switzerland) in 1785. The text is in German, the book has five raised bands, a maroon label with gilt lettering on the spine, brown boards, tan endpapers, a frontispiece with a copperplate engraving that depicts the Grim Reaper, Schellenberg’s name is below the engraving, and the Grim Reaper is a skeleton with a scythe that is a classic symbol of death and a reminder of the inevitability of death (Memento Mori). Then the title page, a foreword (Vorbericht) from pages 3 to 7, a list of emblem titles (Anzeiger), there are 24 full-page copperplate engravings altogether (the frontispiece and 23 in the text), the book is 165 pages long, with explanations in prose and verse by Musäus, it has a red topstain applied by the publisher, and the work combined the Dance of Death engravings by Schellenberg with the text of Musaus. See Holzmannn / Bohatta Vol 2, page 57, No. 1868.
One engraving is missing in the book - the second engraving titled “Der Verzweiflungsvolle” (The Despairing Man), which shows a man falling into Death's arms after shooting himself - and it seems like this is a printing error by the publisher. The engraving is supposed to be on page 15 of the book, above the text, or on the previous page, but it was never printed in this edition. Instead, page 15 shows the title and the text, and we are not certain, but we believe this is an early printing of the first edition and was later corrected by the publisher. (See the image for page 15 in the photos.)
This would also account for only 23 engravings in the text. The first edition is supposed to have an engraving of the frontispiece and 24 engravings in the text, but this copy only has an engraving of the frontispiece and 23 engravings in the text, and page 15 was not torn out of the book, nor was the engraving for page 15. The engraving was just never included in the book by the publisher, and we believe this printing omission is a unique error to the book.
Johann Karl August Musäus (1735 - 1787) was a German author and one of the first collectors of German folk stories. Born in Jena, he studied theology at the University of Jena, and after receiving a Masters degree, he waited for an appointment to the church. He preached for a while, but was not especially devoted to religion, and when he was offered a job as pastor at a nearby church, locals saw him dancing and complained about him, which cost him his job and finished his career in the church, so he turned to writing satires after that. He tutored court pages in Weimar, in 1769 he became professor of Ancient Languages and History at a secondary school in Weimar, then he became a Freemason in 1776 and a member of the Bavarian Illuminati in 1783, he even acted alongside Goethe in Goethe’s comedy Die Mitschuldigen, and was held in high regard in Weimar.
His folk tales (Volksmärchen) were an early part of a revived interest in fairy tales, and they influenced the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen; his Legenden von Rübezahl" ('Legends of Rübezahl") was said to have inspired the Washington Irving’s Headless Horseman in the "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", and one of his folk stories was translated into French and read aloud as part of a summer reading by Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley in 1816, and this reading inspired them to write their own ghost-stories. Byron wrote a fragment of a novel that is considered the first modern vampire story, Polidori wrote The Vampyre based on this, and Mary Shelley went on to write Frankenstein.
Schellenberg (1740 - 1806) was a Swiss artist, writer, and entomologist best known for his illustrations of insects. Born in Basel, he died near Winterthur and was considered one of the most important Swiss etchers of the 18th century.
The book measures 7 1/8 x 4 3/4 inches wide and is in good condition, with a tight binding and clean pages and text, for the most part, light wear on the edges of the spine and at the tips, light wear at the top edge of the front board, light soiling in the margins in a couple of spots, some paper loss on the joint between the frontispiece and title page, and small tears in the margins on a couple of pages.
No first editions are listed on WorldCat except for ebooks and microfilm, so this first edition is rare, and auction records show Christie’s sold a first edition title of the same name for €2530 in 1995 and Ketterer’s sold the same title for €1560 ($1800) in 2007, and we found only two copies of the first edition for sale on the rare book website we use and they go for $1450 and $1935 apiece, and two 1803 copies go for $400 and £675.
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