‘Remembering Good Friends’

Examining a late Eighteenth-Century Friendship Album

Janine Droese

A red leather-bound book belonging in the CSMC library is somewhat scuffed and has shallow cracks. The book – with a horizontal format – is a bit smaller than a DIN A5 sheet of paper and, on the spine, written in gold, is the title ‘Andenken guter Freunde’ (‘Remembering Good Friends’). On the front cover, also in gold, are the letters ‘C. D. V.’; on the back cover we find the year ‘1782’. The dog-eared lower outer corners of some of the pages as well as slight damage to the gilt edges suggest that the book was frequently picked up and regularly leafed through. Who used the book? And to what purpose? And what does the information on the binding tell us?

On opening this 226-page book one immediately realises that it contains short texts hand-written by various people. Pictures, drawings and further decorative elements such as coloured borders catch the eye. There are occasional empty pages between some of the entries; in fact the very first entry is preceded by two empty pages. This entry, on page 4, reads as follows:

Some entries are in the form of a picture, as on page 136 (Fig. 3). There, in a picturesque landscape, we see a monument on which are written a number of inscriptions. On the right side – from the viewer’s perspective – we read ‘DENK / MAHL / DER / FREUND / SCHFT’ (‘MONU/ MENT/ OF / FRIEND / SHP’), and, on the plinth below is engraved the year ‘1786’. The side visible to the viewer bears the text:

Evidently, the book is a friendship album, a so-called Stammbuch, used by the owner to collect entries for purposes of reminiscence. In this way, it is similar to poetry albums or to contemporary friendship books. The persons entering their names could choose the page on which to write their entry, thus leaving a random number of empty pages between the various entries. However, in contrast to modern friendship books, the owners of these albums did not need to have a close relationship with those entering their names. In fact, it is well known that as well as family and friends, both acquaintances and business partners were asked to sign the books. Indeed, one possible motive for requesting someone to sign the book was to establish contact with someone of a higher rank; such entries then served to cultivate the image of the owner of the book. Thus, it may be assumed that the entries found in our album reflect the family situation and the private and business networks of the album owner, and provide some insight into their position in society.

In the album under discussion, most of the entries – e.g. the two mentioned above (Figs 2 and 3) – indicate that those who wrote them were not particularly good at handwriting. There are many indications of this: the large number of corrections, the untidy writing, an orthography which was not typical of the times, as well as the missing or redundant letters. Furthermore, the configuration of the limited space available for the inscription on the monument clearly implies a lack of competence (Fig. 3). Such limitations suggest that the owner of the album did not enjoy a wide-ranging education.

The index on the two final openings offers a good overall view of the album, allowing a first appraisal of the contents (Fig. 4) . The family names of those who left their entries in the album are listed alphabetically, often supplemented with the initial of the first name. The page number on which the entry of the person named can be found is given in a separate column. Many of the names are found several times, indicating that the owner of the album requested various members of a particular family to contribute. Clearly, the index was not written all at once, and the handwriting in the index shows that the entries were not written by the same person. However, we cannot be certain who added the names to the index and at what time the respective addition was made; but it seems likely that both the owner of the album and some of those who contributed wrote their name and page number in the index.

Matching the names and page numbers in the index is only possible because the pages of the album are numbered. We may assume that the pages were numbered either before the entries were collected or during the time in which they were collected. There are some 250 pages in the album, and in eleven cases, the numbering of the pages is not consecutive; thus, it is possible that some pages were removed. Indeed, in one instance, eight pages are missing – presumably four sheets of paper. Only in one case do we find a stub indicating that a page was cut out. In almost all other cases the missing pages might be explained by a possible oversight in the numbering of the pages. However, as regards the missing pages 126 and 140, this explanation does not hold; in both cases, an entry is given in the index which is no longer present in the book. It is impossible to establish who removed the pages or when they were removed. Perhaps the person(s) who wrote them removed these pages because they were unhappy with what they had written. Indeed, in some such albums we find a foreword in which the contributors were asked not to tear out any pages; thus, it seems that such things occasionally happened. Another possibility is that the owner of the album removed the pages. It is known that especially later owners of such albums sometimes offered some pages as a gift or sold them.

The title on the spine of the book – ‘Andenken guter Freunde’ (‘Remembering good friends’) – makes the function of the book very clear; however, the term ‘good friends’ must be understood in the context of the time, i.e. that not all contributors were close friends. Similarly, the number on the back cover is easily interpreted: the earliest entry in the album – placed on the last written page preceding the index (page 250) – dates to the 1 January 1783. Thus, the year embossed on the back cover (1782) seems to indicate the year in which the album was acquired. As for the initials ‘C. D. V.’ on the front cover we find a hint as to their meaning on page 111 of the album (Fig. 5). On the top of that page, a certain Wilhelm Wilke made an entry in which he quoted from the novel Leben und Thaten des Freiherrn Quinctius Heymeran von Flaming (The life and deeds of Baron Quinctius Heymeran von Flaming) written by August Lafontaine (1758–1831), one of the most successful writers in the time of Goethe. Underneath the quote, to the right, he wrote a dedication which begins as follows: ‘Die Zeit, lieber de Vins, die wir zusammen waren, war kurz, sehr kurz, aber desto froher durchlebt, und stets wird sie mir eine süße Rückerinnerung gewähren.’ (‘My dear de Vins, our time together was short, very short; thus was it lived all the more merrily, and, for me, will always remain a pleasant memory.’)

The direct form of address clearly indicates that the owner of the album was a man whose family name was de Vins, and allows us to assume that ‘C. D. V.’ are the initials of the album’s owner. But what more can the manuscript tell us about its owner? A first hint can be found on the title page of the album; this page was designed by the artist Johann August Ernst Niegelssohn (1757–1833).

The picture shows Hermes, the god of commerce, sitting on tied up bales, one of which bears the initials C. D. V. (Fig. 6). In the background is a harbour where large sailing ships can be seen. This picture suggests that de Vins was a merchant, an idea which is underpinned by entries made by other businessmen: Carl Ludwig Fähndrich (entry p. 33) was a member of a Luckenwalder cloth-making family, while Johann Georg Brock (p. 165) owned a cloth and silk business in Berlin. Moreover, a businessman named de Vins is known: a certain Thomas de Vins, freeman of the town of Luckenwalde, was granted a franchise by Frederick II in 1782 to run a wool factory there, producing goods in the Gera style. Born in 1730 in Frankfurt/Main, de Vins had enjoyed years of experience as an accountant in the wool factory of C. Gossler in Magdeburg. Indeed, 40 entries in the album were written in Luckenwalde or in neighbouring Jüterbog or in Kloster Zinna, a fact which suggests that C. de Vins may have been the son of Thomas de Vins. The 23 entries made in Magdeburg (including one from a maternal aunt, ‘Muhme’, as well as one from a female cousin) and five entries made in Frankfurt/Main also support this interpretation. However, the first name of C. de Vins in not known, and there are no further details of his life. The limited area in which album entries were collected suggests that he was not as cosmopolitan as the title page (Fig. 6) – with its harbour and ships – implies. Thus, many questions concerning this album, its owner and the setting in which it evolved remain unanswered, and further evidence and research is required if these questions are to be answered.

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Digitized Manuscript

MS 5/2020: 

Bibliography

• Henzel, Katrin (2014), Mehr als ein Denkmal der Freundschaft. Stammbucheinträge in Leipzig 1760–1804 (Literatur und Kultur. Leipziger Texte – Reihe B: Studien 4), Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag.
• Keil, Robert und Richard Keil (1893), Die deutschen Stammbücher des 16.–19. Jahrhunderts. Ernst und Scherz, Weisheit und Schwank in Original-Mittheilungen zur deutschen Kultur-Geschichte, Berlin: Grote.
• Schnabel, Werner Wilhelm (2003), Das Stammbuch. Konstitution und Geschichte einer textsortenbezogenen Sammelform bis ins erste Drittel des 18. Jahrhunderts (Frühe Neuzeit, 78), Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.

With his Repertorium Alborum Amicorum. Internationales Verzeichnis von Stammbüchern und Stammbuchfragmenten in öffentlichen und privaten Sammlungen [Repertorium Alborum Amicorum An International Register of Albums and of Fragments of Albums in both Public and Private Collections] (https://raa.gf-franken.de/de/startseite.html, last visited on 24.3.2021) Werner Wilhelm Schnabel started a database in which albums and entries made in the albums as well as relevant literature can be studied. Furthermore, the site offers well organised information relating to the subject as well as digital copies of such albums. Currently, the database contains some 26,000 albums and 250,000 entries.

Description

Location: Library of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Universität Hamburg
Catalogue number: MS 5/2020
Size and number of pages: 18.5 × 12.5 cm (landscape format); IV, 226 II pages (of which 109 have been written on, painted or glued; 91 entries)
Material: paper; red leather covering with gilt edges; coloured endpaper
Period: 1783–1799
Places where entries were made: Luckenwalde, Kloster Zinna, Jüterbog, Magdeburg, Berlin, Potsdam, Spandau, Frankfurt am Main, Altenburg, Reinsberg, Waltersdorf

Copyright Notice

Copyright for all photographs: Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Universität Hamburg

Reference note

Janine Droese, ‘Remembering Good Friends’ – Examining a late Eighteenth-Century Friendship Album. In: Wiebke Beyer, Karin Becker (eds): Artefact of the Month No 17, CSMC, Hamburg, https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publications/aom/017-en.html