The burden of the present work is taken up with a catalogue of the German-language examples of the genre from the holdings of the Royal Library, Stockholm and of the University Library, Uppsala. While it is of great value from a bibliographical perspective to have more detailed information on at least a part of those works omitted by Collijn, the fact that this catalogue represents one sixth of the total output of such works from Swedish presses in the seventeenth century is a powerful indicator of the size and financial power of the German community in Sweden during the time under consideration. We know from Drees' monograph on the social function of such printed verses of his long-standing interest in what they can tell us of the German community in Sweden. A close study of the entries reveals a variety of professions followed by the male members of that community, e.g. court official, surgeon, soldier, musician, dancing master, book-keeper, bookbinder, confectioner, manufacturer of medals, vintner, jeweller and merchant, in short exactly those solid, skilled craftsmen whose expertise and entrepreneurship gave an impetus to the industrialisation of northern Europe, but who do not normally leave much evidence of their contribution to that process. In this respect a comparison with the Huguenot refugees invited to settle in the Protestant parts of Germany in the late seventeenth century for that selfsame purpose is compelling.
As the title of the catalogue promises, the individual entries of the
catalogue include the names of those who contributed verses along with
details of the metre employed. The fact that the index of poets
contains only one writer of proven literary consequence, that of Georg
Greflinger, who wrote under the pseudonym of "der nordische
Mercurius", a poem which is not recorded in the relevant chapter of
Dünnhaupt's Personalbibliographien,[2] does not detract from the value
of recording such information, for it adds much needed flesh to the
rather bare bones of Ijsewijn's chapter on Scandinavia (p. 178 - 191)
in his survey of neo-Latin literature in Europe.[3] The present
reviewer's researches over the past twenty years in German and British
libraries can attest not only to the wealth of such poetry hidden in
epithalamia, funeral sermons and dissertations, as such information is
never revealed by standard cataloguing rules, but also to the social
links between poets and addressees which can be deduced from the
presence of these.
Drees provides us with useful notes on the printers responsible for
these fascinating little publications as well as reproductions of the
ornaments - the "dekorative Druckstöcke" of the sub-title - used in
them, many of which were common to printers throughout the Teutonic
lands of north Europe. It is unfortunate that the usefulness of this
inventory is reduced by the darkness or the faintness of a good number
of the reproductions. While many of the ornaments would have been of
less than perfect quality through constant use, one could have
expected the Royal Library, Stockholm, as the sponsor of this volume,
to make better provision for such illustrations. In its failure to do
so it has done Drees and scholarship a disservice.
That cavil apart, this is a most useful volume in several respects and
Drees deserves our congratulations.
W. A. Kelly
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