☞ berüre einen turm touch & drag
gleicher stock the same block, set again
Nüremberg
Verona
Basel

staged so the recurrence can be felt · limits stated below

ij · die form

Setze das blat

assemble the sheet
stock i
spalte i
spalte ij
stock ij

the forme reads backwards · the press turns it round

iij · die werckstat

Wer das blat gemacht hat

the sheet, taken apart into hands
i

Zusammentragen

compiled text

The chronicle was gathered out of many earlier books rather than newly invented — a reading and copying labour of years before a single block was cut.

Hartmann Schedel, physician of Nuremberg.

ij

Verdeutschen

german translation

The German edition is not a reissue of the Latin one. Georg Alt translated and adapted the text into German for it, and the columns you set were set in that language.

Georg Alt.

iij

Verlegen und bezalen

commission & finance

Paper, blocks, type, wages and years of delay were paid for before any copy could be sold. Someone had to carry that risk.

Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermeister.

iiij

Reissen

design of the illustrations

The city views were drawn before they were cut — invented, adapted, or taken from actual sites, and sized to the page you just filled.

Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff and their workshop. The young Albrecht Dürer was apprenticed in that workshop in these years; a hand of his in this book has been argued for and remains unproven.

v

Formschneiden

block cutting

Every white line you saw was cut away. The block you lifted is the survivor of that subtraction — and being a block, it could be used again.

Cutters of the workshop. Individual hands are not securely identified and no single block is credited here to a name.

vj

Setzen

typesetting

The columns were built out of single pieces of metal, backwards, and made to fit around the blocks. Nothing in the forme reads the right way round.

Compositors of the press, unnamed.

vij

Drucken

presswork & publishing

One pull for every side of every sheet of every copy. The German edition was completed on 23 December 1493.

Printed and published by Anton Koberger in Nuremberg. The pressmen who inked and pulled are unnamed.

viij

Illuminieren

hand colouring

Colour came after the press and was bought, not printed. From here on, two copies of the same edition stop looking alike.

Colourists, unnamed. Nothing is claimed here about colour in this particular copy.

ix

Binden

binding

Loose sheets became a book — folded, gathered, sewn, covered, sometimes trimmed away.

Binders, unnamed.

x

Lesen und anmercken

later reading

Five centuries of hands: pointing fingers, underlines, corrections, ownership. The last maker of any copy is its readers.

Readers and annotators, mostly unnamed.

nuremberg · 1493

The City Inside
a Workshop

Das buch der Cronicken vnd gedechtnus wirdigern geschichte[n]

german edition · nuremberg · 23 december 1493 · bsb00059084

spuren von henden · human traces

Wer darin steckt

Hartmann Schedel compiled the text by gathering and reading earlier books over many years; that compiled text then passed entirely through Georg Alt's hands, who rendered it into German — so what you read in the columns is not Schedel's words alone but Alt's translation of them. Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermeister financed the enterprise: they paid for paper, blocks, type and wages before a single copy could be sold, carrying the risk that makes any edition possible. Anton Koberger organised the printing and publishing in Nuremberg, and it was his press workers who inked the forme and pulled a sheet for every side of every copy.

Before any of that, the city views had to be drawn: Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, with their workshop, designed the forms to fit the page. Unnamed cutters then took those drawings and removed from the block everything that would not print — each white line in the panorama you handled is the trace of a cut, not of an addition. Compositors locked the surviving relief of those blocks beside individual pieces of metal type, building each column backwards so that the press would turn it round. After printing, colourists worked on individual copies: from that point on, two copies of the same edition stop looking alike. Binders gathered, folded and sewed the sheets into a book, sometimes trimming pages in ways that cannot be undone.

What passes through every one of these relations is the block itself — carved once, it can be set again beside a different text and a different city name. The same form that carries Nuremberg can carry Verona. That reusability is not an accident of the production; it is its logic. The block moves through the whole chain — from the designer's drawing to the cutter's knife, from the compositor's case to the pressman's pull, from the colourist's brush to the binder's needle — and arrives in the hands of a reader, who may add a mark of their own. Five centuries of those marks have accumulated. The last maker of any copy is its readers.

Ein stock, vil stett.
One block, many cities.

zwei wege · two routes

Deutsch und English

Deutsche fassung

Diese station folgt allein der deutschen ausgabe: Das buch der Cronicken vnd gedechtnus wirdigern geschichte[n], verdeutscht von Georg Alt, vollendet zu Nüremberg am 23. Dezember 1493, getruckt durch Anton Koberger. Die stöck wurden im werckstatkreis von Michael Wolgemut und Wilhelm Pleydenwurff gerissen; wer sie geschnitten hat, ist namentlich nicht gesichert.

  • stock
  • form
  • presse
  • setzer
  • reisser
  • formschneider
  • illuminist
  • rubricator
  • buchbinder
  • leser

English reading

This is an interpretation, not a translation of the book. The German words listed are the trade's own: stock is the woodblock; form the locked-up forme of blocks and type; reisser the designer who draws; formschneider the cutter who removes everything that will not print; illuminist the colourist who works after the press.

What you handled first was the discovery this book keeps: the singular city and the repeatable object are the same thing.

quellschicht · latin source layer

Die lateinisch ausgab

The Latin edition, Liber chronicarum, was completed on 12 July 1493. The German edition followed on 23 December 1493 in Georg Alt's translation. Where the evidence supports it, the same woodblocks were used again across the editions — the blocks outlast the language of the text around them.

Here the Latin edition is a source and a comparison only. This station stands on the German copy, BSB digital object bsb00059084; the two editions are not merged.

grenzen · evidence limits

Was hie nit behaubt wirt

  • The panorama, the small city views and the sheet on this page were drawn for this station from period forms. They are not facsimiles of any leaf of bsb00059084.
  • The recurrence you handled is documented for this book in general — a single carved block sometimes stands for more than one city. The particular pairings shown here are staged so that the repetition can be felt, and are not a record of specific sheets.
  • Not every city view in the Chronicle is invented or reused: some were based on actual places. Both statements must stand together.
  • The type in the columns is set from the book's own title words and its printing date. It is not a transcription of a page.
  • The hand colour and the marginal mark are interpretive gestures offered to the visitor. No colour history, ownership mark or annotation is claimed for this copy.
  • Anonymous cutters, compositors, pressmen, colourists and binders are not credited to individual names, because they cannot be.
  • Albrecht Dürer's possible participation as a young apprentice in Wolgemut's workshop is raised cautiously and is never treated here as settled authorship.
quellen · sources

Wo es ligt