Sawyer
Just learned about a wonderful book from Nuremberg, Germany:
In 1388, the wealthy merchant Konrad Mendel had a retirement home built to provide accommodation and food for twelve old Nuremberg craftsmen in need and equipped with capital for permanent management. Since around 1425/26, every “Mendel brother” has been portrayed with a full-page portrait in Mendel's house book. By the end of the imperial city period, it had grown to a total of 857 image pages with 765 depictions of craftsmen in folio format.
4 comments:
Guild rules, of course, forbade the hen-carrier from conveying roosters ducks, or geese.
But could a sack carrier carry a basket?
In 1388, the wealthy merchant Konrad Mendel had a retirement home built to provide accommodation and food for twelve old Nuremberg craftsmen in need and equipped with capital for permanent management. Since around 1425/26, every “Mendel brother” has been portrayed with a full-page portrait in Mendel's house book. By the end of the imperial city period, it had grown to a total of 857 image pages with 765 depictions of craftsmen in folio format.
From whence does this text come? The supplied link doesn't seem to contain it, but rather a (German language) index of page scans from the manuscript.
I ask because I find it odd that said text refers to "craftsmen" in need, when clearly several of the depicted individuals are not artisans of any sort, but rather simple laborers.
When I search for the term "Nuremberg Twelve Brothers House" / "Nuremberg Twelve Brothers Foundation", I get numerous other sources which all seem to differ among themselves about the details of what it actually was and how it actually operated - although none of those other sources refer to the charity recipients as "craftsmen", usually referring to "citizens" or "the poor" instead.
Some sources claim that it was a charity system for workers who were aged and/or unwell, but still able to work. Other sources say that it was a system that took in the poor and -taught- them a craft, so they could earn a living. Some sources suggest they were given housing in exchange for continuing their labor; while other sources suggest the opposite - claiming they were given housing -because- they could no longer labor, and the portraits depict their prior trades which they left behind.
I've seen some sources that claim there was an expectation that the "brothers" spend a substantial amount of time at church and in prayer; and I've seen other sources make almost the exact opposite claim that, stating that while the choice of twelve beneficiaries was a reference to the Twelve Apostles, the program itself was highly secular and specifically forbade present or former members of the clergy from being selected to receive aid.
And virtually all of these sources specifically come out and state that they have been wholly reliant on machine translation - so I'd be curious to see what someone who can actually read German would make of these texts, and how they might correct these descriptions and their disagreements.
There is also some degree of confusion / conflation with the Landauer Twelve Brothers House, which was much the same idea, but created and operated quite separately.
The German is "Handwerker," for which various dictionaries give both "laborer" and "craftsman." The trade illustrated show a range of skill levels. Knife maker, for example, was pretty high-skill, while one can imagine that hen carrier was not. I imagine that the reputation of the citizen, especially in his church, was more important to the operators of the charity than his income level while working.
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