German Emblem Books

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds an internationally renowned collection of emblem books that is among the most highly utilized primary source materials of its type worldwide. The German emblem books were chosen for this digitization project due to the strength of the University Library collection, the overall physical condition of the books, the on-site faculty expertise and interest in both German and Library and Information Science, and the strong potential for further collaboration with an already actively engaged international community of scholars.

Since the 1940’s the University Library has amassed a collection of over 600 emblem books written from 1540-1800, published in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and England. While there are other emblem book collections in Scotland and Germany that exceed the size of the Illinois collection, no American Library has such extensive holdings. These collections are actively used for teaching and research by numerous University of Illinois faculty members. Further, nationally and internationally known emblem scholars have regularly consulted our collections, and the collections have been the topic of numerous publications about the emblems themselves, as well as their bibliographic environments.

Emblem books can possibly be looked upon as the multi-medial publications of the 17th and 18th centuries. They are books featuring individual emblems. Each emblem is composed of three constitutive elements - a motto, an illustration or “pictura” in the form of a woodcut or engraving, and an explanatory poem or "subscriptio." A single book may have any number of emblems, ranging from just ten to almost 1,500. An emblem is more than the sum of its parts, because the interplay between text and image produces a greater meaning than any of the individual components can provide. An individual emblem, therefore, comprises more than just the pictura, but rather all three parts: motto, pictura, and subscriptio. Emblems were often thought to be hieroglyphs, riddles or even mysterious messages containing secrets. They drew on such diverse sources as the Bible, Classical antiquity, fables, mythology, science and medicine, and they reflected movements and events such as the Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War. Their interpretation and understanding relied on the wit, knowledge and ability of the reader to combine clues in the text and image to produce meaning. During the time of their original use, they were read and viewed widely by both the educated and uneducated classes of European society. Today, research in emblems is highly interdisciplinary, attracting scholars of Latin, history, art history, and the European vernacular languages. This unusually rich form of combined artistic and literary expression also appeals to religious scholars, philosophers, and historians of science and education.

More about the German Emblem book project