Großes Tucherbuch

StadtAN, E29/III, 258
Das Große Tucherbuch, 1542/1590–1606

The "Großes Tucherbuch" is perhaps the most splendid and culturally historically important specimen of its genus. As a representative genealogical book it is part of a tradition which the patrician families of the imperial cities of Augsburg, Frankfurt and Nuremberg established from the 14th century onwards and which flourished above all in the 16th and 17th centuries.

In 1542 the Tuchers commissioned the humanist Dr Christoph II Scheurl, whose mother Helena was a Tucher by birth, to compile a genealogical book. Scheurl’s manuscript has been copied several times, each time in an updated, more representative or simpler form (e.g. the “Kleines Tucherbuch” from 1572-1829: TKS, Bu 001).

This magnificent parchment copy was commissioned in 1590 by Herdegen IV Tucher as administrator of the Dr. Lorenz Tucher’sche Stiftung and completed in 1606 (last entry); its costs amounted to 2,198 gulden. It was produced by Nuremberg’s leading painters, master writers and goldsmiths. After several registers and prefaces, the Tucherbuch contains the family trees of the family, sorted by generations and lines. Each male Tucher who had children himself receives a full-page miniature (with wife/wives), a short biography and details of his children. Daughters and childless sons are dealt with in the context of their father’s children’s register and are only given a usually smaller miniature in certain cases.

Horst-Dieter Beyerstedt