bavarikon4UDescription
In the preface to the Mirror of Honour, Johann Jakob Fugger describes himself as a donor and "ordainer" – today he would be called a sponsor and customer. The Mirror of Honour is a large-scale attempt to present the entire history of the Habsburg dynasty. At the time it was written, Fugger was Lord of Kirchberg and Weissenhorn as well as Ferrette in France, which was awarded to him in 1548 when he left the Fugger's trading house. He already served as President of the Court Chamber under Albert V in Munich at that time. Today, Clemens Jäger from Augsburg (around 1500-1561) is regarded as the author of the most important texts. He succeeded in climbing the social ladder considerably from cobbler to town archivist, councillor and customs collector. He was commissioned by Fugger to write the 'work of honour', in which other employees were presumably also involved. The work on the fair copy stops with Jäger's death. The magnificent manuscript's illustrations are ascribed to his successor Jörg Breu the Younger. The first volume (Cgm 895) of the complete work comprises six books and deals with the origin of the Austrian Mark, the derivation of the House of Habsburg from the Trojan War to King Rudolf and the other rulers up to Emperor Frederick III. It includes thousands of coats of arms, seals and coins, countless cityscapes and landscapes, people's portraits, reports of catastrophes, children born with deformities, earthquakes and floods. The second volume (Cgm 896) contains the seventh book and deals only with the history of Emperor Maximilian I. Special attention is paid to the Habsburg burials, including the Franciscan-Clarissan monastery Königsfelden near Brugg an der Aare in Switzerland, which Elisabeth, the widow of King Albert I, had built in 1309/11 on the site of his murder by his nephew Johann as the house monastery and burial place for the House of Habsburg. Datum: 2019
Author
Ingeborg Neske