Hans VI. Tucher, Reise in das Gelobte Land: Autograph, Fragment I, um 1480

Landesbibliothek Coburg

Description

The early version of the Coburg manuscript is probably the most important German-language travel report of the late Middle Ages. It originates from the Nuremberg patrician Hans VI Tucher (1428-1491), who had travelled the Holy Land in 1479/80. The development of the text form can be traced well in three stages up to the printing of 1482. In the first stage the report was handed down in three manuscripts in which the outward journey and the stay in Jerusalem, the onward journey to Saint Catherine's Monastery on the Sinai and the return journey to Venice were described in each case. They were based on material that Tucher had collected on the trip, including a diary that he arranged and copied as a fair copy. Only the Coburg report part is preserved in the original. It is to be supplemented by eight separate sheets in the Stadtarchiv Nürnberg (Nuremberg City Archive) (E29/III, 259). Some of the other chapters have been preserved as copies, e.g. with an autograph of Tucher's companion Sebald Rieter, in which he mentions the two pilgrims' pro rata travel expenses (Ansbach, Gymnasium Carolinum). In the next stage, personal references in the text were erased or reshaped so that the description of an individual pilgrimage takes on general features that prospective pilgrims could use as a manual in planning and carrying out their journey. The three-part layout was then united in one manuscript (London, British Library). Datum: 2019

Author

Randall Herz

Rights Statement Description

CC0