Das Große Tucherbuch, 1542/1590–1606

Description

The patrician families of the imperial cities of Augsburg, Frankfurt and Nuremberg had representative family books made since the 14th, but especially in the 16th and 17th centuries. "Das Große Tucherbuch" is perhaps the most splendid and culturally historically important specimen of this genus. The Tucher family can be traced back to the early 14th century in Nuremberg and soon belonged to the imperial city's most important merchant and patrician families. In 1542 they commissioned the humanist Dr Christoph II Scheurl, whose mother Helena was a born Tucher, to draft a family book. Scheurl's manuscript has been copied several times, each time in an updated, more representative or simpler form. This magnificent parchment copy was commissioned in 1590 by Herdegen IV Tucher as administrator of the Tucher Family Foundation 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.