[Album amicorum]. Friendship album box of Friedrich Ferdinand von Ammon.

Göttingen (42), Heidelberg (26), and other places, 1815 to (mostly) 1817.

Oblong 8vo (160 x 95 mm). German and Latin manuscript on paper. 75 ff. with 73 entires, of which 70 are on leaves with engravings. Includes a full-page watercolour of a student scene, 1 engraved cover sheet, 1 engraving without an entry, and 1 line of music. Stored loosely in original black and red half morocco covers with giltstamped borders and corner medallions, spine elaborately gilt and titled "Meinen Freunden". In original red card portfolio.

€ 8,500.00

Exceptionally comprehensive and pretty friendship album assembled by the Prussian jurist and member of parliament Friedrich Ferdinand von Ammon (1794-1874) during his university years in Heidelberg und Göttingen. After serving as judge in various capacities, Ammon was chief prosecutor in Düsseldorf from 1832 to 1835, then councillor to the court of appeals in Cologne and president of the Rhenish Railroad. From 1851 onwards he served as president of the senate at the Cologne court of appeals and was a member of the Prussian parliament and house of representatives.

The album includes entries by a wealth of important personages who were active in forming the early German student fraternities (Ammon himself was a member of Heidelberg's Corps Guestphalia and of the Teutonia corporation). Among these friends were the jurist and writer Friedrich Wilhelm Carové (1789-1852), the pastor Ernst Welcker (1798-1858), the physician and politician Heinrich Carl Alexander Pagenstecher (1799-1869), Carl Graf von Moltke (1798-1866), the jurist and politician Franz Anton Good (1793-1866), Friedrich von Seeckt (1793-1870), the jurist and politician Julius Adolf Niethammer (1798-1882), the social politician and jurist Wilhelm Adolph Lette (1799-1868), the jurist Friedrich Blume (1797-1874), the mayor of Stralsund, Johann Carl Heinrich Hagemeister (1796-1860), the private tutor of prince Alexander of Prussia, Johann Hermann Altgeld (1795-1871), and the cameralist and forestry official Johann Christian Düring (1792-1862).

The engravings show portraits (including Ariosto, Cervantes, Euripides, Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Braunschweig, Haydn, Herder, Leibniz, Lessing, Schiller, and Shakespeare) and views (including the Weend paper mill near Göttingen, the Mariaspring hermitage near Göttingen, the Kerstlingeröder Feld near Göttingen, Heidelberg and Heidelberg Castle, the Deutsches Haus near Göttingen, Göttingen's maternity home, Hanstein and Rinbach near Göttingen, Kassel's Wilhelmshöhe, Göttingen's new observatory and the city's surgical hospital.

Condition

Slightly stained throughout in places, otherwise well preserved. The slipcase is somewhat rubbed and stained.

Stock Code: BN#63098 Tags: , ,

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