Early Silesian album amicorum from the Thirty Years’ War

[Album amicorum]. Friendship album of Adolph Weißhahn.

€ 18,000.00

Compiled during the opening phase of the Thirty Years’ War, this Silesian album amicorum preserves a dense network of noble and military signatories across Central Europe.

Rather than a purely student’s book, the sequence of entries and several rank designations point to a milieu connected with the field and with the noble estates of Silesia. The first inscription is by Johann Christian, Duke of Liegnitz (1591-1639), a Calvinist leader among the Silesian estates; further entries include his brother Georg Rudolf (1595-1653), later Landes­hauptmann, and Georg Rudolf’s consort Sophie Elisabeth of Anhalt Dessau (entry dated 1619).

Additional contributors, many of them of the nobility, include Freiherr von Herberstein, Friedrich von Redern, and Georg Heinrich von Zedlitz, among others; one English language entry is subscribed by “Robert von Wadham, Englander”.

Geographically wide ranging, the album records halts in Breslau (Wroclaw), Troppau (Opava), Mistelbach and Ungarisch Brod (Uhersky Brod), reflecting travel along Silesian, Moravian and Lower Austrian routes during 1619-22.

Visual elements comprise eight painted coats of arms and two additional watercolours, complementing more than eighty manuscript entries and underscoring the heraldic culture of the period.

A representative witness to Silesian noble networks and wartime mobility in the early 1620s, with entries that illuminate confession, allegiance and sociability at the outset of the conflict.