Timing the Self in Sixteenth-Century Augsburg: Veit Konrad Schwarz

(1541–1561)*
Stefan Hanß

I: Matthäus Schwarz and Veit Konrad Schwarz

This article explores the interrelated notions of time and the self in a sixteenth-century city and
considers the extent to which knowledge of time and conventions of dating influenced early modern
practices of self-fashioning. Self-narratives—autobiographies, diaries, family chronicles and the
like—enable scholars to historicize early modern concepts of personhood and relationships. 1 It is
equally crucial to historicize notions of time: ‘Experiencing time’, Norbert Elias has stated, ‘is an
integral part of what people experience as their own self within … societies.’ Measuring and
indicating time are practices that both represent concepts of temporality and enable personal
orientation and positioning within societies. These practices provided a set of possibilities for
negotiating and interpreting actions. Self-narratives enabled the ‘reconfiguration of time’ (Ricœur);
they were platforms for authors to reflect on the course of their lives in relation to the passage of the
time. Autobiographers had to rearrange their own pasts in order to represent time textually and, in
doing so, they faced considerable challenges.2
This article focuses on sixteenth-century Augsburg and, more precisely, on the Schwarz family.
The southern German imperial city was a centre of commerce and art as well as a hub of religious
and social debate. These contexts shaped the rise and decline of the Schwarz family, whose most
prominent member, Matthäus (1497–1574), served the famous Fugger merchants as a head
accountant. His son Veit Konrad (1541–1587/8) had studied in Augsburg, Verona and Venice, and
also he worked for the Fuggers. On 2 January 1561, more than three years after his Italian sojourn,
the 19-year-old Veit decided to depict his life in a manuscript, called the ‘Little Book of Clothes’
(Klaidungsbuechlin). He commissioned Jeremias Schemel to depict the stages of his life, the clothes
that he had worn and future events. In order to ensure the enterprise’s continuation, the first
miniatures were bound together with a number of blank pages. Yet after just two months, the
Klaidungsbuechlin came to an abrupt end: the last drawing is dated 13 March 1561. The pages
thereafter remained blank and the book tells us nothing about what happened to Veit subsequently.
Veit followed in the footsteps of his father, who had commissioned an analogous ‘Book of
Fashion’. In comparison to the increasing attention that recent scholarship has given to Matthäus,
Veit’s Klaidungsbuechlin has been strangely neglected. Ulinka Rublack and Maria Hayward have
recently edited both albums in colour for the first time, which allows further research on Veit’s
album.3 A comparison of the albums of father and son is extremely revealing. Matthäus
commissioned 137 portraits, whereas Veit commissioned only forty-one. Consequently, the art
historian August Fink deduced that Matthäus should be regarded as the ‘driving force’ behind Veit’s
self-narrative. The father’s notes on his son’s deeds served as a template for the entries of Veit; as
did the letters that Veit had sent his parents from Italy, which Matthäus preserved. This apparent
modelling led Fink to make further speculations that have shaped the historiography on the Schwarz
family. Fink maintained that Matthäus predetermined the conceptualization, design and sequence of
pictures in Veit’s manuscript. The fatherly advice might also have caused the son to use a larger
format for his own manuscript, 23.5 x 16 centimetres instead of 16 x 10 centimetres. Fink infers that
the father ‘drew up guidelines’, which ‘the obedient son obeyed’, and that Veit soon lost interest in
the project: he ‘lacked the initiative for the regular continuation’ of the manuscript. Fink defines
Veit’s self-narrative as a ‘side effect’ of Matthäus’s manuscript, relevant merely for research on
costumes. Consequently, many scholars have examined Matthäus’s album, but Veit’s volume is
rarely mentioned.4
This article challenges the interpretation of Veit’s album as a product of minor value and a mere
side phenomenon to Matthäus’s manuscript. Rublack has argued that the father’s ‘Book of Fashion’
was part of his broader attempt to shape the familial memory. His paternal grandfather, Ulrich
Schwarz the Elder, had held the office of mayor of Augsburg. He was accused of corruption, an
accusation that led to his public hanging in 1478. This episode cast a shadow over the family’s
honour that lasted for generations. Ulrich’s son commissioned a painting of the family members for
a significant local church to restore their honour. The hanged mayor’s grandson Matthäus then
adopted that strategic usage of objects to further address the problem: he commissioned paintings, a
prayer book and medals. In addition, he drafted manuals on bookkeeping and kept a diary.
Matthäus’s attempts to create a legacy succeeded, and he was ennobled in 1541.5 His interest in
producing things for shaping his commemoration doubtlessly influenced the way in which his son
Veit handled artefacts. Veit’s personal motto even states that each dead man will be soon forgotten
in spite of his writings that show ‘what character (ding) he was’.6 Hayward stresses the impact of
Matthäus’s ‘clothing legacy’ on Veit’s album. She highlights the significance of wardrobes and their
proper usage for the family’s status. By ‘exercising choice’, father and son mastered the careful
staging of materials in particular social settings for personal purposes.7
Rublack’s remarks on the ‘fascination with innovation and tradition’ in the production of the
material and visual culture of Matthäus’s ‘self-observing display’ offer new insights with regard to
the temporal implications of Veit’s self-fashioning.8 I will argue that Veit commissioned his album
in a similarly innovative way in order to document his skills in time management. He decided to
circumvent the invisibility of time by experimenting with its representation through an
autobiographical lens. Veit made the material culture of temporality an essential part of the visual
culture of his self-representation. I interpret the abrupt ending of Veit’s album as a deliberate result
of particular social notions of temporality that were centred on the household. In consequence of
this household-centred idea of time, the focus of previous research on the father-son relationship
must be expanded to take siblings into account. The Schwarz family rated amongst the largest in
Augsburg. Matthäus had thirty siblings; Veit had one sister, Barbara Agnes, and an elder brother,
Matthäus Ulrich, named after their grandmother and their father and grandfather respectively. 9
Reading Veit’s album in the context of the entire family’s social relations and its material culture
leads me to define Veit’s album as a means to document his abilities in time management. I argue
that the material, textual and visual documentation of one’s skills in time management were crucial
in shaping meanings of the self and of one’s own life in sixteenth-century Germany.
In the Schwarz household, astrological concepts of time connected timing practices and self-
perception with birth. The first part of this article therefore explores how Veit and Matthäus
commemorated their births in everyday material culture. Since the moment of birth was thought to
reveal a person’s embeddedness in wider cosmological settings, that moment had to be approached,
analysed and interpreted again and again throughout life. The moment of birth, recharged with
meanings in the course of later life, was thought to determine future events. Time knowledge about
one’s birth and its transition and shaping through a culture of commemoration were thus crucial to
Augsburg citizens. Veit’s album is part of that memorial culture of birth-related interpretations of
time.
The article’s second part outlines the album’s usage to document Veit’s skills in time
management. I argue that the manuscript’s purpose was to document Veit’s transition from
childhood to manhood by presenting him as capable of identifying significant moments that could
be used to shape future time. Given the importance of the household and childbirth for early modern
notions of time and time management, the fact that he waited in vain for the foundation of his own
household through marriage and fatherhood might be considered a key reason that the album
remained unfinished. Since his brother challenged Veit’s skills in realizing proper moments for
manly action, the album’s abrupt ending might have been a response by Veit and thus a deliberate
decision to act, by finishing the album, in accordance with certain ideas about temporality and
masculinity. The manuscript reflects the everyday challenges and limits of time management.
This article’s focus on notions of time in Veit’s Klaidungsbuechlin serves a twofold aim. It shows
how Veit understood, dated, practised, interpreted and lived ‘time’, and how this sheds new light on
the father-son relationship. This focus will correct the ‘side effect’ assessment, which has for far too
long been perpetuated in the historiography. The limited nature of the son’s volume then no longer
appears to be the result of an assumed lack of leisure and interest; rather, the abrupt ending appears
to be the logical outcome of a particular ‘time knowledge’.10

II: Timing and Aging under a Birth Sign

One of the most prominent topics that links the manuscript projects of the father and the son is the
description of timing, dating and aging. Key issues—such as the father-son relationship and the
family’s affiliation with the Fuggers—are illuminated by writing about time. The last miniature in
the father’s album, for instance, portrays Matthäus, aged ‘63 ½ years and 25 days’ and wearing a
black cloak to honour Anton Fugger, who had died two days earlier, ‘at 8 o’clock in the morning’ on
14 September 1560. Veit also wears mourning clothes on the title page of his album in
commemoration of Anton Fugger’s death. Yet, his appearance differs slightly from his father’s dress
code, a fact that the son felt compelled to explain in a written comment: following a month of
mourning, Veit opened his cloak, wore his sword and sported his hat in a stylish manner. However,
Veit emphasized that he was adhering to the social rules of timing for mourning dress. A few
months later, on ‘February 17, 1561, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon’, Veit finally ‘threw the mourning
dress down on the ground’ and went to a wedding feast. Accordingly, the album’s title-page
represents him dealing skilfully with the social regulation of dressing and the increasing desirability
of black Spanish fashion (fig. 1). Veit wished to stress his understanding of appropriate time-related
dress codes and the increasing pace of foreign fashion trends and their adoption in Germany; he
wanted to record the ephemerality of the present for the future.11
To fulfil his ambition Veit recorded time diligently and in a detailed manner. However, exact
knowledge about one’s own birth was a precondition for such fine-grained dating practices. Such
birth-referential timing shaped early modern understandings of life and personhood within social
groups and within a wider cosmological perspective. Veit used a specific astrological notion to
measure his age in relation to his own birth. He presented that method of timing by emphasizing his
parents’ genitures—the horoscopes that show the planetary constellations at the time of birth—in
the miniatures of his father, Matthäus, and his mother, Barbara (figs. 1–3). Veit noted that the
pictures represented his parents’ appearances at the time of his own birth, when they were aged
‘44 years, 215 days and 6 ½ hours’ and ‘34 years and around 2 months’ respectively.12 Jeremias
Schemel, the artist whom Veit commissioned to paint his life, drew upon oil paintings by Christoph
Amberger, who had portrayed Matthäus and Barbara around twenty years previously, just a few
months after Veit’s birth and Matthäus’s ennoblement. Both portraits of Barbara figure a geniture
that records the constellations of the stars at the time of her birth. A similar astrological scheme is
provided in the drawing and the oil painting of Matthäus; furthermore, a note that lies on the
windowsill dates the completion of the painting in relation to the birth of the figure portrayed. The
cartellino documents the time of both events according to astrology and the calendar:
19 February 1497, 18 ½ hours [astrological time of the birth]
20 February 1497, 6 ½ hours [calendar time of the birth]
22 March 1542, 16 ½ hours [astrological time of the completion of the painting]
23 March 1542, 4 ½ hours [calendar time of the completion of the painting].
‘VERITAS’ declares Matthäus boldly in calculating his age as 45 years, 30 days and 21 ¾ hours.13
This birth-referential calculation must have been somehow attractive to Veit because ‘arithmetic and
accounting … were not regarded as mechanical but subtle skills of people with exceptionally fine
minds’.14 Veit had recourse to existing visual displays that manoeuvred this particular self-
fashioning of Matthäus. Now the son used these paintings for his own album, yet he had not simply
commissioned their copying but was actively engaged in their innovative adaptation.
Matthäus and Veit were not alone in their use of detailed timing practices; rather their depictions
allowed the sitters to situate themselves within the context of scholarly education and loyal
proximity to the Fuggers. Countless sixteenth-century paintings and prints of south German origin
explicitly stated the sitter’s age, especially if the portrait was to be distributed amongst family and
friends during his or her lifetime. A woodcut of Johann Schöner, the famous Protestant astrologer,
for instance, also depicted his geniture. Affected by scholarly Italian traditions, such horoscopes
demonstrated erudition, piety and education.15
Although sixteenth-century Europe was saturated with horoscopes, Amberger very rarely painted
genitures. Rublack has therefore ascribed Matthäus’s inclusion of horoscopes to Matthäus’s
personal influence on the production of the paintings; this supposition has been strengthened by an
infrared examination which indicates that the preparatory sketches were in general sparsely
executed, while the inscriptions, in contrast, were drawn in detail before the portrait was finally
painted.16 We can assume that Matthäus was actively engaged in the visual and textual presentation
of his practices of timing in general and in the picture’s emphasis of the astrological significance of
birth-referential dating in particular.
Matthäus’s self-conscious decision to represent himself via this particular mode of dating reflects
his proximity to his employer’s family, amongst whom astrological and birth-referential dating
practices enjoyed enormous popularity. The Fuggers held an extensive collection of horoscopes.
Octavian Secundus (1549–1600) and Philipp Eduard (1546–1618) both collected astrological and
astronomical books; the latter even commissioned a geniture in 1571. The Bohemian mathematician
Cyprian Leowitz (1514–1574) dedicated two of his treatises to Georg Fugger (1518–1569). Leowitz
also drew up nativity horoscopes for Jakob Fugger (1459–1525) and his nephew Anton (1493–
1560), both employers of Matthäus Schwarz. In 1567, Anton Fugger’s second son, Hans (1531–
1598), commissioned his horoscope in Antwerp; he acquired another geniture in Prague about
fifteen years later.17 The case of Octavian Secundus furthermore provides a key insight into the
Fuggers’ storage and usage of such horoscopes. In his house the procurator civitatis of Augsburg
owned a desk with twenty-one drawers. In one drawer, he stored his geniture and those of his father,
brothers, brother-in-law and four sons together with a genealogy of the family. Octavian Secundus
bound his children’s horoscopes in separate volumes and commissioned one for his son Ferdinand
in Venice, paying fifteen Kreuzer for it. He also added handwritten notes to his genitures, including
dates of marriage and death.18
The practice of stating one’s own age with regard to the exact time of birth and its astrological
significance enabled Matthäus to emphasis his proximity and loyalty to local elites. Several of his
portrait medals—some were coined by medallists who had established their reputation through
working for the Fuggers—state Matthäus’s age, while his personal prayer book begins with a telling
portrait drawn by Narcissus Renner. The painter noted the month when the first page of the
manuscript was produced in reference to the owner’s baptismal date and age. Additionally,
Matthäus commissioned his ‘Book of Fashion’, which starts with a heraldic emblem followed by a
miniature portrait of himself, on his own birthday and in the same year that his prayer book was
produced. The first sentence of the ‘Book of Fashion’ directly focuses on the relationship between
person and age: ‘Today, 20th February, 1520, I, Matheus Schwartz of Augsburg, was just 23 years
old.’19 From then on, he stated his age in a detailed manner and recorded that the miniatures show
him, for instance, aged ‘16 years, minus 41 days’, or at age ‘17 years, 8 months, 4 days’.20
The social importance of astrological and birth-referential timing practices also had an impact on
Veit’s manner of temporal description. The commencement of the Klaidungsbuechlin is dated to
‘the second day of January in the year 1561 at two o’clock in the afternoon’, and Veit used this
statement in order to demonstrate his skills in calculating birth-referential timings by referring
explicitly to the veritas-exclamation of his father. Veit was then ‘aged just 19 years, 68 days, and
6 ½ hours … Anyone who doesn’t believe it shall recalculate.’21 Veit’s confident timing of events
with regard to his own birth served to demonstrate his astrological knowledge and skill in
calculation. It also accentuated the son’s continuation of the work of his father, who had served as
the Fuggers’ bookkeeper and had composed theoretical treatises on double-entry accounting. The
calculation of birth-referential dates presented father and son as ‘people with exceptionally fine
minds’, skilled in arithmetic and astrology.22
Both Matthäus and Veit established temporal relations between the present and their own births
when dating events, and they thereby constructed familial lineage and their place within social
groups. Dating birth as exactly as possible (with regard to year, month, day, hour, minute and the
constellation of celestial bodies) was crucially important for situating one’s life cycle and the self in
an overall cosmological context when treating temporal links between past and future as well as
spatial links between earthly life and heaven. Precise dating of microcosmic contexts, such as the
time of birth, enabled protagonists to draw inferences about the overall macrocosmic course of
events. In this sense, the constellations of stars and planets at a given moment were part of the
comprehensive celestial and cosmological hermeneutic that conveyed a message given by God
about the flow of time. The heavenly messages were decipherable for those who understood the
grammar of heavenly signs—the astrologers.23
A consideration of sixteenth-century astrologers and their printed treatises not only provides an
idea of the contemporary significance of birth-referential dating practices, but also demonstrates the
close links that Veit established with this group of experts in deciphering the astrological
importance and cosmological meanings of time. Amongst these experts one, Nikolaus Rensberger,
drew particular attention to the social meanings of dating birth correctly in a comprehensive printed
manual. The fact that Rensberger dedicated his ASTRONOMIA Teutsch (‘German Astronomia’) to
his ‘honourable and favourable Junker and patron Veit Konrad Schwarz’ emphasizes the
significance that birthdays and birth-referential practices of timing and dating had for Veit. The
astrologer and mathematician stated that the young Augsburg patrician had ‘a particular willing
appeal, pleasure and love’ for the art of astrological birth-dating.24
The intricately comprehensive ASTRONOMIA Teutsch, published in Augsburg in 1569,
explained to its readership the possibilities and benefits of correct birth-referential dating. First,
Rensberger assembled instructions and tables useful for defining the exact temporal moment of
one’s birth and its attendant celestial constellations. Secondly, the treatise gives guidance about how
to write and interpret a geniture. Thirdly, the mathematician promised to explain the results that
such horoscopes might give concerning ‘what will befall the new-born in each future year, month,
day and hour’. Rensberger claimed that the Ptolemaic ‘art’ of making and interpreting horoscopes
enabled experts to glimpse divine creation. God’s constellation of celestial bodies, and the
temperaments attributed to them at the time of birth, was thought to inform astrologers of ‘what
might happen in the future’, because ‘just like a physician is looking for reasons, signs and effects
in the matter of human bodies, the astrologer is deducing them from the orb’.25 In his treatise, which
was c. 400 folios long, Rensberger even defined the exact dating of births as an important
responsibility of an ideal paterfamilias:
If an astrologer shows the temperamentum and complexion of this and that child to the
housefather so that it becomes clear that the one child will be of this nature and the other
child will be of that, the astrologer has rendered no small service to the paterfamilias with
such a statement. Because this helps to rear children much better, enabling the housefather to
promote the good nature and correct the bad one.26
Rensberger was not alone in postulating the social esteem of recording and interpreting the
time of birth; in fact, the concept was quite common. Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) also
defined such a practice as a paternal obligation given that, for him, even a purchase of donkeys
required the buyer to record the time of the deal.27 We encounter the paternal focus on genitures of
newborn children in sixteenth-century Augsburg also, specifically in Veit’s milieu. Octavian
Secundus Fugger commissioned the horoscopes of his sons. Matthäus Schwarz, too, recorded the
time of his son’s birth into a ‘Little Book of Children’ (Kinderbuchlin); the father also noted herein
Veit’s (mostly naughty) deeds. This book later served Veit as a reference for his Klaidungsbuechlin.
Father and son thus both diligently observed the socially accepted rules of timing, as Rensberger
had pointed out. Rensberger even recommended that adults date the exact time of their own births,
emphasizing the utility of tables of houses and of the movements of the planets, which were printed
in his treatise as ready reckoners. According to the astrologer, who was well-known to Veit,
genitures were useful to adults for three reasons: first, they promoted a better self-command of
one’s position within an estate-based society (sich selbs also regieren); second, knowledge of one’s
birth date prevented one from learning or doing things against one’s nature; third, knowing one’s
own nativity helped promote good propensities and suppress bad proclivities.28
Birthdays must have been pivotally important for the Schwarz family, given the links between
Rensberger and Veit and the precision that the latter used in recording the time of his birth.
Amberger painted Barbara on her thirty-fifth birthday and her husband also had himself portrayed
on his birthdays. Hans Maler was instructed to paint Matthäus ‘as I had just turned 29 years old’. A
portrait medal, coined for his fifty-fourth birthday, also underlined Matthäus’s faith in the deeper
cosmology of the world by including his personal motto: OMNE QVARE SVVM QVIA (Each
‘wherefore’, it’s ‘therefore’). He commissioned his prayer book and the ‘Book of Fashion’ on his
twenty-third birthday; Matthäus’s miniatures portrayed him on occasion of his twenty-third (twice),
twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth, thirty-first, thirty-second, thirty-third, thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth, forty-
first, forty-second (twice), forty-third, forty-fourth and fifty-fifth birthdays. The Schwarz household
clearly attributed great significance to remembrance of birthdays and the performance of
appropriate social rites such as celebrations of childbirth in neighbourhood and familial
communities and to the exchange of presents such as drawings, medals or cakes on such days.29
In sharp contrast to his father, Veit did not commission a birthday portrait for his
Klaidungsbuechlin. Scholars have therefore assumed that Veit was uninterested in his birthdays;
however, this contrast is insufficient basis for making a judgement concerning attitudes towards
genitures and birthdays.30 The quantity of Matthäus’s painted miniatures is, in fact, the result of his
having dedicated forty years to drawing-up his ‘Book of Fashion’, whereas Veit only dedicated
three months to compiling his manuscript. During that time he did not celebrate his birthday, and
thus had no opportunity to commission a birthday portrait for his autobiographical venture.31
In fact, Veit’s album reveals his profound interest in birthdays, which corresponded to
Rensberger’s prominent reference to Veit’s commitment to astrological practices of timing. Veit
imagined nativity, creation, astrology and the measurement of time as mutually interrelated
phenomena for two reasons: first, horoscopes served to date events and activities; secondly,
inferences could be drawn from genitures to situate microcosmic acts within a macrocosmic
context. Veit not only copied his parents’ genitures from Amberger’s paintings, but also added notes
on the celestial constellations, and he even transformed their astrological conceptualization.
Whereas Amberger painted a horoscope focussed on the year 1542, which related Matthäus’s
nativity (1497) to the date of the portrayal (1542), Veit wrote his father’s date of birth in the centre
of the horoscope and noted the calendar time with regard to the weekday and hour.32 Veit also used
the notes that Matthäus had made on his father’s age at death to calculate the days that he had lived
in order to reconstruct a geniture for his grandfather. Even though Veit miscalculated his
grandfather’s birthday by one year, one month and two days, the note proves the importance of a
family member’s death for birth-referential records. Anna Viatis, the wife of the famous Nuremberg
merchant Bartholomäus Viatis, similarly stated in her self-narrative that her child died on
29 November 1593, ‘a Thursday, ¼ hours before the day started—the day endured 8 hours, the
night 16 hours—; aged 3 years, 37 weeks and 2 days. Praise the Lord!’33
In depicting his parents at the time of his own birth, Veit also adapted the drawing of his father
and pregnant mother which had featured in his father’s ‘Book of Fashion’. We should consider the
insertion of pre-natal portraits to be a conscious decision by Matthäus and Veit with regard to birth-
referential timing, since in the early modern period the behaviour of parents and pregnant women
before childbirth was considered significant for the circumstances of the upcoming birth and the
future life.34 From his parents, Veit also adopted the practice of birth-referential dating in his portrait
medals and his Klaidungsbuechlin, for instance in dating the beginning of his Italian travels at age
‘13 years, 4 2/3 months’ or when he observed that when he had left Venice he had been ‘aged
14 years, 5 months and around 12 days’.35 Veit thus not only copied time statements which existed
in the familial household, but also approached them in an innovative manner by drafting new
calculations and adopting visual displays of horoscopes and birth-referential times for his own
album.
Such birth-referential dating required complex calculations. Veit certainly used household
artefacts to assist him in dating, structuring and indicating time. They enabled him to measure,
record and use time appropriately and to calculate time with regard to his own birth sign, Scorpio.
Amongst such artefacts were astronomical treatises, such as the one by Rensberger that wished to
give guidance so that ‘anybody … might easily be able to give a judgement [Judicium] on his time
of birth on his own’. Many of such treatises, under titles like ‘Practica Teütsch’, had been published
in Augsburg during previous decades. Accordingly, the horoscopes commissioned by Veit coincided
with the regulations and instances given by Rensberger.36 The Schwarz family might also have
possessed a copper compendium as produced by craftsmen for the calculation of the movements of
celestial bodies at a specific time and location. Matthäus had invested in a sand glass, which
counted eight minutes, which he proudly displayed in one portrayal; he likewise gave a mechanical
golden watch to Veit, which his son wore on his chest.37
Practices of dating therefore relied on a material culture of timing. Another miniature in Veit’s
Klaidungsbuechlin, which depicts a baby in a bassinet bearing the initials of Jesus Christ (fig. 4),
shows that wall calendars also indicated time in the Schwarz household. Veit’s wet-nurse, midwife
and mother are drawn next to him, and a framed almanac sheet illustrates time and its usage. The
wall calendar contains four columns and eleven lines, with illegible notes in black and red ink,
which probably recorded biblical references and saints’ and feast days and likely contained useful
practical notes for everyday life, such as statements on weather, climate, humoral pathology or
medicine.38 Veit also possessed a monthly writing-calendar. Here he recorded the autobiographical
notes which helped him reconstruct and authorize later temporal statements: he used the calendar to
annotate some drawings in his Klaidungsbuechlin. This culture of note-taking facilitated the
complex calculations that were necessary for exact birth-referential dating practices. 39
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writing-calendars, such as the one Veit used, were in high
demand. As late as 1670, Hans J. C. von Grimmelshausen’s satire ‘Eternal Calendar’ featured
Simplicissimus lamenting the impossibility of choosing the ‘right calendar’ in a bookshop: ‘the old,
the new, the writing or the farmer’s calendar; the one for the learned peasant, the Welper, the Gold=
and Galgenmeyer, or the main calendar, the almanac of war, peace, history, medicine, herbs,
prodigies, the house, or who knows what calendar!’ The utility of such calendars was apparent to
everyone. They recorded natural time and indicated its social significance, for example giving
attendance times at churches and town halls. Contemporaries recognized the power of ‘calendar-
making’ (Calender=Macherey): its effects on the life, actions, thinking, memory and feelings of
people.40 It is thus no coincidence that Veit depicted the wall calendar in the miniature (fig. 4) that
immediately followed his own and his parents’ portraits. Prominently displaying the year 1541, the
sheet almanac emphasized Veit’s detailed temporal description of his birth:
On October 30, 1541, on Sunday morning between one and two o’clock after the calendar or
Saturday, October 29, 13 hours, 30 minutes in astronomical terms, I, Veit Conratt Schwartz,
was born according to my dear father’s little book, called the ‘The Children’s Book’ … This
1541st year the Sunday-letter was b, the golden number III, the sun-circle X, the Roman
Zins-figure XIIII; there were IX weeks and I day between the day of Christ and the herrn-
fasnacht; between Candlemess and faßnacht were XXVJ days.41
The textual and pictorial representation of Veit’s birth contains additional textual and visual
references that helped him convey his understanding of both the cosmology of time and the
astrological importance of his birth. The miniature that commemorates Veit’s date of birth invokes a
contemporary woodcut illustration of the birth of the Weißkunig (White/Wise King)—the
protagonist in one of Emperor Maximilian I’s (1459–1519) many autobiographical writings, which
negotiated his self-fashioning and memory in the tradition of heroic epics via illustrated texts.
Although a direct influence cannot be firmly established, it is highly probable that Matthäus’s and
Veit’s manuscripts were influenced by Maximilian I’s texts, which had contributed to a corpus of
urban and mercantile writings and visual artefacts that influenced in turn the production of the two
‘Books of Fashions’. Matthäus was, in fact, in contact with the son of the Weißkunig woodcut’s
printer; furthermore, an equestrian portrait of Matthäus makes pictorial references to the emperor’s
autobiographical enterprises.42
Veit made clear pictorial quotations through the spatial arrangement, the bassinet and the
presentation of the baby (figs. 4–5). However, whereas Veit emphasized the relationship between
his birth and its celestial constellations via a detailed description and wall calendar, the Weißkunig
woodcut shows a night-time firmament, with a crescent moon and stars shining a light onto the
newborn child. A woodcut by Hans Burgkmair (1473–1531) illustrates a text that, like Veit’s,
emphasizes the interrelations of microcosm and macrocosm. Maximilian I’s nativity in the sign of
Mercury and Mars portrays the emperor as a truly virtuous Christian monarch whose birth was
accompanied by the remarkable appearance of a comet as ‘a sign … of the child’s future
governance [Regirung]’.43 The emperor’s ‘Latin Autobiography’ notes the celestial impact on his
life by making a connection between the movement of the stars at the time of his birth and the siege
of Vienna (1462). God’s cosmological nexus of celestial bodies and the Weißkunig woodcut itself
are both entitled ‘time’ (zeit). The word is defined as portending a ‘timely’, or just, governance,
whereby the figures of time and emperor are merged: ‘I name and call the young white/wise king in
his actions not a human’, the narrator states, ‘but I call him time’ for he ‘resembles’ it.44 Veit was
clearly making a similar statement about his own cosmological understanding of time and his birth
by citing these pictorial and textual references.
If a nativity was considered to be the ‘mirror’ of the self’s embeddedness in time (as Rensberger
claimed), what would Veit have seen in the personal mirror of his own geniture? Veit ought to have
been—at least in part—pleased with the meaning that Rensberger’s treatise ascribed to his birth
horoscope. The presence of Jupiter and Venus in the ‘strong’ first and fourth houses foretold a long
life, as did the presence of the sun and moon in the third and seventh houses. The pars fortunae—a
particular constellation of sun, moon and ascendant in the zodiac—in the ninth house indicated a
‘just human and clergyman, who does not bother himself with worldly things’. The presence of
Mercury and the sun in the third house was particularly promising—this constellation predicted that
the potentate would grant Veit an elevated position, which would entail many honourable and
prestigious journeys, and that he would enjoy commercial success and the support of honest
brothers. The presence of Venus in the fourth house announced future wealth and prosperity and
prophesized that Veit’s father would mourn for his mother after her death for a long time. The moon
in the seventh house was furthermore considered to foretell that Veit would be very successful in
dealing with women and with his enemies.45
Veit’s geniture also indicated, however, future misfortunes, as he was probably aware, although
he chose not to mention them in his Klaidungsbuechlin. The presence of Saturn in the second house
usually foretold wealth; however, as Veit had been born during the night, it instead predicted that he
would suffer ‘many illnesses, exertions, and work’, and that he would be ‘mean’. There were other
unfavourable omens that the ‘astronomically literate’ Veit neglected to mention: for instance, being
born under the sign of the Scorpio (♏) predicted that he would suffer ‘evil and hard diseases’ and
that his nature would be ‘cold, humid, nocturnal, phlegmatic and womanish’. The presence of Mars
in the first house foretold a talent in employing arms, but it also predicted that Veit would be both
profligate and dishonourable. Veit further glossed over the fact that being born in the ascendant of
Virgo (♍) predicted high office, wealth and artistic talent, but also sexual infidelity.46
The comparison between Veit’s narrative and his birth-referential astrological predictions reveals
the complex and ambiguous options that sixteenth-century astrology offered for the interpretation of
life. The moment of birth indicated possible future actions and also provided a means for
interpreting both the past and the future. The minute of birth combined celestial constellations and
God’s omnipotence into a plan of life that transformed the future into a feasible experience. The
retrospective interpretation of that experience was itself ambiguous. Many scholars dismiss early
modern astrology as superstitious, unscientific nonsense; however, such a reading precludes the
insights that horoscopes and genitures offer for understanding the interrelated social perceptions of
the self and time in early modern Germany. Astrological statements must be treated as historical
practices and tools for shaping the meaning of self. Genitures and horoscopes located the time of
one’s birth in a wider cosmology; thus the moment and the course of time interacted with the
meaning of life and the concept of self.

III: Missed and Anticipated Moments, Temporal Instants and Intervals

I have thus far underlined the importance of birth in sixteenth-century interpretations of life—the
impact of a distinct moment on the course of time. I will now examine how the flow of time shaped
sixteenth-century notions of specific moments, and the extent to which this perception influenced
notions of the self. The transformation of a youth into a man forms the essential narrative of Veit’s
Klaidungsbuechlin. Veit had to determine key moments in his self-narrative to describe and depict
this process; in so doing he addressed both missed moments and moments awaited. I will argue that
an examination of this process of self-narrative reveals the importance and limitations of individual
skill in managing a proper balance between instants and intervals. This ability permitted Veit to
demonstrate his proficiency in identifying moments that were fitting for action and for recording.
‘Dating’ will here be understood as a specific means of timing (zeiten) and as a cultural practice
used to negotiate relations between moments and periods within specific social and historical
settings. ‘Time’ itself is invisible, as Elias noted. The visibility of time exists solely in its effects on
artefacts and people, in moments of passed time. Consequently, rotating clock-hands do not show
the ‘time’; rather they represent the standardized movement of a socially accepted measuring
instrument.47 Renaissance theorists were also aware of these characteristics of time, and they too
addressed the ambiguity of time between visibility and invisibility, existence and absence.
Philosophical treatises written around 1600 sometimes defined tempus (‘time’) solely in relation to
past and future phenomena, and even excluded the present entirely. Some theorists also discussed
whether the existence of time could be assumed at all. Renaissance debates on fortuna (‘fortune’)
asked whether time could be controlled.48 Dating practices have to be considered, in light of such
theoretical debates in Renaissance philosophy and recent sociology, as early modern attempts to
classify vague temporal moments within socially accepted descriptive patterns.
Printed (and widely circulated) tables of the movements of celestial bodies allowed people
to define the astrological qualities of temporal moments both retrospectively and prospectively. 49
But what if the right moment to act, or to refrain from acting, passed by without having been
recognized as a truly momentous moment? Veit depicts such a missed moment in his
Klaidungsbuechlin. A miniature depicting Veit aged ‘14 years and 2 months’ (fig. 6) portrays him
residing in Verona in December 1555. The caption reads that the apprentice, dressed in a
flamboyant white costume with fashionable stripes, dots and zigzag lines, went to the household of
his master aiming to appeal to the master’s daughter ‘Honesta’ and his five unmarried nieces. The
white colour of the costume, Veit states, ‘suited a young fellow best’. Tight-fitting leg garments, a
black belt and a prominent codpiece were intended to demonstrate his masculinity. 50
Matthäus Ulrich, Veit’s elder brother who had also been educated in Italy, scribbled a sardonic
note onto the page with his brother’s masculinizing self-presentation sometime between spring 1561
and 1565. He played upon the meaning of Honesta’s name as ‘honesty’ in Italian (onestà) in order
to satirize Veit’s amorous adventures. In the tradition of Venetian satirical poems, Matthäus Ulrich
stated that Honesta shed countless tears after the departure of Veit, who later agonized about their
meaning. She remained honourable and chaste, though unwillingly. When his pubescent brother
realized the quandary, Matthäus Ulrich continues, it was too late. Each celebration produced great
sadness in Veit, whose ‘tail [i.e. “cock”] grows in the meantime’. Veit’s brother described him as
being ‘such a simple-minded … sheep’ that he only realized the lady’s admiration for him when it
was already too late. Matthäus Ulrich thus accused the younger Veit of temporal mismanagement
and of having missed the proper moment to act.51
It is unclear whether Matthäus Ulrich wrote his comment into his brother’s manuscript before or
after Veit had decided to cancel the project. The contested sexual honour of the younger brother
might be a reason for the abrupt ending of the Klaidungsbuechlin, since Matthäus Ulrich had
mocked Veit’s claim to masculinity, which was an issue of pivotal significance for his self-
representation. In obvious parallels to the father’s ‘Book of Fashion’, the entire album aimed to
‘stylize’ Veit ‘as a man’ and refers to ‘the insignia of masculinity’.52 Matthäus had commissioned
the depiction of several important moments in his developing manhood: wearing leg garments
instead of loose dresses as children usually did; the carnival; his support of his father’s commerce
(wearing a sword); his adolescent adventures; his travels through Italy; and his return and
marriage.53 But what in Veit’s album portrayed him becoming a man of honour? Veit still wore wide
shirts and skirts when, as a child ‘full of mischief’, he had bound insects on threads and taken them
for a walk. Veit outdid other pupils, who wore hose, in brawling at school, despite being dressed in
skirts. The first picture that shows Veit wearing hose depicts him as successfully learning the lute.
He is later shown in the honourable service of the Fuggers, writing their records and going to Italy,
where he engaged in more brawls, staged his first amorous ventures, and, above all, was educated.
From this point onwards, his clothes become ever more elegant. Veit even rode the horse of Hans
Jakob Fugger (1516–1575) when returned to Augsburg. He later won, and hosted, crossbow
competitions in the presence of the Fuggers and their daughters. Upon these occasions, he wore his
sword, initially only at night-time, but later also in the daytime, when he more frequently attended
weddings and called on unmarried ladies. Finally, the last miniature of Veit’s Klaidungsbuechlin
depicts him fencing (fig. 7).54
In light of Veit’s long-standing but unsuccessful pursuit of women, the fencing scene can be
considered a provisional end to the manuscript, as it partially symbolizes his transition from
childhood to manhood.55 The termination of the manuscript cannot then be interpreted as illustrating
Veit’s declining interest in his Klaidungsbuechlin, but rather suggests that Veit was waiting for an
appropriate moment to bring his ‘coming of age’ narrative to an end. Furthermore, the following
empty pages gave Veit space enough to continue the volume.56 As the household served as the ‘key
principle of the structure and orientation’ of early modern self-narratives, Veit’s marriage would
have served as the next main event in his narrative of emerging manhood.57 Matthäus, too,
commissioned a drawing upon his marriage, when he ‘was 41 years and 69 days old’, and discarded
the autobiographical records that he had so far compiled, which were called ‘“The Course of the
World”, that is to say “The Rake’s Life”’.58 The destruction of that manuscript by Matthäus on the
occasion of his marriage prompts us to consider the ending of his son’s allegedly unfinished album
a conscious decision. Veit’s marriage would have signified a moment of familial and communal
importance, for weddings served ‘as key political ritual of the urban society of Augsburg’ at a time
when the sexual reformation linked masculine maturity and respectability with marriage. With the
spread of the Reformation sexual relationships outside marriage were increasingly banished in
sixteenth-century Augsburg. This new idea of masculinity and manly maturity, linked to marriage
and legitimate offspring, also affected the Catholic household of the Schwarz family. 59 Veit surely
held high expectations for his intended marriage. He approached various women and wagered with
his friends who would be the first to marry—the stake was half of the price of a particularly
expensive outfit. However, Veit died unmarried and childless in 1587/8.60 The son of an executed
great-grandfather and an ennobled father evidently failed to fulfil his own high expectations of
marriage. Veit explicitly mentioned his disappointment about mistimed wedding aspirations:
On January 10, 1560, I first began to wear weapons during daytime. And as I was now
invited to distinguished weddings, I was quick to practice my dancing with the pretty single
women, as written in my calendar; the planet Venus fully tempted me to also flirt face-to-
face [by looking directly into a woman’s face], like a donkey [goes after] a bundle of hay.
 But I never let myself go too far out without a lantern, because I thought, I do not want to
court someone to get a child. So it is useless that I fight for the virgins who are to be
married, on reflection, as I am not yet marrying; so these same virgins would not wait for me
either, and thus [I] would have had effort and work for nothing. My age 18 years and around
2 1/2 months.61
Veit highlighted the significance of this statement for his plan of life through adding his personal
insignia, introduced with an Ecce statement, to the drawing. Indeed, Veit never married and instead
of founding his own household he lived in his parental home, first with his mother and later with his
sister and brother-in-law.62 Meanwhile, the fencing scene provided a provisional end for his
manuscript that communicated the transition of life stages. Within a ‘culture of appearance’, fencing
articulated honour and therefore represented Veit as (becoming) a man, who was accepted by his
opponent, Jorg Ulstat, and by his male peers. Matthäus, unsurprisingly, also commissioned a
portrait of himself fencing when he was around the same age as Veit.63
The abrupt ending of Veit’s album thus cannot necessarily be considered a result of his lack of
interest, but rather must be contextualized as reflecting his particular knowledge of time. The next
moment appropriate for portrayal, which would thus continue his album’s central narrative, simply
did not occur: his becoming an honourable man through marriage. It was an act of social
competence to choose the ‘right’ moments for self-representation and similarly to accept their
absence, in life and in self-narratives. Veit’s attempts to document his abilities according to proper
time management generated a heroic narrative which was challenged by his brother. Given Veit’s
own laments about the repeated mistimings of his marriage efforts, we might wonder whether he
started to doubt the possibility of timing the self in the manly mode that his album’s narrative
outlined. In fact, Veit was confronted with a variety of temporal concepts in his everyday life that
defied his control. His brother began his military service by fighting the Ottomans during the siege
of Malta in 1565. Just five years later, Matthäus Ulrich died, aged thirty-one. As a 6-year-old boy,
Veit had experienced how his father, ‘aged 51 5/6’, was confined to bed for twenty-two weeks after
suffering a stroke.64 Such untimely events had no place in a celebratory self-narrative for they
documented the limits of time management.
Identifying the right moment to act and to be depicted acting was a social skill. Veit received
parental support in his acquisition of skills in time management in general and in defining useful
temporal moments in particular. After his son’s return to Augsburg, Matthäus presented him with
clothes on New Year’s Day 1558. On the one hand, such gifts served to constitute and articulate
relationships, hierarchies, obligations and expectations in early modern group cultures. On the other
hand, New Year was traditionally a time for prayers, sermons, congratulations and blessings. After
years of absence and Italian travels, the gift symbolized the father’s appreciation of the son and
represented the latter’s successful reintegration into the Augsburg household. Matthäus
demonstrated how to use a particular moment to shape interpersonal relationships.65
Another present pointedly reflected his parents’ support for their son’s pursuit of skills in time
management: Matthäus gave Veit ‘a small striking watch’ (figs. 8–9).66 Veit’s wearing of that golden
watch on his chest fitted with a long family tradition. Matthäus commissioned a self-portrait in 1526
which showed the ‘successful 29-year-old’ wearing the family’s emblem with an hour dial and an
hourglass that was decorative rather than functional.67 This piece of jewellery did not tell the time,
but rather symbolized temporality itself. Unlike the working hourglass that Matthäus wore at his
knee, the trinket’s position on the torso made it a highly visible symbol of temporality and
ephemerality. Among the many drawings representing that piece of jewellery in the ‘Book of
Fashion’, a double page depicts Matthäus moving his hand towards it four times. Having been
portrayed on the previous page in a black mourning gown on the occasion of Jakob Fugger’s death,
the following spread illustrates his newly purchased colourful hose. The gesture of pointing at the
piece of jewellery with the family’s emblem, the dial and hourglass, symbolized familial origins,
mortality and the end of the period of mourning. Emphasizing his creativity in dealing with
temporal obligations and traditions, Matthäus documented his connoisseurship in managing time as
well as time’s futility.68
Veit’s watch, part of a family tradition, links our discussion of early modern time management
with a material culture of time and its visual and textual representation. The artefact was given an
emotional significance by its own biography. When Matthäus presented the watch to Veit, its
significance was enhanced by its production out of precious materials, its possession by people of
personal importance to Veit and its aging within the social networks that Veit belonged to. 69 Indeed,
the specific context for the artefact’s presentation as a gift is illuminating. Matthäus sent the watch
to Veit while he was in Venice for several months at the end of a two-year sojourn in Italy. The gift’s
significance as a material tool for managing the invisible flow of time in accordance with its social
implications operated on two levels: first, Matthäus had already commanded his son some months
earlier to travel to Venice, his journey’s final station; secondly, Veit’s return to Augsburg shortly
after receiving the watch illustrates the consequences of the ‘timing present’. 70 Matthäus reminded
Veit to be aware of the passing of time, to use time carefully and to return home. The chiming
mechanism reminded Veit of Augsburg and his parents’ household. In that sense, the watch
simultaneously indicated and halted time, as wearing, touching, watching or listening to it evoked
memories of past events or imaginings of what might be occurring at that particular time, or even at
a future time, in Augsburg. The gift was a means to communicate the attentive use of time and to
manoeuvre the balance between temporal intervals (the Italian journey) and the socially accepted
moment (the return to Augsburg).
Veit commissioned two drawings of himself wearing the watch. The first drawing, from June
1558, shows him in an elegant pose wearing tight-fitting hose and sleeves, a fashionable black
taffeta doublet with fancy patterns stitched onto it, and a leather hose lined with atlas (fig. 8). The
harsh contrast between the black of the clothes and the golden shine of the watch underlines the
latter’s luxury value and thereby refers to Veit’s status in a watch-literate urban community. In
Augsburg, clocks indicated time in prominent places. The cathedral had a clock from around 1300.
Both the Perlach Tower and the office of the municipal council had been adorned with clocks since
the fourteenth century. In Veit’s lifetime the municipal clock warden solemnly swore ‘to God and
the saints to faithfully regulate, keep and maintain the clock of the city day and night’, which
highlights the religious and political functions of the representation and enforcement of temporal
order. A guild of clockmakers, established in the fifteenth century, produced luxury watches for
local elites, but also attracted supra-regional esteem.71 In Augsburg and other southern German
cities alike, clockmakers produced watches that closely resembled Veit’s in shape and function.
Hans Schniep, who was active in the city of Speyer during the second half of the sixteenth century,
produced a circular gilt-brass watch (fig. 10). Its eyelet was made for a lace that enabled its owner
to wear the watch on his chest. The clock-face indicated time in relation to the hours and a chiming
mechanism turned the flow of time into an audible experience just as was the case for Veit’s
‘striking watch’ (fig. 11).72 The second miniature depicting Veit wearing the watch underlines the
artefact’s status as a representation of luxury and social order. The stylish and costly (20 gulden)
damask doublet in dyed red-brown again prominently displays the golden watch (fig. 9). Veit
commented that he ‘wanted to be dressed up [butzt]’, which he emphasized by grasping the hilt of
the citizen’s honourable sword and by wearing the watch as a mark of status and honour.73 Tellingly,
the pictures depict Veit one year and two-and-a-half years after his return to Augsburg, when he had
already worked at the Fugger’s scriptorium, had established contacts with local peers and
authorities and was dressed as an honourable citizen. The watch symbolized the stages of his life
between Venice and Augsburg, and also represented his successful social reintegration.74 Visual
representations of self timing documented an important skill—an aptitude that enabled Veit to
circumvent the invisibility of time by making the material culture of temporality an essential part of
his self-representation.

IV: Timing the Self

In early modern Germany, the moment of birth threw its shadow over the future cycle of life, but
individuals actively used practices such as dating, timing and writing to negotiate the relationship
between time and self and to promote particular autobiographical interpretations of the flow of time.
A person’s birth condensed past, present and future within a single moment whose cosmological
meanings had to be deciphered again and again throughout his or her lifetime by practices of dating.
Such interpretation encouraged social appreciation of horoscopes and genitures as valuable
practices for recording moments within time. Veit employed such timing practices to narrate his life
story and to reinforce social ties by articulating a cross-generational understanding of the self. 75
The ways in which Veit elaborated his particular life narrative provide access to early modern
understandings of temporal moments and timespans. Veit defined the temporal interrelations of life
events by interpreting their connection with the past and future flow of time; he thereby claimed
interpretative agency over temporality in accordance with the logic that has been described by
Georg Simmel: the definition of moments, or rather temporal positions (Zeitstellen), is always given
retrospectively, at a point when time has already passed; the moments might be scaled up or down
in terms of units, but they ultimately remain human constructs: no matter how minutely time is
scaled, each point in time (historisches Atom) ‘actually occupies a time line [Zeitstrecke]
continually’.76 Just as each geometrical point contains a countless number of further points, each
Zeitstelle is a construct defined by its temporal position. As a result, the relationship between
defined moments shapes a person’s sense of temporality, and the possibilities for narrating their life,
just as the location of geometrical points defines the shape of curves and lines. By defining
moments within the flow of time, Veit shaped the intelligibility of both temporality and his life. His
skills in reconfiguring time served Veit as he wrote about what Bourdieu calls a ‘practical time,
which is made up of incommensurable islands of duration, each with its own rhythm, the time that
flies by or drags, depending on what one is doing, i.e. on the functions conferred on it by the
activity in progress’.77 In that sense, writing about time and redefining its moments and intervals
was a crucial means of shaping interpretations of one’s life and self.
Veit’s attempts at defining moments and timespans also reflect, however, the ambivalence and
challenges of early modern time management. The core narrative of his album is the transition of a
youth into a man. Outlining this particular narrative in a convincing manner required considerable
competence in time management: an honourable man’s standing was defined, in part, by his social
skills in mastering time. However, Veit experienced the limits of his ability to control time. His
brother challenged Veit’s skills in time management, and thus the core pattern of his self-
representation. The album’s abrupt termination indicates that he waited in vain for the next proper
moment to be drawn, surely the wedding and the foundation of a household. The early conclusion
of his Klaidungsbuechlin did not necessarily arise from a lack of interest, but rather demonstrated a
particular manner of representing oneself in accordance with parental tradition. 78 When Veit
experienced untimely events like mistimed wedding efforts as well as the futility of time, which was
also visible in the life cycle of his father and brother, he developed a sense of the limitations of his
attempts to represent his mastery of temporality. The acceptance of his failed aspirations in time
management was itself a social competence that is evident in his conscious decision to end a life
narrative that no longer fitted his experience. His discernment, in turn, documents his ability to
consider the social implications of time management, for the repercussions were by no means
limited to the economic sphere. Like Veit, other authors of early modern self-narratives also wrote
about time in order to make sense of their lives. Self-representation, here, was itself a practice of
time management: under certain circumstances it could become meaningless, and its documentation
was therefore no longer considered a worthwhile undertaking. Writing about the self was closely
linked to writing about time, as the representation of time served an author’s self-fashioning.

University of Cambridge
sh885@cam.ac.uk

This article explores the interrelated notions of time and the self in sixteenth-century Augsburg. It
focuses on Veit Konrad Schwarz, a young Augsburg patrician, and his ‘Little Book of Clothes’
(1561). Veit circumvented the invisibility of time by making the material culture of temporality an
essential part of his self-representation. The visual representation of timing the self was a significant
skill, and self-narratives such as Veit’s served to represent a person’s connoisseurship in managing
time. The article adopts a twofold approach to the inter-relationship of self and time during the early
modern period. First, genitures, horoscopes and birthdays are shown to have been significant for the
representation of notions of time and practices of dating. Birth-referential timing shaped
understandings of life and personhood within early modern groups. Secondly, by examining how
Veit addressed both missed and anticipated moments in his manuscript’s key narrative about the
transition of a youth into a man, the article shows that managing a proper balance between moments
and timespans served to demonstrate a person’s proficiency in recognizing moments that were
appropriate for action, for description and for illustration.
*
My thanks go to Rona Gordon, Maria Hayward, Bridget Heal, Gabriele Jancke, James Lees, Regine
Maritz, Ulinka Rublack and to the journal’s peer reviewers, as well as to those who discussed my
papers presented at conferences in Berlin and Brunswick. The notes have been substantially shortened.
1
J. S. Amelang, The Flight of Icarus: Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe (Stanford,
1998); G. Jancke, Autobiographie als soziale Praxis: Beziehungskonzepte in Selbstzeugnissen des 15.
und 16. Jahrhunderts im deutschsprachigen Raum (Cologne, 2002); M. Fulbrook and U. Rublack, ‘In
Relation: The “Social Self” and Ego-Documents’, German History, 28, 3 (2010), pp. 263–72; C.
Ulbrich, H. Medick and Angelika Schaser (eds), Selbstzeugnis und Person: Transkulturelle
Perspektiven (Cologne, 2012).
2
N. Elias, Über die Zeit: Arbeiten zur Wissenssoziologie II, ed. M. Schröter (Frankfurt/M., 1988),
pp. 117, 8, 34–51, 112; P. Ricœur, Zeit und Erzählung, 3 vols., vol. 3: Die erzählte Zeit (Munich,
1991); S. Hanß, ‘“Bin auff diße Welt gebohren worden”: Geburtsdatierungen in frühneuzeitlichen
Selbstzeugnissen’, in A. Landwehr (ed.), Frühe Neue Zeiten: Zeitwissen zwischen Reformation und
Revolution (Bielefeld, 2012), pp. 105–53; A. Baggerman, R. Dekker and M. Mascuch (eds),
Controlling Time and Shaping the Self: Developments in Autobiographical Writing since the Sixteenth
Century (Leiden and Boston, 2011).
3
U. Rublack and M. Hayward, The First Book of Fashion: The Book of Clothes of Matthäus and Veit
Konrad Schwarz of Augsburg (London, 2015).
4
A. Fink (ed.), Die Schwarzschen Trachtenbücher (Berlin, 1963), pp. 43, 62, 190–7, 200f, 204f, 210–1;
P. Braunstein (ed.), Un banquier mis à nu: autobiographie de Matthäus Schwarz, bourgeois
d’Augsburg (Paris, 1992); V. Groebner, ‘Inside Out: Clothes, Dissimulation, and the Arts of Accounting
in the Autobiography of Matthäus Schwarz, 1496–1574’, Representations, 66 (1999), pp. 100–121; V.
Groebner, ‘Die Kleider des Körpers des Kaufmanns: zum “Trachtenbuch” eines Augsburger Bürgers im
16. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, 25 (1998), pp. 323–58; G. Mentges, ‘Fashion,
Time and the Consumption of a Renaissance Man in Germany: The Costume Book of Matthäus
Schwarz of Augsburg, 1496–1564’, Gender & History, 14 (2002), pp. 382–402; U. Rublack, Dressing
Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford, 2010), pp. 32–79.
5
Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, pp. 7–11.
6
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 184–5.
7
Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, pp. 28–46; quotations pp. 28, 35.
8
Ibid., p. 3.
9
Ibid., pp. 8, 16. Given that many authors of autobiographical writings mentioned their use as exempla
for children and given the parallels of Veit’s and his father’s albums, I assume that Veit had family
members such as his parents, siblings and future children in mind when producing the album.
10
A. Landwehr, Geburt der Gegenwart: eine Geschichte der Zeit im 17. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt/M.,
2014), pp. 37–40.
11
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 176, 182f, 250f; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, pp.
330, 366.
12
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 186–9; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, pp. 333–4.
13
M. Borobia, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza: Old Masters (Madrid, 2009), pp. 290f; I. Lübbeke, The
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Early German Painting. 1350–1550 (London, 1991), pp. 38–43.
14
Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, p. 8.
15
M. W. Ainsworth and J. P. Waterman, German Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1350–
1600 (New York, 2013), pp. 34f, 129, 177–83; Bavarian State Painting Collections (ed.), Alte
Pinakothek München: Erläuterungen zu den ausgestellten Gemälden (2nd edn, Munich, 1999; 1st edn,
1983), pp. 43f, 54, 56, 67f, 165–7, 252f, 278f, 281, 306f, 313f, 357f, 487–91, 521f; Borobia, Museo
Thyssen-Bornemisza, pp. 251, 255, 265, 295; D. Hess and D. Hirschfelder (eds), Renaissance—Barock
—Aufklärung: Kunst und Kultur vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Nuremberg, 2010), pp. 54, 85f,
154f, 175, 204, 213–15, 261; J. L. Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance
Art (Chicago, 1996), p. 35; R. Slenczka, ‘Die Heilsgeschichte des Lebens: Altersinschriften in der
nordalpinen Porträtmalerei des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 76, 4 (2013),
pp. 493–540; C. Emmendörffer and C. Trepesch (eds), Wunderwelt: der Pommersche Kunstschrank
(Augsburg, 2014), pp. 166–70; German National Museum Nuremberg, P27417; G. Oestmann, H.
Darrel Rutkin and K. von Stuckrad (eds), Horoscopes and Public Spheres: Essays on the History of
Astrology (Berlin, 2005); E. Garin, Astrologie in der Renaissance (Frankfurt/M., 1997); A. Grafton,
Cardano’s Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer (Cambridge, Mass., 1999); M.
Quinlan-McGrath, Influences: Art, Optics, and Astrology in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 2013).
16
Lübbeke, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, p. 38; Rublack, Dressing Up, pp. 64–6.
17
Austrian National Library Vienna [ÖNB], Cod. 10696, 10933; M. Häberlein, The Fuggers of
Augsburg: Pursuing Wealth and Honor in Renaissance Germany (Charlottesville, 2012), chapter
‘Libraries and Collections’; C. Karnehm, ‘Malvezzi contra Fugger—eine Affäre’, in J. Burkhardt (ed.),
Die Welt des Hans Fugger (1531–1598) (Augsburg, 2007), p. 99; C. Karnehm (ed.), Die
Korrespondenz Hans Fuggers von 1566 bis 1594: Regesten der Kopierbücher aus dem Fuggerarchiv,
vol. 2/1 (Munich, 2003), p. 809; N. Lieb, Octavian Secundus Fugger (1549–1600) und die Kunst
(Tübingen, 1980), pp. 256, 315; S. Wölfle, Die Kunstpatronage der Fugger, 1560–1618 (Augsburg,
2009), p. 219; G. von Pölnitz, Jakob Fugger: Quellen und Erläuterungen (Tübingen, 1951), p. 8; G.
von Pölnitz, Die Fugger (6th edn, Tübingen, 1999; 1st edn, 1959), pp. 272, 276; G. von Pölnitz and H.
Kellenbenz, Anton Fugger, vol. 3/2 (Tübingen, 1986), pp. 348f; A. Wittstock, Melancholia translata:
Marsilio Ficinos Melancholie-Begriff im deutschsprachigen Raum des 16. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen,
2011), pp. 154–5.
18
Lieb, Octavian Secundus Fugger, pp. 54–9, 263–4, 315; Pölnitz and Kellenbenz, Anton Fugger,
vol. 3/2, pp. 348–9.
19
R. von Bernuth, ‘“wer jm gůtz thett dem rödet er vbel”: natürliche Narren im Gebetbuch des
Matthäus Schwarz’, in Cordula Nolte (ed.), Homo debilis: Behinderte—Kranke—Versehrte in der
Gesellschaft des Mittelalters (Korb, 2009), pp. 411–30; R. Cermann, Katalog der deutschsprachigen
illustrierten Handschriften des Mittelalters, vol. 5, 1/2: Gebetbücher (Munich, 2002), pp. 53–62; Fink,
Trachtenbücher, pp. 10, 16, 98f; 184f; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, p. 226;
Georg Habich, Die deutschen Schaumünzen, 3 vols. (München, 1929–34), vol. 1/1, p. 23, no. 467, 469–
72, 474–8, 486, 496, 546, 793–4; Georg Habich, Das Gebetbuch des Matthäus Schwarz (Munich,
1910), pp. 10, 28, pl. V, 1, pl. XXII, 1; Lieb, Octavian Secundus Fugger, ill. 1; U. Merkl, Buchmalerei
in Bayern in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts: Spätblüte und Endzeit einer Gattung (Regensburg,
1999), pp. 329–35; Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Cod. 78 B
10.
20
Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, pp. 241, 243.
21
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 182–5; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, pp. 331–2.
22
Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, p. 8; ÖNB, Cod. 10906, 10720; E. Westermann
and M. A. Denzel (eds), Das Kaufmannsnotizbuch des Matthäus Schwarz aus Augsburg von 1548
(Stuttgart, 2011), pp. 27, 498.
23
Hanß, ‘“Bin auff diße Welt gebohren worden”’; R. W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular
Movements in Reformation Germany (London, 1987), pp. 1–16.
24
N. Rensberger, ASTRONOMIA Teutsch/ Dergleichen vormals nye in druck außgangen/ darinn
verfast seind vier Bu[e]cher […] (Augsburg, 1569), fol. {2}r, {3}r–v (12 Sept. 1568; reprints: 1569,
1570, 1575); N. Lieb, Die Fugger und die Kunst im Zeitalter der hohen Renaissance (Munich, 1958),
p. 89.
25
Rensberger, ASTRONOMIA Teutsch, fol. {3}r, {2}v, {5}r–v; C. Ptolemy, Astronomia: Teutsch
Astronomei. Von Art/ eygenschafften/ vnd wirckung. Der xij. Zeychen des Himels. Der vij. Planeten.
Der xxxvj. Himelischen Bildern vnd jren Sternen […] (Frankfurt/M., 1545).
26
Rensberger, ASTRONOMIA Teutsch, fol. {6}r.
27
E. Lallis, Zeit und Zeitlichkeit in den Libri della famiglia des Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472)
(Augsburg, 2002), p. 70. I thank Kristina Odenweller for drawing my attention to the quotation.
28
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 190f; Lieb, Octavian Secundus Fugger, p. 315; Rensberger,
ASTRONOMIA Teutsch, fol. {8}r.
29
F. Anders and E. Krull (eds), Welt im Umbruch: Augsburg zwischen Renaissance und Barock, vols. 2
(Augsburg, 1980), vol. 2: Rathaus, p. 107; Cermann, Katalog der deutschsprachigen illustrierten
Handschriften, vol. 5, 1/2, p. 54; Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 13, 16, 18, 98–100, 104f, 119, 122, 126,
129, 150–2, 154, 159, 161–5, 167f, 175; Habich, Die deutschen Schaumünzen, vol. 1/1, no. 793–4;
Habich, Gebetbuch, p. 10, plate V, 1; Lübbeke, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, p. 41; Musée du
Louvre, Département des Peintures, R.F. 1958–8; S. Ozment, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in
Reformation Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 100–121, 160; K. von Greyerz, Passagen und
Stationen: Lebensstufen zwischen Mittelalter und Moderne (Göttingen, 2010), pp. 47–69.
30
J.-C. Schmitt, L’invention de l’anniversaire (Paris, 2009), pp. 17–43.
31
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 182–5.
32
Anders and Krull, Welt im Umbruch, vol. 2, plate XI; Borobia, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, pp. 290f;
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 14f, 62, 186–91; Lübbeke, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, pp. 39–43.
33
Also, Matthäus miscalculated his age at 21 2/3 years instead of 21 1/3 years in another miniature. Fink,
Trachtenbücher, pp. 11f, 99, 118, 186–7; Municipal Archive Nuremberg, E 1/ 1905 Nr. 12, 43.
34
Ibid., pp. 99f; U. Rublack, ‘Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Female Body in Early Modern Germany’,
Past & Present, 150 (1996), pp. 90–2.
35
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 206f, 218f; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, pp. 345,
351; Habich, Die deutschen Schaumünzen, vol. 1/2, no. 1532; vol. 2/1–2, no. 2909, p. 551.
36
Rensberger, ASTRONOMIA Teutsch, fol. {1}v–{2}r, 107r, 109r; S. Heuring, Practica Teütsch/ auff
das fünfftzehendhundert vnd ainvndfünfftzigste Jar (…) (Augsburg: Valentin Otmar, 1550); Fink,
Trachtenbücher, pp. 182f, 186–9.
37
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 13, 139f, 230–1; The British Museum London, Prehistory and Europe,
1888,1201.296; H. Tait, Catalogue of Watches in the British Museum, vol. 1: The Stackfreed (London,
1987), p. 12.
38
D. Sibenbürger, Almanach nicht allein den Gelerten/ sonder auch den Kauffleuten nützlich […]
(Nürnberg 1540); O. Brunfels, Almanach ewig werend Teütsch vnnd Christlich Practick/ von dem xlj.
Jar an/ biß zu[o] end der welt […] (Augsburg, 1541; Strasbourg, 1541).
39
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 232–3; A. M. Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information
before the Modern Age (New Haven and London, 2010).
40
H. J. C. von Grimmelshausen, Des Abenteurlichen Simplicissimi Ewig=wa[e]hrender Calender […]
(Nuremberg, 1670), pp. 7, 5, 5–51; K.-D. Herbst (ed.), Verzeichnis der Schreibkalender des
17. Jahrhunderts (Jena, 2008); H. Meise, Das archivierte Ich: Schreibkalender und höfische
Repräsentation in Hessen-Darmstadt 1624–1790 (Darmstadt, 2002); H. Tersch, Schreibkalender und
Schreibkultur: zur Rezeptionsgeschichte eines frühen Massenmediums (Graz-Feldkirch, 2008).
41
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 190f; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, pp. 190, 335.
42
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 23f, 113; Mentges, ‘Fashion’, p. 390; H. Tersch, Österreichische
Selbstzeugnisse des Spätmittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit (1400–1650): eine Darstellung in
Einzelbeiträgen (Vienna, 1998), pp. 111–49.
43
Der Weiß Kunig: Eine Erzehlung von den Thaten Kaiser Maximilian des Ersten […] (Vienna, 1775),
p. 55; ÖNB, Cod. 3033, fol. 36v; Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 190–1. Regirung refers to the future rule
and a balance of the temperaments of the new-born. Rensberger, ASTRONOMIA Teutsch, fol. 8r.
44
Tersch, Österreichische Selbstzeugnisse, pp. 134, 115.
45
Rensberger, ASTRONOMIA Teutsch, fol. {7}v, 232v, 198r–199v, 232r–235r, 238v, 317v, 319r, 320v,
323v; Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos, pp. 22–37.
46
Rensberger, ASTRONOMIA Teutsch, fol. 302r, 306v, 192r–v, 218r, 227r, 228v, 316r. On the common
practice of concealing astrological details regarding one’s own birth, see Hanß, ‘“Bin auff diße Welt
gebohren worden”’, pp. 114–24.
47
Elias, Über die Zeit, pp. VII, 8, 11–14, 40–4, 76–92, 97, 114–5. Cf. Raulff, Der unsichtbare
Augenblick.
48
Cf. a conference paper by Joseph S. Freedman: S. Hanß, ‘Conference Proceeding Frühe Neue Zeiten.
Zeitkonzepte zwischen Reformation und Revolution. 22.09.2010–24.09.2010, Mainz’, H-Soz-u-Kult,
http://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-3317, 16 October 2010, pp. 3–4; M.
Edwards, Time and the Science of the Soul in the Early Modern Philosophy (Leiden, 2013); J. Assmann
et al., ‘Zeit’, in J. Ritter, K. Gründer and G. Gabriel (eds), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie,
vol. 12 (Darmstadt, 2004), col. 1224–1234; F. Buttay-Jutier, Fortuna: usages politiques d’une allégorie
morale à la Renaissance (Paris, 2008); Landwehr, Geburt der Gegenwart.
49
Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos, pp. 28f; Rensberger, ASTRONOMIA Teutsch.
50
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 212f; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, p. 348; W. Fisher,
Materializing Gender in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 59–82;
P. Simons, The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History (Cambridge, 2011).
51
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 17, 212f; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, p. 348. The
Italian translation—‘[i]ntanto la coda cresca’—demonstrates the usage of vocabulary lists by Matthäus
Ulrich. The author obviously looked up the term ‘Schwanz’, but instead of taking the vulgar and
insulting denotation as ‘penis’ (cazzo), Matthäus Ulrich used the zoological term ‘tail’ (coda). This
misinterpretation is indicative of the use of writing-calendars that often contained word lists. A note by
Veit corroborates that observation. Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 208–9, 212–3.
52
H. Wunder, ‘Wie wird man ein Mann? Befunde am Beginn der Neuzeit (15.–17. Jahrhundert)’ in C.
Eifert et al. (eds), Was sind Frauen? Was sind Männer? Geschlechterkonstruktion im historischen
Wandel (Frankfurt/M., 1996), pp. 122–55, quotation p. 130.
53
Ibid., pp. 127–35, 138; Rublack, Dressing Up, pp. 32–79; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of
Fashion, pp. 28–46; Mentges, ‘Fashion’.
54
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 192–205, 208–25, 234–59; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of
Fashion, p. 337. See the apparent parallel between the miniature showing Veit learning to play the flute
and Maler’s portrait of Matthäus as a young lute player: Musée du Louvre, Département des Peintures,
R.F. 1958–8.
55
In that sense, a wall inscription refers to wearing and using weapons as acts in the service of local
and imperial authorities. Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 258–9.
56
Ibid., pp. 43, 261.
57
G. Jancke and C. Ulbrich, ‘Vom Individuum zur Person: neue Konzepte im Spannungsfeld von
Autobiographietheorie und Selbstzeugnisforschung’, in Jancke and Ulbrich (eds), Vom Individuum zur
Person: neue Konzepte im Spannungsfeld von Autobiographietheorie und Selbstzeugnisforschung
(Göttingen, 2005), pp. 7–27, quotation p. 20; von Greyerz, Passagen und Stationen, pp. 161–96.
58
Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, pp. 312–3; Rublack, Dressing Up, pp. 58–66.
59
Groebner, ‘Kleider’, p. 345; L. Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation
Augsburg (Oxford, 1989); Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, pp. 14–18. When Anton
Fugger married (4 March 1527), Matthäus presented him a silver cup with a dating inscription which
underlines the significance of the wedding day. Lieb, Die Fugger und die Kunst, p. 87.
60
Fink, Trachtenbücher, p. 18.
61
Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, pp. 213, 359.
62
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 18, 182–5, 236–7; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, p.
21, 368.
63
H. Medick, Weben und Überleben in Laichingen, 1650–1900: Lokalgeschichte als Allgemeine
Geschichte (2nd edn, Göttingen, 1997; 1st edn, 1996), pp. 379–446. Fencing, wearing the sword,
attending shooting competitions and hunting were significant for the self-fashioning of Veit as
becoming an honourable man: Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 17f, 232–55, 258f; N. Lieb, ‘Veit Konrad
Schwartz: ein Augsburger Bildnis des 16. Jahrhunderts’, Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, n.s.
11, 3–4 (1934/36), pp. I–III.
64
Fink, Trachtenbücher, p. 17; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, pp. 175, 325–6.
65
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 228f; M. Mauss, ‘Essai sur le don: forme et raison de l’échange dans les
sociétés archaïques’ in L’année sociologique, 1 (1923/24), pp. 30–186 ; N. Z. Davis, The Gift in
Sixteenth-Century France (Oxford, 2000).
66
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 230f; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, p. 356.
67
Rublack, Dressing Up, pp. 33, 35–7.
68
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 13, 76, 128–30, 139–41, 143, 146–7; Town Council of Augsburg, EJnes
Ersamen Rahts der Statt Augspurg der Gezierd vnd Kleydungen halben auffgerichte Policeyordnung
(Augsburg, 1582), fol. 6r.
69
A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (8th edn,
Cambridge, 2010; 1st edn, 1986); U. Rublack, ‘Matter in the Material Renaissance’, Past & Present,
219 (2013), pp. 41–85; Evelyn Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy,
1400–1600 (New Haven, 2005), pp. 96–122.
70
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 206f, 218–21, 224f, 230f, 238–9.
71
Ibid., pp. 230–1; G. Dohrn-van Rossum, History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders
(Chicago and London, 1996), pp. 95, 194–5; B. Mauer, ‘Kalenderstreit und Krisenstimmung:
Wahrnehmung von Protestanten in Augsburg am Vorabend des Dreißigjährigen Krieges’, in B. von
Krusenstjern and Hans Medick (eds), Zwischen Alltag und Katastrophe: der Dreißigjährige Krieg aus
der Nähe (Göttingen, 2001), pp. 345–56; E. Groiss, ‘Das Augsburger Uhrmacher-Handwerk’, in K.
Maurice (ed.), Die Welt als Uhr: deutsche Uhren und Automaten 1550–1650 (Munich, 1980), pp. 63–
89; Lieb, Octavian Secundus Fugger, pp. 133–6, 220–1.
72
The British Museum London, Prehistory and Europe, 1958,1201.2213; Tait, Catalogue, vol. 1, pp.
45–6; Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, pp. 210, 356–7.
73
Rublack and Hayward, The First Book of Fashion, p. 360.
74
Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 226–39.
75
N. Z. Davis, ‘Boundaries and the Sense of Self in Sixteenth-Century France’, in T. C. Heller, M.
Sosna and D. E. Wellbery (eds), Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in
Western Thought (Stanford, 1986), pp. 53–63, 332–5.
76
G. Simmel, ‘Das Problem der historischen Zeit’, in Simmel, Das Individuum und die Freiheit: Essais
(Berlin, 1984), pp. 48–60, quotation p. 55. Cf. C. G. Starr, ‘Historical and Philosophical Time’,History
and Theory, 6 (1966), pp. 24–35; M. Heidegger, ‘Der Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft’,
Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, 161 (1916), pp. 415–36; G. Seibt, ‘Die Zeit als
Kategorie der Geschichte und als Kondition des historischen Sinns’, in J. Aschoff (ed.), Die Zeit:
Dauer und Augenblick (Munich, 1989), pp. 145–88.
77
P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977), p. 105; Ricœur, Zeit und Erzählung,
vol. 3; H.-G. Gadamer, ‘Über leere und gefüllte Zeiten (1969)’, in Gadamer, Kleine Schriften, vol. 4/2
(Tübingen, 1987), pp. 137–53.
78
It is therefore more than telling that Veit started his manuscript just a couple of months after Matthäus
had finished his own album. Fink, Trachtenbücher, pp. 176, 182–5.