Anonymous German printmaker
Woodcut exlibris of Veit Tuchsenhauser (d. 1553), dated 1542
[Southern Germany? 1542]
woodcut, border 175 × 144 mm, sheet 190/193 × 155 mm, dated (above, in a banderol) 1542 and lettered (below) Vitus · Tuthsenhauser · ptb9 [presbyter] · | in Straubing Doctor.
No watermark observed. In fine state of preservation.
provenance Craddock & Barnard, London (mount, pencil inscriptions, circa 1970s)
Large woodcut exlibris of Vitus (Veit, Veyt, Veith) Tuchsenhauser (Duchsenhauser, Duxenhawser, Tuthsenhauser), dated 1542, when Tuchsenhauser was Propst zu Kloster Pfaffmünster bei Straubing (diocese of Regensburg).1
Tuchsenhauser’s origin and career have yet to be satisfactorily established. He was born at Hohenpeißenberg, at unknown date, the son of Jakob Tuchsenhauser, Pfleger von Weilheim (1497–1508); graduated in 1529 Doctor of Canon Law at Ingolstadt;2 and was appointed (successively, or concurrently) Prediger in Landsberg am Lech, Pfarrer von Reichling, Frauenpfarrer in Ingolstadt (succeeding Johann Maier von Eck), Probst zu Ilmmünster, Propst zu Kloster Pfaffmünster,3 Domherr und Pfarrer of St Jakob zu Straubing (1536–1553); he died 11 April 1553.4
Nothing seems to be known of Tuchsenhauser’s library; it could be that his books became incorporated in the monastery library at Pfaffmünster, and arrived on the market in 1803, after its secularisation.5 A hand-coloured impression of this exlibris in the collection of Johann August Ritter von Eisenhart (1826–1905) was cited by Warncke (1890), then published and reproduced by Eisenhart himself, in 1893 (image), and reproduced again by Mitterwieser, in 1920; its present whereabouts are unknown. No impression of the exlibris was described by Ilse O’Dell, Deutsche und Österreichische Exlibris 1500–1599 im Britischen Museum (London 2003).
Woodcut exlibris (border 175 × 144 mm, sheet 190/193 × 155 mm)
references Friedrich Warnecke, Die deutschen Bücherzeichen (ex-libris): von ihrem Ursprunge bis zur Gegenwart (Berlin 1890), p.211 no. 2236 (impression in the collection of August von Eisenhart); [August von Eisenhart], ‘Das Tuthsenhauser’sche Bücherzeichen’ in Exlibris: Zeitschrift für Bücherzeichen, Bibliothekenkunde und Gelehrtengeschichte 3 (no. 4, October 1893), p.75 (reproduced); [August von Eisenhart], ‘Nachtrag zu Veit Tuchsenhauser (nicht Tuthsenhauser)’ in Exlibris: Zeitschrift für Bücherzeichen, Bibliothekenkunde und Gelehrtengeschichte 5 (no. 2, April 1895), pp.42–43 (link); Walter Hamilton, Dated book-plates (ex libris) with A Treatise on their Origin and Development (London 1895), p.18; Karl Emich zu Leiningen-Westerburg, German book-plates: an illustrated handbook of German & Austrian exlibris, translated by G. Ravenscroft Dennis (London & New York 1901), p.144; Alois Mitterwieser, ‘Dr. Veit Tuchsenhauser und sein Exlibris’ in Exlibris: Buchkunst und angewandte Graphik 30 (1920), pp.47–501. Hans Agsteiner, Stiftsverlegung 1581, Pfaffmünster-Straubing: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Gegenreformation und der Katholischen Reform, Beiheft zum Jahresbericht des Historischen Vereins für Straubing und Umgebung, 82. Jahrgang, 1979/80 (Straubing 1981), p.13.
2. Helmut Wolff, Geschichte der Ingolstädter Juristenfakultät 1472–1625 (Berlin 1973), p.313; Siegfried Hofmann, Geschichte der Stadt Ingolstadt 1506–1600 (Ingolstadt 2006), pp.426, 432–433.
3. Alfons Huber, Die Pfarrer von St. Jakob in Straubing in St. Jakob zu Straubing: Erhebung zur Basilika (Straubing 1989), p.63.
4. A letter of 1490, apparently identifying the unmarried Sigmund Tuchsenhauser (c. 1439–1500) as Veit’s father, is cited by Klaus Freiherr von Adrian-Werburg, ‘Die Tuchsenhauser’ in Blätter des Bayerischen Landesvereins für Familienkunde 26 (no. 2, 1963), pp.295-306 (p.304; link). Agsteiner, op. cit., p.56, gives 1559 as the date of his death (on the authority of Joseph Anton Zimmermann’s Chur-Bayrisch Geistlicher Calender); cf. Mitterwieser, op. cit., p.50, referring to an inscription placed in St. Jakob, Straubing, on 6 April 1583, recording Tuchsenhauser’s death exactly 30 years earlier, and to testamentary documents in Kreisarchiv Landshut, dated 26 June 1553. Thomas Ries, ‘Pfarrerverzeichnis’ in Sakrale Kunst in der Pfarrei St Jakob, catalogue of an exhibition (Straubing 1980), states 11 April 1553.
5. Mitterwieser, op. cit., p.50: ‘Wir wissen aber nicht, welche Schicksale seine Bücherei hatte’.