our oldest book

When I looked up Doris Siepmann's old book from 1916 for the previous entry, I also took our oldest book off the shelf to see whether it, too, might contain any information I hadn't appreciated yet. It is an edition of the poetry of Friedrich Schiller, signed by one of its owners with the year 1838. So we always assumed that was the age of the book, too, which doesn't carry a printing year. However, the name of the author is given without the "von" - he became Friedrich von Schiller in 1802. Accordingly, when I search with the text of the title page:

Gedichte von Friedrich Schiller. Mit dem Portrait des Verfassers

I get shown a similar edition dated 1801, which makes sense in terms of the missing "von". Also, my edition says it is the most recent and most complete one - suggesting the author was still alive and writing when it was printed. (In postumous publications, they would either claim to have the complete poems or a selection.) So that is already quite exciting and mindboggling to have Schiller's work in an edition dating from his lifetime (1759-1805).

Then that inscription. In ink and with a beautiful handwriting we have

C. de Lorenzi 1838.

A couple of practice rounds appear below, in very faint pencil, maybe they tried to rub those out.

The same hand has also signed the inner cover page of the second part with "C. de Lorenzi" in the top right corner and with "Lorenzi" further down. There are three parts bound together in this volume, maybe they were united after C. de Lorenzi signed the first two? Note that the front of the third part isn't signed. Maybe the arrival of the third part was the point when the three parts were rebound as one volume.

Then on inside of the hardcover (so more recent if the binding unites previously separate volumes), we have in pencil, with a less secure handwriting, possibly from a child:

Karl de Lorenzi
Karl de Lorenzi (in a less secure writing, maybe the top line was a parent showing young Karl how to sign his name?)
in
Simmern
den 29. Februar
1864

then a calculation:

2222
-
2016
-----
206

and a stray figure 8 to the right of the calculation. I do like everything to do with numbers, but can't think of anything to explain these figures.

A child also added a moustache to Schiller's portrait in the frontispiece, and the grownup with the inkpen added the missing "von" to his name in several places.

Zoom into this one to appreciate the wormhole appearing symmetrically either side of the crease between "F. Schiller" and "In der Verlagsbuchhandlung". It goes through more than 100 pages and towards the end of vol 1, page 160 ff, it extends sideways and may still contain the dried out bookworm. Will have to do some microscopy or macro photography on that.

And for comparison, here is a similar print without the embellishments, credited to a different artist, probably both etchings based on the same painting by Anton Graf.

Considering the chaos on the cover pages, there are only very few markings in the text - one I've spotted is very unoriginally drawing attention to Schiller's most famous poem, Das Lied von der Glocke (Song of the bell), which appears in volume 2:

Books we have from the 19th century would normally come from the family of Christoph Gottlieb Kauer the station master of Adamsweiler. He was born and grew up in Simmern, so it is quite conceivable that his parents got the book second hand from the de Lorenzi family who lived there throughout the 19th century (and into the 20th - a de Lorenzi was the mayor's deputy 1917-1938). Some finds that may or may not be linked to our book scribblers:

A Joseph de Lorenzi born 8.9. 1856 at Simmern emigrated to the US in 1881 and later had a shop in Mishawaka, Indiana. His parents were Karl de Lorenzi and Louise Rottmann (likely from the family of the poet and local politician Peter Joseph Rottmann, we also have one of his books which I believe was signed and/or gifted by the author, there was some sort of story attached to it, but I don't have it here to check). So his father could be our Karl and/or the C of the book.

As a representative of the de Lorenzi family, here's a portrait of the migrant Joseph de Lorenzi, courtesy of the Mishawaka Museum.

Another Carl, Carl Joseph de Lorenzi was born 9. 4. 1845 - he could still be responsible for the more recent pencil inscription.

Johann Baptist De Lorenzi was born in Simmern in 1807 and died in Koblenz in 1883. He was the landlord of the inn La Maison Rouge, according to the website geni.com. Simmern was under French occupation until 1815, so the French name may be referring to that time when JB De Lorenzi was still a child. In October 1852 he signed a guest book of a spa hotel at Bad Homburg (Hessen) as "Herr von Lorenzi, Gastwirth" cheekily trying to create the impression that his name includes a nobility title.

My hypothesis would be that the book came from the de Lorenzi / Rotter families to the family of the old shoemaker

Mathias Kauer * 21. 6.1813 Simmern + 2. 4.1885 Simmern,
} oo 13. 9.1844 Simmern unter Dhaun (NB different place from the town of Simmern)
Katharina Sophia Weis * 25. 3.1815 Raversbeuren + 8. 1.1862 Simmern

whose photo appears at the top of the Kauer clan entry.

For instance, when Joseph de Lorenzi emigrated, Mathias Kauer was still around and could have snapped it up.

After he died in 1885, it must have moved in with the station master's family in Alsace, and ended up with the station master's daughter Johanna Kauer when she moved to her retirement residence at Hahnenbach. Where my mother must have nicked it, because I remember my parents had it on their shelves when I was at school age. And now I have it here in Oxford. The book has travelled a bit over the last 224 years.

PS 25.12. In a slightly more recent (19th century, see photo below) edition of Schiller's complete works I spotted a few late poems that aren't included in the very old book, such as Der Antritt des neuen Jahrhunderts (The start of the new century) likely written in 1801. That newer edition has no family connection beyond my great-aunt Esther who bought antiquarian books. I'm intrigued though that the volumes (12 bound into 4) were bound by G. A. W. Särnstad in Mariestad, Sweden, which almost hints Esther may have acquired the edition during her student days in Königsberg or in Posen.