Fleysch, Augustin.

Wanderbuch für [in manuscript: Augustin Fleysch, Schmiede] nach Vorschrift des Konigl. Sächsischen allerhöchsten Mandats vom 7 Dec. 1810.

[Germany], s.n. 1813-1823.

8vo (165 x 95 mm.). 64p. The first five pages (title, instructions, personal details) are letterpress with blank spaces completed in manuscript. The following fifty-nine pages have letterpress pagination and typographic headpieces but are otherwise blank. A total of twenty-six pages are completed in manuscript in various cursive hands, forty-four ink stamps validating inscriptions.

Contemporary red and black patterned paper boards (worn, slightly defective), book block traditionally sewn then stabbed as issued with woven yellow and black thread — the ends secured to the final verso with the red wax seal of the city of Stolpen (Saxony), officially authorizing and authenticating the volume for use.

            Augustin Fleysch, a twenty-two-year-old journeyman blacksmith, received this itinerant work license on 7 October 1813 from the municipal authorities of Stolpen (near Dresden).
           This Wanderbuch documents more than a decade’s travels to some twenty towns and cities in and around Saxony and records his work for and with over fifty blacksmiths, who filled this employment passport and described Fleysch’s work and its duration. They signed their entries and authenticated them with proprietary stamps — some emblematic with hammers or horseshoes. In 1823, Fleysch returned to Dresden, where the entries in this booklet end.
          The handful of German Wanderbücher I located in U.S. institutions are not as early as that offered here. In good condition.
¶Werner, “Traveling Journeymen in Metternichian South Germany” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 125/3 (1981) 190-219, 202-5.

Item #02422

Price: $1,350.00