Broadsheets with Engravings in a Manuscript Chronicle from Ulm: Visual Representations of the Hungarian Kingdom on German Political Leaflets during the War of Reconquest (1683–1699)

Abstract

The news about the war of expulsion against the Ottoman Empire was presented by a multi-central propaganda. A manuscript chronicle written in Ulm demonstrates the literacy of the broadsheets’ readership. The writer, Eberhard Gockel (1636–1703), a physician from Ulm, wrote a diary on the most important occurrences and affairs of the Turkish war from 1678 to 1703. He attached to his chronicle broadsheets and engravings on the recaptured Hungarian fortresses and the great victories against the Turks. Gockel had good sense for high quality engravings, and he chose the works of publishing houses with excellent reputations, for example Jakob Koppmayer from Augsburg, Johann Jonathan Felsecker and Johann Hoffmann from Nürnberg and Michael Wening from München. As a citizen of Ulm, he respected the interests of the House of Habsburg, but he mainly focused on the role of the imperial and troops from the region of Swabia. His manuscript illustrated with engravings gives a detailed description of the Hungarian Kingdom’s fight against the Turks. Gockel focuses on the news of the anti-Ottoman war of 1683–1688 and he recorded the victories against the Turks even after the French invasion of the Rhineland in 1688. Gockel was critical of the quantity of military news and tried to remain unbiased on political and religious questions. Gockels’ chronicle proves that the readers of the broadsheets had all the tools to use the media of that time critically, and that sensibility and curiosity for the news of the world was a significant part of the identity of a citizen in a city like Ulm.