Transmigrant Literature: Translating, Publishing, and Printing in Seventeenth-Century Frankfurt’s Migrant Circles

Abstract

This article examines the role of migrant publishers in German literary culture and the book market in the seventeenth century. Focusing on Christoph Le Blon's network of secondgeneration migrant publishers, including Joachim von Sandrart, Friedrich Hulsius, and Lucas Jennis, it argues that migrant circles in and around Frankfurt functioned as transfer zones for literary cultures between Germany and other European countries. Frankfurt publishers were often part of transnational migrant networks and were especially important for the introduction and popularization of new forms of religious literature in early modern Germany. In 1624, two years after Catholic League troops conquered Heidelberg and many Protestant inhabitants had left town, a modified German edition of Julius Wilhelm Zincgref's Emblemata Ethico-Politicorum Centuria, titled Sapientia picta, appeared in the Frankfurt publishing house of Peter Mareschall (Figure 1). 1 Mareschall, who had left Heidelberg for Strasbourg after the siege and was later praised as a steadfast Christian who had chosen exile for the sake of religion, dedicated the emblem book to his brother-in-law, Daniel Bélier. Both men had a migrant past, even before the fall of Heidelberg: Mareschall descended from a Lyon family, and Bélier's parents were from Tournay; both families had fled religious persecution and military devastation in their homelands. In his dedication, Mareschall presents Classical and Biblical commonplaces regarding the true home of man in general and of the Christian in particular. Departing from Socrates, who regarded Athens as his hometown, but the whole world as his homeland, Mareschall moves to Ovid's reflections on exile and his assertion that "a brave and able man could be at home in any country." 2 Mareschall then proceeds with the image of the Christian pilgrim, who is always journeying toward his true home: Christians should not seek permanent homes This is a post-print of the article '