19 March 2025

The book’s history begins with a journey to France and Italy undertaken by a certain Joachim Gagelmann (c.1540–1595) of Hamburg in the year 1571. One of the places he headed for was the University of Padua, whose anatomical department and botanical garden made it one of the most innovative chairs of medicine at the time and a magnet for visiting scholars. The key to this was autopsy: in medical practice, the value of empirical observations is almost impossible to overestimate – dissecting the human body or studying, touching and even smelling real plants reveals much more about nature than any book can. Plant material was the mainstay of medicine in those days. The failure to recognise even minor differences between plant species could end in serious, even fatal, errors in the production and administration of medicines. This is why part of a medical education took place by the beds in the botanical garden, a lesson in observation that very few universities at the time could offer.

This empirically based teaching practice in the garden provided vital impetus for the development of a new medium. In order to have real-life objects of study available beyond the moment and the seasons, plant specimens or parts of plants were given to students in the garden. Building on the long-established practice of preserving plants by drying and pressing, this gradually established a pragmatic long-term method of preserving these plant specimens in books. Gagelmann compiled a collection of some 200 different species. He described it as a book of living herbs (“Lebendiger Kreutter Buech”), although the scientific term used at the time was herbarium or, perhaps more aptly, hortus siccus (dried garden).

Even if he was only able to give the volume a simple parchment cover with little sense of prestige about it, Gagelmann did not hesitate to present it – on his return in 1575, having completed his studies – as a gift to the duke, Herzog Julius zu Braunschweig-Lüneburg. The gift was intended to show the fruits of his labour and to thank Julius for funding his years of education in Padua. Evidently, a doctor trained in the latest standards was exactly what the court in Wolfenbüttel was looking for. Gagelmann seized the opportunity and served as a personal physician to the dukes of Wolfenbüttel until his death in May 1595.

Various clues indicate that the herbarium was not only kept in the library of the Wolfenbüttel palace but also spent about two centuries in the university library in Helmstedt. It is currently the subject of a private research project.

Gagelmann’s herbarium was very much a working collection. This can be gleaned not only from the unadorned cover but also from the opened pages. The prime concern was to archive plant material rather than to present the objects neatly or, for that matter, in an aesthetic arrangement, as one would in a collection designed for public display. Ravaged by time, however, often little more than fragments of the plant specimens remain, and sometimes only their imprints on the paper.

Thus, it is no longer possible to botanically identify the plant specimens that survived the centuries inside this book. However, other sources have been helpful. The handwritten plant names were particularly important here – even if one is left wondering about the confusing nomenclature. What, for example, is meant by Iva, Serpillum or even Flamma ♃? It was not until the mid-18th century that universally standardized botanical species names gradually started to become established. In Gagelmann’s time, the same plant was known by lots of different names; it might be called one thing in northern Italy and something completely different in Breisgau or North Germany, with names diverging along regional and local lines. Conversely, the same name could be in use for several different species.

It is important, then, for the purposes of identification, to connect the recognisable botanical traces with the names in a context that is as clear as possible. This is where printed plant books come into play. Books on herbs were sold all over Europe from the 15th century onwards. They listed many of the common plant names in use regionally and in medical circles and featured illustrations of the various species that made increasing efforts to be detailed and accurate. Gagelmann’s plant book and other works of this kind were already standing side by side on the shelves of Herzog Julius’s library.

The final hurdle in this process of identification – often akin to detective work – can be cleared by consulting historical garden plans from Padua, which fortunately still exist from Gagelmann’s time. His herbarium is therefore also a valuable source for historical research into the botanical garden in Padua. Combining these sources provides some clues about the botanical classes taught there. Perhaps it will be possible at some stage to find out whether Gagelmann’s book was used at the university of Helmstedt. There has been a hortus medicus there since 1692.

Iva, by the way, was the common name in Padua for ground-pine (Ajuga chamaepitys [L.] Schreber), Flamma ♃ refers to Flamma Jovis, which can be identified as a species of clematis. Specimens of both these plants were cultivated in the 16th century in the spaldo quarto of the geometrically laid-out garden in Padua. They have been preserved in Gagelmann’s herbarium as evidence of historical flora and the early modern transfer of knowledge.

Research into herbaria is a wide field with interdisciplinary perspectives, making it a regular focus at the HAB. As well as Gagelmann’s herbarium, a larger project on the Herbarium Ruperti has been underway at the library since 2024.

Title image: page 41 with seven dried plant specimens from the herbarium of Joachim Gagelmann, Lebendiger Kreutter Buech (Padua, c.1575), HAB: 929, Helmst.,

http://diglib.hab.de/varia/objekte/929-helmst/start.htm

PURL: http://diglib.hab.de/?link=203

The author

Petra Feuerstein-Herz was head of the Department of Early Printed Books at the Herzog August Bibliothek until the end of 2021. She is currently writing a book on the history of the Gagelmann herbarium and the collection of plants it contains.