Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/721

Rh NUREMBERG 663 Adam Krafft, consisting of a ciborium or receptacle for the host, in the form of a florid Gothic spire 65 feet high ; the carving of this work is exquisitely minute and delicate. In front of the altar hangs a curious piece of wood-carving by Veit Stoss, representing the Salutation. The shrine of St Sebald, in the church of St Sebald, consisting of a bronze sarcophagus and canopy, in the richest Gothic style, adorned with numerous statues and reliefs, is looked upon as one of the greatest achievements of German art. It was executed by Peter Vischer, the celebrated artist in bronze, who was occupied on the work for thirteen years (1506-19) and has here shown himself no unworthy rival of Lorenzo Ghiberti. The church of Our Lady possesses some fine old stained glass windows and some paintings by Wohlgemuth. The Aegidienkirche, a building of last century, contains a good altarpiece by Van Dyck. The town-house, an edifice in the Italian style, erected in 1616-19, contains frescos by Diirer and a curious stucco relief of a tournament held at Nuremberg in 1446. The new law courts, the hospitals, and the barracks are also imposing structures, but the most interesting secular build ings in the town are the houses of the old patrician families, already referred to. Among the most characteristic of these are the old residence of the counts of Nassau, and the houses of the Tucher, Funk, and Peller families. A special interest attaches to the dwellings of Albert Diirer, Hans Sachs, the cobbler -poet, and Johann Palm, the patriotic bookseller who was shot by order of Napoleon in 1806. Statues of Diirer, Sachs, and Melanchthon (the reputed founder of the grammar-school) have been erected ; and the streets are further embellished with several fount ains, the most noteworthy of which are the Schone Brunnen, in the form of a large Gothic pyramid, adorned with statues (1385-96) and the Gansemannchen or goose- mannikin, a clever little figure by Labenwolf. On the way to the cemetery of St John, which contains the graves of Diirer, Sachs, Behaim, and other Nuremberg worthies, are Krafft s Stations, seven pillars bearing stone reliefs of the Passion, and ranked among the finest works of the well- known sculptor. The charitable, educational, scientific, and artistic insti tutions of Nuremberg are on a scale worthy of its ancient dignity. The Germanic National Museum, established in an old Carthusian monastery, has one of the most important historical collections in Germany. It includes a picture- gallery with works by Holbein, Diirer, Wohlgemuth, &c. The Bavarian Industrial Museum is also a very creditable institution. The municipal library contains about 800 manuscripts and 50,000 printed books, some of which are of great rarity. Though not of so great relative importance as of yore, Nurem berg still occupies a high place among the industrial and commercial centres of Europe. The principal manufactures are lead pencils, colours, gold and silver wire, gold and silver foil, railway plant, tobacco, playing-cards, and lastly the &quot;Dutch&quot; toys and fancy articles in metal, carved wood, ivory, &c., which are collectively known as &quot;Nuremberg wares.&quot; A great proportion of the toys exported from Nuremberg are really made by the peasants of Thuringia. The pencil manufactory of Faber, the railway works of the Nuremberg Company, and Zeltner s ultramarine factory are among the most important of their class in Europe. Large quan tities of Nuremberg manufactures are sent to India and America, the exports to the United States alone being valued at 800,000 in 1882. Brewing, lithography, and map-publishing are also exten sively carried on. Nuremberg is the chief market on the Continent for hops, and in 1882 the &quot;turn over&quot; in the trade in this article was 4,000,000. The bronze foundry established by Professor Burgschmiet, and now carried on by Professor Lenz, produces numerous admirable and important castings ; and in the artistic handicrafts generally Nuremberg artisans are honourably distin guished. In addition to numerous railways, trade is facilitated by the Ludwig canal, connecting the Danube and the Main. The railway from Nuremberg to Fiirth was the first in Germany. Nuremberg s money-market is also of some importance. The population of Nuremberg at the height of its prosperity has been estimated at as high a figure as 150,000, but there seems good reason to believe that it did not exceed 40,000 to 50 000 souls In 1818 it had sunk to 27,000, but since then it has steadily in creased. At the census of 1880 the town contained 99,519 inhabit ants, / 6, 886 of whom were Protestants, 19,143 Roman Catholics, and 3032 Jews. According to a local estimate the population had risen to 103,255 at the beginning of 1883. Several of the patrician families of Nuremberg can trace their descent in a direct line for four or five centuries, and still occupy the houses built by their forefathers. A few of them are said to possess very complete and interesting domestic archives. History. The first authentic mention of Nuremberg which seems to have been called into existence by the foundation of the castle, occurs in a document of 1050 ; and about the same period it received from Henry III. permission to establish a mint, a market, and a custom-house. It is said to have been destroyed by the emperor Henry V. in 1105, but if this was the case the town must have been very speedily rebuilt, as in 1127 we find the emperor Lothair taking it from the duke of Swaliia and assigning it to Henry the Proud, duke of Bavaria. We now first hear of an imperial officer styled the burggrave of Nuremberg, who, however, seems to have been merely the military governor of the castle, and to have exercised no sway over the citizens. This office came into the hands of the counts of Hohenzollern at the beginning of the 13th century, and &quot;burggrave of Nuremberg&quot; is still one of the titles of their descendant, the emperor of Germany. The govern ment of the town was vested in the patrician families, who, contrary to the usual course of events in the free towns, succeeded in perma nently excluding the civic guilds from all share of municipal power. Conrad III. (1138-1152) reunited Nuremberg to the empire, and for the next three or four centuries the town was specially favoured by the German monarchs, who frequently resided and held diets here. In 1219 Frederick II. conferred upon it the rights of a free imperial town, and in 1355 it witnessed the promulgation of the famous &quot;Golden Bull&quot; of Charles IV. At the beginning of the 15th century the burggraves of Nuremberg, who had in the mean time raised themselves to the rank of princes of the empire, were invested with the margraviate of Brandenburg, and sold the castle of Nuremberg to the town. They, however, reserved certain rights, which resulted in keenly -contested feuds between the burghers and the margraves Albert Achilles (1449), Frederick (1502), and Albert Alcibiades (1552). The quarrel with the margraves, however, did not interfere with the growth of the town s prosperity, which reached its acme in the 16th century. Like Augsburg, Nuremberg attained great wealth as an intermediary between Italy and the East on the one hand, and northern Europe on the other. Its manufactures were so well known that it passed into a proverb &quot;Nuremberg s hand goes through every land. &quot; Its citizens lived in such luxury that JEneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II., 1405-1464) has left it on record that a simple burgher of Nuremberg was better lodged than the king of Scotland. The town had gradually extended its sway over a terri tory nearly 500 square miles in extent, and was able to furnish the emperor Maximilian with a contingent of 6000 troops. But perhaps the great glory of Nuremberg lies in its claim to be the principal font of German art. Its important architectural features have already been described. The love of its citizens for sculpture is abundantly manifest in the statues and carvings on their houses. Adam Krafft (c. 1455-1507), Veit Stoss (c. 1450-1532), and Peter Vischer (c. 1455-1529) form a trinity of sculptors of which any city might be proud. In painting Nuremberg is not less prominent, as the names of Wohlgemuth (1434-1519) and Albert Diirer (1471- 1528) sufficiently indicate. In the decorative arts the Nuremberg handicraftsman attained great perfection in ministering to the luxurious tastes of the burghers, and a large proportion of the old German furniture, silver-plate, stoves, and the like, which we now admire in industrial museums, was made in Nuremberg workshops. Wenzel Jamnitzer (1508-1585), the worker in silver, is perhaps eminent enough to be added to the above list of artists. Its place in literary history by no means an unimportant one Nuremberg owes to Hans Sachs (1494-1576) and the other meistersanger. _ A final proof of the vigorous vitality of Nuremberg at this period may be found in the numerous inventions of its inhabitants,_ which include watches (at first called &quot;Nuremberg eggs&quot;), the air-gun, gun-locks, the terrestrial and celestial globes, the composition now called brass, and the art of wire-drawing. Nuremberg was the first of the imperial towns to throw in its_lot with the Reformation (in 1525), and it embraced Protestantism with its wonted vigour. Its name is associated with a peace con cluded between Charles V. and the Protestants in 1532. The first blow to its prosperity was the discovery of the sea-route to India in 1497 ; and the second was inflicted by the Thirty Years War, during which Gustavus Adolphus was besieged here in an entrenched camp by Wallenstein. During the eight or ten weeks that the blockade lasted no fewer than 10,000 inhabitants of Nuremberg are said to have died of want or disease. The downfall of the town was accelerated by the illiberal and short-sighted policy of