Das Familienbuch Hans Voglers des Älteren und des Jüngeren aus dem St. Galler Rheintal

From the children's directory to the vermouth recipe: a complete edition of an extraordinarily rich collection of everyday texts from the late Middle Ages.

In 1479, the 36-year-old Hans Vogler the Elder, as the bailiff of the Abbey of St. Gallen, began compiling a collection of texts about his family and the surrounding area of Altstätten in the Rhine Valley. He initially set up four chapters: one for family history records, one for the wine prices (the fixed market price for wine) in the Rhine Valley, one for chronicle entries about extraordinary weather phenomena, deaths, plague outbreaks, or structural changes, and one for literary pieces and recipes for treating horse ailments or improving wine.

A little later, he added a detailed directory of the bailiffs of the Rhine Valley lordship and began a brief overview of the abbots of the Abbey of St. Gallen. His son Hans, born in 1498, initially continued the family book faithfully until he, disturbed by the events surrounding the Reformation he introduced as the town bailiff of Altstätten in the Rhine Valley and the subsequent expulsion during the Counter-Reformation, decided to write an independent account of his experiences. During his years in exile in Zurich and Alsace, he included an autobiography and a collection of documents on the history of the Reformation in the substantial volume, contributing to a wide-ranging thematic spectrum with sections written in a very immediate and impactful style.