Die Siegel der Klster in Schleswig-Holstein und Hamburg

In the Middle Ages, monasteries were centres of spiritual and contemplative life. In addition to the deeply religious everyday life of monks and nuns, which was organised according to one of the strict rules of the order, monasteries were also places where legal transactions were carried out. Due to its spiritual sphere, the monastery offered an outstanding setting for the sealing process, which was used time and again by the municipal societies in particular for their business activities and court judgements, as the judgements and documents were thus given a special weight. This richly illustrated volume is the first to present the surviving seals of the monasteries in Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg in words and pictures. Introductory texts explain the use of the seals and their art-historical forms. This is followed by an explanation of how the seals have survived and how they were documented photographically in the 1930s. The main section shows and describes the surviving convent, abbess and abbot seals as well as the prior and prioress seals of each branch. A list for each of the seals indicates their materiality, state of preservation and storage location. This pictorial and textual information is supplemented by an outline of the history of the respective branch. From the High to the Late Middle Ages, there is an increasing differentiation of the pictorial motifs, whereby the standardisation of the seals also reveals the incipient standardisation of legal acts in the Late Middle Ages.