“Let us start where all stories have their beginning and ending: in the archive,” Bernd Rock writes in the opening pages of this engaging book (12). And indeed, Ketzer, Künstler, und Dämonen (Heretics, Artists, and Demons) is both a carefully reconstructed archival study of the goldsmith David Altenstetter (ca. 1547–1617) and a vividly imagined tale of his place within late Renaissance society and culture. Part history, part history-as-it-might-have-happened, the book provides a fascinating, albeit speculative, perspective on the subject and his time period, illustrated with copious images and sixteen beautiful color plates of Altenstetter's artworks.
Born and trained in Alsace, Altenstetter migrated to Augsburg after his journeyman years, where he married well, became a master craftsman, and built a reputation for his magnificent work, particularly in enamel. Roeck takes his readers on a roughly chronological journey through Altenstetter's life, from his early years in Colmar to his rise in stature and success among Augsburg's artisans to his death on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War. A relatively wealthy and respected citizen, appointed numerous times to his guild's board and Augsburg's city council, Altenstetter nevertheless had occasional tussles with the law: most prominently, he was arrested in 1598 on suspicion of being a heretic and spent a weekend in jail, although he was freed without penalty.
Roeck centers his book on painstaking archival research in several cities, most centrally Augsburg. The interrogation connected to Altenstetter's imprisonment provides the richest evidence, augmented by taxation books, guild records, and accusations of professional misconduct, among other documents. Roeck handles the nitty-gritty detail of archive work with a deft touch, finding evidence in the smallest nuggets of information and rendering it accessible to the reader. The offhand mention of a widow's name in a taxation book provides insight into Altenstetter's family and social networks in Augsburg, while a single line of seemingly obtuse numbers in another tax record demonstrates the economic success the goldsmith had attained by his late twenties. Added to these sources are Altenstetter's artworks, used to elucidate both the goldsmith's abilities and his mentality, particularly his interest in the grotesque.
Yet the evidence on Altenstetter, although substantial for an artisan, leaves many gaps. Roeck, an eminent historian of early modern Augsburg, solves this problem by patching together the available clues with his substantial knowledge of the social, cultural, and religious setting to create a plausible — though not provable — version of Altenstetter's life. Most central to the narrative is his argument that Altenstetter was a Schwenkfelder, a follower of the Protestant spiritualist Caspar Schwenkfeld von Ossig (ca. 1489–1561). Other speculations include the goldsmith's involvement in alchemy and his journey to Prague in service of Emperor Rudolf II. Some of these conjectures are more convincing than others. The Schwenkfelder hypothesis, for example, is multifaceted and highly plausible. The suggestion that Altenstetter practiced alchemy, in contrast, is based on less-substantial evidence and the trip to Prague on very little indeed.
If not incontestable, none of Roeck's theories is completely incredible, and each serves a broader purpose. In large part, Altenstetter acts as an entrée into the cultural history of southern Germany in the late Renaissance. The Schwenkfelder hypothesis becomes a window on the complex religious scene in a newly dual-confessional society; Altenstetter's alchemical involvement leads to a discussion of Paracelsus and his followers; and the trip to Prague introduces the fascinating figure of Rudolf II. This format occasionally grows tiresome; in places, the book feels like a checklist of early modern cultural phenomena and is most successful when it stays grounded to Altenstetter and his surroundings. Aimed at engaging a nonacademic audience, the writing can be overly dramatic in places. At his best, though, Roeck brings the artist and his city vividly to life: the goldsmith's daily routine, the sounds and smells of early modern Augsburg, the scene in Altenstetter's workshop the evening of his arrest.
Ketzer, Künstler, und Dämonen is not a Rankean attempt to depict Altenstetter's life as it really was. Instead, it is an experimental portrait of Altenstetter as he plausibly might have been, based on a hybrid of fact and intelligent conjecture. This approach will not please everyone, and Roeck could have been more consistent about alerting his readers when his ideas are merely speculative. Nevertheless, it makes for a highly entertaining and thought-provoking read.
