This work by Jeremias Held (Henry Green, no. 74) is the second
German translation of the emblems of Andrea Alciato, who is
rightfully known as pater et princeps of the emblem. The first
German translation was written by Wolfgang Hunger and published by
Chrestien Wechel in a bilingual Latin-German edition in Paris in
1542. Held's version, printed in 1566 and 1580, has never before
been offered in its entirety in a modern reprint. It, too, is a
bilingual edition with the Latin texts followed by Held's German
version.
Jeremias Held produced this, the second German translation, which
appeared in a 1566 and a 1580 edition. The 1566 edition was printed
in Frankfurt-am-Main by Georg Raben for Simon Hüter and
Sigmund Feyerabend. The colophon is dated 1567.
Held's version contains 132 woodcuts in text to Alciato's 212
emblems, and they are numbered i-ccxvii. The numbering of the
emblems has caused some confusion. Henry Green (190) hastily called
the number 217 a misprint, but it is not. The number 217 is correct
and derives from the separate numbering of the alternative versions
of the epigrams, which Alciato had labled “aliud,” to
four of the emblems.
Held's written German is simple and colloquial. In fact it is
sloppy. In matters of orthography, we cannot know if the
typesetting accurately represents his intentions, but it probably
does.