PRIMARY SOURCES

ON COPYRIGHT

(1450-1900)

Commentary on:
Counterfeited Privilege in Grimmelshausen's 'The Magic Bird's Nest' (1675)

Back | Commentary info | Commentary
Printer friendly version
Creative Commons License
This work by www.copyrighthistory.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900)

www.copyrighthistory.org

Identifier: d_1675

 

Commentary on the Counterfeit "Privileges and Liberties" devised by Christoffel von Grimmelshausen Himself for the Second Part of his Novel The Magic Bird's Nest

Friedemann Kawohl

Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management, Bournemouth University, UK

 

Please cite as:
Kawohl, F. (2008) ‘Commentary on Grimmelshausen's mock privilege ()', in Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org

1. Full title

2. Abstract

3. References

 

1. Full title

Counterfeited "Privileges and Liberties" Devised by Christoffel von Grimmelshausen Himself for the Second Part of his Novel The Magic Bird's Nest

 

2. Abstract

The counterfeited "privileges and liberties" listed by Grimmelshausen at the beginning of the second part of his novel The Magic Bird's Nest can be read as an ironic comment on the absence of proper reprinting provisions in the German lands.

 

Issued by the "Grand King of the Moon, this world's most vast and populous territory", it lays out in great detail what a buyer of the book was legally entitled to do with it: "read it, even twice or several times", "barter it for a box full of snuff, as long as he had indeed paid the bookseller in whose shop he had found this little work the due price for it". The owner in his turn was entitled "to give someone the book as a thank-you present, or perhaps just to lend it out without ever asking for it back." The "legitimate right to reprint [...] offer it for sale, sell it, exchange it for another book at some fair, transfer ownership of it, and, in general, to make use of it in the most profitable way" is however reserved for that reprinter who would be prepared to "explain publicly [...] why he had shown no scruples whatsoever  in acting against the law of nature" and "why  [...] he was endeavouring [...] to take away in a thievish manner the bread from his fellow man's mouth, that is, above all, the bread from the original publisher's mouth?"

 

Grimmelshausen had good reason to fear reprints. The first volume of The Magic Bird's Nest had been published by Johann Fillion in Montbéliard (Mömpelgard in German), a small town near Belfort which at that time belonged to the House of   Württemberg but did not form part of the Holy Roman Empire. Shortly afterwards a reprint of this volume was published in the Netherlands with a fraudulent reference to the original publisher's name "Amsterdam / Gedruckt bey Johann Fillion Im Jahr 1673").[1]

 

3. References 

Books and articles [in alphabetical order]

Tarot, Rolf. "Introduction" to Grimmelshausen, Das wunderbar!iche Vogelnest, ed. by Rolf Tarot (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1970)



[1] Rolf Tarot, "Introduction" to Grimmelshausen, Das wunderbar!iche Vogelnest, ed. by Rolf Tarot (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1970), xvii.

 



Copyright History resource developed in partnership with:


Our Partners


Copyright statement

You may copy and distribute the translations and commentaries in this resource, or parts of such translations and commentaries, in any medium, for non-commercial purposes as long as the authorship of the commentaries and translations is acknowledged, and you indicate the source as Bently & Kretschmer (eds), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) (www.copyrighthistory.org).

With the exception of commentaries that are available under a CC-BY licence (compliant with UKRI policy) you may not publish individual documents or parts of the database for any commercial purposes, including charging a fee for providing access to these documents via a network. This licence does not affect your statutory rights of fair dealing.

Although the original documents in this database are in the public domain, we are unable to grant you the right to reproduce or duplicate some of these documents in so far as the images or scans are protected by copyright or we have only been able to reproduce them here by giving contractual undertakings. For the status of any particular images, please consult the information relating to copyright in the bibliographic records.


Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) is co-published by Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, 10 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DZ, UK and CREATe, School of Law, University of Glasgow, 10 The Square, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK