This is the second volume of a series which will eventually cover the whole of Europe as well as the USA and Australasia and maintains the high standard of the author's Whales’ bones of the British Isles (Redman Reference Redman2004) as regards both the depth of research and quality of production.
The documentation of whale remains in Germany extends so much further back in time than anywhere else and the earliest reference revealed by the author concerns whale bones hung from the fortifications of the Baltic port of Lubeck in 1336. Then in 1365, following the stranding of a whale at Damerow (island of Usedom), the Duke of Pomerania sent the jaws and some of the ribs to be hung in churches at Wittenberg., Brandenburg, Stralsund and Stettin, an act which emphasises the totemic quality of cetacean remains and man's fascination with these giants of the sea. Sometimes a stranding or the accidental discovery of bones would be regarded as a portent of evil and this probably explains the frequency with which ribs and miscellaneous bones were brought to a church, to purge them of any malevolent powers. They were often thought to be the remains of a mythical monster, a dragon, or of a vanished race of giants which made them objects which could amaze both high and low, and an essential component of every prince's wunderkammer.
Germany also gives us the first example in history of the ‘touring’ whale when an entrepreneur displayed the mounted skeleton of a whale washed ashore at the mouth of the Rhône. Starting in 1620 it was shown in Augsburg, Nürnberg and Strasbourg before being dismantled in 1625 and the pieces sold off. A contemporary print to advertise the attraction is the earliest representation of an articulated skeleton.
In the eighteenth century with an abundant supply of bones from an expanding European whale industry whale bone arches became popular and whale shoulder blades were hung up as shop and inn signs, some of them beautifully painted. Especially on the island of Föhr in Schleswig Holstein, once home to many whalers, bones were commonly used for a variety of practical purposes, to support the winch for a well bucket, in rows to form a fence or boundary, and, uniquely, sandstone headstones were bolted to jawbones set up in the churchyard. Another survival there is a row of cut down jaw bones forming the wall of a pig sty. In Hamburg a pair of jaw bones formed part of the equipment of a ropery.
Of special note from earlier times is a vertebra known as Martin Luther's footstool. This is first noted in 1574 and is displayed in the Luther-Zimmer in the Wartburg at Eisenach where he made the first full translation of the New Testament into German.
In the other countries the author mainly records whale skeletons of more modern vintage displayed in museums and universities but there are a few surprises from these landlocked nations. In the Czech Republic a jaw bone, rib and scapula in the church of St. Frantisek Serafinsky at Golcuv-Jenikov, serves to remind us of the significance with which these relics were once endowed; they were brought by General Martin Goltz from Stralsund as booty of the Thirty Years War. In Austria part of one of the bones which formed an arch outside the Restaurant zum Walfisch in the Prater, Vienna, is still preserved and a whale rib of unknown origin hangs in the passageway leading to the Universitatsplatz, Salzburg. Rapperswil, Switzerland, was the home of Jerg Zimmerman who arranged the touring of the whale skeleton in the early seventeenth as described above.
This informative and well illustrated volume provides interest for the anthropologist, folklorist, social historian, zoologist and anyone who enjoys exploring the story of the cetacean tribe and the wonder it has generated amongst mankind over countless generations. It is completed by a bibliography, index of place names and people, index of categories of whalebone and location maps.
