Robyn Dora Radway’s gloriously illustrated monograph Portraits of Empires: Habsburg Albums from the German House in Ottoman Constantinople delves into many of the puzzles that have long fascinated historians of the German House in the latter sixteenth century, between the Treaty of Edirne in 1568 and the Turkish War in 1593.
The work builds and expands upon sections of Radway’s PhD dissertation relating to groupings of “alba amicorum” or “Stammbücher” (friendship albums) within the German House in Constantinople (Robyn Dora Radway, “Vernacular Diplomacy in Central Europe: Statesmen and Soldiers between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, 1543–1593,” PhD diss., Princeton University, 2017). While studies of many of the individual albums have been carried out (for example, Das Kostümbuch des Lambert de Vos: Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat des Codex Ms.or.9 aus dem Besitz der Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen, ed. Hans-Albrecht Koch, Graz, 1991), including by Radway herself (Robyn Dora Radway, “Three Alba Amicorum from the Habsburg Netherlands: Manlius, Wijts, and Huenich in the Ottoman Empire,” Early Modern Low Countries 6, no. 1 [2022], 103–126), Portraits of Empires draws the material together in a fresh and integral way. It thus brings a rich perspective to the study of the relationships between the Ottoman Empire and Continental Europe. Rather than examining these relationships as a form of “othering,” Radway explores the direct contacts between the people of the Holy Roman Empire in the German House and the Ottoman people, moving beyond categories of military and humanist sources to focus directly on the alba amicorum.
The book’s strength is in the individual albums and the stories of the people who owned them. This is initially put into the historical context of the key players within the Ottoman and Holy Roman Empire during the sixteenth century. It includes a detailed analysis of the written works of the period relating to the eight ambassadors and their staff staying at the German House between 1568 and 1593, who reappear in later chapters (pp. 14, 23–26), (pp. 1–13). This section is also important as a description of the German House in Constantinople, residence of the Hapsburg Embassy and its associates. It is significant that the location of the House, across the street from the Atik Ali Pasha Mosque, facilitated direct Ottoman surveillance (pp. 14–38).
The book moves on to focus on how the albums themselves were created and constructed (pp. 39–93). In addition to focusing on the individual costume albums, Radway skillfully explains the background to the album amicorum tradition, its development, and impact (pp. 41–45). Here we also see a detailed study of the traditions of paper making and watermarks across China, Europe, and the Ottoman Empire, and their significance to the works considered within the monograph (pp. 64–66). This section, as indeed the whole book, contains beautiful illustrations, which the reader or researcher should consider as a stepping stone to further study in and of themselves. In addition, it superbly explores the combination of media from printed images to personalized illustrations. It is in this section that we begin to find the melding of the Ottoman and European traditions that make the rich culture of the alba amicora from the German House so unique within the broader genre.
From this, Radway moves to specific sections focusing on residents of the German House and their individual albums, including the “Ambassadors” (pp. 94–132), detailing several key figures who stayed in the German House and their key insights into the courtly and ambassadorial protocol of the Ottoman Court. These were created by men who not only wished to create a record of the German House but also to memorize the intricate details and rhythms of ambassadorial protocol. This includes several manuscripts that have been explored in great detail, alongside unpublished manuscripts and archival sources (pp. 97–99).
The section on the “Staff” of the German House (pp. 133–164), in contrast, includes messengers traveling across the Balkans (p. 138), as well as key individuals in the household, such as the Master of the Kitchens, Sebald Plan, who served at the German House for seven years and had an extensive network of his own (p. 148). Significant within this section is also a map of the networks of staff and visitors to the German House, discovered within the albums of German House staff members, and reaching across Continental Europe (p. 159).
The scholars associated with the German House, their signatures and declarations of friendships, as well as the ways their stays impacted on their later works, help to explain their importance for understanding the Ottoman Empire at this time. This is especially relevant to concepts of the Ottoman Empire in relation to the Classical world, as well as the languages and religions of the period (pp. 165–195).
Radway’s analysis of “Noble Men Passing Through” (pp. 196–227) contrasts this earlier section through specifically focusing on the formal audiences, ceremonies, and direct acts of diplomacy, as well as the depictions of the ceremonies themselves. This section highlights several external events in the alba amicorum, including captives and freed captives of the Ottoman Empire (p. 205), impact of the plagues and external events on the German House (p. 206), the custom of wearing Hungarian dress as a visitor to the German House (pp. 206–208), and interactions between visitors to Constantinople (pp. 209–214).
This monograph provides an exciting focus on a series of individuals and their manuscripts, vital to understanding the complex relationships between visitors to the German House during this period. It also serves as a valuable resource for scholars of the German House in Constantinople, Ottoman-Hapsburg relations, the album amicorum tradition, and the history of books and paper across a wide geographical area. It should be noted that the appendix (pp. 231–240), on all the albums available relating to the German House, is an extremely useful resource. The illustrations have been exquisitely reproduced, and the reader could only wish that there were more. Indeed, each chapter might provide inspiration for further projects. It is, therefore, the perfect point for scholars to look even deeper into the album amicorum tradition of the German House.
