Von Erdbiden, Etliche Tractat, alte und newe, hocherleuchter und bewärter Scibenten: inn welchem klärlich angezeigt, was dieselbigen jeder Zeit gutes oder böses mitgebracht: Auch was darauff erfolgelt sey: Weil nach des Herrn Christi Weissagung, zu den letzten Zeiten, vil Erdbiden geschehen söllen: Zeit jeder menigklich tröstlich unnd nützlich zu wissen

THE FIRST GERMAN-LANGUAGE TREATISE ON EARTHQUAKES

4to (198x152 mm). [24] leaves. Collation: A-F⁴. Large woodcut vignette of an earth-quake on the title page. Woodcut decorative initials and tailpieces. Modern marbled cardboards. Very light browning and occasional marginal foxing, but a good, crispy copy.

Very rare first edition. Apart a didactic poem by an anonymous author on the earthquake in Bavaria of 1511, this seems to be the first general treatise on this subject in German. The work opens with a long letter by Rasch to the printer Adam Berg, dated Vienna January 6, 1582, in which he writes about the difficulties to compose a book on earthquakes and holds theoretical speculations worthless. He tells about the earth-shock who took place at Vienna in July 1581, which however did not cause such great harm as the terrible earthquake that happened in southern Germany in 1348, which was still remembered by Rasch's contemporaries in form of a poem.

Rasch explains the causes of earthquakes with cavernous spaces in the depth of the earth filled with fire, air or water, whose fortuitous contact gives rise to every manner of destructive action, which, he rightly declares, are most destructive in the epicenter of the earthquake. He ends his letter praising Berg's editorial skills and hints to some of his own future publications. There follows a German translation of a tract on the same subject by Friedrich Nausea, bishop of Vienna, and his account of an earthquake happened at Mainz in 1528; a treatise by the Italian humanist Filippo Beroaldo; and an anonymous tract, of which Konrad von Megenberg's Buch der Natur served as a model. At the end is a libel by one Magister Albertus from Strasbourg, who sees the causes of earthquakes in the infamous actions of the Jews (cf. S. Günther, Münchener Erdbeben- und Prodigienlitteratur in älterer Zeit, in: “Jahrbuch für Münchener Geschichte”, 4, 1890, pp. 240-244).

Johann Rasch was born around 1540 in Pöchlarn on the Danube in Lower Austria. As a child he was a choirboy at the Benedictine monastery grammar school. From there he went to the University of Wittenberg. He was repulsed by the constant quarrelling that prevailed there and decided to leave Wittenberg after only a short stay to live as a cleric in Mondsee Abbey from 1561 to 1563. However, he left this place soon after and enrolled at the University of Vienna in 1565, where he studied astronomy and mathematics under Bartholomaeus Reisacher. After graduating, he went to Munich, where he met the printer Adam Berg, but was unable to make a living there and returned to Vienna in 1570 as organist at the Schottenkirche. In 1576 he became a Catholic bookseller in Vienna. Rasch probably became a Viennese citizen around 1580. He is last recorded as a taxpayer in the tax register of the city of Vienna in 1611, which suggests that he probably died in 1612.

In historical research, Rasch is primarily recognised as a musician. In the early 1570s he had several of his compositions printed by Adam Berg in Munich. In addition to music, between 1579 and 1597 Rasch published in several places such as St. Gallen, Rorschach, Graz, Vienna and Munich astronomical-astrological, calendrical, prognostic, economic, historical, theological, ethical and poetic-literary pamphlets, as well as a book on wine, which is his most important economic work. As a Catholic calendar maker, he defended the calendar reform of Pope Gregory XIII (cf. M. Schilling, Rasch, Johann, in: “Frühe Neuzeit in Deutschland 1520‒1620. Literaturwissenschaftliches Verfasserlexikon”, Berlin-New York-Boston, 2016, V, cols. 191-197).

VD16, ZV-11372; P. Hohenemser, Flugschriften-Sammlung Gustav Freytag, Frankfurt/M, 1925, p. 32, no. 446; K. Schottenloher, Bibliographie zur deutschen Geschichte im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung 1517-1585, Stuttgart, 1957, IV, p. 193, no. 367-49c.

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