1591Oldest surviving town view

This drawing by Wilhelm Scheffer, known as Dilich, is the oldest surviving view of the city of Alsfeld, a drawing made in 1591. Wilhelm Dilich was the son of the pastor Heinrich Scheffer, known as Dilich, from Wabern in Northern Hesse. Wilhelm attended the scholars’ school in Kassel and studied from 1589 to 1590 first at the University of Wittenberg, then from 1590 to 1591 at the Philipps University of Marburg. There he met the future Landgrave Moritz of Hesse-Kassel, for whom he worked from 1597 to 1622 as a landgravial draftsman and “Abreißer” (the person who transferred the drawings in reverse onto the woodblock or copper plate, into which they were then incised by the engraver), but also as a historian and master builder.

In his manuscript “Synopsis deskriptionis totius Hassiae…” (= Description of all of Hesse, 1591), produced in 1591, he depicted all Hessian cities of the 16th century in drawings. His city views are often the oldest verifiable historical pictorial representations, as is the case with Alsfeld. The fact that the “Synopsis” did not achieve wider distribution may have annoyed Dilich, but he did not give up and finally, after six further works, published his best-known work in Kassel in 1605: the “Hessische Chronika.” This contains the second oldest surviving city view of Alsfeld, which can also be seen in this exhibition. (MNic)