The Little Man of Nuremberg . . . in Edinburgh
Matthias Buchinger (1674-1739) was a dazzling calligrapher whose mastery of the art of microscopic writing (micrography) was unparalleled in his day, whose feats of stage magic astonished his contemporaries, and whose talents extended to proficiency in an orchestra’s worth of different musical instruments, some of his own design. He married four times, had fourteen children, travelled across Europe, eventually settling in the British Isles rather than his native Germany, and died lauded as “the Greatest German Living”. He was also born without hands or legs.1
In modern medical language, we would say that Buchinger had been born with the congenital condition called Phocomelia. In early modern Europe, however, such conditions were subject to a variety of potential interpretations, some moralising, some exploitative, few happy. We know little of his youth, but his parents appear to have done their best to protect him and keep him away from the public gaze at first, only later trying, unsuccessfully, to find him a conventional trade. By the time he reached adulthood, however, he began to use his remarkable talents at calligraphy and sleight of hand as a source of income, exhibiting himself, or being exhibited, as a wondrous “freak” of nature (in the language of the time) in various towns across Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
This self-presentation as a travelling curiosity evidently helped keep body and soul together, as well feeding a growing family. But novelties soon grow stale and Buchinger, his wife, and children led an itinerant life across Europe. By October 1717 they had reached Britain, when readers of the London Daily Courant would have learned that there was “Lately arriv’d” in the metropolis.
A German born witho[u]t Hands, Feet, or Thighs (that never was in this Kingdom before) who does such miraculous Actions as none else can do with Hands and Feet: He makes a Pen, and writes several Hands as quick and well as any Writing-Master: He draws Faces to the Life, Coats of Arms, Pictures, Flowers, &c. with a Pen, very curiously; Threads a fine Needle very quick; shuffles a Pack of Cards, and deals them very swift; plays well upon the Dulcimer; d[o]es many surprizing Things with Cups and Balls; plays at Skittles several Ways very well; shaves himself very dexterously; and many other Things too tedious to insert here.2
London—and Britain—loved Buchinger; within a few years he had become a wig-wearing rockstar. This necessitated frequent traveling and after his initial stay in the capital, he proceeded first to Ireland and subsequently to Scotland, arriving in Edinburgh, first in 1723 and again in the winter of 1727-28. By this time, Buchinger the calligrapher was at the height of his game, producing large and exceptionally rich micrography for bedazzled Scottish patrons.
Enter then, the pedigree-obsessed Scottish gentry and we have the perfect combination to produce the remarkably micrographic drawing which is this month’s Featured Item. Buchinger had long since learned to capitalise on aristocratic pride by drawing coats of arms and family trees, but he had never attempted anything as elaborate as the large double family tree shown here and dated from Edinburgh, 10 May 1729. It is written on a sheet of vellum measuring 350 x 400 mm in a reddish ink and while the bottom left-hand corner has suffered from historic damp, it remains fresh and vivid: a spectacular object to behold.
But what exactly is it? Buchinger had evidently been commissioned to produce this piece for Archibald Steuart (1683-1773), an Edinburgh advocate who spent much of his life pursuing his mother’s cousins, the Denhams of Westshield, Lanarkshire, through the Scottish law courts, eventually proving his right to the estate at Westshield. Unsurprisingly, then, the family tree itself reflects Steuart’s claims, with one tree, his father’s family of the Steuarts of Allanton (an estate near Motherwell and also in Lanarkshire) on the left, and his mother’s family, the Denhams, on the right. Archibald and his children uniquely appear on both trees, leaving no one in doubt about who might be the rightful heir of the two families.
But there is much more going on here than a mere opportunistic landgrab. Encompassed within Buchinger’s minute script is an entire Scottish family epic, tracing how both sides of the advocate’s family had been prominent in the violent dissent of the Restoration era, had been exiled to the Low Countries, in some cases on pain of death, and had returned triumphantly to Scotland with the Revolution of 1688, taking up some of the leading offices in government (Archibald’s uncle, Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees (1635-1713), had become Lord Advocate and his maternal-grandfather, Sir William Denham of Westshields, 1st Baronet (1630-1712), Master of the Mint). As well as a claim to Westshields, it was a document that both recorded and solidified Steuart’s position as a member of the post-Restoration political and economic elite.
And so, we have a pedigree written in Edinburgh by a German for a family who had spent decades in exile in the Low Countries—a pan-European document by any standard. Nor, once written, would it remain even within those capacious boundaries. A quarter millennium after it was penned, the pedigree was acquired by the American magician and scholar of stage magic Ricky Jay (1946-2018) as part of his lifelong fascination with Buchinger.3 It was subsequently acquired by Blackie House Library and Museum and, after many decades’ absence, has returned to its native city of Edinburgh. While Buchinger died, hopefully happy, if none too prosperous, and undoubtedly surrounded by a large family, in Cork in 1739, the legacy of “The Little Man of Nuremberg” lives on just off the Royal Mile.
Kelsey Jackson Williams
Senior Research Fellow
Those interested in Buchinger should note that Tico Seifert, Senior Curator of Northern European Art and a long-standing friend of Blackie House, will be giving a lecture to the Friends of the National Galleries on Buchinger’s work on 11 November 6-8pm. Stay tuned for more information on an upcoming exhibition on Buchinger and his art.
1. The best modern study of Buchinger is in Christian Tico Seifert, “Matthias Buchinger: ‘Show Man’, Draughtsman and Calligrapher, ‘Born without Hands and Feet’”, in Körperwunder Kleinwuchs: Wahrenehmungen, Deutungen und Darstellungen kleinwüchsiger Menschen und die ‘Zwergenmode’ in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Andreas Tacke (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2024), 197-213, to which this essay is greatly indebted.
2. Daily Courant, 18 October 1717.
3. See Ricky Jay, Matthias Buchinger: “The Greatest German Living”, by Ricky Jay, Whose Peregrinations in Search of the “Little Man of Nuremberg” are herein Revealed (South Egremont, Mass.: Siglio Press, 2016).