The Durer – Alnpeck Connection
When the great German artist Albrecht Dürer died in 1528, he was one of the one hundred wealthiest men of Nuremberg and his valuable workshop and stock of prints, woodblocks, and plates became the property of his wife, Agnes. However, she was forced by law to sell the workshop and remaining stock to Dürer’s brother, Endres, in order to settle the estate. Agnes died in 1539.
Endres Dürer was the son of the goldsmith Albrecht Dürer the Elder. Ä. and his wife Barbara and the brother of the painter Albrecht Dürer d. J. and Hans Dürer. In 1497 he began an apprenticeship as a goldsmith. Although not proven, it is likely that he was trained by his father. Around 1502, he took over the workshop from his father, who had died shortly before. In 1514 he received his master’s degree and was listed for the first time as a silver-worker in the city’s goldsmith register.
Endres married a woman named Ursula whose maiden name is not known. Some claim that she was the widow of N. N. Hirnkoffen. Ursula had a sister whose name is also not known. Ursula’s sister married Sebald von Hirnkoffen / Hirnkofen / Hirnhofer / Hirnkouen. If Ursula was a window she may have married a brother of Sebald’s. Two sisters marrying two brothers is not unknown. If she were not a widow when she married Endres and her maiden name was Hirnkoffen then she may have been a sister of Sebald’s. We just don’t know.
Sebald (and possibly Ursula) was a child of Wilhelm von Hirnkoffen. His other children included: Theobald, Christoph, Hanns, Wilhelm, and Sigmund. We also know that Sebald and his NN wife had two daughters: Constantina and Regina. These relationships are shown on the chart.
On September 27th, 1514, Endres Dürer had to provide a guarantee of 6 guilders for a “Doctor Rennwart”, possibly Wilhelm von Hirnkoffen, to redeem a horse. This Wilhelm von Hirnkoffen was possibly Ursula’s father; if so Endres was helping out his father in law. If not, then he was helping his wife’s sister’s father in law.
Endres continued printing Dürer’s works until his death on 21st April 1555. At that point, the workshop materials became the property of his widow, Ursula, who also continued to print Dürer’s woodcut images.
On February 14th , 1531, Urusla’s niece Constantia von Hirnkoffen married the goldsmith and coin etcher Gilg Kilian Präger from Dresden. He was not a man of means and upon his domiciling at Nuremburg the city council reduced the admission fee for citizenship by half, to two guilders.
Constantina’s sister Regina married Hieronymus Alnpeck.
At this time (around 1531), Constantina and Regina’s father Sebald von Hirnkoffen and his father Wilhelm, must already have died, because the dowry for Constantia’s marriage to Gilg Kilian Prager was paid out on May 14th and on August 17th, 1531, by Endres Dürer and his wife Ursula, Constantina’s aunt.
On September 24th, 1533 Endres Dürer took over the guardianship of his niece Constantina, for whom he also acted as a guarantor on. [But, if she was married 1531 why would she still be under her Uncle’s guardianship in 1533?]
Gilg Kilian Prager was living with his ‘uncle in law’, Endres, when in 1532 a dispute broke out between them in which Endres tried to force Prager to leave his household by May 1st. On March 20th, 1532, a court decided that Prager did not have to undertake to move out of the Durer household by the date set by Endres. How/ why the dispute started and how it was resolved we do not know.
As noted above, Endres Dürer died in 1555, and his widow Ursula survived him by nine years. After which she still managed to retain the stock of prints, woodblocks, and plates that her husband had inherited.
When Ursula died in 1564, the Dürer workshop and its contents were either passed on by inheritance were or sold to Hieronymus Alnpeck and his wife Regina, Ursula’s niece. Although Ursula had left a will, the original no longer exists and instead only a short summary of it was made in later times. From this we know that Constantina and Regina were daughters of her N. N. sister and her husband Sebald von Hirnkoffen and that both were beneficiaries. At the time that Ursula wrote her will Regina (Hirnkoffen) and Hieronymus Alnpeck were living in Prague.
Unfortunately, no genealogical databases indicate the marriage between Hieronymus Alnpeck and Regina von Hirnkoffen. These genealogical databases do show one or two persons named Hieronymus Alnpeck alive during this period. One of these was the son of George and Anna (Mannewitz) Alnpeck. However, his dates vary from one database to another. The majority tells us that he was born around 1492 and that he died on June 24th 1563. Another set of databases has this Hieronymus as being born around 1500 and dying in 1576. If the year of death for Hieronymus was 1563 then he could not have enjoyed any legacy from Ursula as she died in 1564. If Hieronymus died in 1576 then he would have had almost twelve years in which to enjoy his Dürer legacy. Even so, most databases indicate that this Hieronymus married NN Haußmann (1516 – 1576) the daughter of the Freiberg Mint Master Hans Haussman and that they had several children: i) Wolf Alnpeck; ii) Georg Alnpeck; iii) Hans Alnpeck (1532 – 1601); and iv) Katharina Alnpeck. If the wife of Hieronymus Alnpeck died in 1576 then Hieronymus could not have married Regina von Hirnkoffen. Hieronymus and N.N. Haußmann appear to have remained married up until their deaths.
How about this as a theory? Hieronymus Alnpeck was born between 1492 and 1500. He married NN Haußmann around 1533 when she would have been 17. Let us say she died on June 24 1563 and he died in 1576. In other words, we swap the death dates for the wife for the husband’s. If Haußmann died in 1563, this would have given Hieronymus enough time for him to marry Regina and to have inherited from Ursula in 1564.
Hieronymus Alnpeck, who by his own admission had been a servant of Czech Johann Christoph Popel von Lobkowitz (1549 – 1609), valued his wife’s inheritance to a maximum of 800 fl. for tax purposes.
He also applied by letter to the Nuremberg City Council to waive any additional tax. Based on this letter,
Archduke Ferdinand, then also governor of Bohemia, agreed that the council could reduce the usual inheritance tax, which amounted to 10% of the estate value, from 80 to 20 guilders.
It was during this time that the Archduke was beginning to build up his own art collection. Perhaps he agreed with Alnpeck to reduce the inheritance tax because he himself was interested in the artistic legacy of Albrecht Dürer.
This idea is supported by the fact that Ferdinand later acquired most of the hand drawings and engravings by Dürer from the estate of Hieronymus and Regina.
It is known that sales of drawings from Dürer’s studio in Nuremberg were made at various points by his heirs, Endres and Ursula Dürer, before the latter sold large portions of the estate to the merchant and collector, Willibald Imhoff in 1557. After Imhoff’s death in 1580, his son Karl sold the bulk of the collection in 1588 to Rudolf II of Prague; and other Dürer material was disposed of by Ursula Dürer’s niece, Regina (Hirnkoffen) Alnpeck in about 1580, some of which was acquired by Rudolf II’s court artist, Bartholomeus Spranger (1546-1611).
When the Freiberg mint was moved to Dresden in 1556, (Andres Alnpeck the mint master there having died in 1553), the new mint master was Hans Biener (Büner) from Joachimsthal. His name was first mentioned in 1553 as an assistant to mint master Andreas Alnpeck in Freiberg. At Dresden, Hans Büner was first appointed on October 3rd, 1556 as administrator of the mint, and he was re-appointed on July 9th , 1558. Later he held the title of Master of the Mint, and he worked as such until his death in 1604.
Hans had the following as members of his staff at the Dresden Mint: Caspar Hase who was appointed Warden and Sworn Tester; Johann Ludewig Frank who was employed as a master coin smith; Gilg Kilian Prager as an iron cutter (coin engraver); and Matthes Urban as a coin printer. There were two Pragers – father and son – who worked at the Dresden Mint: Kilian Prager der Ältere is noted working there in 1582 and Kilian Prager der Jüngere in 1592.
The fact that Prager worked for the Dresden mint that had moved there from Freiberg after Andres Alnpeck’s death, would help support the idea that his brother in law Hieronymus Alnpeck was of the same family as Andres’.
If so, then it is possible that this Hieronymus Alnpeck was a son of Georg and Anna (Mannewitz) Alnpeck’s and the brother of Magdalene Alnpeck who was the direct ancestor of the Three Loeck Sisters. Unfortunately, none of the genealogical databases available on the internet show a Hieronymus whose dates would fit with the Hieronymus who inherited the Durer workshop. However, I would submit that the Hieronymus Alnpeck who married NN Haußmann and then Regina von Hirnkoffen was son of Georg and Anna (Mannewitz) Alnpeck.
Some drawings by Albrecht Durer from the collection of Regina and Hieronymus Alnpeck are now held at the British Museum, London. In total there are about 14 drawings.
inv 5218.45
possibly Florent Nepotis. inv. 5218.54
nv. 5218.40
The British Library has the following from Hieronymus and Regina Alnpeck’s Durer collection:
- Two cutting patterns for women’s cloaks from the Netherlands, also known as ‘Höcke’ or ‘Huik’; verso: geometric designs
- Recto: sketches for Lorenz Staiber’s coat of arms; verso: two alphabets
Some of the above is taken from: Ursula Timann: Die Familien von Hirnkoffen.