Bull's Head and Mermaid - The Bernstein Project - Österreichische ...

AT8100-W270_63 Piccard-Online Nr. 085687 (1383) AT8100-W270_63 / Piccard-Online Nr. 085687
Ill. 6
AT8100-W211_16 Piccard-Online Nr. 085727 (1361) AT8100-W211_16 / Piccard-Online Nr. 085727 (1361)
Ill. 7
Precision in Width:
A Comparison of Tracing and Beta Radiography
In July 1956, on the recommendation of the Hauptstaatsarchiv
Stuttgart, Gerhard Piccard made his first visit to the
Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna (HHStA). During this
and subsequent visits, he made about 1,700 tracings of watermarks
in manuscripts, records and documents. The HHStA
was established by Maria Theresia in 1749 as a central
archive for bringing together the state documents scattered
in the various provinces of the House of Habsburg. The collecting
of such documents was ended in 1918, and the
archive has since become the historical department of the
Austrian State Archives. It contains documents from a large
geographical area.
70
During his sojourns at the HHStA, Gerhard Piccard copied
1,648 watermarks from the collection of state papers (“Reichssachen”:
Fridericiana, Maximiliana) and the document department
(“Urkundenabteilung”: Görz), as well as 40 additional
watermarks from paper in the manuscript department
(“Handschriftenabteilung”). His inspection of these collections
was most likely similar to his earlier examination of documents
in the Landesarchiv Innsbruck, where he had gone
through the Fridericiana, Sigmundiana, Maximiliana and Ferdinandea
as well as the Tyrolean Raitbücher. The sixteen manuscripts
that he worked on in the HHStA are all from the 14 th
century. Eleven volumes are from the Innsbruck
Schatzgewölbe and deal with Tyrol or the chancellery of the
dukes of Tyrol-Görz; the other five are from the chancellery of
the Habsburg dukes from Albrecht II to Albrecht III. The logic