On a recent trip to the Munich City Archive I examined a number of city council record books as part of my dissertation research. Most of the books’ pages contained sparse notes or were blank, but some of them were illustrated. Well, not really illustrated. Rather, the pages contained imprints, barely visible designs etched into the page. I couldn’t scan them, they were too faint for my phone scanner to pick up. Instead I took close up pictures of them and then copied them onto notebook paper. Later, I traced over the pictures I took on my tablet.

The imprints only appeared in a few of the record books I examined, about four in total. Each design only appeared in one, maybe two, books, and some appeared much more than others. There were six total designs: a donkey with a sunburst above its head, a bull with a star, a crescent above a star, a duck or goose, a castle piece, and a human head. The donkey appeared the most, followed by the bull and the duck. The human head appeared the least, only on about three pages in one book.

All of the imprints were from a set of council records from 1397-1404, a roughly eight year period marked by a period of “Unrest” within the city. The Unrest started when Duke Johann of Bavaria died and his sons and brother began a struggle over the succession of Bavaria-Munich. At this time, Bavaria was divided into four parts, each ruled by a different member of the Wittelsbach family, all of who held a ducal title. The question of succession was important for both the dukes and the citizens of Munich, who quickly got involved in the struggle. The citizen factions took sides and began fighting each other, which, eventually, led to the banishment of a number of the city’s gentry by 1403. The conflict lasted seven years and involved a siege of the city, but resolved in 1404.

One of the main sources about the Unrest in Munich is a short memoir by a man named Jorg Kazmair. Kazmair was a member of the city council and had been elected mayor in 1396, though he likely did not serve his full year term. He was still a councilman when the succession crisis started and used his position to document the Unrest, even when he was exiled towards the end.

While I’m not sure who created the imprints in the record books, I think, at least for the ducks and head which appear in the 1398-1399 book, Kazmair himself is a likely suspect. He was the person who wrote the book, evidenced by the opening page which introduces him as such, so it makes sense that he also probably doodled in it. The other imprints are more of a mystery, but remain an interesting tidbit in Munich’s written history.