1818 Alsatian folk art Taufschein with Pennsylvania-German ties, chicken and egg motif.

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Curious and crudely executed folk art, this 1818 German-language taufschein (baptismal certificate) is decorated in ink and pencil. The text records the birth in “Diemringen” and baptism in “Rathsweiler” (likely Ratzwiller, a village near Diemringen in Bas-Rhin, Alsace). Fitting the baptismal theme, it features a chicken and egg motif symbolizing creation and new life. The opening lines, in German (transcription approximate), read: “I’ve been baptized and registered, The Book of Life includes me [now], My Father will love me eternally / And be merciful to His child, / God surely knows me already for a long time, / My name rests in His hand.”

Alternating lines, circles, and triangles frame the text in an abstract border, with the chicken and egg motif placed prominently at the top. Square blocks of color in each corner may suggest a picture frame or reference the brass bosses found on elaborately bound 18th- and 19th-century Bibles.

Accompanying the taufschein is a one-page, untranslated German manuscript written on matching laid paper with an identical watermark, also dated 1818. Both items appear to have originated in Bas-Rhin and were acquired together from an estate in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania—an area of early German-speaking settlement. The family may have emigrated from Alsace after the post-Napoleonic upheaval of 1815, when widespread political and economic instability spurred migration.

The watermark on both sheets is of the “Vryheyt” (“Freedom”) type used in Holland and later copied in England, Sweden, and the United States; see Churchill’s Watermarks in Paper, nos. 79–108. The full watermark—visible on the illustrated sheet—depicts a lion holding a stave within a crowned circle, possibly encircled by the motto “Pro Patria Eiusque Libertate.”

Price: $1,250.00