Special guest lecture by Dr. Thomas T. Müller, Chairman and Executive Director of the Luther Memorials Foundation in Saxony-Anhalt: In search of the lost book.

A German-Livonian detective story at the Ceremonial event dedicated to the 500th anniversary of printed books in Latvian at St. Peter's Church, Riga.

In Search of the Lost Books. A German-Livonian Detective Story by Thomas T. Müller:

1.  A Smuggling Story

While on the same day, far away in Zurich, Huldrych Zwingli was debating with the Anabaptists— this new group was firmly convinced that one should not be baptized as an infant, but only when one was able to understand the act of baptism— exactly on this day Johannes Brandes (1467–1531) stood at his standing desk in Lübeck and recorded the events of the past few days. It was probably already chilly on that Wednesday, November 8, 1525. Autumn was gradually giving way to winter, and the 58-year-old cathedral dean, already at an age that was considered quite advanced at the time, was probably feeling the gout in his fingers as he wrote; an ailment that had increasingly troubled him in recent times.

From Zwingli in the Swiss Confederation to Luther and his followers in Wittenberg—these reformist preachers, he must have thought, were doing nothing but stirring up unrest. The city of Lübeck had recently experienced quite a commotion of its own.

In Lübeck, on the River Trave, whose council continued firmly to oppose the doctrines emerging from Wittenberg, additional Lutheran writings had appeared, despite the prohibition against their possession and circulation. On this occasion, however, the matter involved a particularly brazen act of smuggling, which Johannes Brandes duly documented for posterity in his notebook—a record that combined official minutes with personal reflections:

Shortly before, at the Zum Goldenen Horn inn, the Lübeck Council had confiscated and officially sealed a barrel filled with books, which was apparently intended for export and was to be secretly taken to a ship without the authorities' knowledge. The destination of the cargo was Livonia, the historical region that once covered large parts of present-day Estonia and Latvia.

It seemed the merchant who had devised this smuggling operation was not too pleased with the intervention by the authorities.

The reason for his anger was either financial, because he feared losses due to the loss of his ‘hot’ goods, or the fear that the council would learn that this was not just a simple case of smuggling, but that the books also contained highly sensitive content.

In short: the merchant secretly retrieved his barrel in violation of the law and fled with it towards the port of Travemünde. From there, the goods were to be shipped to Riga. But such audacity could not be tolerated by the Lübeck council, which ordered that the merchant be chased, arrested, and brought back to the Free Imperial City, along with the barrel that had already been confiscated.

When the Lübeck officials caught up with the fugitive, there must have been a scuffle. Brandes recorded that the merchant, along with two other men who had helped him in the smuggling attempt and apparently also fought alongside him during the confrontation, were overpowered, put in chains, and brought back to Lübeck together with the barrel, where they were placed under arrest.

Brandes had received the relevant report the previous evening, on November 7, 1525, from the Lübeck council secretary, Paulus van dem Velde. On first inspection, it was discovered that the contents of the barrel were “Lutheran books, as well as missals in the vernacular Livonian, Latvian, and Estonian languages.”

That means at the very least, Luther’s books must have been suspected of spreading the new dangerous teachings from Wittenberg to the people in Livonia, whom Brandes described as “still uneducated in the Christian faith”. For the Lübeck council which was still predominantly Catholic, this clearly called for immediate action.

Apparently, there were plans for publicly burning the books in the Lübeck marketplace—however, they were to be first sorted into good and bad books, unfortunately without any explanation. This task was assigned to the experienced council secretary, Paulus van dem Velde.

He, in turn, refused to undertake the review without first consulting with Lübeck's inquisitor, Dr. Wigbold von Meppen, and the Lübeck cathedral canon, Dr. Gerhard Frille.

The cathedral canon, however, wanted to be officially authorised by the Lübeck cathedral chapter before taking action.

And thus, the whole affair ultimately landed on the table—or rather the standing desk—of Cathedral Dean Brandes. It was now his duty to convene the chapter to discuss the matter the following day.

2.  The Chronicler

Johannes Brandes was born 1467, and came from one of the most respected and influential families in the town of Itzehoe in Holstein. As a priest, he studied law at the universities of Rostock and Leipzig, where he also earned his Master’s degree in 1486. He later went to Rome, where from 1493 he worked at the Curia as a legal representative and later as a notary at second-highest court of the entire Roman Catholic Church.

But he advanced not only in his professional life—he also knew how to secure his personal affairs.

Over time, he succeeded in acquiring numerous benefices in Schleswig-Holstein, Denmark, and Mecklenburg, making him by 1525 one of the more financially affluent residents in Lübeck.

However, after his bid to become Bishop of Lübeck in the summer of 1523 had clearly failed, the cathedral chapter there appointed him Dean of the Chapter in November 1523. From this point onward, he relocated his primary residence back to the North, although he was still mentioned as a notary at the Roman Curia as late as 1525.

The matter of the forbidden books now rested with Johannes Brandes—a man of extensive travels and considerable learning.

3.  The Censors

After being urgently called together by their dean the previous day, the canons of the chapter convened on Thursday, November 9, 1525—promptly at 8 a.m. and nearly in full attendance—in the chapter hall to discuss the matter at hand.

It quickly became clear that the members of the cathedral chapter found themselves in a dilemma.

If they were to take an official stance on the matter, as the city council wished, they risked incurring the wrath of the increasingly influential Lutheran-leaning citizens of the city. However, if they refused to issue a statement in support of the confiscation of the books, they would undermine their own authority in such matters before the council.

Ultimately, a compromise was reached: in addition to Inquisitor Dr. von Meppen and Canon Dr. Frille, Magister Johannes Rode (d. 1532), Bartholomäus Balduini, and Brandes himself were appointed from among their ranks to advise the council secretary, Paulus van dem Velde. However, this was to be done strictly in confidence and was not to become public knowledge.

Early in the morning of November 11, Brandes met with council secretary van dem Velde and informed him of the chapter’s decision to establish a five-member commission to handle the matter.

However, the city council, which met later that morning following their conversation, apparently decided after all to have the matter examined exclusively by the two scholars who had been originally proposed.

That same Saturday, the small inquiry committee convened at the home of the wealthy and staunchly conservative council member Hermann Plönnies (d. 1532) in Lübeck. There, Gerhard Frille, rector of the University of Rostock for multiple terms and also canon in Lübeck, together with the Dominican friar Wigbold von Meppen, apparently examined the books closely for the first time.

It emerged that among the materials were at least two vernacular books—likely in German—concerning baptism and the order of hymns for church services, as well as additional volumes. The first two were immediately identified as “Lutheran” simply by their titles.

On the afternoon of November 11, 1525, the censors unanimously ruled that these Lutheran publications could be consigned to the flames.

Other books, however, could not be read—which likely means that they were not understood because of a language barrier. These were set aside for further, separate examination.

After this, Johannes Brandes remained silent in his notes on this matter for some time.

It was only on November 24, 1525, that he finally wrote that Canon Frille and Wigbold von Meppen had now submitted their final report—which recommended the burning of the Lutheran writings—to the lawyer and city council member Dr. Matthäus Pakebusch, who had been tasked with the case by the Lübeck council.

In summary, it must be noted that the matter concerning the barrel of books in November 1525 in Lübeck was apparently so important that not only were the city’s most respected theologians and jurists involved, but some of the most influential conservative members of the council also took part.

Hermann Plönnies, in whose home the censors carried out the examination, was already regarded at that time as one of the Free Imperial City’s most experienced diplomats—and he even personally knew the Swedish king Gustav Vasa.

Only four years later, he would advance his career as mayor of Lübeck. Long before 1525, Plönnies conducted business not only with Sweden but also with the Baltic region, well attested in Reval (modern-day Tallinn) and Dorpat (modern-day Tartu).

Dr. Matthäus Pakebusch, who received this expert opinion on the books, was also already highly active in Lübeck’s foreign affairs and possessed excellent contacts in Narva and Reval, where his son Arndt later became a council member and mayor. Matthäus Pakebusch had studied law in Leipzig and later represented Lübeck as its highest-ranking jurist in delicate matters on several occasions.

For instance, he represented the interests of the imperial city at the Reichstag in Worms in 1521. Even after his meeting with Martin Luther at the Reichstag, he remained staunchly Catholic and never wavered in his confessional allegiance until his death in 1537.

In fact, just like council member Plönnies, he became one of the most fervent defenders of the old faith.

Together, they apparently sought—with the support of the Lübeck cathedral chapter—to prevent the spread of the evangelical doctrine into the Baltic region. But by then, it was already too late.

4.  Burning Questions

Whether the books confiscated in Lübeck were ultimately burned, is something our most important witness, Johannes Brandes, does not reveal in his notebook. The entry dated November 24, 1525, documenting the submission of the expert opinion to the Lübeck council, is the final reference to the matter. Despite decades of research by various historians, no additional archival evidence has been discovered to this day.

As a result, numerous burning questions remain unanswered for scholars—even if a fire in Lübeck’s marketplace, fuelled by Lutheran literature, never actually took place:

1. Have any copies of these writings survived?

2. In what languages were the texts written if the censors were unable to understand them?

III. Who commissioned the works?

1. Who were the authors and translators of the texts?

2. Where were the books printed?

3. Who was the merchant intending to bring them to Livonia?

VII. Why, of all places, were the books hidden in a barrel?

Let us return once more to the scene of the incident—Lübeck in the 16th century.

Johannes Brandes continued to regularly record events there for another five years after the incident. But not long after making his final entry in his surviving protocol book on October 15, 1530—by then, due to illness, it had become increasingly difficult for him to use his quill—he was forced to withdraw from various offices for health reasons. He eventually died on January 14, 1531, at the age of 63.

His notes, and with them the story of the lost books, soon faded into obscurity—and remained forgotten for a long time.

5.  The Rediscovery

The first scholar to recognise the immense significance of Cathedral Dean Johannes Brandes’ protocol book as an outstanding source for Lübeck’s Reformation history was the Protestant theologian Wilhelm Jannasch. Nearly 400 years after Brandes’ death, Jannasch not only transcribed and analysed the texts, but also compiled a comprehensive index. Shortly after taking up his post as pastor in Lübeck in 1914, he began an in-depth study of the city’s church history.

Although his work on a book about the Reformation in Lübeck was already well advanced by the early 1930s, various factors led to repeated delays, and so the volume was not published until after his retirement in 1958.

One reason for the delay may have been his involvement in the Confessing Church and his efforts to protect Jews during the Nazi era. Because of his opposition, Jannasch was repeatedly arrested by the Nazis. In 2020, he and his wife were honoured by the Israeli memorial Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations”.

When the volume was finally published in 1958, it included, among many other new findings, the first printed reference to the story of the lost books from 1525.

Professor Paul Johansen (1901–1965) from Hamburg was thrilled by this news following the book’s publication. As soon as he read about the discovery in the cathedral dean’s records, he began conducting his own research into the matter. The results appeared a year later under the title “Printed German and Non-German Masses for Riga, 1525” in the journal Zeitschrift für Ostforschung. Johansen instantly recognised the significance of this source for the history of written Estonian and Latvian.

!!! To this day it represents the earliest known mention of printed books in both languages.  !!!

Furthermore, the date for the first printed book in Estonian—previously documented by Johansen himself and a colleague in 1929 as dating back to 1535—could now be pushed back by a full decade.

Even more, the first known mention of a printed Latvian book could be dated back 60 years. Until then, the earliest known example had been the Cathechismus Catholicorum, printed in Vilnius in 1585.

But who exactly was Paul Johansen, and why was he so well-versed in Baltic history?

Born in 1901 in Reval (modern-day Tallinn), Johansen studied agriculture and history in Copenhagen, Hohenheim, and Leipzig. He earned his doctorate with a dissertation on Estonian settlement and agricultural practices in the Middle Ages. From 1924 onwards, he first worked as a research assistant at the Reval City Archive and later became the city’s chief archivist.

Over a period of 15 years, he made a foundational impact on Estonia’s developing archival sector.

After the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, he relocated to Germany and in 1940 took up a professorship in Hanseatic and East European history in Hamburg. To this day, Johansen is highly revered in Estonia.

In 1996, on what would have been his 95th birthday, the Estonian President Lennart Meri personally unveiled a bust of Johansen, erected by the Tallinn City Archive.

Johansen’s article on the historical Lübeck book mystery soon attracted attention in the Baltic region. In anticipation of the 450th anniversary of the first mention of these prints, the Estonian historian Jüri Kivimäe (b. 1947)—born in Pärnu and trained in Tartu—followed the trail of the lost books. He conducted what remains the most comprehensive investigation into the story of the barrel of books in Lübeck and its contents.

Twenty-five years later, then a professor of history at the University of Toronto in Canada, Kivimäe returned to the topic. He noted with regret that no new archival discoveries about the prints from 1525 had emerged in the interim.

However, reviewing and updating several earlier interpretations was necessary due to advances in recent scholarship.

Even in 2025, the now retired Professor Kivimäe could report at a scholarly conference on the subject—which took place just three weeks ago in Wittenberg with participation from researchers across Latvia, Estonia, Germany, Canada, and Denmark—that there is still no trace of the books.

6.  The Current State of Research

To conclude, I will now attempt to answer the previously raised questions based on the current state of knowledge:

I.Have any copies of these writings survived?

It is assumed that the books were likely not publicly burned. Such an act might have caused too much unrest in a city where religious unity had long since eroded. Nevertheless, a (presumably secret) destruction of the books remains the most likely scenario.

However, inquisitor Dr. Wigbold von Meppen admitted to Johannes Brandes that he—"just as the council will probably do"—had set aside some copies of the forbidden writings and intended to keep them.

The whereabouts of these texts, like those possibly retained by the Lübeck council, remain completely unknown. All efforts to locate them have so far been unsuccessful. Still, it cannot be ruled out entirely that a copy might have survived somewhere.

1.  In what languages were the texts written if the censors were unable to understand them?

This is perhaps the most frequently asked question in this German-Livonian historical detective story! It has puzzled not only historians, but also linguists and archivists alike. Johannes Brandes left behind a cryptic note that continues to challenge scholars. The original text reads: "libris lutterianis eciam missis in vulgari livonico lettico ac estonico." What is clear, however, is that the merchant intended to ship Lutheran writings to Riga, and that these included texts in the vernaculars of Livonia: Livonian, Latvian, and Estonian. Scholars agree on the presence of Latvian and Estonian texts.

There is less consensus regarding the exact meaning of “in vulgari livonico.” This could be translated either as “in the Livonian vernacular” or “in the Livonian language.” There was no unified language in Livonia in the 16th century. What we called today the Livonian language (an old language related to Estonian and officially declared extinct in 2013) was spoken by so few people even back then, that it seems unlikely—at least in economic terms—that a translation would have been created specifically for such a small audience.

This kind of interpretation had been proposed by Paul Johansen and, more recently, by Latvian historian Gustavs Strenga. However, I share the view of Jüri Kivimäe, who considers it far more likely that Brandes’ phrase “in vulgari livonico” referred instead to Low German (Middle Low German, to be precise)—a language widely spoken in Livonia at the time alongside Estonian and Latvian.

III. Who commissioned the books?

The most likely commissioners were members of the German-speaking upper class with Protestant sympathies, as well as early evangelical preachers in the Livonian cities of Riga, Reval (Tallinn), and Dorpat (Tartu). A name that comes up repeatedly in this context is that of the later Anabaptist leader Melchior Hoffmann.

After encountering conflicts with the city council in Dorpat, Hoffmann apparently travelled to Wittenberg in spring 1525 to receive personal confirmation from Martin Luther himself that his reformatory views were in line with Luther's. Prior to this, he had already received endorsements from two key figures of the early Livonian Reformation: Sylvester Tegetmeier, preacher at St. James' Church in Riga, and Andreas Knopcken, preacher at St. Peter’s Church in Riga. It was partly because of these connections that this very location was chosen for today's commemorative ceremony!

While in Wittenberg, Hoffmann, together with Martin Luther and Johannes Bugenhagen, published a letter to the Livonians, calling on them to promote the Reformation in their country in harmony.

This proves at least that Hoffmann was in Wittenberg at the time and obviously had access to Luther and the local printing works. However, there is still no evidence to prove that he was actually the person who commissioned the writings!

1.  Who were the authors and translators of the texts?

There is little hard evidence, but several educated guesses. The most plausible theory, first proposed by Wilhelm Jannasch, is that the “Lutheran books” included Luther’s own Small Baptismal Booklet (Taufbüchlein), and the Formula missae (Latin Mass order), translated into German by Paulus Speratus. These assumptions are widely accepted by scholars. Far less certain are the identities of those who translated the long-lost books into Estonian, Latvian, and possibly Low German.

A possible candidate for the Estonian translations could be Franciscus Witte of Dorpat. As recently noted again by expert Christine Ruhrberg, he enrolled at the University of Wittenberg on June 12, 1525 under the name “Franciscus Weyss de Terbato”.

It is quite possible that he travelled to Wittenberg together with Hoffmann. The search for the Latvian translator is even more difficult and rests on even more speculation.

1.  Where were the books printed?

It has long been assumed that the books were printed in Wittenberg.Paul Johansen even suggested that the printer might have been Hans Lufft, the same man who later printed the Estonian Catechism of 1535. However, there is no solid evidence to confirm this, and in the absence of documentation, any printing press in Wittenberg—or elsewhere in the Holy Roman Empire—remains a possibility.

1.  Who was the merchant intending to transport them to Livonia?

As of now, nothing at all is known about this individual. Not even plausible speculations have emerged regarding their identity.

VII. Why, of all places, were the books hidden in a barrel?

At the time, it was by no means unusual to transport books in barrels. These wooden containers, bound with metal hoops—today mostly associated with wine, whisky, or beer—were for centuries among the most effective means of transporting goods. Their use was not limited to sea routes; they were used just as frequently on land.

Books, too, could be easily transported this way. It’s important to remember that the professions of printer and bookbinder were not as geographically intertwined as they are today. Until the early 20th century, books were generally delivered unbound and only later handed over to a local bookbinder by the buyer.

A barrel, typically sealed tightly, offered protection from moisture, damage, and prying eyes. If the contents were also deliberately mislabelled, there was a real hope that the shipment could cross the Baltic Sea undetected, undamaged, and—most importantly—dry.

7.  A Provisional Conclusion

Many questions still remain—and likely can only be answered by a chance discovery.

What we certaintly know is this:

When Cathedral Dean Johannes Brandes was laid to rest in 1531 at the age of 63, in the preaching house of Lübeck Cathedral, it is highly unlikely that any of the mourners could have imagined that, half a millennium later, a brief note he had penned on Wednesday, November 8, 1525, would become the occasion for an elaborate commemorative program sponsored by two sovereign Baltic states.

According to his records, it was—on this very day—exactly 500 years ago, on the evening of November 7, 1525, perhaps even at this very hour, that he first learned of the existence of the barrel containing what are now believed to be the first printed books in Latvian and Estonian.