Book review: a rebuttal

Abstract

From the Editor: Arms & Armour, Volume 17, No. 2, contained a review prepared by Jan Piet Puype, former Senior Curator of the Netherlands Army Museum (Legermuseum), Delft, of a major study by Dr Wilfried Tittmann of Nuremberg firearms; Die N€ urnberger Handfeuerwaffen vom Sp€atmittelalter bis zum Fr€ uhbarock: Der Beitrag N€ urnbergs zur Milit€arischen Revolution der fr€ uhen Neuzeit, Akademische Druckund Verlagsanstalt, Graz 2018. The review prompted a response from the author who has asked to submit a rebuttal to some of the comments made in it. The view of the editors of Arms & Armour is that it is only fair to the author that he is given an opportunity to make this response. The rebuttal: In Arms & Armour, Vol. 17, No. 2, November 2020, pp. 213-218, Jan Piet Puype wrote a review on my book – a dissertation in history of technology on the firearms of Nuremberg – nearly three years after receiving a copy of it. The article contained a dozen erroneous statements, which I wish to correct as follows: 1) P. 218: Mr. Puype signed as: Former Chief Curator of the Netherlands Army Museum, Soesterberg, Netherlands. See editor’s note above. 2) P. 213: The article stated that the title of my dissertation was: Wilfried Tittmann, Die N€ urnberger Handfeuerwaffen vom Sp€atmittelalter bis zum Fr€ uhbarock: Der Beitrag N€ urnbergs zur Milit€arischen Revlution [sic!] der fr€ uhen Neuzeit (1⁄4 The Portable [sic!] Firearms of Nuremberg from the Late Middle Ages to the Early Modern Age), Akademische Druckund Verlagsanstalt, Graz, 2018. The dissertation was published in year 2015, in 2 volumes... Correction: The dissertation was submitted and accepted in 2015. It was printed with the assistance of the VG WORT Science Promotion Fund in the spring of 2018. Author: Wilfried E. Tittmann (instead of just Wilfried Tittmann as commonly referenced). The subtitle ‘Der Beitrag N€ urnbergs...’ was not translated into English. 3) P. 213: The author chose the development of firearms from the city of Nuremberg from the 1300s until the middle of the 18th C as his subject because nearly all archival material on the aforementioned matters has survived the devastations of the Second World War. Correction: The period of study extends from 1377 (beginning of incompletely preserved city accounts) to 1632-34 (pandemic and ‘demographic catastrophe’, i.e. end of Nuremberg’s role as ‘arsenal of the Reich’). It is also incorrect to indicate the mid-18th century as the upper limit. A survey of Nuremberg firearms and their development is not possible even in this narrower time frame based on archival sources (one such study extending to 1550 by Dr. Willers, formerly a custos of the Germanic National Museum Nuremberg, already exists). The abovementioned statement by Mr. Puype also completely contradicts my three-dimensional, technohistorical approach, newly emerging questions and the range of sources comprising all the attainable evidence (which, moreover, was presented in detail). This marked the first time that archival and realia research strands were combined.