Triumphal Entry of America in Protestant Germany

Duke Friedrich I of Württemberg (reg. 1593–1608) maintained a Wunderkammer typical of the age, when collecting was less about systematic classification and more about assembling a trophy chest of curiosities and wonders. As was common during the period, the Duke did not hesitate to display and in some cases gift his treasures to further his diplomatic relations with courts and gentleman scholars. Notably, the Duke decided to parade his Aztec feathered shields in tournament dramatisations of ‘the Triumphal Entry of America.’ The performative insertion by Duke Friedrich I of Württemberg (reg. 1593–1608) of Aztec feathered shields in a performance was likely based upon the Protestant engraving entitled Quae pompa delecta ad Regem deferatur, published by Theodor de Bry in 1591. In the performance, the shields take their place in a symbolic act of Protestant religious war. In his chronicle Beschreibung deß Fürstlichen Apparatus, Königlichen Auffzugs/Heroischen Ingressus und herrlicher Pomp und Solennitet, Jakob Frischlin relates how at the Stuttgart Castle the personification of America made her way towards the Protestant Duke Friedrich, in the hope that he would release her from Spanish Catholic subjugation. The Protestant deployment of the shields reminds us that collections are far from innocent or static assemblages of dead objects with fixed meanings. And that is why the two shields are still held in a museum in Germany.