An unusual pair of small German parcel-gilt silver cups and covers of historical interest, Hans Weber, Nuremberg, circa 1626

each engraved with The Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, The Resurrection and The Last Judgment, covers with female personifications of The Four Continents, domed based with hatched ornament, cover rims inscribed ANNO 1626 DEN 9 MAI AM TAG HIOBS HAT MAN CHRISTOBH HAMERN DES RATHS ZU EGER INS EXILIUM Vertrieben, inside of covers fitted with the marriage arms of Christoph Hammer and his wife, marked on bodies and bases

Associated literature:
Deutsche Gold-Schmiedekunst vom 15.Bis Zum 20. Jahrhundert aus dem Germanischen Nationalmuseum, Berlin, 1987, cat. 34

Georg Mundig von Rodach,  Consiliorum Sive Tractatum Juris Volumen, 1664, vol. Alterum Consilium I, p. 24 et sec.,

Marked with town and makers mark to rim of body and rim of base, both also with assay scrapes. the covers fit slightly awkwardly to the bodies but okay. One has slightly more wear to the gilding than the other, more silver showing through than the other. Engraving however is generally very crisp, a little less so around the rim of the covers. Possible old repair to one of the finials but otherwise good condition.
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A third cup of this size by the same maker, with the same inscription and armorials exists in the Germanischen National museum, Berlin. (The cataloguers have recorded the identical inscription but with the date of 1629 perhaps in error)

The inscription in translation reads: On the day of Job, 9 May 1626 Christoph Hamer of the Eger town council was driven into exile
Georg Mundig von Rodach wrote an account of the events in the life of Christoph Hamer which led to his expulsion from Eger and its commemoration in these cups. The t.mes was 1618 with largely protestant Bohemia on the verge of revolt against the Emperor by throwing his catholic regents out of a window of Prague castle. At this t.mes , Hamer, a Lutheran but loyal imperial subject and important person from the town of Eger in Bohemia, had lost his beloved wife and was on an extended journey to France, the Low Countries and England. Hearing of the ructions at home he returned to help and was sent by his town council to the town of Pilsen to offer the benefit of his wise council. 

After the Bohemian revolt Catholics had fled to Pilsen for safety, and this town about to face attack by protestant forces under Ernst von Mansfeld, was in a state of anxiety.  Hamer came to give his help, but for some reason which is not clearly explained in Rodach’s sympathetic account, he became embroiled in a misunderstanding with a group of soldiers during which he fired a shot. This shot was described by Rodach as the first shot of the siege of Pilsen, although it appears largely to have been without serious repercussions at the t.mes , and Hamer paying his way out of the problem, returned freely to Eger. Years later, though when Bohemia was being catholicised and protestants suffered horribly for their religion, the event was remembered and Hamer was accused of disloyalty to the Emperor by a man called Weiss (described as treacherous and evil by Rodach) for having fired this shot in Pilsen.  In those t.mes s of intense loathing between religions, when Protestants were on the receiving end in Bohemia, Weiss’s accusation held and the Lutheran Hamer was expelled from his home town. He left on 9th May 1626, commemorated by Lutherans as the day of the biblical Job, a good man beset by disasters.