Family registers are also known as friendship albums or souvenir d'amitié. In principle, they are comparable to poetry albums or today’s online social networks. Since their creation in the sixteenth century, it was customary to ask friends, acquaintances, or notable individuals to make an entry while travelling for educational purposes. These could be quotes, personal dedications, drawings, or embroideries. The entries served to remind people later of their youth. With the family register, one created a “quasi-family” of like-minded people, an ancestry of one’s own choosing. The family register custom is therefore also an alternative to the concept of nobility, which is defined by birth. Here, in the spirit of humanism, creativity in shaping one’s life and personality became a democratic principle of the bourgeoisie. The family register custom originated in Martin Luther’s circle and continued into the nineteenth century. At first, students used it, but over time it became increasingly popular and reflected various cultural developments. The keeping of family registers was confined to members of the German Empire and can be interpreted as compensation for the lack of an identity-forming nation-state—in contrast to France or England.
The museum owns one of the largest collections of these albums in Germany with almost 700 copies. Due to the wealth of contributions by renowned artists and scholars, this album is one of the most important in the collection, uniquely embodying Enlightenment ideals and their significance in science and art. It contains entries by Goethe, Lichtenberg, Herder and Wieland, drawings by members of the Academy of France in Rome and sketches by the architects Combes, Bernard, Norry, Vaudoyer, and Tagliafichi. Apart from his name, nothing is known about the owner, only that he moved in the same circles as the prominent figures gathered in his album. He may have worked as a tutor to a nobleman, with the task of imparting Enlightenment ideals of learning and art. He presumably used his position and proximity to the famous to shape his personality with the help of the family register.