Breslau Cabinet of Natural and Artificial Curiosities

Daniel von Reusch, easily the leader and senior of the merchants that Breslau fosters. For the former, if you desire a just series of Caesars from Julius Caesar up to Gallienus, he will provide it in bronze. The latter, whether you demand more select coins from ancient or recent times, will willingly share, according to the kindness for which he is known toward good men, as much as he brought back happily two years ago from the province of Holland.

Since, therefore, these praised men have all, to a man, met their day, and none of their museums have stood firm, but all have been scattered; while indeed the Röthelian collection passed to the Most Full Title Lord Johann Adrian, Baron von Plencken, Royal Supreme Chancellor of the Court in Silesia, here in this place, and afterwards to his heirs; the Haunoldian collection, insofar as it contained coins brought from the East and West Indies, went to Arnstadt (which is now seen together with the incomparable coin apparatus in Gotha), and insofar as it contained other modern coins, it reached the Elisabethan Library of our city and his nearest relatives; the Lohensteinian collection, in which many very elegant ancient gems were also to be found, was bought by the Generous Lady von Rehdiger for the sum of 4,000 Imperials, from which afterwards most of them fell into the hands of the Jews; the Reuschian and Hoffmannswaldavian collections were claimed for the most part by the local ecclesiastic, Lord Godofr. Hanckius, by right of purchase; from the latter, the Museum of Shells was bequeathed to the Elisabethan Library; however, a great part of the apparatus of painted pictures was sold off, except for those which the Most Generous Lord Karl Ludwig von Colwitz, most ample Senator of our city, still possesses. I, for my part, have wished to briefly delineate this Storehouse of Natural and Artificial things, as they are preserved at this time in Breslau, partly in public places, partly in the museums of many nobles and certain private individuals; but I have reserved for another time the more copious description and the meditation to be instituted regarding each individual piece.

Our Breslau shines with many magnificent places dedicated to Divine worship: among which, first in dignity and workmanship is the Cathedral Temple of St. John on the island, which should be judged among the primary basilicas of Germany without injustice. The beginnings of this temple were transferred to Breslau with the episcopal seat, which was first at Smogrow, then...