Tegernsee Haggadah

Cod.hebr. 200
Passau or Vienna, ca. 1478? (before 1493)
Parchment, illuminated in Vienna by the Master of the Munich Cgm 173 or his workshop
Jewish texts were also sometimes richly illustrated. The Haggadah is read and sung during the family meal celebrating the Jewish Passover. Both, the feast and the text commemorate the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. This Haggadah, executed for the Jewish community of Passau, was illuminated by a Christian workshop. It came to the library of the Benedictine monastery of Tegernsee via the cathedral preacher Paul Wann who got the book in the course of the expulsion of the Jews from Passau. A Latin foreword of a Christian Hebraic scholar was later added.
Fol. 11r: The miniature by the so called Master of the Munich Büchlein von der Liebhabung Gottes (Cgm 173) or his workshop illustrates the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt ("We were slaves of the pharaoh in Egypt"), the hard work, symbolised here by the construction of a tower.