A pair of Imperial Eagle beakers, Bohemia, dated 1634. Colourless clear glass with polychrome enamelling, traces of gilding. Inscribed on the back: ‘The Holy Roman Empire with all its members united 1634’ [‘Das Heilige Römische Reich mit Sampt einen geliedern 1634’]. Height 24 cm. © Kuntskammer Georg Laue.

This pair of tall glass beakers is lavishly decorated with enamelling invoking the unity of the Holy Roman Empire as a political configuration. The double-headed Habsburg eagle is represented displaying on his outspread wings the coats of arms of all fifty-six principalities ruled by electors, archbishoprics, duchies, margravates, free imperial cities and all the other territories granted Imperial immediacy constituting the Holy Roman Empire as a unified political entity. Thus, the heraldic representation of the late medieval doctrine of the quaternions of the imperial constitution, according to which the Holy Roman Empire was divided into subgroups of four, each of which was arranged in a hierarchy of ten estates.

Glass beakers featuring the Imperial Eagle became enormously popular in the German-speaking territories in the late 16th century and 17th century. The motif of the Imperial eagle encompassing the Imperial estates and principalities on its outspread wings derives from prints dating to about 1500 and stems from the Imperial ideal of representing a unified ‘body politic’ with a consolidated social and political hierarchy. The earliest Imperial Eagle beakers date from the 1570s, most of them decorated with a crucifix rather than the Imperial orb that so conspicuously forms the eagle’s breast on the two drinking vessels discussed here. Magnificent vessels of this kind, which addressed all members of the Holy Roman Empire from the lower ranks of the nobility to the powerful Electorate with their iconography, continued to be highly prized throughout the seventeenth century.

At the same time, these tall Imperial Eagle beakers reflect the rude drinking habits prevailing in the upper reaches of Imperial society, notably at German courts, which were notorious in the 17th century for excessive consumption of alcohol. In a satirical piece of writing entitled Zechrecht [The Laws of Drinking] published in 1616, Richard Brathwaite, the English writer behind the suggestive pseudonym Blasius Multibibus (‘Blasius Drinkmuch’), reported on the use of Imperial Eagle beakers in Germany. He mentioned the widespread custom ‘as when [...] two or three [persons] drink from one glass’, and noted that no other glasses were more suitable for this style of drinking than Imperial Eagle beakers – because they held so much drink: ‘Then there is the monstrously large beaker / which is called the Roman Empire / whose sturdiness and massiveness is so great and powerful / that it would probably trip up the mightiest Hercules or toper / and cast [him] down again to God’s earth’. Barthwaite went on to explain that it was the custom to fill such beakers with beer or wine and drink from them ‘in the following manner / that each of the first three takes a swallow / but the fourth must drink up everything else / that still remains / draining it to the dregs and drying it up’.