Inside the book

The title page announces "Mit 11 Abbildungen" (with 11 illustrations - all collected in one folded plate), and Bronner's preface, signed at Wiesloch on 24 July 1830, immediately declares improved vine training a "Bedürfniß der Zeit" (need of the time). His complaint is economic as much as agricultural: when markets readily paid for inferior wine, growers had little reason to change. Better viticulture begins when better wine becomes worth making. The numbered sections move from argument to experiment. "Zweck und Nutzen der niederen Erziehungsart" (purpose and advantages of low vine training) makes the case for cultivation without stakes and singles out Riesling as "die edelste der Rebsorten" (the noblest of grape varieties), weighing the new system against established practices such as the Bechtheim method. "Der Rebsatz" (planting the vineyard) follows the vine from selection and soil preparation through planting, winter earthing, yield, and, unusually, a year-by-year account of Bronner's "Bockschnitt" (bush-pruning system) from the first season through the sixth. The final section, "Traubenspaliere mit Winkelschnitt" (grape espaliers trained by angle pruning), moves from the vineyard toward the house. Bronner sets out his "Winkelschnitt" (angle-pruning system), contrasts it with the "fächerförmige" (fan-shaped) method, and engages with Metzger's "Rheinischer Weinbau" (Rhenish Viticulture). The large folding plate by Th. Hengstenberg gathers the argument into eleven numbered figures, progressing from young vines through increasingly elaborate espalier forms.