Sebastian Brant’s (1457–1521) moral satire Ship of Fools (Ger. Narrenschiff), written in rhyming couplets, was a bestseller in its own epoch. With its tale of a ship carrying 112 fools, who together set sail for the promised land of Narragonia, it remains one of the greatest successes in German literature to this day. The author holds up a mirror to his contemporaries and points an admonishing finger at human folly in a satirical but never offensive way. Alongside Brant’s unvarnished language, the book’s enduring popularity is founded on the visual humour of its woodcuts. 73 of the 112 illustrations are attributed to the young Albrecht Dürer. The Liberna Collection houses a copy of the first German edition, which was published on Shrove Tuesday 1494 in Basel by Johann Bergmann von Olpe, a friend of Brant since his student days. It is one of only 13 copies known today, some of which are incomplete.