Family books represent a text genre that has so far been neglected by Germanistic research. Based on the interpretation of the album of Duke Augustus the Younger, the founder of the Wolfenbüttel Library, a model for inquiry and interpretation is developed that also allows interdisciplinary research to capture family book entries philologically in a targeted manner and to use them for further questions. Different forms and functions of text production and the resulting constitution of meaning are analyzed in their dependence on historical, biographical, and intertextual factors. This includes examining the reception processes of early modern poetics as well as the meaning-creating function of emblematics.