Von der Littaw.

Title

Von der Littaw.

The upper illustration shows the miraculous birth of Krakow in 1543 or Satan's birth of Krakow in 1543. Described in the text as "This monster was born in 1543 at S. Pauli's church in Vynsterswyck in the Nidland, of a woman, which was a child with large round and fiery eyes, its nose like an ox's horn,...". Below the coat of arms of the Republic of Lithuania and on the reverse an illustration with the title "Vladisla wirt künig in Poland".

ca. 1550

Artist

Münster (1489-1552)

Sebastian Münster (1489–1552) was a leading Renaissance cosmographer. His most famous work, the Cosmographia (1544), was a comprehensive description of the world with 24 maps, based on research dating back to 1528. Continuously revised, the 1550 edition already included many new maps. It was the first scientific yet accessible world description published in German, illustrated with numerous woodcuts by artists such as Hans Holbein the Younger. Between 1544 and 1650, the Cosmographia appeared in 46 editions (27 in German) and was translated into several languages. Münster’s work combined the knowledge of scholars, artists, and travelers and remained influential long after his death.

Historical Description

he beginning of Lithuania as a state lies in the 13th century. Prince Mindaugas, who even had himself crowned king in 1253 with the Pope's approval, brought the neighboring tribes under his sovereignty by military force. At his death in 1263, his principality/kingdom encompassed approximately the area of present-day Lithuania. Parallel to this, the expansion to the east already took place in the 14th century. From the disintegration of the old Kievan Rus after the Mongol storm until 1240 several successor principalities had developed. Lithuania was prevented from pursuing an expansive western policy by the Teutonic Order, while the eastern flank lay open due to the Tatar invasion. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania advanced into this power vacuum and, with the conquest of Kiev (after 1362), came into competition with the Grand Duchy of Moscow for supremacy among the constituent principalities of Rus. Lithuanian eastward expansion reached its peak in the first half of the 15th century. The close political union of Poland and Lithuania resulted in the Real Union of Lublin in 1569, which meant the end of independent Lithuania, after the Lithuanian nobility had already increasingly come under the influence of Polish culture and language in the preceding decades. Thus, during the Reformation, Lithuania went the Polish way and remained Catholic, while the northern, German-influenced Baltic became Protestant. Lithuania remained with the Polish state until the partitions of Poland and then came under Russian rule in 1795. In the wake of perestroika, which triggered the Singing Revolution in the Baltics, Lithuania became the first union republic of the Soviet Union to declare itself a sovereign state in 1990 and renamed the Supreme Soviet the Constituent Assembly.