Das Ander Buch / Amsterdam. / Von Gallia. Dietenhofen der herrlichen Vestung sampt der selben Belägerung contrafehtung.

Title

Das Ander Buch / Amsterdam. / Von Gallia. Dietenhofen der herrlichen Vestung sampt der selben Belägerung contrafehtung.

Description

Bird's eye view of the city of Amsterdam with coat of arms and index. The reverse shows the fortress of Dietenhofen in France and the coats of arms of Limburg and Poland.

ca. 1550

Artist

Münster (1489-1552)

Sebastian Münsters (1489-1552) is one of the famous cosmographers of the Renaissance. Its real importance in the field of cartography is based on its famous cosmography, which he published in 1544 with 24 double-sided maps (including Moscow and Transylvania). The material for this came largely from research and the collection of information from around 1528, which he initially only wanted to use for a description of Germany, but was now sufficient for a map of the entire world and ultimately led to a cosmography. He constantly tried to improve this work, i.e. to replace or add to maps. In the edition of 1550, only 14 maps were taken over from the earlier editions. The 52 maps printed in the text were also only partially based on the old maps. The great success of this cosmography was also based on the precise work of the woodcuts mostly by Hans Holbein the Younger, Urs Graf, Hans Rudolph Deutsch and David Kandel. It was the first scientific and at the same time generally understandable description of the knowledge of the world in German, in which the basics of history and geography, astronomy and natural sciences, regional and folklore were summarized according to the state of knowledge at that time. Cosmography is the science of describing the earth and the universe. Until the late Middle Ages, geography, geology and astronomy were also part of it. The first edition of the Cosmographia took place in 1544 in German, printed in Heinrich Petri's office in Basel. Heinrich Petri was a son from the first marriage of Münster's wife to the Basel printer Adam Petri. Over half of all editions up to 1628 were also published in German. However, the work has also been published in Latin, French, Czech and Italian. The English editions all comprised only a part of the complete work. Viktor Hantzsch identified a total of 46 editions in 1898 (German 27; Latin 8; French 3; Italian 3; Czech 1) that appeared from 1544 to 1650, while Karl Heinz Burmeister only had 36 (German 21; Latin 5; French 6; Italian 3; Czech 1) that appeared between 1544 and 1628. The first edition from 1544 was followed by the second edition in 1545, the third in 1546, the fourth edition in 1548 and the fifth edition in 1550, each supplemented by new reports and details, text images, city views and maps and revised altogether. Little has been known about who - apart from the book printers Heinrich Petri and Sebastian Henricpetri - were responsible for the new editions after Münster's death. The 1628 edition was edited and expanded by the Basel theologian Wolfgang Meyer. With Cosmographia, Sebastian Münster has published for the first time a joint work by learned historians and artists, by publishers, wood cutters and engravers. The numerous vedute are usually made as woodcuts. Sebastian Münster obtained his knowledge from the travel reports and stories of various scholars, geographers, cartographers and sea travelers. Long after his death, "Kosmographie" was still a popular work with large editions: 27 German, 8 Latin, 3 French, 4 English and even 1 Czech editions appeared. The last edition appeared in Basel in 1650.

Historical Description

The name of the city derives from a dam with a lock in the Amstel River, built in the 13th century. Until the 13th century, most of the present province of Holland was poorly populated. It was a very wet area, consisting mainly of marshes and swamps, and was cut by several rivers. One of these rivers was the Amstel. Due to storm surges, the IJ had widened the mouth of the Amstel into a narrow, elongated bay. Around this, about 500 fishermen had settled in huts by 1230. Lords of the Amstelland around the river of the same name was the noble family van Amstel, they built new castle, the Kasteel van Amstel. Around 1270 they had the river, where it widened into a bay, cut off by the dam that gave it its name. The settlement is first mentioned in 1275 as "Amstelledamme". From this dam, the dike ran northward in curves on both sides of the bay, where today's Nieuwendijk and Warmoesstraat streets still run higher than their surroundings. The area could only be built on with houses and roads in the marshland with the help of countless piles as subsoil - driven up to 18 meters deep through the boggy soil into the firm sand. Fishing, initially the most important source of income, gradually gave way to trade, especially with dried or cured herring from the Swedish south coast and with beer from Hamburg, for which Amsterdam received an import monopoly in 1323. In 1347, locks were mentioned for the first time, which made the laborious transport of goods over the dam unnecessary by allowing ships to pass through with their masts down. Amsterdam was never a member of the Hanseatic League, with which there were trade conflicts and disputes over the passage through the Öresund, which was settled by compromise in 1441. New techniques (immediate gutting of fish while still on board) also made fishing in the North Sea more efficient. Salt and tropical fruits were imported from the Mediterranean. Amsterdam became a stacking and transhipment market and the goods were further processed, giving rise to production techniques, sciences, banking, insurance and printing. Since 1492 Jews from Spain came to Amsterdam, they became a part of the city and there were numerous synagogues. In 1621, the conflict with Spain broke out again during the Thirty Years' War and was formally ended only in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, which brought international recognition of the Republic of the United Netherlands and at the same time its departure from the Holy Roman Empire. The annexation of Portugal by Spain in 1580 had forced the northern Netherlands to allow ships to sail to India themselves. The first voyages were made from Amsterdam and immediately led to great success. In 1602, the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) was founded, and in 1621, the Dutch West India Company was also established. In 1626, the VOC founded the city of Nieuw Amsterdam, which has been called New York since 1667. These trading companies turned the Republic into a global maritime and trading power, which, after the armistice with Spain in 1609, marked the beginning of the Dutch Golden Age. However, this success also led to rivalry with the great powers of England and France. Three Anglo-Dutch naval wars took place between 1652 and 1674, and in the Second Northern War the Netherlands had to defend its trading interests in the Baltic Sea at the same time. This was followed by falling prices, English competition overseas, damage to ships and wooden piles of dikes by the shipworm and subsequent flooding, and the rinderpest, which brought the export of cheese and butter to a standstill. This initiated Amsterdam's decline as a transhipment port for world trade and led to a change in economic structures by the end of the century. Amsterdam managed to become the financial center of the world - as a banker for European princes who used borrowed money to wage their costly wars. The city did not experience a new boom until the Noordzeekanaal was opened in 1876, giving Amsterdam a connection to the North Sea and thus to the United Kingdom and the United States (USA). Once again, Amsterdam became the center of cultural and scientific life, although economically it was gradually outstripped by Rotterdam, especially after the Second World War.