Das Fünffte Buch

Title

Das Fünffte Buch

Description

Three illustrations of various scenes with Indian elephants and a coat of arms depiction.

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

Elephants are the largest living land animals. They are a family from the order of proboscideans. There are three recent species: the African elephant, which inhabits the largely open landscapes of sub-Saharan Africa, the forest elephant, which is also native to Africa but is largely restricted to tropical rainforests, and the Asian elephant, which occurs in southern and south-eastern Asia and uses a variety of landscapes. The natural range of the Asian elephant used to extend from eastern to southeastern and southern Asia, and possibly all the way to the western part of the continent. Today, it is highly fragmented and is limited to the Indian subcontinent as well as to individual parts of the back of India, Sri Lanka and some of the Greater Sunda Islands or the southernmost part of China. The animals inhabit both more open landscapes and more densely wooded areas. The African elephant once colonized almost the entire African continent, but today it also occurs in highly fragmented habitats south of the Sahara. The northern limit of its distribution is in the south of Sudan. From here, the habitat extends across East and West Africa to South Africa. The way of life of today's elephants is comparatively well researched. The animals spend most of their time feeding, which can account for around two thirds to three quarters of their active phase. Sleep usually only lasts a few hours. Elephants are generally sociable animals that live in complex social communities.