Groeninga M.D. LXX.III

Title

Groeninga M.D. LXX.III

Description

Decorative and detailed view of Groeningen in Sachsen Anhalt. Gröningen was first mentioned in a document in 934. Ecclesiastically, the area belonged to the bishopric of Halberstadt of the archbishopric of Mainz. Gröningen was at times the residence town of the Bishop of Halberstadt. As a result of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, the bishopric of Halberstadt fell as a secular principality in 1650 and the archbishopric of Magdeburg in 1680 to the Electorate of Brandenburg and the later Kingdom of Prussia, respectively. After the defeat of Prussia in 1806, Napoleon annexed the areas of Prussia west of the Elbe to the Kingdom of Westphalia. Gröningen belonged to the Saal Department. After the Congress of Vienna, Gröningen became part of the Magdeburg administrative district of the Prussian province of Saxony in 1816. The sugar factory Wiersdorff, Hecker & Co was built in Gröningen in 1864. Initially, it was in competition with a small sugar factory in Kloster Gröningen, which had already been built in 1848 and went out of business in 1876.

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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 area of today's state of Saxony-Anhalt was one of the cultural focal points in the German-speaking area in the early Middle Ages. Today's state capital Magdeburg was at that time one of the political centers in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The well-preserved architectural monuments from the Romanesque and Gothic periods, such as the cathedrals in Magdeburg and Halberstadt, the old town of Quedlinburg and many castles and churches, testify to the earlier importance of the entire region. The state was created in July 1947 through the unification of the Free State of Anhalt with the Prussian provinces of Magdeburg and Halle-Merseburg, which the Free State of Prussia had created in April 1944 by dividing its province of Saxony.