Schlesia nach aller gelegenheit / in Stetten / Wässern und Bergen / mit sampt andern anstossenden Ländern.

Title

Schlesia nach aller gelegenheit / in Stetten / Wässern und Bergen / mit sampt andern anstossenden Ländern.

Map shows the whole of Silesia with the city of Wroclaw, a mileage scale cartouche and index.

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

Silesia is a region in Central Europe on both sides of the upper and middle reaches of the Oder and extends in the south along the Sudetes and Beskids. Most of Silesia lies in what is now Poland. A small part in the west of Lower Silesia belongs to East Germany, a southern part of Upper Silesia to the Czech Republic. Between 1289 and 1292, Bohemian king Wenceslaus II became suzerain of some of the Upper Silesian duchies. Polish kings had not renounced their hereditary rights to Silesia until 1335. The province became part of the Bohemian Crown under the Holy Roman Empire, and passed with that crown to the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria in 1526. In the 15th century, several changes were made to Silesia's borders. Parts of the territories which had been transferred to the Silesian Piasts in 1178 were bought by the Polish kings in the second half of the 15th century. From 1526 to 1742 the Habsburgs, as kings of Bohemia, were also dukes of Silesia. Almost all of Silesia became Protestant in the 16th century. Well-known Silesian reformers were among others Johann Heß and Caspar von Schwenckfeld, whose theology was invoked by the Schwenkfeldians, who were represented in Silesia until the 17th century. After the First Silesian War it was agreed in the preliminary peace of Breslau (1742) that Austria had to cede Lower and Upper Silesia to the Oppa as well as the Bohemian County of Glatz to Prussia. Frederick the Great was able to defend this acquisition in the Second Silesian War and also in the Third Silesian War (1756 to 1763). A smaller part of Upper Silesia around Troppau, Jägerndorf, Teschen and Bielitz as well as the southern part of the Principality of Neisse, which belongs to Lower Silesia (= the political district of Freiwaldau until 1938) remained as Austrian Silesia (officially: "Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia") until 1918 of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. First (until 1782) as part of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then (until 1849 and 1860–1861) Moravia. According to a decree of March 4, 1849, all peoples of the Austrian Empire, including Silesians, were given equal rights.