Thuringia

Title

Thuringia

Description

Map shows total Thuringia

ca. 1595

Artist

Mercator (1512-1594)

Gerardus Mercator (1512 - 1594). He was a cartographer, philosopher and mathematician. He is best known for his work in cartography, in particular the world map of 1569 based on a new projection which represented sailing courses of constant bearing as straight lines. He is renowned to the present day as the cartographer who created a world map based on a new projection which represented sailing courses of constant bearing as straight lines. In his own day he was the world's most famous geographer but in addition he had interests in theology, philosophy, history, mathematics and magnetism as well as being an accomplished engraver, calligrapher and maker of globes and scientific instruments. He wrote few books but much of his knowledge is to be found in the copious legends on his wall maps and the prefaces that he composed for his atlas ,the first in which the term "atlas" appears and the sections within it.

Historical Description

Named after the Thuringii tribe who occupied it around AD 300, Thuringia came under Frankish domination in the 6th century. The Thuringian tribe formed during the Migration Period. The Saxon Otonen and the Sangerhausen became a center of the Holy Roman Empire in the 10th century. A separate Duchy of Thuringia cannot develop in this way. Greatest power in the Thuringian war at that time was the county of Weimar. It was only the Ludowinger rights that brought parts of Thuringia under their control. In the 12th century, the process of expanding the state in Thuringia was secured. It is called the first climbed cities such as Mühlhausen. The important noble families of medieval Thuringia were next to the dominant Wettin and the Ludowingern. In 1485, with the division of Leipzig, the wet lands were sold to the Albertiner rights in the east and the Ernestiner administration in the west. With the Reformation at the beginning of the 16th century, Thuringia became the center of German politics. Martin Luther made announcements of responsibility at the University of Erfurt and in the Augustinian monastery before he went to Wittenberg and the Reformation began. In 1640, two main Ernestine lines emerged: the House of Saxony-Weimar and the House of Saxony-Gotha. Subsequently, the phase of humanism began in Thuringia, in which the University of Erfurt also had a heyday. A center of German humanism was formed around Ulrich von Hutten and the reformers. It was only around 1780 that the ruling Duchess Anna Amalia and her son Karl August left the region again. They called poets such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or Friedrich Schiller and their court, where they established Weimar Classicism as a German version of the classic literary movement. In 1833, the Customs and Trade Association of the Thuringian States was founded, which spurred industrial revolution in the country. As a result of industrialization, Thuringia became the cradle of social democracy. 1869 Greater August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht in Eisenach the Social Democratic Workers 'Party, in 1875 merged with the General German Workers' Association in Gotha to form the SPD. The Gotha program and the Erfurt program subsequently defined the goals of social democratic politics in Germany.