Thuringiae Nova descriptio

Title

Thuringiae Nova descriptio

Description

Map shows the area of Erfurt in Thuringia with a title cartouche depicting a coat of arms and a mileage indicator cartouche.

ca. 1635

Artist

Janssonius (1588-1664)

Johannes Janssonius (Jansson)( 1588- 1664) Amsterdam, was born in Arnhem, the son of Jan Janszoon the Elder, a publisher and bookseller. In 1612 he married Elisabeth de Hondt, the daughter of Jodocus Hondius. He produced his first maps in 1616 of France and Italy. In 1623 Janssonius owned a bookstore in Frankfurt am Main, later also in Danzig, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Königsberg, Geneva and Lyon. In the 1630s he formed a partnership with his brother in law Henricus Hondius, and together they published atlases as Mercator/Hondius/Janssonius. Under the leadership of Janssonius the Hondius Atlas was steadily enlarged. Renamed Atlas Novus, it had three volumes in 1638, one fully dedicated to Italy. 1646 a fourth volume came out with ""English County Maps"", a year after a similar issue by Willem Blaeu. Janssonius' maps are similar to those of Blaeu, and he is often accused of copying from his rival, but many of his maps predate those of Blaeu and/or covered different regions. By 1660, at which point the atlas bore the appropriate name ""Atlas Major"", there were 11 volumes, containing the work of about a hundred credited authors and engravers. It included a description of ""most of the cities of the world"" (Townatlas), of the waterworld (Atlas Maritimus in 33 maps), and of the Ancient World (60 maps). The eleventh volume was the Atlas of the Heavens by Andreas Cellarius. Editions were printed in Dutch, Latin, French, and a few times in German.

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.