Von der Statt Lucern.

Title

Von der Statt Lucern.

Description

View of the city of Lucerne in Switzerland.

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

The earliest known mentions of the place are ad monasterium Lucernense or ad Lucernense monasterium, monasterium Luciaria and in quodam loco, qui Lucerna ex antiquitate est dictus. The derivations of Latin lucerna "luminary" compares to this day "luminary city of Lucerne. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Germanic Alemanni took ever greater possession of the area from the 7th century onwards. The Alemannic language gradually replaced the Latin. In 1250 Lucerne already reached the size it maintained until the 19th century. In the 13th century, Lucerne was characterized by party fights between supporters of the emperor and the pope and seemed to have already possessed a municipal self-government with a council and a citizens' assembly. Especially from the second half of the 14th century, Lucerne successfully began to strengthen its influence in the surrounding rural areas and to bind lordship rights to itself. In 415, Lucerne was granted imperial freedom by King Sigismund and was thus an imperial city until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Lucerne formed a strong member of the confederation. The city expanded its territorial rule, levied taxes and appointed civil servant bailiffs. In 1798, nine years after the beginning of the French Revolution, the French army invaded Switzerland. The Old Confederation disintegrated and the rule of the patricians was transformed into a democracy, the Helvetic Republic was born, of which Lucerne was the capital for a short time.