Wolgastum. Wollgast.

Title

Wolgastum. Wollgast.

Description

Two bird's-eye views of the besieged German town of Wolgast on one sheet. The appearance in the sky (lion and eagle) is only explained in the German edition between the engravings: "In Wehrender belagerung diser Statt, hat sich über dem Schloss dises Wünderzeichen, ein Loew und Adler streitende in der Luft sechen lassen Angesichts der gantzen Armeen".

ca. 1646

Artist

Merian (1593-1650)

Matthäus Merian (1593 – 1650) , born in Basel, learned the art of copperplate engraving in Zurich and subsequently worked and studied in Strasbourg, Nancy, and Paris, before returning to Basel in 1615. The following year he moved to Frankfurt, Germany where he worked for the publisher Johann Theodor de Bry. He married his daughter, Maria Magdalena 1617. In 1620 they moved back to Basel, only to return three years later to Frankfurt, where Merian took over the publishing house of his father-in-law after de Bry's death in 1623. In 1626 he became a citizen of Frankfurt and could henceforth work as an independent publisher. He is the father of Maria Sibylla Merian, who later published her the famous and wellknown studies of flowers, insects and butterflies.

Historical Description

Wolgast is a small town in the northeast of Germany. The largest part of the city is located west of the island of Usedom. The area of Wolgast belonged to the settlement area of the Slavic Liutices, later to the Duchy of Pomerania. The town was first mentioned in documents in 1123 as a trading and customs post. In 1230 a castellan for Wolgast was mentioned for the last time. The first granting of the town charter probably took place between 1250 and 1259. From 1295 to 1625, after the division of the Duchy of Pomerania into Pomerania-Stettin and Pomerania-Wolgast, the town was the seat of the dukes of the Wolgast line. Their residence, Wolgast Castle, was one of the most important North German Renaissance buildings. During the Thirty Years' War, in the Battle of Wolgast in 1628, the imperial troops under Wallenstein defeated the Danish defenders of the town under King Christian IV. In 1630, the Swedish King Gustav II Adolf landed with his army in Peenemünde, which belonged to the town of Wolgast. After the king's death, the repatriation of his body to Sweden from Wolgast took place in 1633. From the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 until the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the town, like the entire territory of Western Pomerania, belonged to Swedish Pomerania, and from 1720 it became the border point of the Oder inlet and outlet, because the Swine outlet was silted up. Wolgast benefited from customs and tax collections. Since the end of the 18th century there was a new boom through trade and industry. Warehouses and trading houses were built. Around the middle of the 19th century, the shipowners represented in Wolgast had 20 merchant ships.