St. Gallen globe

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The St. Gallen globe in the National Museum Zurich

The St. Gallen globe is a terrestrial and celestial globe that contains a representation of the earth and the sky on the same sphere . It dates from the second half of the 16th century and is now in the National Museum in Zurich . A copy is in the St. Gallen Abbey Library .

construction

The St. Gallen globe is one of the largest surviving globes from the 16th century. It has a sphere diameter of 121 centimeters and lies in a solid wooden frame. The whole construction is 2.33 meters high.

Thanks to a study from the 1960s in which the globe was dismantled, the type of ball construction is known. The 70 kilogram ball consists of a shell made of wooden shingles that has been covered with a layer of paper mache . A layer of chalk was applied over this, which served as a layer of paint. Thousands of copper nails hold the whole thing together.

The wooden support structure is decorated with portraits of ancient and medieval scientists. Various geographical measurement parameters are recorded in the comprehensive rings, the turning mechanism is only partially preserved and in the original no longer functional.

The representation of the world painted on the surface is based on a world map published in 1569 by Gerhard Mercator . The combination of a terrestrial globe with a celestial globe, which is unique for its size and age, is unusual: the constellations belonging to the corresponding hemispheres were painted on the terrestrial globe. The constellations are physically drawn, especially on the large empty areas of still little-known parts of the world , otherwise they are marked with gold stars. The sky cartography is based on two woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer published in Nuremberg in 1515 . In addition to the constellations, various sea deities, sea monsters and other mythical creatures are depicted on empty areas.

history

St. Gallen globe before 1595

The history of the origin of the St. Gallen globe was largely in the dark until a depiction of the globe from before 1595 painted on parchment appeared in 2016 . This "sales prospectus" made it possible to find out that the globe was completed by Tilemann Stella shortly after the death of Duke Johann Albrecht von Mecklenburg in 1576 and updated 15 years later for Johann VII . It had previously been assumed that it was probably made in Augsburg between 1571 and 1584 and later came to Constance , possibly via Jakob Fugger .

It was first mentioned in writing in 1595 in the account book of the abbot of the St. Gallen monastery , Bernhard II. Müller . Apparently the globe was a gift from the Constance pharmacist Lucas Stöckli, who was still generously paid for this gift. From now on the globe was kept in the old abbey library in St. Gallen , which is where it got its name. In the course of the Second Villmerger War , troops from Zurich and Bern looted the monastery in 1712, the globe ended up in this way as part of the looted cultural assets and was placed a few years later in the then city library in Zurich's Wasserkirche . Since 1897 it has been on deposit in the exhibition of the Swiss National Museum, where a gentle restoration was carried out in 1961 .

In the 1990s, the dispute over the ownership of the cultural assets looted in 1712 flared up again between the cantons of Zurich and St. Gallen . This dispute on cultural property was resolved at the end of April 2006 through Federal Councilor Pascal Couchepin . For the globe, this meant that the original still belongs to the central library in Zurich and can be viewed in the National Museum. The Canton of Zurich made a copy for this in return for its own account. This was handed over on August 21, 2009 during an official ceremony in St. Gallen.

Replica

In contrast to the original in the State Museum, the globe copy in the St. Gallen Abbey Library can be operated, rotated and tilted as a scientific instrument, which helps to understand and present early modern science. The refreshed drawings make the full splendor of the heaven and earth images of that time visible.

literature

  • Franz Grenacher: The so-called St. Gallen globe in the Swiss National Museum. Assumptions about its origin and statements about its construction . In: Journal for Swiss Archeology and Art History . tape 21 , 1961, ISSN  0044-3476 , pp. 66-78 .
  • Hans-Peter Höhener: The St. Gallen Globe . In: Alfred Cattani , Bruno Weber (ed.): Zurich Central Library. Treasury of Lore . Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-85823-252-1 , p. 59-61, 167 f .
  • Martina Rohrbach, Beat Gnädinger (ed.): The Zurich globe. Globus replica project 2007–2009, documentation. Zurich 2009 ( staatsarchiv.zh.ch PDF; 16.9 MB).
  • Jost Schmid: A new terrestrial and celestial globe for St. Gallen . In: Cartographica Helvetica . tape 37 , 2008, ISSN  1015-8480 , p. 47-48 .
  • Jost Schmid: New knowledge about how the St. Gallen terrestrial and celestial globe works . In: Cartographica Helvetica . tape 41 , 2010, ISSN  1015-8480 , p. 19-24 .
  • Jost Schmid: Optical and radiographic analyzes of the St. Gallen globe. New insights into its dating and authorship . In: Journal for Swiss Archeology and Art History (ZAK) . tape 74 , 2017, p. 145–156 ( https://www.zb.uzh.ch/Medien/spezialsammlungen/karten/zak.pdf full text [PDF]).

Web links

Commons : St. Galler Globus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Geneviève Lüscher: The oldest surviving terrestrial and celestial globe in the world. Heaven and earth . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung on Sunday . February 13, 2010 ( nzz.ch ).
  2. ↑ News from the St. Gallen Globe - “This happens to a researcher once in a lifetime” . In: Swiss Radio and Television from November 2, 2019.
  3. ↑ Jürg Krummenacher: The riddle of the globe has been solved. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , September 22, 2017, p. 14; online under the title Der St. Galler Globus comes from Northern Germany, NZZ Online, September 21, 2017, accessed on September 21, 2017 (archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/6teZNp0nk ).
  4. ↑ Grenacher: The so-called St. Gallen globe in the Swiss National Museum. ... pp. 67–73.