Erhard Etzlaub

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Colored first edition of the Romweg map, 1500, which like all maps of Etzlaub is south.

Erhard Etzlaub (* around 1460 in Erfurt ; † 1531 or 1532 in Nuremberg ) was an astronomer, cartographer , “compass builder” and doctor of medicine.

Life

"Erhart Etzlauber" obtained the citizenship of Nuremberg in 1484, but the civil register does not record either origin or profession. Assuming that Etzlaub is identical to "Eberhardus Eczleiben", who was matriculated at the Erfurt University in 1468, his year of birth is approximated to 1455–1460. Nuremberg contracts from 1503 on buying a house on an annuity prove that he was married to an Ursula at the time. In 1500 and 1507 he is described in letters as an important compass maker and in 1507 as a "sworn surveyor". In 1511 he was appointed captain in the Heumarkt district, so he held a highly honorable public position. Another letter from 1517 proves that he comes from Erfurt and that he also worked as a doctor in 1513 at the latest. In 1515 he described himself in the "Almanach" (wall calendar) he created as "astronomer and personal physician of the high school in Erfurt".

Etzlaub died childless between December 20, 1531 and February 21, 1532 and left a widow.

The cartographer

Romweg map

On the occasion of the holy year 1500 , which promised a strong influx of pilgrims to Rome, he carried out the "epoch-making" map as a woodcut. This is the Rome way from meylen to meylen with points pegged from eyner Stat to the other through deutzsche lantt in size 41 × 29 cm (scale approx. 1: 5.6 million). Etzlaub invented a simple and usable method for the street representation: By means of the representation by dotted lines, both the course and the distance between two places could be read off. The distance between two points is one German mile (7.4 km). In a later edition Etzlaub made the political boundaries recognizable by different colors. Like all Etzlaub maps, the map is oriented to the south, i.e. H. South is on top, the cardinal points are labeled with noon on top, ascent on the left, undergang on the right and midnight below. A sun compass is also drawn on the lower edge of the map and its use is explained in a legend. Draftsmen, wood cutters and printers are not named, but it can be assumed that the cards were issued by Georg Glockendon .

The map shows the area between the 58th and 41st parallel, from Viborg to Naples , and from Krakow in the east to about the Narbonne - Brussels line in the west. The streets start from the most important cities on the periphery of the empire , radiate through it and converge in Rome .

Etzlaub had probably collected the data for this from information from traveling merchants and partly also taken from the Klosterneuburg Fridericus card from around 1421, which has not survived. Several surviving copies are known, for example in the Göttingen State and University Library , the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg , the Berlin State Library , the Bibliothèque Nationale Paris and the British Library London .

Highway map "through the Roman Reych"

A map enlarged and changed to the format 54.5 × 39.7 cm Das sein dy lantstrassen through the Romisch reych; from a Kunigreich tw another dy Tewtsche land poking from miles to miles recorded with puncten was trucked by Georg glogkendon tw Nurnbergk 1501 . His son Albrecht published another unchanged edition in 1533 after Etzlaub's death. Today only one copy of these prints is known in Germany (it is in the Löbau City Archives in Saxony), another from the Hauslab- Liechtenstein library in Vienna is now in Harvard.

The map extends to the 40th parallel south of Salerno and shows the whole island of Corsica (Cvrsica). In the west it was extended to Paris (Parisium), in the north Scotland was shown in more detail, in the representation "Ptolemaic west-east bent". The left edge shows the individual latitudes from 40 ° to 52 °, the mathematical climates are noted on the right edge . As with the Romweg map, the longitudes in the lower edge have been replaced by ten-mile lines from 10 to 210.

Miniature map (93 x 65 mm) of the cover of the pocket sundial from 1511. This and a similar map from 1513 were mistakenly regarded as the forerunners of the Mercator projection since 1917 .

The map and the Romweg map were printed as a colored single-sheet print by Georg Glockendon after he had cut them into wood.

More cards

The database collected by Etzlaub was taken over in the first half of the 16th century by important cartographers such as Martin Waldseemüller (around 1470 to 1522) and Sebastian Münster (1488–1552), often the southern part of his work.

In addition to this best-known cartographic achievement by Etzlaub, two other maps have been proven with certainty:

  • The Nuremberg map of the area (woodcut, 39 × 27 cm, printed by Jorg Glogkendon) appeared as early as 1492 as the oldest printed special map and political map. It shows 100 places within a radius of 16 miles (around 120 km) around Nuremberg. The cities are already represented by circle symbols instead of the stylized cityscapes still common in Cusanus , and the political affiliation is noted by letters (r for imperial city, b for episcopal city, etc.). There is only one earlier example of this, the Koblenz fragments .
  • A map of the territory of the imperial city of Nuremberg , published in 1519, designed by Etzlaub and painted on parchment by Michel Graf from Nuremberg (scale approx. 1: 30,000, 94 × 84 cm).

Other maps are either lost or cannot be assigned with certainty to Etzlaub:

  • In 1507 Etzlaub received the order from the city of Nuremberg to record all possessions of the purchased Hauseck rule as a "sworn surveyor".
  • A copy from 1600 of a map of the Nuremberg countryside drawn by Etzlaub in 1516 has been preserved.
  • With some probability (because of similarities with the map from 1519) the forest plan “Nuremberg in the Reichswald” (parchment, 69 × 59 cm. 1516) is Etzlaub's draft.
  • A connection between the first map of Bohemia by the pharmacist Mikuláš Klaudyán (Nikolaus Klaudian or Claudianus), which was printed in Nuremberg by Hieronymus Höltzel in 1518 , and Etzlaub's work is plausible insofar as Klaudian had previously stayed in Nuremberg several times and Etzlaub at least one of his in 1517 Published calendars in the Czech language, which he himself most likely did not know. Klaudian's map is also south-facing, shows a similar outline of Bohemia to Etzlaub's map of the Romweg, similar coloring and shows distances by means of points at a distance of one Bohemian mile (approx. 9000 m).

The compass builder

Etzlaub's sundial from 1513

Compass was the name of the foldable travel sundial that had been manufactured in Nuremberg since the days of Regiomontanus and that also contained a compass. They were also used in shipping. Two such pieces of Etzlaub have been preserved, one from 1511 is in the Germanic National Museum, the other from 1513 in the USA.

The lids of the folding sundials are engraved with miniature maps measuring around 100 × 80 mm, which cover the area from the equator to the 67th parallel and are used for adjustment. Instructions for use that Etzlaub gave are recorded in the Codex ad Compastum Norembergensem , which cannot be found at the moment (State Library Munich).

In 1507 Michael Beheim, brother of the globe maker Martin Behaim , wrote to his brother Wolfgang that he would send him several such pieces to Lisbon as soon as Etzlaub had finished them in a few weeks. In 1512 Johannes Cochlaeus praised the craftsmanship of the sundials built before Etzlaub in his Brevis Germaniae Descriptio , "which are even sought after in Rome".

The fact that Etzlaub's work was sometimes rumored to be the forerunner of the Mercator projection is due to faulty investigations that Josef Drecker carried out on the miniature maps in 1917. In 2004 Krücken came to the conclusion: To regard Erhard Etzlaub as a “forerunner” of Gerhard Mercator remains without “fundamantum in re”.

The coat of arms with which Etzlaub signed many, but not all, of his works from 1517.

The almanac

Wall calendars, which in addition to feast days, full and new moons and planetary constellations, also provide health recommendations and bloodletting times in a more esoteric way, are documented from 1515, but not continuously preserved, although it can be assumed that they were published annually after that. They were designed differently depending on the intended distribution area. Four versions from 1520 have survived, namely for Hochstift Eichstätt , City of Regensburg, Palatinate Bavaria and Austria.

From 1517 onwards, several of his almanacs also bear Etzlaub's coat of arms, which, however, seems unknown to the large German coat of arms collections: It shows a gold tray made up of two slanted and slanted red strips, with a red flower in the middle and in each of the four corners. The shape shown here with the two capital letters E on the upper edge of the shield is only found after 1517.

literature

  • Kurt Brunner: Erhard Etzlaub's map "The road map through the Roman Empire" . In: Reiner Buzin and Theodor Wintges (eds.): Kartographie 2001 - multidisciplinary and multimedia. Contributions to the 50th German Cartographers' Day . Heidelberg 2001, pp. 43-54.
  • Brigitte English: Erhard Etzlaub's Projection and Methods of Mapping , in: Imago Mundi , 48 (1996), pp. 103-123 [not viewed].
  • Manfred H. Grieb : Nürnberger Künstlerlexikon, Munich 2007
  • Otto Maull :  Etzlaub, Erhard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 669 ( digitized version ).
  • Nine Miedema: Erhard Etzlaub's cards. A contribution to the history of medieval cartography and single-sheet printing , in: Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 71 (1996), pp. 99–125 [not viewed].
  • Frieder Schanze: On Erhard Etzlaub's Romweg map, the printer Kaspar Hochfeder in Nuremberg and an unknown Nuremberg printer in the successor to Hochfeder , Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 71 (1996), p. 126-140 [not viewed].
  • Fritz Schnelbögl : Life and work of the Nuremberg cartographer Erhard Etzlaub († 1532) in: Mitteilungen des Verein für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, Vol. 57, 1970 , pp. 216–231; can be viewed online
  • Wilhelm Wolkenhauer: Erhard Etzlaub's travel map through Germany 1501 , Nikolassee near Berlin, 1919, DNB entry
  • Christoph Wilhelmi: Erhard Etzlaubs portrait. Painted by Barthel Beham, recently discovered. In: Kartographische Nachrichten, 4/2017, pp. 226–228.

Web links

Commons : Erhard Etzlaub  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Fritz Schnelbögl: the life and work of the Nuremberg cartographer Erhard Etzlaub , S. 216 ff
  2. ↑ Fritz Schnelbögl: the life and work of the Nuremberg cartographer Erhard Etzlaub , p 223
  3. ↑ a b Wilhelm Wolkenhauer, Erhard Etzlaubs Reisekarte durch Deutschland 1501 , p. 3, still speaks of “in Göttingen, Nuremberg, Dresden, Munich and Paris (here in two copies that show 'minor differences')”.
  4. ^ The road map from 1501 , Liechtenstein Map Collection (Houghton Library), Harvard University Library
  5. ↑ William Wolkenhauer, Erhard Etzlaubs travel map by Germany in 1501 , p.4
  6. ↑ Fritz Schnelbögl: the life and work of the Nuremberg cartographer Erhard Etzlaub , S. 223f .; Description from Wolkenhauer and from Löbau .
  7. ^ Brunner, Kurt: Erhard Etzlaubs map "The road map through the Roman Empire", in: Kartographie 2001 - multidisciplinary and multimedia. Contributions to the 50th German Cartographers' Day, ed. by Reiner Buzin and Theodor Wintges (Heidelberg 2001), pp. 43–54, here pp. 43f.
  8. ↑ Fritz Schnelbögl: the life and work of the Nuremberg cartographer Erhard Etzlaub , p 222ff.
  9. ↑ cf. August Ortegel: On the Nuremberg forest plan of 1516 in: Mitteilungen des Verein für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, Vol. 57, 1970 , pp. 232–241; can be viewed online .
personal data
SURNAME Etzlaub, Erhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cartographer, compass builder, astronomer and doctor
DATE OF BIRTH around 1460
PLACE OF BIRTH Erfurt
DATE OF DEATH between December 20, 1531 and February 21, 1532
Place of death Nuremberg