Georg Braun

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Georg Braun (disambiguation) .

View of the city of Münden around 1570 from Civitates orbis terrarum

View of the city of Zurich from 1581

View of the city of Kiel from 1588

Georg Braun (* 1541 in Cologne , † 1622 ibid) was a theologian , canon and dean of the pen St. Marie degrees in Cologne. From 1572 to 1618 Braun was the author and editor of the Civitates Orbis Terrarum , a pioneering and comprehensive work with city ​​views at the time .

life and work

He is presumably the son of the glassmaker Tilmann Bruin and George Braun's siblings are thus the pastor Melchior, who has been dean of St. Apostles and pastor of Little St. Martin since 1585, and the glass painter Bartholomäus. He went to the collegiate school in Emmerich and from 1558 he went to the Jesuit high school in Cologne, where he achieved the degree of a baccalaureus in 1561. After studying theology, Georg Braun worked as a pastor in his hometown of Cologne. At the instigation of Heinrich Rantzau , he received a canon position at Lübeck Cathedral in 1587 , which he handed over to Ludwig Pincier in 1589 .

The six-volume standard work with high-quality vedute is probably inspired by Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia and, in terms of format and layout, is clearly based on the Theatrum orbis terrarum by Abraham Ortelius , published in 1570 . It set completely new standards and served for a century as a model and as a treasure trove for other works. The city views are given on double pages on the inside, while the respective historical and topographical descriptions are printed on the outside.

Frans Hogenberg (Vol. I-IV) and his son Abraham Hogenberg and Simon van den Neuwel (Vol. V and VI) are essentially the creators of the tablets. Other people involved include the Dutch miniature painter Georg Hoefnagel and the painter and cartographer Daniel Frese as supplier of templates based on orders from Heinrich Rantzau , most of which were made as engravings by Greve . Works by Jacob van Deventer , Sebastian Münster and Johannes Stumpf were also used.

As an author and publisher, Braun, who made only a few trips, had extensive contacts. Through his relationships, he was able to procure many templates and gain artistic staff. He wrote the texts for the tablets.

Georg Braun, who died in 1622 at the age of eighty, was the only one of the original participants who saw the publication of the 6th volume in 1618.

Works

• Civitates Orbis Terrarvm Liber. Antvverpiae 1575 ( digitized version )
• Vrbivm Praecipvarivm Totivs Mvndi. Kempen, Coloniae 1581 ( digitized version )

literature

• Ferdinand Geldner:  Braun, Georg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 550 ( digitized version ).
• Wolfgang Bruhn: Old German city pictures: 24 colored sheets. Georg Braun; Franz Hogenberg. Asmus, Leipzig 1938. New edition 1964.
• Georg Braun, Franz Hogenberg: Old European Cities: 16th century city maps and texts. with a description by Ruthardt Oehme of early map-making techniques. Thames and Hudson, London 1965.
  • in German: Old European City Pictures , Johannes Asmus Verlag, Hamburg 1964
• Stephan Füssel (Ed.): Georg Braun, Franz Hogenberg: Civitates orbis terrarum (Cities of the World). 363 copper engravings with 564 cityscapes reissued and annotated. After an original from the Historisches Museum Frankfurt. The original was published from 1572 to 1618. Taschen, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-8365-1125-4 .
• G. Ulrich Großmann : The most beautiful cities in Europe: the city books by Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg. Publisher of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum , Nuremberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-946217-04-6 .

Web links

Commons : Braun & Hogenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Georg Braun in the catalog of the German National Library
• Civitates orbis terrarum (full scans)
• Civitates orbis terrarum (selection of scans)
• City views of Kiel in the 16th and 17th centuries 17th century Franz Obermeier, University of Heidelberg, accessed on May 7, 2011 . 
• Cologne edition of the Civitates Orbis Terrarum digitized version of the Univ.-Bibl. Heidelberg

Individual evidence

1. ^ Franz Obermeier: City views of Kiel in prints from the 16th to 18th centuries . Dissertation, Heidelberg University 2006, p. 1.
2. ↑ Wolfgang Prange : The change in the confession in the Lübeck cathedral chapter: 1530-1600. Lübeck: Schmidt-Römhild 2007 (publications on the history of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck: Series B; Vol. 44) ISBN 978-3-7950-0484-2 . esp.p. 157 (No. 149)