Hans Conrad Gyger

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Hans Conrad Gyger
Gyger plan

Hans Conrad Gyger (born July 22, 1599 in Zurich ; † September 25, 1674 there ; authorized to live there ) was a Swiss cartographer and engineer .

Life

Gyger was the son of the glazier Hans Georg Gyger and his wife Elisabeth Meyer von Herisau . Gyger received an apprenticeship as a glass painter from Christoph Nüscheler . In 1619 he became quartermaster and was a member of the Meisen guild .

Cartographic work

Gyger published several maps of the Canton of Zurich and Switzerland. Ten maps of the Zurich landscape were drawn up between 1644 and 1660, on which the troop assembly areas and their catchment areas are shown.

At the same time he was working on a large hand-painted relief map of the canton (230 × 225 cm) on behalf of the Zurich government. It was completed in 1667 after 38 years of work. The map on a scale of 1: 32,000 is considered a masterpiece of three-dimensional terrain representation. Gyger was the first to depict a landscape in this way. It was common then and for a long time afterwards to depict hills and mountains on maps from a gentleman's perspective. Because the map was subject to military secrecy, his pioneering work had no direct impact on other cartographers. In the course of the 18th century the "Gyger map" was redrawn.

The Swiss cartographer Eduard Imhof praised Gyger and his work in the monthly “Atlantis” in 1944 as follows: “This map not only towers above all other Swiss maps of the 17th and 18th centuries, it also had none abroad at its time Rival. Yes, you can say that it has not been surpassed anywhere except for our day in the picturesque immediacy of the landscape. "

In July 2012, the Zurich Central Library was able to bid for a map of the upper Lake Zurich that had been lost for centuries . The 35 by 57 centimeter map of the upper Lake Zurich was previously only known from a Gyger catalog raisonné. The original was made around 1635 and originally served official purposes.

In addition to his work as a map painter , Gyger also worked as a glass painter.

Gyger menu

Map of the upper Lake Zurich

Map of the upper Lake Zurich, around 1640

In July 2012, the Zurich Central Library was able to bid for 9,000 francs in Zofingen, a map of the upper Lake Zurich that had been lost for centuries . The 30 by 57 centimeter map was previously only known from a Gyger catalog raisonné and two copies from the 18th century.

It was created around 1640 and illustrates a border dispute between the cantons of Zurich and Schwyz, which was negotiated between 1635 and 1643 at the Frauenwinkel near Pfäffikon SZ . The subject of the disputes was merchant shipping and the income from fishing; The Schwyzer had tried in vain to shift the borders in their favor. To represent the political separation, Gyger painted the Zurich areas in a light brown, the Schwyz area gray-green. In the 1920s, the map was drawn up on wood.

She appeared in the area around Aarau on an attic floor in the remains of a deceased elderly woman. It is not known how the latter came into possession of the card.

literature

Web links

Commons : Gygerkarte  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Maplan website
  2. Press release of the ZB (PDF) Illustration in the Tages-Anzeiger
  3. Tages-Anzeiger , July 19, 2012.