Martin Behaim

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Upper plate of a two-part memorial chandelier for Martin Behaim: The plate, made in 1519, contains the only contemporary depiction of his person. The knight in golden armor is Martin Behaim, his wife Joana de Macedo kneels across from him, the two sides of the family are brought together in the coat of arms. Behind it is probably her son Martin Behaim the younger. The tape reads “in memoriam eius” (in memory of him). The plate was added to a candlestick from 1490, which originally hung in the Katharinenkirche in Nuremberg and is now in the possession of the Germanic National Museum.

Martin Behaim (born October 6, 1459 in Nuremberg , † July 29, 1507 in Lisbon , Portugal ), also Martin Bohemus, port. Martinho da Boémia and lat. Martinus de Boemia, was a cloth merchant from Nuremberg and knight of the Kingdom of Portugal . He became known as the stimulator of the oldest surviving globe .

Life

origin

The surname Behaim is supposed to indicate that the family came to Nuremberg from Bohemia in the 12th century , but this is not documented. In the imperial city of Nuremberg the family belonged to the patriciate and from 1681 called themselves Behaim von Schwarzbach . Numerous family members have held important positions in the city.

The father Martin Behaim (born November 10, 1437 - † August 6, 1474) earned his money, like almost all patricians, from trading. From her marriage to Agnes Schopper († July 8, 1487) there were twelve children, seven of whom survived into adulthood. The family lived in a large house belonging to their mother Agnes on Hauptmarkt until 1484 , which was destroyed in a bombing raid on January 2, 1945. Today in Nuremberg there is a plaque on the reconstructed house on Hauptmarkt No. 15 across from the beautiful fountain in memory of the seafarer and manufacturer of the globe.

Martin Behaim was the oldest of the siblings. No records have survived from his youth; it is also not known whether he learned Latin , as there are no Latin documents from his pen. When Martin was 15 years old, his father died at the age of only 37. Since his mother did not remarry, his uncle Leonhard, together with a close friend of the family, took over the legal guardianship.

Stay in the Netherlands

After finishing school, Martin was sent to a cloth merchant in the Netherlands in 1476 , where he stayed for a year. He visited the Frankfurt Easter and Autumn Fair several times and then started a new apprenticeship with a fellow countryman from Nuremberg in Antwerp . This teacher even allowed him to trade in cloth for his own account.

For the period from June 8, 1479 to March 1, 1483 there are no sources for his biography. During a home leave in Nuremberg, he was sentenced to eight days' arrest because, as a Christian, he was said to have danced at a Jewish wedding during Lent. A document proves that he was back in Antwerp in 1484 and, among other things, traded in galls for making ink. In this document, Behaim declares that he will move to distant lands and regulates the financial situation in the event of his death. The trip first took him to Lisbon.

Stay in Portugal

One of Behaim's teachers in Nuremberg was the famous mathematician and astronomer Regiomontanus , whose star tables ( ephemeris ), together with an improvement of the Jacob's staff, Behaim introduced to the Portuguese court. Behaim was thus a respected personality at the Portuguese royal court. On February 18, 1485, Behaim in Alcaçovas was knighted by King João II of the military order Ordem de Cristo , to which the Infante Heinrich the Navigator also belonged. Previously, Behaim had been accepted into the royal junta dos Mathematicos and was an advisor to King João II. Around 1484, on the instructions of King João II , Christopher Columbus presented his plan to travel west to this royal junta dos Mathematicos , which was rejected with the consent of the king. But there is no evidence that Behaim and Columbus met.

Martin Behaim Monument at Cape Cross Lodge in Cape Cross , Namibia

Between 1485 and 1486 he joined Diogo Cão on a sea voyage along the West African coast southwards to Cape Cross in Namibia . Sources for this are two texts on the globe itself as well as a remark in Schedel's world chronicle , which most likely also goes back to Behaim personally.

Sometime in the four years after he was accepted into the military order, Martin Behaim married Joana de Macedo, the daughter of the governor of the Azores islands Fayal and Pico . Apparently only one child came from this marriage, who in turn was baptized with the name Martin (* 1488).

Return to Nuremberg

In 1490 Martin Behaim reappeared in Nuremberg to take care of his mother Agnes' inheritance. Behaim's long absence had put his family in an embarrassing position as they had to settle debts with several creditors. These circumstances explain several critical remarks made by his siblings, such as his youngest brother Wolf, "that I feel (myself) about him, I even like to wonder that we can be completely single from ym". Since the siblings could not agree on the division of inheritance, an arbitration commission was set up. Until the inheritance was paid out in 1491, Martin Behaim was apparently in a financially distressed position; he could not pay servants' wages and promissory notes. In 1492 Behaim received the order from the Nuremberg Council on his own initiative to produce a globe that was supposed to depict the known world of that time. Under the guidance of Behaim, the globe was finally made by various craftsmen around 1492–1493.

Captivity and death

Behaim monument on Theresienplatz in Nuremberg

In 1493 Martin Behaim returned to Portugal by sea and traveled to Flanders at the beginning of 1494 on behalf of the king. According to his own report, he got into captivity with servants and travel budget and was brought to England, where he became seriously ill. A pirate is said to have helped him escape. In May 1494 he was back in Portugal.

In 1495, his patron King João II and his father-in-law died, who had given him great support at the Portuguese court. In addition to these losses, his wife had put him in a precarious position during his absence; her adultery with an influential man resulted in a power struggle that went as far as the royal court.

Behaim seems to have found no favor with the new king, he died on July 29, 1507 in Lisbon, completely impoverished. His son later moved to Nuremberg.

The potato

Behaims Erdapfel in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum , Nuremberg

Throughout the Middle Ages the earth has been viewed as a sphere; there is not a single medieval source in which it was referred to as a disk. The apple was the most common metaphor for the earth in the Middle Ages, for example in the form of the imperial apple as the emperor's insignia . Behaim only took up a common phrase when he called his globe "Erdapfel". The representation of the earth in spherical form did not establish a fundamental new worldview.

Behaim reproduces the world of ideas of antiquity and the Middle Ages with the three continents Asia, Europe and Africa on the globe. America, Australia and the Pacific are missing. In addition, the circumference of the earth is set far too short. It is the same worldview on the basis of which Columbus ventured his famous journey. Since Behaim himself was a trader and the Portuguese had a monopoly on the sea route around Africa, he might want to make it clear to the Nuremberg Council through the globe that there would still have to be an alternative route to the Spice Islands from Asia if one sailed directly west.

Behaim's Erdapfel is described over and over with texts. As a source of life, they should be used with caution. An inscription claims that Behaim was still at sea at a time when he was actually knighted in Portugal. Another text dates the globe to 1492 and describes it as a gift from Behaim. In fact, work was still being carried out on it in 1493 and probably also in 1494 and the Nuremberg council paid for it.

The billing shows that the globe is a prototype (“large” or “first sphere”). This source also mentions a printing copy ("mapa") for series production, of which the Nuremberg Council also bought a copy. The discovery of America made the globe obsolete shortly after its presentation.

During the Second World War, the globe was kept in the Nuremberg art bunker . Today the globe is in the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg.

Unsubstantiated claims about Behaim

Bust of Behaim in the Ruhmeshalle , Munich

For a medieval person, Behaim's life is well documented, but there are still gaps, especially in the knowledge of his Portuguese life. Over the centuries they have been embellished with unsubstantiated claims. The most important are:

  • The Altdorf professor Johann Christoph Wagenseil claimed in 1682 that Behaim discovered America before Columbus. Other authors believe that Behaim at least gave Columbus the idea of ​​sailing west. These claims held up well into the 20th century.
  • Behaim is said to have been in Portugal as early as 1481 or 1482. That cannot be ruled out, but so far there is no evidence of this either.
  • Behaim is said to have been a great scientist. However, there is neither a reference to a scientific training by Behaim, nor a scientific work from his pen. Nothing is known from contemporary Portuguese sources about Behaim as a cosmographer, captain, navigator or even as a member of a “junta of mathematicians”. It was not until 1552, decades after his death, that the Portuguese historian João de Barros (1496–1570) reported that Behaim was then called to improve navigation options. As a student of the famous mathematician and astronomer Regiomontanus , he brought his ephemeris (star tables) and the Jacob's staff to Portugal and thus enabled navigators to explore the open sea. Behaim is also supported by the fact that his parents and Regiomontan lived in Nuremberg on the main market and that the two could have met. It is more likely, however, that Behaim learned how to observe the heights of the sun and how to calculate geographic latitudes from Bernhard Walther, who was a close confidante of Regiomontans. By claiming to have been a student of Regiomontan, Behaim very likely caught the attention of the Portuguese king. And since he was not only able to operate the navigation instruments, but also had the astronomical tables, he probably also contributed to the development of ocean-going shipping.
  • Behaim assembled, painted and labeled his globe himself. In the settlement of 1494, however, Hans Glockengießer is paid for a ball made of molded clay, Ruprecht Kalberger (1470-1507) for the globe, which he made over it from cloth and glue, and finally Georg Glockendon († 1514), who made it with his Woman painted. "An entry from 1510 shows that the horizon ring was only attached to the globe frame this year."

Peter J. Bräunlein presented in Martin Behaim. Legend and Reality of a Famous Nuremberg Man (1992) on the occasion of the Behaim exhibition of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum put together the scattered newer works on Behaim (Hermann Kellenbenz, Johannes Willers and others) and argued out the current state of knowledge in many individual questions. Bräunlein opposes the glorification of Martin Behaim and corrects a number of common misjudgments and legends about Martin Behaim. The work of Armin M. Brandt Martin Behaim (1459–1507), Seefahrer, Entdecker, Kosmograph (1989), which is attached to the Behaim myth, found an appropriate response.

Honors

  • In Nuremberg there is a Martin Behaim monument on Theresienplatz . In addition, the Martin-Behaim-Gymnasium and in Darmstadt the Martin-Behaim-Schule were named after him. In Berlin, Nuremberg and in many other cities there are Behaim or Martin Behaim streets.
  • A bust of him was displayed in the Hall of Fame in Munich .
  • The Goethe-Institut in Rotterdam is located in the Martin-Behaim-Haus there in the Herengracht.
  • The Society for Overseas History eV (GÜSG) and the Franz Steiner Verlag award the Behaim Prize, endowed with up to 2000 euros, for outstanding dissertations in the field of non-European history.
  • The moon crater Behaim is named after him.
  • Behaim Peak in Antarctica has been named after him since 1962 .
  • The asteroid (12145) Behaim has been named after him since 2010 .
  • After him, the plant genus Behaimia is Griseb. named from the legume family (Fabaceae).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Bott (ed.): Focus Behaim Globus Part 2 , Verlag des Germanisches Nationalmuseums, Nuremberg 1993, p. 769 f.
  2. ↑ Gustav Faber: In the footsteps of Christopher Columbus , Paul List Verlag, Munich 1992, p. 49 f.
  3. ↑ Gustav Faber: In the footsteps of Christopher Columbus , Paul List Verlag, Munich 1992, p. 50
  4. ^ Gustav Faber: In the footsteps of Christopher Columbus , Paul List Verlag, Munich 1992, p. 52.
  5. ↑ model of Behaimglobus , research project of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg
  6. ↑ Ralf Kern: Scientific instruments in their time. From astrolabe to mathematical cutlery . Cologne, 2010. p. 118.
  7. ^ Gerhard Bott (Ed.): Focus Beheim Globus Part 2 , Verlag des Germanisches Nationalmuseums, Nuremberg 1993, p. 765
  8. ↑ Review by Klaus A. Vogel: Peter J. Bräunlein, Martin Behaim. Legend and reality of a famous Nuremberg man . Bayerische Verlags-Anstalt, Bamberg 1992 (253 pages). In: Journal for historical research, Volume 22, 1995, pp. 264-265
  9. ↑ Minor Planet Circ. 72989
  10. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .

literature

See also

Web links

Commons : Martin Behaim  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Martin Behaim  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Behaim, Martin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Martinus de Boemia (Latin); Behaim von Schwarzbach, Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Stimulator of the first traditional globe
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1459
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH July 29, 1507
Place of death Lisbon