1787 Christoph Gottlieb von Murr Map of the Western Hemisphere of Martin Behaim

This fascinating and unique map, printed in 1787, is one of the earliest acquirable representations of the western hemisphere as it appeared on the oldest surviving globe - Martin Behaim's Erdapfel, a manuscript globe produced in Nuremberg in 1492. Behaim's globe was influential and fascinating, offering a glimpse on the imagined form of the world at the time of Columbus. Behaim's fame, amplified by supporters over the following centuries, led some to scholars to suppose he himself traveled across the Atlantic to America, or at least that supplied the theory to Columbus that the Atlantic route to the East Indies was navigable. The present map, copied from the western hemisphere of Behaim's globe by the historian Christoph Gottlieb von Murr, was produced as evidence that Behaim had neither stolen a march on Columbus, nor guided him. Having marshaled his evidence, von Murr says that 'history, and the globe destroy absolutely all these so - called facts, and prove (Behaim) had no knowledge of America.'

Geographical Details

The western hemisphere, as conceived on Behaim's globe, extends from Madeira and Grand Canary Island to China and Java. Much is imaginary, or at best legendary. For example, the islands known as the Manilas were described as having such extreme magnetism that ships carrying iron could not safely navigate there. In the far north there appears an island noted as a source of white falcons: this island would be correctly identified on other, later maps as Iceland. The Azores, Cape Verdes, and Canary Islands appear with some accuracy. The central portion of the map features the imaginary islands of Antilia and St. Brendan.

The western half of the map is dominated with the geographical reports of Marco Polo. The island of Japan (or Cipangu) is here presented as the wealthiest island of the Orient. Elsewhere are placed nutmeg forests, pepper forests, and Marco Polo's reports of mermaids. Turning his critical eye to these details, von Murr said of Behaim that 'he only passes on the stories that have been made to him, and which he is content to transcribe.'

Martin Behaim and his Globe

The Nuremberg native Behaim moved swiftly to establish himself as a textile merchant in Flanders. His meteoric rise continued: by 1484 he had become a successful merchant in Portugal, and by 1485 he was a courtier, a supposed expert in navigation and astronomy, and knighted by Portugal's John II. He married in Portugal in 1486, and thereafter took part in a voyage to west Africa. During a three-year return to Nuremberg beginning in 1490, he was financed by the city council to produce a globe. The 21-inch globe, painted by Georg Glockendon the Elder, was completed in 1492. The globe contains more than two thousand place names, is filled with illustrations, coats of arms, and text. The globe presented no evidence that its author had any inkling of the Americas. For one, its scale was predicated on the assumption that Claudius Ptolemy's measurement of the globe's size was correct. (It was not, Ptolemy having underestimated the size of the planet by more than a quarter). In this error Behaim was not alone among early mapmakers. Indeed, it is easy to look at Behaim's globe and understand why Columbus thought a western route might be feasible: From the Azores, or further south from the Cape Verde Islands, the space of ocean separating the European mariner from Japan seems much more manageable than the route around Africa. But there is no historical evidence that Columbus and Behaim ever spoke or corresponded. Instead, the globe's content reflects more the reports of Marco Polo, John Mandeville, and Diogo Gomes, while lacking more current Portuguese geographic data which presumably would have been available to Behaim as an 'expert' in navigation and a trusted courtier.

A Persistent Geographical and Historical Argument

Behaim's contribution to cartography, whatever it might have been, fell out of sight for many years. In 1682, a professor of the university of Altdorf - Johann Christoph Wagenseil - delivered and published a eulogy for a descendant of Behaim, in which he granted the 15th century Behaim the laurels for 1) the discovery of America prior to Columbus; and 2) the discovery of the Strait of Magellan, prior to Magellan himself. Wagenseil proposed that Behaim's alleged achievements brought honor to Nuremberg in particular and Germany in general. In his panegyric, Wagenseil complained that

enormous fame has transported the names of Columbus and Magellan throughout all regions of the world with great fanfare, yet not [that of] our countryman, although he is deserving of a rank at least equal to that of the gods of the seas.

From this point onwards, Wagenseil’s claims provided a basis for later historians' connecting Behaim and Columbus (particularly in Germany, where the myth of a German hero found fertile ground.)

In 1778, Christoph Gotlieb von Murr published Diplomatische Geschichte des portugiesischen beriihmten Ritters Martin Behaims, a methodical and authoritative refutation of Wagenseil based on an exhaustive scrutiny of the historical record, up to and including not only Behaim's globe but also the Behaim family archives. This Nuremberg imprint included the first plate of this map of the Western Hemisphere as depicted on the Behaim globe, thoroughly annotated to connect with von Murr's text. The article was seized upon, translated and republished in to French (1787) and Spanish (1794). There were several editions printed in 1801 and 1802. The plate was not reused, but instead the map was re-engraved for each edition: the differences in pagination for each edition of the work required that the map itself have significant changes, as it contained numerous references to specific pages in von Murr's text.

Publication History and Census

The present example of this oft-reprinted map was printed for the 1787 French translation of von Murr's work, included in the Recueil des Pieces interessantes concernant les Antiquites, les Beaux-Arts, les Belles-Lettres, et la Philosophie. We have not seen this edition appear on the market, and this printing of the separate map is not catalogued in OCLC, although the Recueil appears to be well-catalogued in institutional collections.