Mountains on Regional Maps of Central Europe

Early modern Europe was a complicated landscape of shifting political and territorial allegiances. Maps played an important role in developing and confirming these understandings of territory. But maps were more than political tools: they also demonstrated the author’s understanding of a given area. The three maps in this exhibit all depict the same region of Central Europe, approximately from present day Germany east through parts of Russia. On the Map of Central Europe by Henricus Martellus (ca. 1490) and the Eichstätt Map by Nicolaus Cusanus (ca. 1491), the Alps are rendered as the most distinctive geographical feature, with lots of detail and appropriate size. However, the Alps are depicted with less detail on the Eichstätt map. They are rendered more as placeholders, yet retain a properly imposing nature. Whereas on the Martellus map the Alps are much more artistically drawn. On the Romweg Map by Erhard Etzlaub (ca. 1500) the Alps are depicted as rough sketches that are much smaller than on the other two maps, with several roads cutting straight through, making the journey seem easy. This rendering is in line with consistently basically rendered environmental features on this map.

During this period, representations of mountains reflected their growing cultural importance both to resource extraction projects and as artistic motifs in literature and the fine arts. As materials like copper and iron were increasingly needed for armor and weapons, mountains became places with material value. Mountains also increasingly appear in German literature. They often evoke negative feelings and are used metaphorically to denote hostility. But their inclusion in works of fiction is minimal, as the true literary focus on mountains had not yet emerged in medieval Germany. Maps themselves in this period were expressions of the intellects of each artisan who contributed to their creation. There was a heavy dependence on the migration of people, many of whom were German, to facilitate the spread of various kinds of information related to map making. Henricus Martellus is a possible example of this, because he likely moved from Nuremberg to Florence at the height of the German humanist movement. 

The three maps in this exhibition demonstrate the varying approaches to depicting mountains, especially the Alps. While the Martellus map and Eichstätt map honor the Alps with a sense of impassibility, the Romweg map makes the route from Germany to Rome clear and relatively unobstructed, and is the only one of the three to include roads. This could speak to the different goals of these maps. While the Romweg map could be functional with its mass of details of both cities and roads, the other two envision regions and the possible political implications. There are no national borders on these two, but the choices of borders for the map constitutes an understanding of Europe. The differences in depictions of the mountain between the Martellus/Eichstätt maps versus the Romweg map reinforce these conclusions, with the varying importance given to the Alps. 

References

Ireton, Sean, and Caroline Schaumann. “Introduction: The Meaning of Mountains: Geology, History, Culture.” In Heights of Reflection: Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century, edited by Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann, 115:1–19. Boydell & Brewer, 2012. 

Classen, Albrecht. “Terra Incognita?: Mountains in Medieval and Early Modern German Literature.” In Heights of Reflection: Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century, edited by Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann, 115:35–56. Boydell & Brewer, 2012.

Roberts, Sean. “World Views: Cartographers, Artisanship and Epistemology in Early Modern Italy.” Material Culture Review 92–93, no. 92/93 (2022): 92–109.