Marquisate of Brandenburg, with the Duchies of Pomerania and Mecklenburg
This map is a representation of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, and Pomerania (modern day northeastern Germany and northwestern Poland) from an atlas by Willem Janszoon Blaeu. It first appeared in the 1634 edition. Key features include outlines of political territory, compass roses and ships in the Baltic Sea, elaborate scale and cartouche, and detailed landscape iconography. Contemporary political boundaries between the three regions are outlined in blue, pink, yellow or green to delineate each from the other. The regions represented do not show hard political lines, but rather a relative description of the locations of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, and Pomerania. Each region is labeled in labels and by heraldry which gives a conceptual representation of each entity's claim beyond the unstable geographic borders. The top of the map depicts a small portion of the Baltic Sea. It has no label, but it does have icons that signal to the viewer that the space is sea. There are two compass roses, each with rhumb lines coming out from each compass direction, which is reminiscent of medieval portolan charts used by sailors in the Mediterranean. There are also three ships in the sea, which indicates that the Baltic is a sea that people regularly sail on, to the mapmaker’s knowledge. As opposed to modern maps that usually denote water with empty space, it is common for maps at this time period to visually indicate the presence of seas. The two bottom corners of the map contain intricate images to orient the viewer to the map. In the bottom left corner, the cartouche identifies the map as focusing on Brandenburg with text and the crest. Next to the text is a woman holding a key, which is likely symbolic. In the right bottom corner of the map there is a scale in common German miles surrounded by cherubs. Along the right border of the map is another scale that marks latitude, each degree subdivided into 60 minutes. There are lots of small icons on the map to label different features. Cities are represented by little castle or town icons that the colorist has painted red. There are many trees on this map, and they appear to be clustered into forests. There are a few mountains, and on the far left of the map there is a swamp, colored light green and labeled Paludes, Latin for swamp. The rivers on this map provide a central network and means of understanding the space. Many of the major rivers are labeled and many of the cities are located along these rivers. Much as a modern map may use roads or highways to provide a central frame of understanding, the rivers provide a centralized network which spans regions and connects cities. The map is part of a larger atlas made by Willem Janszoon Blaeu. Blaeu and his son were major players in the booming cartography industry in what is now the Netherlands in the 1600s. Blaeu's Atlas Novus was part of a larger "atlas race" among mapmakers in Amsterdam at the time as they tried to outdo each other in their cartographic ability. The map shown above is a copper print from Blaeu's Atlas Novus which first appeared in the 1634 edition of the atlas and continued to appear in Blaeu's atlases and those of his son into the late 1650s. Blaeu is known to have bought copper plates from the Mercator-Hondius atlas in the 1630s, and it is possible that this is one of them. A similar map, which appears in the David Rumsey collection, is credited to Mercator. (Ruby Becker '25) (Erin Watson ‘24)
Willem Janszoon Blaeu, Brandeburgum Marchionatus, cum Ducatibus Pomeraniae et Mekelenburgi, in Atlas Novus, (Amsterdam: 1635).
Special Collections, Carleton College, Northfield, MN
Rights for maps held by individual publishers and institutions. Thumbnails displayed constitute fair use.
Mercator Map At David Rumsey Collection
Carleton Library Special Collections (Flat Files) (G5700 1400-1800 Map 12)