Prussia, now a province of Germany

Prussia, now a province of Germany

Prussia, nunc Germanie provincia

This map is an image of the region of Prussia with a city featured prominently in it. It is contained in a  page cut from the Nuremberg Chronicle. The sheet of paper is a rectangle, forty-three centimeters tall by 29.5 centimeters long. The map itself is a square with twenty-three-centimeter-long edges. As mentioned before, the map is a city view, but it is not specified which city it depicts, in fact the buildings in the map are separated by different forms of terrain which makes it seem like the map contains four built up areas. Furthermore, the artist behind the map, simply titled the map “Prussia, now a province of Germany”. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that the map represents the region of Prussia.

Like many city views, the main urban area is shown as a bird’s eye view. From above the ground, we see that the city is located on a mountain, with the higher points of the mountain located on the back of the landscape. This creates the effect of going down the mountain as the eyes of the observer travel down the page. On the back of the landscape, the map has the first and smallest city, it is walled, and its only distinctive feature is a church that is also the tallest building of this city. To the right, on a slightly taller rock formation, there is another city built by a river that flows downhill all the way down to the bottom edge of the map. This city is also small in size, and it has no notable features.

Downhill and to the left of the city, below the biggest rock formation of the map, there is the biggest city of the map. This city consists of a collection of towers and houses, and like the rest of the cities in the map, it seems to be walled, creating a distinction between nature and city. This city is also built by the previously mentioned river. At the bottom of the page, there is a fourth, medium-sized city, also built by the river, and also walled. To the right of this city, there is a group of trees that indicate a forest.

As mentioned before, this map comes from the Nuremberg Chronicle, which was written by Hartmann Schedel. The Nuremberg Chronicle was a fifteenth century book, commissioned by Nuremberg merchants Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermeister. The book described the universal history of the Christian world. It was written by humanist and physician Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514) and published by Anton Koberger in 1493. It was first ordered to be published in Latin with an order for German text following about a year later. It was somewhat of a “best-seller” at the time, with over 2,500 copies printed.

The chronicle is notable because of its inclusion of printed images alongside or embedded within the text, something virtually unheard of before. All images are created from woodcuts, images carved into a block of wood in negative and then covered with ink and then stamped onto the page. Woodcuts were made in the workshops of Michael Wolgemut, Wilhelm Pleydewurff, and Hieronymus Münzer. Some editions of the Nuremberg Chronicle had their plates hand colored by local German artists.

(Louisa Grader '24), (Alejandro González A '24)

Schedel, Hartmann

Hartman Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle,1493; plate CLXXX
Nuremberg : Anton Koberger

Citation for second image....

sheet map removed from book

1493

Wood Cut

Special Collections, Carleton College, Northfield, MN

Image 2: lksjdflksjdflkjsdf "Frau Mauro". CC BY-NC 4.o. Wikipedia.

Latin

Regional Map

1493 Prussia—modern day northern side of Germany, Poland and Lithuania.

Harley, J. B., David Woodward, Mark S. Monmonier, and Mary Sponberg Pedley. The History of Cartography. Edited by J. B. (John Brian) Harley, David Woodward, Mark S. Monmonier, and Mary Sponberg Pedley. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Nuvoloni, Laura. n.d. University of Cambirdge Digital Library. Accessed March 1, 2023. https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-INC-00000-A-00007-00002-00888/1.

Rights for maps held by individual publishers and institutions. Thumbnails displayed constitute fair use.