Neueste Karte Der Erde Mit Rucksicht auf das Beurfniss des Handelstandes sowie fur den Unterricht An Lehr-Anstalten…

Description

This remarkable nineteenth-century German wall map of the world stands out for its intricate detail and rich historical contextualization. The map is a fascinating tool intended to educate and inform, encapsulating numerous facets of world geography in a single densely packed chart.

A new ‘Newest Map of the World’

Baur’s chart centers on the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean and applies a standardized Mercator Projection. The well-known warping this creates around the polar caps is palpably evident in this map, which depicts the Spitsbergen (Svalbard) roughly the same size as Indonesia.

The map is comprehensive in its coverage. Not only does it include all the landmasses of the world, but it is also brimming with intricate features such as lines denoting prevailing currents, renowned explorers’ routes, and crucial shipping lanes and transportation routes. It is consequently a vivid portrayal of the modern world in motion and effectively illustrates the interconnectedness of a globalized world. On land, the map offers an even greater wealth of information, with dense place names identifying mountains, rivers, cities, and even major railroads. Floating above the landmasses, we find smaller insets of polar projections depicting a North and South Pole that humans have yet to reach.

The bottom of the chart boasts a number of essential insets. Yet the insets in this map need to match the original. We see essential close-ups showing capes, straits, archipelagos, and exotic ports like Buenos Aires, Mombassa, and Havana.

Census

Neatline’s example of Baur’s map was published by Julius Maier in Stuttgart sometime in the 1880s. As the map is undated, a more precise date cannot be ascertained. The OCLC lists three examples of Neatline’s state of this map (no. 56794952) held at UC Berkeley, the University of Texas at Arlington Library, and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. A fourth and possibly independent example is listed with the British Library (no. 558025467) and tentatively dated 1887.

While an independent production, the map is based on an earlier state from 1869 originally compiled by German emigré Traugott Bromme, a man renowned for his immigrant guides to America. This original edition was subsequently refined for independent commercial publication by Stuttgart-based map publisher Carl Friedrich Baur.