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An elegantly engraved and finely colored map of Saxonia Superior (Upper Saxony), showing the territorial extent of the Electorate of Saxony in the mid-18th century, shortly after the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War and well before the upheavals that would accompany the Napoleonic reordering of Europe. Engraved by Tobias Conrad Lotter, this map is a representative product of Augsburg’s thriving mid-century cartographic publishing industry, which was then competing with Paris and Amsterdam as a center of geographic production.
The map captures the political and administrative complexity of Saxony and its dependencies within the Holy Roman Empire. Regional borders are outlined in color and internal subdivisions are delicately shaded in wash. Key urban centers such as Leipzig, Dresden, Halle, and Wittenberg are prominently marked with oversized red symbols. Mountain ranges are rendered in profile using traditional hachuring, while rivers and road systems are shown with crisp linear detail. The geographic spread includes portions of neighboring Brandenburg, Bohemia, Franconia, and Thuringia, underscoring Saxony’s position as both a cultural and territorial hub.
The broader context of this work reflects the resurgence of German cartographic output in the 18th century, particularly in the wake of the Peace of Westphalia and the gradual return of imperial and princely courts from cultural orbit around Versailles. The reassertion of German political identity and scholarly ambition, seen in figures like Homann in Nuremberg and Lotter in Augsburg, was materially linked to cartography, which served both as an administrative tool and a visual assertion of territorial sovereignty. This map, then, speaks to a moment when the fragmented patchwork of German lands demanded careful definition and display, anticipating the growing importance of statistical and territorial exactitude in Enlightenment governance.
Tobias Conrad Lotter (1717-1777) is one of the best-known German mapmakers of the eighteenth century. He engraved many of the maps published by Matthaus Seutter, to whose daughter Lotter was married. He took over Seutter’s business in 1756. Lotter’s son, M. A. Lotter, succeeded his father in the business.
