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Description

Unrecorded Wall Map of the World Based Upon Sanson's 6 Sheet Wall Map -- Not In Shirley!

Rare separately published wall map of the World, published in Augsburg by Hans Georg Bodenehr in 1682.

Originally issued in 60 small numbered sheets, the map was originally bound into he accompanying geographical text, but has been joined in recent times.  The original outline color matches the only other known surviving example of the map.

The map is copied from and extremely rare 6 sheet map of the World first published in 1669, which is known only in a single location.  Rodney Shirley notes:

In the Bibliotheque Nationale are two copies of a six-sheet world map which, although lacking printed attribution, is without doubt by Guillaume and Adrien Sanson, the sons of Nicolas Sanson, who died in 1667.  The map caries their new address of aux Galeries du Louvre and also the imprint of their publisher, Pierre Mariette.  Above the first address on one of the copies is a manuscript note saying Par les Srs. Sanson . . . 1676, recording the date of an edition later than the date originally on the map

The work is an enlargement of Nicolas Sanson's general map of 1660 with considerably more place names.  It gives a complete picture of the accepted geographical knowledge of the time . . . 

The cartographic features of the map include:

  • California as an island, based upon the second Sanson model
  • Open Great Lakes
  • South America projected on a wide basis
  • Australia and New Zealand based on Tasman's model
  • Massive Compagnie land bridge between Japan and California
  • Massive unknown southern continent

The map was originally issued dissected into the text in 60 sheets, which have been here joined in modern times and laid on 2 sheets of archival linen.

The full tile of the book is:

Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica Descriptio Die gantze Welt Nach Dero Vornehmsten Theilen. Denen Staats-Kriegs-und Gelehrten Personen, Auch Handels- und Reisenden Leuthen zu sonderbahr bequemen Gebrauch in 60. auffeinander zutreffende Tabellen vorgestelt, 

The present example of the book is incomplete, lacking the 4 double page maps of the world and frontispiece.

Provenance:  Dr. Hans-Peter Kosack (1912-1976), a German geographer and mapmaker, whose primary work was done in Germany during WWII and later as an expert on the mapping of the Antarctic.  One of his most widely distributed maps is the National Geographic Map of Antarctica, published in 1957.

The wikipedia notes as follows:

In the years 1935 and 1936 [Kosack] worked as a research assistant at the Department of Geography of the Georg-August-University Göttingen and then had guest-stays at the Geographical Institutes of the University of Sofia, the University of Lemberg, the Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg, the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University and the University of Vienna.

On December 1, 1937, he joined the National Socialist German Workers Party.  In March 1939 he became a speaker at the Reich Office for State Reception.  After the Polish campaign , he was involved in the survey of the new border with the Soviet Union . . .  In October 1941, he joined the Geographical Service of the Federal Foreign Office as a research assistant and was assigned to the Einsatzkommando "Potsdam" of the Sonderkommando Künsberg, which organized the map and book robbery on behalf of the Foreign Office.  In November 1941 he was stationed in Kie , then in Kharkov.  From March 1942 he was conscripted as a soldier and trained at the airfield Königsberg-Devau as a pilot. He was a nautical inspector in the marine weather service and finally came to the research squad for the special disposal of the OKW under the direction of Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel, where he had the rank of Special Leader Z from June 1944.

After two years as a prisoner of war, he was from 1947 scientific lecturer at the Institute of Regional Studies, the later Federal Research Center for Geography and Regional Planning, in Bad Godesberg.

In 1951 he was also the first chief editor of the Fachjournals Kartographische Nachrichten (Journal of Cartographic News). From 1954 to 1973 he was co-editor of the newsletter of the Rundbriefs des Zentralverbands der deutschen Geographen und der Bundesanstalt für Landeskunde  (Central Association of German Geographers and the Federal Institute of Geography).

After 1970 he taught part-time at the librarian teaching institute of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Cologne.

His main interest was the polar regions, especially the Antarctic, to which he, without ever having been there, wrote two textbooks. He also worked on encyclopaedias such as Knaur's Lexicon, the Brockhaus Encyclopedia and Westermann's Encyclopedia of Geography. 

Rarity

The map is extremely rare, made all the more remarkable by the inclusion of the accompanying text.

OCLC locates only 1 example (Staatsbiliothek zu Berlin), which includes an engraved frontispiece not present in our example.  We note a single example at auction at Sothebys, May 7, 1965, purchased by Francis Edwards for 52 GBP ($145.00).