Early
woodcut map of Germany by Laurent Fries from the 1541 edition of Ptolemy's
"Geographia". This map is reduced and derived from Martin
Waldseemuller's rare 1513 map. The map covers the region known as the German
Empire in the 16th century, extending from Denmark to the Alps and from France
to Poland. It includes significant regions such as Bohemia, Prussia, and parts
of France and Italy. The depiction includes rivers, mountains, and several
cities and regions labeled in Latin. Notable geographical features like the
"Mare Germanicum" (North Sea) and "Danube River" are
included. In the lower center an illustration of the Holy Roman Emperor is
displayed alongside Latin text which translates to “Here Rome reigns. Emperor
Charles the most illustrious died in the year 1535.”.

Laurent
[Lorenz] Fries was born between 1485 and 1490 in the Alsace region of France.
Virtually nothing is known of his early life or his education, but he seems to
have attended a number of universities across Europe, including Vienna,
Montpelier, and Pavia, by which he managed to acquire a sophisticated knowledge
of medicine, astronomy, and the classics. While serving as the town doctor of
Colmar, he published an important tract on the treatment of syphilis using a
new medicine synthesized from the bark of the guaiac tree, a species only
recently imported from South America. Though important, his medical writing
would soon be overshadowed by his cartographic work, particularly his four
editions of Ptolemy’s Geographia, the foundational text for the study of
geography in medieval Europe.

After
moving to Strasbourg in 1519, Fries had his first encounter with map publishing
when he collaborated with Peter Apian in the publication of a reduced version
of Martin Waldseemuller’s world map. Incidentally, Waldseemuller’s map was the
first to use the name ‘America’ for the newly-discovered continents across the
Atlantic and the only known copy now sits in the Library of Congress in
Washington.

Upon
the completion of this first project, Fries embarked on the publication in 1522
of a new edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia with maps showing the dramatic
expansion of knowledge since the classical period. Most of these maps,
including this ‘modern’ world map, were reductions of maps prepared by
Waldseemuller for an incomplete work entitled Chronica mundi. In the
introduction to his atlas, Fries graciously acknowledges the debt owed to
Waldseemuller by stating: “Lest we seem to claim the merits of others, we
declare that these maps were originally constructed by Martin Waldseemuller
piously deceased, and that they have been drawn in a format smaller than that
which they ever had before”. Despite
suffering from some serious textual errors, Fries’ volumes seem to have sold
well enough to merit a second edition in 1525, followed by two further editions
in 1535 and 1541.

Fries’
maps are some of the earliest world maps available to the collector and are
highly sought after as they are wonderful portrayals of the confusion and
uncertainty of the age in which they were published. For centuries, Claudius
Ptolemy’s Geographia had been the foundation of European geographical
knowledge, but the recent discovery of the Americas and the rounding of the
Cape of Good Hope had raised questions that classical geography was unable to
answer. Fries and his contemporaries were caught between a devotion to Ptolemy
and a need to rationalize these new discoveries.

In
1525, Fries abandoned Strasbourg as the Protestant Reformation had overtaken
the city and hostility towards Catholics was on the rise. He moved to Metz and
continued publishing medical texts until his death in 1530 or 1531.

Martin
Waldseemüller, born at Radolfzell on the Bodensee, studied at Freiburg, where
he matriculated in 1490, and finally settled at St. Die in Lorraine, at that
time a centre of learning under the protection of Duke Rene 11. There, in the
company of like-minded savants, he devoted himself to the study of cartography
and cosmography. The outcome of this was the publication of “Cosmographia
Introductio” 1507, in which he suggested that the name America should be given
to the newly discovered continent, after Amerigo Vespucci. Vespucci was one of
the first explorers to recognise that it was a “New World” while Columbus was
still insisting that it was merely a series of large islands off China.