A civilisation at peril: Goethe's representation of Europe during the Sattelzeit

The importance of the concept of Europe as a source of meaning and object of contested discursive battles during the fundamental transition towards modernity of the Sattelzeit (1750–1850) can hardly be overstated. The Weimar Classics (Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Wieland) made important contributions both to Enlightenment debates about Europe before the French Revolution and to the discursive battles about the continent taking place in the aftermath of the French Revolution in a context of heightened epistemic uncertainty and ideological confrontation. The paper aims to investigate Goethe's representation of Europe as an almost millenarian civilisation endangered at the end of the eighteenth century by a double process of economic and political modernisation. Particular attention is paid to how Goethe rooted his perception of Europe as a civilisation in geographic and climatic assumptions and how he compared the continent to other civilisational entities such as America, China, India or Persia. Finally, the political implications Goethe derived from his perception of Europe as an ailing civilisation shall be contrasted with democratic, romantic and conservative discourses about the continent in the aftermath of the French Revolution.     

Goethe's ‘Wilhelm Meister’ and Spinoza

Abstract

A strong case is made in this review that Spinoza greatly influenced Goethe in his much-studied Wilhelm Meister novels, a fact not hitherto recognized, although Goethe himself acknowledged the inspiration he derived from Spinoza's work. Goethe's Werther, and his Faust, are the mythical figures of modern times with the two Wilhelm Meister novels the critical countertheme in which the voice of Spinoza is here considered the cantus firmus of outstanding significance.     

“… daß der Liebhaber etwas Erfreuliches und Nützliches zu leisten im Stande ist.” Goethe,Soemmerring und das Os intermaxillare beim Menschen

Goethe's theoretical comments on the acknowledgement of the natural sciences dilettante differ considerably from his own experiences in this role (Farbenlehre, Zwischenkieferknochen) of dilettante. Therefore, it seems necessary to raise general questions on the concept: dilettante of natural sciences during Goethe's time, furthermore, on the characterization and labeling of such a dilettante in an historical-scientific context. This is especially important since up to the present time this particular problem has hardly ever been examined. In addition, there is a summary of an historical case study, the discovery of the human intermaxillary bone by Goethe and of the specialists' reactions on this discovery, especially that of Soemmerring.     

Caspar Vopel's Ventures in Sixteenth-Century Celestial Cartography

ABSTRACT

This paper concerns the undertakings in celestial cartography of the sixteenth-century Cologne cartographer Caspar Vopel. Copies of his printed celestial globe and of the celestial maps included on his world map are also described. Vopel's celestial mappings display his extraordinary interest in astronomical myths through a series of conspicuous iconographic features. In particular, Vopel's introduction of the images of Antinous and Coma Berenices is revealed to have been inspired by a humanist edition of the Ptolemaic star catalogue. Finally, a study of the celestial maps on the copies of Vopel's world map by Valvassore (1558) and by Van den Putte (1570) shows that these represent different editions of Vopel's world map and that the celestial maps on the world map of Matteo Pagano were in turn copied from those on the world map of Valvassore.     

The World Map as an Emblem: Abraham Ortelius and the Stoic Contemplation

Although the close association of word and image in medieval cartography is widely acknowledged, the significance of the relationship after the rediscovery of Ptolemy's Geography and throughout the Renaissance has been overlooked, despite Abraham Ortelius's choice of the term ‘Reader’ for users of the Theatrum orbis terrarum (1570). In this paper, the map of the world, which (as in Ptolemy's Geography) opens Ortelius's Theatrum, is analysed to show how Ortelius's concept of space was very different from Ptolemy's. Attention is drawn to the content of the texts on the map, to Ortelius's notion of geography as the eye of history, and to the importance in the Renaissance of the emblem as a conceit, or device, in the system of acquisition and transmission of knowledge. As in emblems, the words on Ortelius's map are not there to explain or to comment on what is seen but to give the image meaning; the purpose of the map is to invite contemplation of God's world. The map is contradictory, however; for Ortelius's accurate and up‐to‐date presentation of the physical world is qualified by a verbal statement that the world is ‘nothing’, a mere pinpoint in the immensity of the universe. It is concluded that Ortelius was not a geographer in the same way Ptolemy was, and that Ortelius was using geography as a philosopher and his world map as an illustration of his moral and religious thinking.     

“Alles ist Blatt”. Über Reichweite und Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Sprache und Darstellungsmodelle Goethes

The essay will elaborate on the following aspects of the selected topic: 1) Goethe's scepticism of language: An apprehension of the almost unbridgeable gap between language and the world of objects constitutes the starting point in his approach to language. — 2) The paradoxical nature of the objective world: The paradoxical character of the realm of natural science is a second starting point: Goethe first attempts the logically ‘impossible’, namely to capture simultaneously that which at a higher level is identical and at the empirical level visibly distinct, that which is both static and changing, the uniformity of the kingdom of nature and its multiplicity; he proceeds to undertake a translation of this into a mode of representation accessible to the mind's eye. — 3) Goethe's scientific models of representation: Goethe's models, which graduate from variation of synonym through the exploitation of multifarious fields of imagery to the free juxtaposition of different text-forms each providing its own perspective, serve to resolve the problems outlined in 1 and 2. Form is cognition, its value being not principally aesthetic but heuristic. 4) The scope and influence of Goethe's language: The product of Goethe's scientific efforts is a standard transparent language, both vivid and explanatory, capable of concisely delineating exceedingly complex circumstances and interactions. Even in some spheres of science its influence extended to the beginning of the twentieth century, facilitating the dialogue between disciplines. — 5) The limitations of this language: One of the clear limitations of this language shows itself to be its close adhension to visual perception: its dread both of abstraction, with its disregard of objective fields of reference, and of the formalised language of mathematics. — 6) The shadow of abstraction: Since the eighteenth century the world has lived in the increasingly dark shadow of an abstraction, which has assumed new dimensions in the laboratory-like world of today. — 7) Distance to Goethe: From a present-day persepective Goethe's science appears as distant legend.     

Academic Cartography,Internal Map History,and the Critical Study of Mapping Processes

ABSTRACT

Academic cartographers consistently expressed an interest in the history of map form (design and practice), at least until the 1980s. This essay reviews the formation of academic cartography, primarily in central Europe and the United States, and the scholarly work on the internal history of cartography that was clearly manifested in Imago Mundi. Internal map history catalysed the development of socio-cultural map histories after 1980 but did not itself change along those new lines. This was unfortunate because it is by paying attention to internal questions of the physical and graphic form of maps and the practices of mapping—albeit critically reconfigured as the processes of producing, circulating and consuming maps—that map historians will discover new and fertile intellectual ground.     

Eugene Romer’s 1916 Atlas of Poland: Creating a New Nation State

The work of Eugene Romer, founder of Polish geography, was framed by his involvement in the national cause. The Atlas of Poland, a key tool in his political activism, was completed during the First World War under the uncertain circumstances prevailing on the Eastern Front. It focused more on the issue of unification than on boundaries. Skilled in physical geography, Romer made use of a cartographical technique rarely applied to ethnographical maps, that of isopleths. In this article, we address the reasons for this daring innovation and consider Romer’s training in the Austrian and German schools of cartography before examining the reception of the atlas by geographers from the different academic backgrounds.     

“Only a God Can Resist a God.” Political Theology between Polytheism and Gnosticism

ABSTRACT

Sovereignty – based on a claim to irresistible authority – and “speaking truth to power” (or parrhesia) are evidently opposed and yet they seem to have a strange affinity with one another, at least if one follows Foucault’s last lectures on this motif of political philosophy. This article revisits Hans Blumenberg’s reconstruction of the meeting between the German poet Goethe and the French emperor Napoleon as an example of a parrhesiastic encounter between philosophy and tyranny. The article situates Blumenberg’s discussion of Goethe’s pantheism and polytheism in the context of his ongoing polemic with Schmitt’s conceptions of sovereignty and political theology. It argues that while both Blumenberg and Schmitt seek to offer responses to the Gnostic rejection of worldly power, a reading of Goethe in light of the discourse on parrhesia or frank speech lately revived by Foucault allows for the articulation of republican response to Gnosticism.     

Evolving Ideas: J. B. d’Anville’s Maps of Southern Africa, 1725–1749

This article focuses on the changes made to the cartography of southern Africa between 1725 and 1749 by the French geographer Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville. The maps in question were produced in collaboration with the Portuguese ambassador Dom Luís da Cunha as part of d’Anville’s plan to demonstrate what lay between the Portuguese colonies of Angola in the west and Mozambique in the east and to establish a link across the continent. The maps he produced in the first two phases of his mapping of southern Africa (1725–1731) echoed the traditional horror vacui. The vast blank that appeared on his map of Afrique of 1749, however, has to be seen as d’Anville intended—the integration of empty space on a map with Enlightenment rationalization of geography.     

Mapping Spain in the Sixteenth Century: The Escorial Atlas and Pedro de Esquivel’s Notebook

ABSTRACT

The twenty-one maps of Spain that comprise the Escorial atlas (El atlas de El Escorial) and the later notebook compiled by Pedro de Esquivel for another map of Spain have long been confused. Recently identified documents in the Royal Library, Stockholm, have allowed us to recognize the two works as completely separate and to shed new light on each. In this article we describe their respective histories, starting with the Escorial atlas, now known to have been commissioned by Emperor Charles V from the Sevillian cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz, who between c.1538 and 1545 produced an index map and 20 regional sheets drawn to the scale of 1:400 000. We then go on to show how, later in the century (between c.1552 and 1565), Pedro de Esquivel was using a version of the topographical methods described in Peter Apian’s Cosmographia to assemble data for the map of Spain commissioned by Philip II before and just after he became king in 1556. Esquivel died in 1565 before all the data had been collected, his map was never drawn, and his notebooks, with all his astronomical measurements and calculations of angles and distances, took a curious journey that ended in Stockholm in the archives of the Royal Library of Sweden.     

THE LETTER KILLS: ON SOME IMPLICATIONS OF 2 CORINTHIANS 3:62

The paper focuses on an argument put forward by Augustine in his De doctrina Christiana: there are passages in the Bible that need to be read in a literal, contextual, and ultimately rhetorical perspective. This approach to the Bible (usually overshadowed by Augustine's own parallel emphasis on the importance of allegory) was needed to deal with customs—for instance the patriarchs' polygamy—that had to be evaluated, Augustine argued, according to standards different from those prevailing in the present day. This need inspired Augustine to utter some sharp remarks on the need to avoid (as we would say today) ethnocentric, anachronistic projections into the Biblical text. The long‐term impact of Augustine's argument was profound. The emphasis on the letter played a significant role in the exchanges between Christian and Jewish medieval readings of the Bible, which affected Nicholas of Lyra's influential commentary (Postilla). The same tradition may have contributed to Valla's and Karlstadt's audacious hermeneutic remarks on the Biblical canon, which covertly or openly focused on contradictions in the Biblical text, questioning the role of Moses as author of Deuteronomy. Traces of those discussions can be detected in Spinoza's Tractatus theologico‐politicus. The paper suggests that the emphasis on a literal, contextual reading of the Bible provided a model for secular reading in general. The possible role of this model in the aggressive encounter between Europe and alien cultures is a matter of speculation.     

Emmanuel de Martonne and the ethnographical cartography of central Europe (1917–1920)

Abstract

Emmanuel de Martonne is well known among geographers as the founding father of geomorphology and as one of Paul Vidal de la Blache's main disciples. He also played a central role as a geographical expert on the Comité d'études, a body set up by Deputy Charles Benoist during the First World War to prepare guidelines for the organization of peace and, in particular, the demarcation of boundaries. De Martonne's special expertise was the construction and comparison of ethnographical maps. He applied his theories on ethnic mapping and improved methods of representation of mixed minorities to his map of the Romanian nation published in 1919 by the Service Géographique de l'Armée. In his reports on Central Europe, de Martonne claimed neutrality, but the graphical options employed on his map offered a biased view of the Romanian nation, inspired mainly by the views of the French school of regional geography.     

Cosmopolitan translation and patriotic sensibilities in German garden art

ABSTRACT

My focus in this article is on a small group of German theorists, designers and patrons who thought extensively about the relationship between national identity and garden design: Christian Hirschfeld, Prince Franz von Anhalt-Dessau and his wife Luise, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Prince Pückler. These garden enthusiasts knew one another through personal contact or their writings, and they responded to and developed their ideas in relation to the newly framed creative enterprise in German lands of “garden-landscape-art”. What they shared was a conviction that garden forms affect feelings, with the role of the garden artist to determine paths that would alter and diversify the visitor’s experience of place. This essay explores how spontaneous emotions, elicited by movement through the garden, were linked with a growing sense of patriotism that contrasted with cosmopolitan judgments in the writings of Hirschfeld, Pückler, and Goethe.     

“Follow the Tree Flowers”: Fugitive Mapping in Beloved

This article attempts to analyse mapping practices at the intersection of geography, black studies and literary studies, in order to reassess the political and pedagogical possibilities of mapping under late capitalism. I turn to Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved to track black cartographic practices otherwise obscured or, as Katherine McKittrick writes, “rendered ungeographic”. The novel offers a hidden and unauthorised archive for the often clandestine geographic practices that make possible fugitivity from the mechanics of “slaveholding agro‐capitalism” and its ongoing legacy. As an unofficial archive of black geographic practice, Morrison’s novel might itself be thought of as a map: a contemporary mode of memorialising the depth of place, relation, and navigation—a depth no two‐dimensional map can accommodate. Finally, this article demonstrates the valuable interventions that black studies and black creative production can make within the subfields of critical cartography and critical geography.     

Mercator’s Lithuanian–Russian Borderlands: Russiae pars amplificata (1595) and Its Polish Sources

abstract

This article focuses on the inset on Gerardus Mercator’s large map of Russia cum confiniis [Russia with surrounding lands] that was published in his Atlas (1595), and the map Moscovia [Muscovy] published by Jodocus Hondius in the Atlas minor (1607). Comparison of the contents of Mercator’s inset map, titled Russiae pars amplificata [Part of Russia enlarged] and Hondius’s Moscovia map with the Polish propaganda poem Raid on Muscovy by Jan Kochanowski that had appeared in 1583—just after the war between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy—led to the suggestion that both Mercator’s and Hondius’s maps were based on Polish–Lithuanian narrative sources as well as on a map drawn by the Polish royal cartographer Maciej Strubicz. To test the hypothesis, a historical-linguistic analysis of the orthography of the map’s toponyms and hydronyms was employed to distinguish their Polish, German and Latin characteristics. The result confirms that the two maps were indeed based on a Polish military map containing a hidden Polish propaganda message.     

The Tenpō-Era (1830–1844) Map of Matsumae-no-shima and the Institutionalization of Tokugawa Cartography

Japan’s early modern Tokugawa government (1603?1868) sponsored a series of projects of national mapping. The Matsumae family, ruling what is now Hokkaido, were loosely incorporated into these projects. It was only during the last of these, in the Tenpō era (1830?1848), that their lands were represented in the same manner as the rest of Japan because the central government made the final Matsumae-no-shima map. This article examines the production of this final official map of Japan’s north to argue that the Tokugawa’s institutional mapping made this region part of the nation through its own mapping framework, distinct from the cartographic forms with which national or imperial states are usually associated.     

‘I draw a line here and open a new chapter’: The Bagrow-Almagià Correspondence 1947–1955

ABSTRACT

The Imago Mundi archives, held in the Map Library of the British Library in London, contain the correspondence between Leo Bagrow, the founding editor of Imago Mundi, and the Italian geographer and historian of cartography Roberto Almagià. Their correspondence, which continued throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, brought out the worst in their very different characters, at times to an almost comical extent. The exchanges reveal Bagrow’s somewhat brusque editorial methods but also show his vision for Imago Mundi and demonstrate his total dedication to the history of cartography. The letters also provide a revealing commentary on the immense difficulties of international communication and research in the immediate post-war years, and the persistence of the cultural nationalism that dominated the history of cartography as an academic pursuit in this period.     

A Content Analysis of Imago Mundi, 1935–2010

ABSTRACT

The 592 research articles in the first 62 volumes of Imago Mundi, from 1935 to 2010, are analysed to discern trends in the scholarly approaches, biases and interests of historians of cartography. Particular attention is paid to map historians’ preferred historical periods and topical subjects of study, to their nationalistic tendencies and to the shifting importance of traditional, internal and socio-cultural approaches to map history.