When East Was Still Up: Historical Maps and Sea Charts in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek

“North is up”: Today’s seldom questioned convention of defining the cardinal direction North on the upper edge of maps and sea charts is actually a relatively young approach, because it was only with the Renaissance and the rediscovery of Claudius Ptolemy’s World Map from the second century AD that geographers began to refrain from depicting the East with the Holy City of Jerusalem on the upper edge of the map.

Ptolemy, Greek mathematician and astronomer, used the North Star as a fixed point in his calculations and projected the earth’s surface onto one level; he used curved lines as latitudinal lines. His map of the world was later improved following the discovery of America and eventually became the standard. Ptolemy’s definition of the latitudinal lines, with the equator at 0° and the poles at +-90°, is still valid today. The importance of the Orient up until then is also shown in the etymological origins of the word “orientation”: the Orient was definitive. This is evident within the words and the history of cartography.

You can study various cartographic features on the historical maps in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek: maps, sea charts, atlases and geographical classroom pictures by data partners like the SLUB Dresden and the Deutsche Fotothek, the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research or smaller institutions like the Sylter Heimatmuseum reveal the development of cartography as well as the political dimensions of maps.

The hand-drawn sea chart from 1568 depicts the Mozambique Channel, including Madagascar and the Seychelles – it is one of the so-called “portolan charts”. Portolan charts have been around since the end of the 13th century and are linked with the emergence of the mariner’s compass. Instead of longitudinal and latitudinal lines, they have a systematic network of the extended lines found on a 16-point compass dial. These sea charts were drawn on parchment and survived into the mid-17th century.

The replication of maps via copperplate came about at the end of the 15th century and lasted until the mid-19th century, when it was replaced with lithography. Copperplate only continued to be used to produce sea charts until after the Second World War, as the number of copies was relatively low then. The 8th edition of the famous “Stieler’s Handatlas” was still being produced via copperplate printing and coloured by hand in the late 19th century, before the ninth edition (1901 – 1905) was published as a lithograph – this halved the price of the atlas and made it available to a wider public.

In his book, “On the Map”, author Simon Garfield writes that maps are “witnesses to our humanity”. “They are closely linked with our history and restructure it time and time again, reflecting our best and worst characteristics (spirit of discovery and curiosity, conflict and destruction). They also serve as evidence for the ever-changing structures of power” (p. 17/18).

The following satirical map of Europe during the First World War illustrates this statement. Its title is “Ein Dokument der Perfidität Albions” [a document of the perfidy of Albion] and it portrays the different nations using symbolic representations, such as Germany as an eagle. It addresses the various stances - attacking, observing, deterring – of the nations at the start of the First World War. The picture was originally printed and distributed in England and was given a title for its German edition by the publisher W. Nöltings as a sign of “the perfidy of Albion”, England’s “deceitful” politics.

The next map would not have existed if it weren’t for the spirit of discovery Simon Garfield alludes to: a “facsimile atlas” by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld from 1889.

Nordenskiöld was the first seafarer to defeat the infamous Northeast Passage in 1878/79: the seaway which runs along the northern coast of Europe and Asia from the White Sea to the Bering Strait. His “Vega Expedition” was the first to reach Japan via the northern route. After his return, Nordenskiöld published a plethora of atlases and maps which can be found today in the Helsinki University Library as part of UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” Programme.

Maps and sea charts in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek