Chorography between Mimesis and Metric: Handdrawn Regional Maps from Westfalia (1450-1650)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Felicitas Schmieder
• Subject Area: Early Modern History ; Medieval History
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 322324775

The project aims at the beginnings of regional cartography in Westfalia between mid-15th century and c. 1650, and looks at hand-drawn representations of regional spaces in their archival file context, mostly unique pieces created for specific, mostly legal, administrative or economic means, representing spatial and other knowledge in a combination of pictorial and scriptural elements. The project aims at working out the larger context of development of this new medium which in the end changed the in Middle Ages common use of words for spatial descriptions to graphic representations.In the early times of regional representations of space they were vastly different in forms and layouts, suggesting that their makers experimented with a variety of traditional and more recent new knowledge and skills. This leads to the basic thesis that mapmakers while picking up innovations of technology, craft and art for representing the three-dimensional reality at a two-dimensional plane -, continued to use medieval layout traditions for quite some time. This means that early regional maps are to be read multi-dimensionally - as are e.g medieval world maps and diagrams - because they contain further levels of meaning beyond the spatial (elements of time for example).Crucial aspects of the development will be studied with the help of selected maps from Westfalian archives, regarding map and file as unity which has always to be examined in context. Recording the persons involved and their "networks", contents, purposes and usages of maps, procedures concerning production and layout and working out the importance of image and text in maps and files should allow to get a general impression of the beginnings of regional cartography in Westfalia.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Arnd Reitemeier; Professor Dr. Michael Rothmann