2. Helwig, Martin

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List of works by author Helwig, Martin

Martin Helwig (5 November 1516 – 26 January 1574) was a German cartographer of Silesia and pedagogue. He was born in Neisse and died in Breslau, Holy Roman Empire. A former pupil of an eminent German scholar and educationist Valentin Friedland, Helwig went on to study at the University of Wittenberg, where as a student of Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon he earned the academic degree of Magister. In 1552, he became Rector of St. Maria Magdalena School in Breslau (now Wrocław, in Poland). Equally proficient in mathematics and geography as well as classical languages, he produced the first woodcut map of Silesia made on the basis of surveys and data collected from local inhabitants, which he published in 1561 under the title "Silesiae Typus", and dedicated to Nicolaus II. Rehdiger, a wealthy Silesian merchant, banker, philanthropist, governor and patron of the principality of Breslau sponsored the map. Martin Helwig's map went on to receive acclaim in a public writing by Caspar Peucer, an eminent German scholar at the University of Wittenberg, and was later republished in several versions of Abraham Ortelius's pioneering world atlas, "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum". The first map of Silesia by Martin Helwig constituted until the middle of the 18th century the main model and source of information for the cartographical presentation of this region of Europe on the maps of the most famous cartographers and publishers of those times. The popularity of Helwig's work was ensured by the Basel editions of Münster's Cosmographia, in which copies of the map were soon included. In addition, they circulated as a welcome publisher's item by Blaeu, de Jod, Ortelius and Mercator, in whose separate and atlas editions it received at least ten copperplate reworkings by the middle of the 17th century. Helwig's Silesia was also the third map appendix of Merian and Zeiller's Topographia Bohemiae, Moraviae et Silesiae, das ist Beschreibung und eigentliche Abbildung (Frankfurt/M. 1650). On some younger versions, Mount Sněžka is characterized by perhaps the first known depiction of Krakonoš in the form of a horned griffin standing on goat's legs (Rübezahl).

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  • Catalog No.: 22996
    Helwig, Martin

    Slezsko. "Silesia Ducatus A Martino Helwigio Nisseni descriptus". Orig. copper-engraving after M. Helwig's map of Silesia. From "Topographia Bohemiae, Moraviae et Silesiae", M. Merian, Frankfurt am Main, 1650. With figure title-cartouche, a coat-of arms and the scale of map. 26,5:34,5 cm.

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  • Catalog No.: 00336
    Helwig, Martin

    "Silesia Ducatus". Altkol. Kupf.-Kte. nach M. Helwig bei W. J. Blaeu, (1638). Mit ausgem. fig. Titelkart. u. gr. farb. Wappen. 38,5:50 cm.

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  • Catalog No.: 23585
    Helwig, Martin

    Silesia. "Silesia Ducatus A Martino Helwigio Nisseni descriptus". Orig. copper-engraving after M. Helwig's map of Silesia. Published by W. J. Blaeu, Amsterdam, 1634. Orig. old colouring. 38:50 cm.

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  • Catalog No.: 25910
    Ortelius, Abraham (author)
    Helwig, Martin (other authors)

    Silesia. "Silesiae Typus". Orig. copperplate engraving, 1570 after M. Helwig's map of 1561. Published by A. Ortelius in Antwerp. Coloured. With ornamental title cartouche, Silesian coat of arms and the scale of map. 28:39 cm.

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Showing 1 - 4 of 4 items