View of Lunenberg, Germany

This very old woodcut is from Sebastian Munster’s Cosmographey: das ist Beschreibung aller Länder Herrschaffen und für nemsten Stetten des gantzen Erdbodens It was published in Basel in 1592.

The work was a massive chronicle of all the geographical knowledge of the world to that point. The work included world maps as well as views of smaller cities and woodcut illustrations of historical subjects, mythology, natural history and ethnography. It was the first work to show America in its “correct” continental form and “sealed the fate of ‘America’ as the name of the New World.” (Burden 12) It was also the first to name the Pacific Ocean

Sebastian Munster (1489-1552) was a German cartographer, cosmographer, and a Hebrew scholar. He also became a Franciscan monk at an early age. Munster’s Cosmographia was the first work of scientific based knowledge in the German language.