No, The World Is Not Flat!

Bad news for flat-earth believers: Ancient Greek astronomers proved that the earth was a sphere – which later gave us the Latin (and German) word globus. Although references to globes representing the planet earth date from about 150 BCE, no terrestrial globes from ancient times are known to have survived.

Three Historic Germanic Globes
Globes representing the known Old World were constructed by the Ancient Greeks and during the Islamic Golden Age. While educated people in medieval Christian Europe knew the earth was a sphere, the earliest known attempts by Europeans to create a physical terrestrial globe did not occur before the 15th century.

This article was inspired by my attempt to learn more about the oldest known surviving globe of the world, known as the Behaim or Erdapfel globe. I earlier wrote about the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller and his groundbreaking map of the world. Published in 1507, his large 12-panel map was the first to label the New World’s continent “America” – a landmass hitherto unknown to Europeans.

Martin Waldseemüller probably created globes, but none are known to have survived. This printed panel of 12 gores by Waldseemüller could have been applied to the surface of a globe by him or his workers, but Martin Behaim’s globe is the oldest known surviving terrestrial globe. PHOTO: Public Domain, Badische Landesbibliothek

It is likely that Waldseemüller also produced terrestrial globes, but not a single one is known to have survived. We do know that he created “gores,” the printed, curved paper map panels pasted on a globe to depict the land and seas of the earth. But some 15 years before Waldseemüller’s world map, another cartographer produced a terrestrial globe in Nuremberg, Bavaria. Martin Behaim’s 1492 globe can be viewed today at Nuremberg’s Germanisches National Museum. To this day, it remains the world’s oldest surviving globe.

While researching Behaim’s pioneering globe, I stumbled upon two more notable early globes created by two other German cartographers. So here they are, the three early historic Germanic globes.

1. Martin Behaim’s “Erdapfel” Globe (1492)
Although Martin Waldseemüller, best known for naming the New World’s dual continent “America,” later produced world maps and (probably) globes, it was another Martin, who created the oldest terrestrial globe known to still exist, the so-called Erdapfel (“earth apple”) globe – without America.

Martin Behaim (1459–1537) produced his Erdapfel globe in Nuremberg, Bavaria in 1492, the year Columbus landed in what he mistakenly thought was India. But no one would know about his voyage of discovery until later, and even then, it would be the year 1507 before any map or globe appeared with the label “America” for the New World.

Martin Behaim’s 1492 “Erdapfel” globe on display at Nuremberg’s Germanic National Museum. It is the oldest known existing globe ever made. PHOTO: Alexander Franke (Ossiostborn), CC-BY-SA-2.0-DE via Wikimedia Commons

Behaim was apparently more than just a mapmaker. It is believed he was also a navigator and a merchant. Before constructing his globe, Behaim had traveled extensively. He went to Lisbon, Portugal in 1480, where for about a decade he developed commercial interests and mingled with explorers and other educated people. He also may have gone on several ocean voyages, but that is not certain. Following his return to Nuremberg in 1490, he began work on his pioneering terrestrial globe.

Behaim’s Nürnberger Globus has a diameter of 51 cm (20 in) and depicts the world as it was known to exist at the time. As a result, the American continent is missing, and the globe is not very accurate by today’s standards. (Even globes created much later would still display serious distortions and inaccuracies.) An inscription on the globe’s South Pole states that the sphere was created at Behaim’s request as a project funded by the Nuremberg town council. It was created by Behaim and his team of artists and craftsmen, including the artist Georg Glockendon. Upon completion it was put on display in a reception room in the Nuremberg town hall until the early 16th century. After remaining in the possession of the Behaim family, in 1907 the globe was transferred to Nuremberg’s Germanisches Nationalmuseum, where it can be seen today.

The “earth apple” name for Behaim’s globe is probably related to the Reichsapfel (“Imperial Apple,” Globus cruciger) that was also kept in Nuremberg along with the Imperial Jewels (Reichskleinodien). Although nowadays the German word “Erdapfel” means “potato” in southern Germany and Austria, at the time when Behaim’s globe was made, potatoes had not yet arrived in Europe from South America.

Behaim’s globe was a remarkable achievement for its day. Before any Europeans knew about the existence of the American continent (including Columbus himself, who even after four voyages, failed to realize what he had found), Behaim’s “earth apple” globe represented the epitome of European geographic knowledge for a decade and a half. In 2023, Behaim’s globe was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World register as an outstanding testimony to how the world was imagined at the time.

LOCATION: Behaim’s globe is held at Nuremberg’s Germanisches Nationalmuseum, which also has Schön’s 1520 printed globe (see below) on display.

2. Johannes Schön’s Globe (1515)
Martin Waldseemüller was the first to place the name “America” on a map or globe, but to this day there is no trace of any actual globes he may have produced. It was a student of Waldseemüller who created the earliest known surviving terrestrial globe displaying the continent labeled “America.” In fact there is not just one exemplar of the 1515 Schöner-Erdglobus, but two! And Johannes Schön later (1520) produced yet another globe, this time in a flat manuscript format.

One of Johannes Schön’s 1515 two surviving globes. This one is located in the Historisches Museum Frankfurt. Schön created what is now the oldest known surviving terrestrial globe ever. PHOTO: Historisches_Museum_Frankfurt, Uwe Dettmar, CC-BY-SA-4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Even Schön’s 1520 globe, as attractive as it is, still has many distortions and errors. But it is one of the first world maps/globes to show the as yet unexplored Antarctic. There is no Pacific or Atlantic Ocean (only “Eastern and Western” oceans), but there is an “Oceanus Indicus” (Indian Ocean). The equator and the lines of longitude and latitude are shown, along with the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. But there is far too little space devoted to the oceans in general, and the globular map is missing the largest ocean on earth, the Pacific.

In 1513, the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and became the first European to set eyes on the Pacific Ocean. (The Polynesians, Japanese and other Asians were already well aware of it.) Balboa named it the “South Sea.” It would be another seven years before the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan (sailing for Spain) actually entered the Pacific Ocean in 1520 – and named it “Pacific” for its calm waters compared to the rough Strait of Magellan later named after him. Magellan also made another painful discovery: The Pacific was far more vast than anyone had anticipated.

Johannes Schön’s printed globe, showing the western hemisphere, was published in 1520. Its chief problem is too little space for the oceans, with the Pacific Ocean, the world’s largest body of water, missing entirely. This is a lithograph by Johann Gebhard published in an 1853 book about Martin Behaim. PHOTO: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Of course, Johannes Schön, working in Bamberg, Bavaria, had no way of knowing all this, as news of such discoveries did not travel very fast in those days. It would be 1529 before the Portuguese cartographer Diogo Ribeiro, working in Spain, produced a map that represented the Pacific’s approximate true size, delineating fairly accurately the coasts of Central and South America. There were however still serious gaps. The Pacific coast north of Guatemala and south of Peru were still blank. The Pacific was still labeled Mar del Sur (South Sea). Even maps printed a century later (“A New and Accurate Map of the World,” 1627) would be similarly sketchy for the Pacific coast north of Mexico. Australia was missing entirely, although European explorers first stumbled upon what was later called New Holland in 1606.

LOCATIONS: Both Schön’s 1515 globe and the original 1529 Ribeiro map are held at the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar, Germany. (Schön’s 1515 globe is one of 29 globes that survived the September 2004 fire that destroyed the Weimar library building.) The Historisches Museum Frankfurt has a second exemplar of Schön’s 1515 globe. It is found on Level 2 (Ebene 2) of the new Exhibit Building that opened in 2017. Schön’s later (1520) globe is displayed next to the 1515 Behaim globe at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.

3. The Gottorf Giant Globe (1650-1664)
The story of this large, unique, and notable 17th century walk-in globe is a bit odd and mysterious. Some observers also consider this unusual globe to be the world’s first planetarium, although strictly speaking it was not. Its interior was a celestial globe with a figurative artistic representation of the heavenly sky as viewed from earth. The exterior of the globe was a normal globe showing the known world as of the mid-17th century.

The unusual Riesenglobus (“giant globe”) was created at the behest of the science-loving Frederick III, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, near the northern German town of Schleswig in what is now Schleswig-Holstein. The duke wanted to better understand the connection between the earth and the sky. Pursuing that vision, between 1650 and 1664, in the Neuwerk Garden of the duke’s Gottorf Castle a building was constructed to house the globe. The duke commissioned his court mathematician Adam Olearius (1599-1671) to construct a unique globe that realized his vision of combining earth and sky. Sadly, Duke Frederick III did not live to see the completion of his project. He died in 1659 in the Second Northern War, and the globe was completed in 1664 by his son Christian Albrecht.

The interior “celestial” artwork for the Gottorf Giant Globe. The celestial globe interior showed the constellations, with stars (as nailed points). As the globe rotated, the stars and constellations “moved” across the sky as they would at night. PHOTO: smithsonianmag.com

It took seven long years to complete the construction of the Globe house pavilion (Lusthaus), but that was much less time than it took to construct the building’s centerpiece, the large Gottorf Globe that measured 3.1 meters (10.2 ft) in diameter. It could seat about a dozen people in its interior. Part of that project was also to design and build a water-powered machine to rotate the globe, something that apparently never functioned very well.

The completed globe, located in its pavilion, opened to visitors around 1658. For about 55 years, between that year and 1713, the Gottorf Globe remained at home in the Neuwerk Garden (now the Baroque Garden) of Gottorf Castle. It was a popular, famous attraction known far and wide during that time. But war would impact the globe and the realm of Holstein-Gottorp. Unlike the other globes we have described here, the Gottorf Globe soon changed ownership and location. It suffered a fate that involved its removal, death and rebirth.

The Gottorf Giant Globe on display at Gottorf Castle in Schleswig, Germany. PHOTO: commander-pirx, CC-BY-SA-3.0-DE via Wikimedia Commons

In 1713, following Holstein-Gottorp’s loss of the Great Northern War against the Danish crown, the Russian Tsar Peter the Great – a Danish ally – claimed the globe as part of the spoils of war. Peter had it removed from its pavilion (by tearing part of it down; it was demolished in 1768) and then shipped it off to St. Petersburg, Russia. It was an ignominious journey that lasted four years and ended with the damaged globe being placed temporarily in an elephant house!

Finally, the globe was housed in the Kunstkamera museum in St. Petersburg. But four decades later, in 1747, disaster struck yet again when the globe was almost completely destroyed in a fire. That meant that the original Gottorf Globe built in Germany no longer existed. (The globe’s original hatch was in storage at the time of the fire, so it is pretty much all that remains of the German original.)

Replicas are now on display both in Schleswig, Germany and at the Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg, Russia. A new modern Globe house was recently built to house Schleswig’s replica globe. Since Russia is no longer a travel option for most people these days, we recommend a visit to Schleswig. Either way, you’ll experience a copy of the original globe, but at least in Schleswig you’re still at the original site of the duke’s imaginative creation.

LOCATION: The Gottorf Globe and Baroque Garden in Schleswig, Germany is now home to a replica of the original globe. NOTE: The Gottorf Globe and Baroque Garden will open again on 1 April 2024. Website available in English, German, and Danish.
Address: Schlossinsel 1, 24837 Schleswig, Germany

– HF