LC Seeks to Buy Historic Map
for $14 Million
The Library of Congress is making an effort to purchase a 500-year-old German map that is the first document to describe the New World as “America.” Currently owned by German Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg, the map was made in 1507 by a priest, Martin Waldseemüller, for a revised edition of Ptolemy’s atlas of the world. The map, which consists of 12 separate woodblock prints, is currently bound in a book with several other valuable documents, including a 12-section sea chart and some incomplete star charts made for a globe. The map occupies 36 square feet when completely assembled.
Waldburg-Wolfegg has set a deadline of November 15 for LC to raise the collection’s $14-million price, and the library has kicked off an intensive fundraising effort, the Washington Post reported October 19. Winston Tabb, associate librarian for library services, told reporters that “To the best of my knowledge, this would be the single largest acquisition in library history.”
According to John Hebert, chief of LC’s geography and map division, “[The map] represents the very first symbolization of America in any kind of medium. It also represents the first document that truly understands, at least from a European perspective, the way the world is constructed.” LC has described the document as “America’s birth certificate.”
Posted October 23, 2000.
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