Made in Nürnberg

In the period from roughly 1450 and 1550 Nürnberg was the leading centre in Europe, and thus probably the world, for the manufacture of scientific instruments. It is historically interesting to look at how this town in the middle of Europe came to acquire this status and also to take a brief look at some of the more famous of the Nürnberger instrument makers from this ‘golden’ period.

Like many European towns and cities, Nürnberg, as an entity, began to emerge at the beginning of the High Middle Ages, probably around the year 1000 CE. Like many such settlements it was initially not much more than a fortified hill top at a crossroads. The first record of the name is 1050 CE as nuorenberc, which later evolved into Nuremberg, the name by which it is still known in English. This name is the subject of a rare German bad pun; the Germans don’t really go in for puns. According to folk etymology the name was originally ‘Nur einem Berg’, which translates as ‘just a hill’. The geographical position of Nürnberg played an important role in its development. If you take an outline map of Europe and draw a straight line from Kiel, in Northern Germany, to Northern Italy and a second one from Paris to Prague, the point where they cross is Nürnberg. This led to Nürnberg becoming a major European trading hub in the medieval period; importing wares from the Northern Italian trading cities and then distributing them throughout Europe.

Germany didn’t exist as a country in the Middle Ages but was a loose conglomerate of large and small states interconnected through a network of feudal obligations and vaguely held together in the so-called Holy Roman Empire, which as somebody once quipped was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. Within this patchwork of large and small Germanic states Nürnberg was one of the so-called Free Imperial Cities, small independent city-states, which only owed feudal allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor. From 1105 CE Nürnberg was ruled by a hereditary Burggraf, a title that translates as Lord of the castle. From 1192 till 1427 the Burggrafen of Nürnberg came from the Hohenzollern family, who would go on to play a significant role in German history. In 1427 the rich traders of Nürnberg, of whom more shortly, bought the Burggraf rights from the Hohenzollern and from then on until 1806, when Nürnberg became part of Bavaria, the city was ruled by the town council. Although dominated by the rich trader families the town council was surprisingly democratic with three groups of councillors being appointed/elected from the three tiers of citizenry at regular intervals. During the Renaissance Nürnberg, like one of its major trading partners Venice, called itself a republic.

The Holy Roman Emperor granted the city of Nürnberg special tax privileges, which combined with its favourable geographical position and the large Europe wide demand for the spices that came into Europe through the Northern Italian trading cities meant that the Nürnberg traders became very, very wealthy. This led to them looking for new opportunities to invest their surplus profits. The High Middle Ages saw a steeply rising demand for metals (gold, silver, copper, lead, iron) and with it an expansion of the metal ore mining industry. The major ore deposits, and thus the mines, were situated in the eastern part of Middle Europe, Eastern Germany, Hungary, Rumania, Austria etc. Realising that it was an expanding business with a future the Nürnberg traders began investing in the metal ore mines and soon controlled a large part of this industry. At first content just to sell the ore they soon realised that they could make more profit if they smelted the ore themselves and so built their own smelters and began selling refined metal. It did not take long before the artisans of Nürnberg began to work the metal themselves producing finished metal objects for sale. By the fifteenth century Nürnberg had become one of the major metal working centres of Europe producing quite literally everything that could be made from metal from pins and needles to suits of armour. A sign of this development is that the first mechanical wire drawing machine was developed in Nürnberg. The Nürnberg guilds were incredibly well organised with single families responsible for the production of one object or group of objects. When Karl V (Holly Roman Emperor 1519–1556) ordered 5000 suits of armour from Nürnberg, one group of families was responsible for the leg plates, another for the breast plates and so on. Highly organised piecework.

Nürnberg as depicted in the Nuremberg Chronicles 1493

Of course many scientific instruments are made of metal, mostly brass, and so Nürnberg in its all inclusiveness became a major centre for the manufacture of all types of scientific instruments. In fact it became the leading European centre for this work and thus, most probably, the leading world centre in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We have two important historical attestations of Nürnberg’s supremacy in this area. The philosopher Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus) (1401–1464) was very interested in astronomy and he purchased a celestial globe and other astronomical instruments from Nürnberg and this can still be viewed in the Cusanus Museum in his birthplace Kues. In 1470 when Johannes Regiomontanus set out to reform and modernise astronomy he moved from Budapest to Nürnberg because, as he tells us in a letter, Nürnberg had a good communications network through which he could communicate with other astronomers and because the best astronomical instruments were manufactured in Nürnberg. The communications network was an essential element of any Renaissance trading city and Nürnberg’s was second only to that of Venice.

By 1500 Nürnberg was the second biggest German city with a population of around 40 000, half of which lived inside the city walls and the other half in the surrounding villages, which belonged to the city. It was one of the richest cities in the whole of Europe and enjoyed a high level of culture, investing both in representative architecture and the arts, with many of the leading German Renaissance artists fulfilling commissions for the rich Nürnberg traders, known locally as the Patrizier; most famously Albrecht Dürer. Interesting in our context, Dürer’s maths book contained the first printed instructions in German of how to design and construct sundials. The first half of the sixteenth century was the golden age of scientific instrument production in Nürnberg with many of the leading instrument makers selling their wares throughout Europe, where they can still be found in museums in many different countries. In what follows I shall give brief sketches of a couple of the more well known of these craftsmen.

Nürnberg was famous for it’s portable sundials with family dynasties producing high quality products over three, four or even five generations. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the most significant sundial maker was Erhard Etzlaub (ca. 1460–1532) who like many other Nürnberger instrument makers was as much as a scholar as an artisan. As a cartographer he produced the first map of the Nürnberg region. He followed this with the so-called Rome pilgrimage map displaying the routes to Rome for the Holy Year of 1500, which famously Copernicus also attended. This map plays an important role in the history of modern cartography because it’s the first map with a scale, enabling the pilgrim to plan his daily journeys.

Etzlaub’s Rome Pilgrim Map
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Etzlaub also constructed a map on the cover of one of his compasses in 1511 that is drawn in a projection that comes close to the Mercator projection. Etzlaub was a member of the so-called Pirckheimer Circle. A group of like minded proponents of the mathematical sciences centred around Willbald Pirckheimer, soldier, politician humanist scholar and translator from Greek into Latin of Ptolemaeus’ Geographia; a translation that became a standard work.

Willibald Pirckheimer, porträtiert von Albrecht Dürer (1503)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

This group of mathematical scholars demonstrated their interest in the mathematical sciences and in the construction of complex instruments in the highly complex sundial that they painted on the side of the Lorenzkirche in 1502, which also displays the time according to the Great Nürnberger Clock:

Lorenzkirche Sundial
Source: Astronomie in Nürnberg

And the clock on the Frauenkirche constructed in 1506:

Frauenkirche Clock

The gold and blue ball above the clock dial displays the phases of the moon and is still accurate today.

Another member of the Pirckheimer Circle was Johannes Schöner(1477–1547), addressee of Rheticus’ Naratio Prima, the first published account of Copernicus’ heliocentrism.

Johannes Schöner
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Schöner was the first producer of serial production printed globes both terrestrial and celestial. He also wrote, printed and published pamphlets on the design and manufacture of various scientific instruments. Schöner was Europe’s leading globe maker whose globes set standards for globe making, which influenced the manufacture of globes down to the nineteenth century.

Schöner Celestial Globe 1535
Source: Science Museum London

Also a member of the Pirckheimer Circle and a close friend of Schöner’s was Georg Hartman (1489–1564).

Georg Hartmann
Source: Astronomie in Nürnberg

Hartmann like Schöner was a globe maker although none of his globes have survived. He was also one of the leading sundial makers of his generation and his complex and beautiful dials can still be found in many museums.

Hartmann Bowl Sundial
Source: Wikimedia Commons

In the early sixteenth century Nürnberg was the main European centre for the production of astrolabes and here Hartmann played a leading role. As far as can be ascertained Hartmann was the first person to produce astrolabes in series.

Hartmann Astrolabe Yale
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Previously all astrolabes were produced as single pieces, Hartmann, however, produced series of identical astrolabes, probably employing other craftsmen to produce the individual parts according to a pre-described plan and them assembling them in his workshop. As a young man Hartmann had spent several years living in Italy where he was friends with Copernicus’ brother Andreas. As a scholar Hartmann was the first to investigate magnetic inclination or dip. However his studies were never published and so the credit for this discovery went to the English mariner Robert Norman.

Handmade metal instruments were, of course, very expensive and could in reality only be purchased by the wealthy, who often bought them as ornaments of status symbols rather than to be used. To make scientific instruments available to those with less money both Schöner and Hartmann produced paper instruments. These consisted of the scales and tables, normally found engraved on the metal instruments, printed accurately on paper, which the user could then paste onto a wooden background and so construct a cheap but functioning instrument.

Paper and Wood Astrolabe Hartmann
Source: MHS Oxford

A later instrument maker was Christian Heiden (1526–1576) who like Schöner was professor for mathematics on the Egidiengymnasium in Nürnberg, Germany’s first gymnasium (similar to a grammar school). He made a wide range of instruments but was especially well known for his elaborate and elegant sundials, as much works of art as scientific instruments these were much prized amongst the rich and powerful and could be found on many a German court.

Column Sundial by Christian Heyden
Source: Museumslandschaft Hessen-Kassel

This is of course only a very, very small sample of the Nürnberger instrument makers, the history pages of the Astronomie in Nürnberg website, created and maintained by Dr Hans Gaab, lists 44 globe makers, 38 astronomical instrument makers and more than 100 sundial makers between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries; with the greatest concentration in the sixteenth century. Nürnberg was known throughout Europe for the quality and the accuracy of its scientific instruments and examples of the Nürnberger handwork can be found in museums in many countries, even outside of Europe.