How Renaissance Nürnberg became the Scientific Instrument Capital of Europe

This is a writen version of the lecture that I was due to hold at the Science and the City conference in London on 7 April 2020. The conference has for obvious reasons been cancelled and will now take place on the Internet. You can view the revised conference program here.

The title of my piece is, of course, somewhat hyperbolic, as far as I know nobody has ever done a statistical analysis of the manufacture of and trade in scientific instruments in the sixteenth century. However, it is certain that in the period 1450-1550 Nürnberg was one of the leading European centres both for the manufacture of and the trade in scientific instruments. Instruments made in Nürnberg in this period can be found in every major collection of historical instruments, ranging from luxury items, usually made for rich patrons, like the column sundial by Christian Heyden (1526–1576) from Hessen-Kassel

Column Sundial by Christian Heyden Source: Museumslandschaft Hessen-Kassel

to cheap everyday instruments like this rare (rare because they seldom survive) paper astrolabe by Georg Hartman (1489–1564) from the MHS in Oxford.

Paper and Wood Astrolabe Hartmann Source: HSM Oxford

I shall be looking at the reasons why and how Nürnberg became such a major centre for scientific instruments around 1500, which surprisingly have very little to do with science and a lot to do with geography, politics and economics.

Like many medieval settlements Nürnberg began simply as a fortification of a prominent rock outcrop overlooking an important crossroads. The first historical mention of that fortification is 1050 CE and there is circumstantial evidence that it was not more than twenty or thirty years old. It seems to have been built in order to set something against the growing power of the Prince Bishopric of Bamberg to the north. As is normal a settlement developed on the downhill slopes from the fortification of people supplying services to it.

A fairly accurate depiction of Nürnberg from the Nuremberg Chronicle from 1493. The castles (by then 3) at the top with the city spreading down the hill. Large parts of the inner city still look like this today

Initially the inhabitants were under the authority of the owner of the fortification a Burggraf or castellan. With time as the settlement grew the inhabitants began to struggle for independence to govern themselves.

In 1200 the inhabitants received a town charter and in 1219 Friedrich II granted the town of Nürnberg a charter as a Free Imperial City. This meant that Nürnberg was an independent city-state, which only owed allegiance to the king or emperor. The charter also stated that because Nürnberg did not possess a navigable river or any natural resources it was granted special tax privileges and customs unions with a number of southern German town and cities. Nürnberg became a trading city. This is where the geography comes into play, remember that important crossroads. If we look at the map below, Nürnberg is the comparatively small red patch in the middle of the Holy Roman Empire at the beginning of the sixteenth century. If your draw a line from Paris to Prague, both big important medieval cities, and a second line from the border with Denmark in Northern Germany down to Venice, Nürnberg sits where the lines cross almost literally in the centre of Europe. Nürnberg also sits in the middle of what was known in the Middle Ages as the Golden Road, the road that connected Prague and Frankfurt, two important imperial cities.

You can also very clearly see Nürnberg’s central position in Europe on Erhard Etzlaub’s  (c. 1460–c. 1531) pilgrimage map of Europe created for the Holy Year of 1500. Nürnberg, Etzlaub’s hometown, is the yellow patch in the middle. Careful, south is at the top.

Over the following decades and centuries the merchant traders of Nürnberg systematically expanded their activities forming more and more customs unions, with the support of various German Emperors, with towns, cities and regions throughout the whole of Europe north of Italy. Nürnberg which traded extensively with the North Italian cities, bringing spices, silk and other eastern wares, up from the Italian trading cities to distribute throughout Europe, had an agreement not to trade with the Mediterranean states in exchange for the Italians not trading north of their northern border.

As Nürnberg grew and became more prosperous, so its political status and position within the German Empire changed and developed. In the beginning, in 1219, the Emperor appointed a civil servant (Schultheis), who was the legal authority in the city and its judge, especially in capital cases. The earliest mention of a town council is 1256 but it can be assumed it started forming earlier. In 1356 the Emperor, Karl IV, issued the Golden Bull at the Imperial Diet in Nürnberg. This was effectively a constitution for the Holy Roman Empire that regulated how the Emperor was to be elected and, who was to be appointed as the Seven Prince-electors, three archbishops and four secular rulers. It also stipulated that the first Imperial Diet of a newly elected Emperor was to be held in Nürnberg. This stipulation reflects Nürnberg’s status in the middle of the fourteenth century.

The event is celebrated by the mechanical clock ordered by the town council to be constructed for the Frauenkirche, on the market place in 1506 on the 150^th anniversary of the Golden Bull, which at twelve noon displays the seven Prince-electors circling the Emperor.

Mechanical clock on the Frauenkirche overlooking the market place in Nürnberg. Ordered by the city council in 1506 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the issuing of the Golden Bull at the Imperial Diet in 1356

Over time the city council had taken more and more power from the Schultheis and in 1385 they formally bought the office, integrating it into the councils authority, for 8,000 gulden, a small fortune. In 1424 Emperor, Sigismund appointed Nürnberg the permanent residence of the Reichskleinodien (the Imperial Regalia–crown, orb, sceptre, etc.).

The Imperial Regalia

This raised Nürnberg in the Imperial hierarchy on a level with Frankfurt, where the Emperor was elected, and Aachen, where he was crowned. In 1427, the Hohenzollern family, current holders of the Burggraf title, sold the castle, which was actually a ruin at that time having been burnt to the ground by the Bavarian army, to the town council for 120,000 gulden, a very large fortune. From this point onwards Nürnberg, in the style of Venice, called itself a republic up to 1806 when it was integrated into Bavaria.

In 1500 Nürnberg was the second biggest city in Germany, after Köln, with a population of approximately 40,000, about half of which lived inside the impressive city walls and the other half in the territory surrounding the city, which belonged to it.

Map of the city-state of Nürnberg by Abraham Ortelius 1590. the city itself is to the left just under the middle of the map. Large parts of the forest still exists and I live on the northern edge of it, Dormitz is a neighbouring village to the one where I live.

Small in comparison to the major Italian cities of the period but even today Germany is much more decentralised with its population more evenly distributed than other European countries. It was also one of the richest cities in the whole of Europe.

Nürnberg, Plan by Paul Pfinzing, 1594 Castles in the top left hand corner

Nürnberg’s wealth was based on two factors, trading, in 1500 at least 27 major trade routes ran through Nürnberg, which had over 90 customs unions with cities and regions throughout Europe, and secondly the manufacture of trading goods. It is now time to turn to this second branch of Nürnberg’s wealth but before doing so it is important to note that whereas in other trading centres in Europe individual traders competed with each other, Nürnberg function like a single giant corporation, with the city council as the board of directors, the merchant traders cooperating with each other on all levels for the general good of the city.

In 1363 Nürnberg had more than 1200 trades and crafts masters working in the city. About 14% worked in the food industry, bakers, butchers, etc. About 16% in the textile industry and another 27% working leather. Those working in wood or the building branch make up another 14% but the largest segment with 353 masters consisted of those working in metal, including 16 gold and silver smiths. By 1500 it is estimated that Nürnberg had between 2,000 and 3,000 trades and crafts master that is between 10 and 15 per cent of those living in the city with the metal workers still the biggest segment. The metal workers of Nürnberg produced literally anything that could be made of metal from sewing needles and nails to suits of armour. Nürnberg’s reputation as a producer rested on the quality of its metal wares, which they sold all over Europe and beyond. According to the Venetian accounts books, Nürnberg metal wares were the leading export goods to the orient. To give an idea of the scale of production at the beginning of the 16^th century the knife makers and the sword blade makers (two separate crafts) had a potential production capacity of 80,000 blades a week. The Nürnberger armourers filled an order for armour for 5,000 soldiers for the Holy Roman Emperor, Karl V (1500–1558).

The Nürnberger craftsmen did not only produce goods made of metal but the merchant traders, full blood capitalists, bought into and bought up the metal ore mining industry–iron, copper, zinc, gold and silver–of Middle Europe, and beyond, (in the 16th century they even owned copper mines in Cuba) both to trade in ore and to smelt ore and trade in metal as well as to ensure adequate supplies for the home production. The council invested heavily in the industry, for example, providing funds for the research and development of the world’s first mechanical wire-pulling mill, which entered production in 1368.

The wirepulling mills of Nürnberg by Albrecht Dürer

Wire was required in large quantities to make chainmail amongst other things. Around 1500 Nürnberg had monopolies in the production of copper ore, and in the trade with steel and iron.  Scientific instruments are also largely made of metal so the Nürnberger gold, silver and copper smiths, and toolmakers also began to manufacture them for the export trade. There was large scale production of compasses, sundials (in particular portable sundials), astronomical quadrants, horary quadrants, torquetum, and astrolabes as well as metal drawing and measuring instruments such as dividers, compasses etc.

The city corporation of Nürnberg had a couple of peculiarities in terms of its governance and the city council that exercised that governance. Firstly the city council was made up exclusively of members of the so-called Patrizier. These were 43 families, who were regarded as founding families of the city all of them were merchant traders. There was a larger body that elected the council but they only gave the nod to a list of the members of the council that was presented to them. Secondly Nürnberg had no trades and crafts guilds, the trades and crafts were controlled by the city council. There was a tight control on what could be produced and an equally tight quality control on everything produced to ensure the high quality of goods that were traded. What would have motivated the council to enter the scientific instrument market, was there a demand here to be filled?

It is difficult to establish why the Nürnberg city corporation entered the scientific instrument market before 1400 but by the middle of the 15^th century they were established in that market. In 1444 the Catholic philosopher, theologian and astronomer Nicolaus Cusanus (1401–1464) bought a copper celestial globe, a torquetum and an astrolabe at the Imperial Diet in Nürnberg. These instruments are still preserved in the Cusanus museum in his birthplace, Kues on the Mosel.

The Cusanus Museum in Kue

In fact the demand for scientific instrument rose sharply in the 15^th & 16^th centuries for the following reasons. In 1406 Jacopo d’Angelo produced the first Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Geographia in Florence, reintroducing mathematical cartography into Renaissance Europe. One can trace the spread of the ‘new’ cartography from Florence up through Austria and into Southern Germany during the 15^th century. In the early 16^th century Nürnberg was a major centre for cartography and the production of both terrestrial and celestial globes. One historian of cartography refers to a Viennese-Nürnberger school of mathematical cartography in this period. The availability of the Geographia was also one trigger of a 15^th century renaissance in astronomy one sign of which was the so-called 1^st Viennese School of Mathematics, Georg von Peuerbach (1423–1461) and Regiomontanus (1436–176), in the middle of the century. Regiomontanus moved to Nürnberg in 1471, following a decade wandering around Europe, to carry out his reform of astronomy, according to his own account, because Nürnberg made the best astronomical instruments and had the best communications network. The latter a product of the city’s trading activities. When in Nürnberg, Regiomontanus set up the world’s first scientific publishing house, the production of which was curtailed by his early death.

Another source for the rise in demand for instruments was the rise in interest in astrology. Dedicated chairs for mathematics, which were actually chairs for astrology, were established in the humanist universities of Northern Italy and Krakow in Poland early in the 15^th century and then around 1470 in Ingolstadt. There were close connections between Nürnberg and the Universities of Ingolstadt and Vienna. A number of important early 16th century astrologers lived and worked in Nürnberg.

The second half of the 15^th century saw the start of the so-called age of exploration with ships venturing out of the Iberian peninsular into the Atlantic and down the coast of Africa, a process that peaked with Columbus’ first voyage to America in 1492 and Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India (1497–199). Martin Behaim(1459–1507), son of a Nürnberger cloth trading family and creator of the oldest surviving terrestrial globe, sat on the Portuguese board of navigation, probably, according to David Waters, to attract traders from Nürnberg to invest in the Portuguese voyages of exploration.  This massively increased the demand for navigational instruments.

The Erdapfel–the Behaim terrestial globe Germanische National Museum

Changes in the conduct of wars and in the ownership of land led to a demand for better, more accurate maps and the more accurate determination of boundaries. Both requiring surveying and the instruments needed for surveying. In 1524 Peter Apian (1495–1552) a product of the 2^nd Viennese school of mathematics published his Cosmographia in Ingolstadt, a textbook for astronomy, astrology, cartography and surveying.

The Cosmographia went through more than 30 expanded, updated editions, but all of which, apart from the first, were edited and published by Gemma Frisius (1508–1555) in Louvain. In 1533 in the third edition Gemma Frisius added an appendix Libellus de locorum describendum ratione, the first complete description of triangulation, the central method of cartography and surveying down to the present, which, of course in dependent on scientific instruments.

In 1533 Apian’s Instrumentum Primi Mobilis 

was published in Nürnberg by Johannes Petreius (c. 1497–1550) the leading scientific publisher in Europe, who would go on ten years later to publish, Copernicus’ De revolutionibus, which was a high point in the astronomical revival.

All of this constitutes a clear indication of the steep rise in the demand for scientific instruments in the hundred years between 1450 and 1550; a demand that the metal workers of Nürnberg were more than happy to fill. In the period between Regiomontanus and the middle of the 16^th century Nürnberg also became a home for some of the leading mathematici of the period, mathematicians, astronomers, astrologers, cartographers, instrument makers and globe makers almost certainly, like Regiomontanus, at least partially attracted to the city by the quality and availability of the scientific instruments.  Some of them are well known to historians of Renaissance science, Erhard Etzlaub, Johannes Werner, Johannes Stabius (not a resident but a frequent visitor), Georg Hartmann, Johannes Neudörffer and Johannes Schöner.**

There is no doubt that around 1500, Nürnberg was one of the major producers and exporters of scientific instruments and I hope that I have shown above, in what is little more than a sketch of a fairly complex process, that this owed very little to science but much to the general geo-political and economic developments of the first 500 years of the city’s existence.

One of the most beautiful sets on instruments manufactured in Nürnberg late 16th century. Designed by Johannes Pretorius (1537–1616), professor for astronomy at the Nürnberger University of Altdorf and manufactured by the goldsmith Hans Epischofer (c. 1530–1585) Germanische National Museum

**for an extensive list of those working in astronomy, mathematics, instrument making in Nürnberg (542 entries) see the history section of the Astronomie in Nürnberg website, created by Dr Hans Gaab.