A New Map of Germany, Hungary, Transilvania & the Suisse Cantons, with many Remarks not extant in any map. According to ye newest and most Exact observations

Book Description

London: Moll, Midwinter, and Thomas Bowles, 1712 [but c. 1720]. Engraved with period outline colour. Browning at edges, some small marginal tears. 24 1/8 x 39 3/4 inches. 24 7/8 x 40 7/8 inches. Herman Moll clearly undertook the making of this map of Germany with great enthusiasm. With its portrait of the Diet, it suggests Germany, Austria, Hungary and Eastern Europe as far as the Ottoman Empire as a vast confederation, essentially a parliamentary Holy Roman Empire. The complex array of dominions is laid out on a large scale that is quite readable and generally correct.. Moll offers additional information about many regions by naming the resource primarily associated with it, for example, beer with Hamburg and salt with Trieste. Furthermore, he locates many copper, iron and silver mines. It is also an unabashedly English map of the continent in that it includes the route taken by the great general John Churchill (1650-1722) in the 1704 campaign during the War of the Spanish Succession, noting the battles with, of course, the Battle of Blenheim. The map is dedicated to Marlborough and portrays him on his horse crushing his adversaries. The inset view of "the General Diet of the Empire or Parliament..." endeavors to equate the Electoral College with the English Parliament. Over the doorway is a sign which reads, "The Liberty of Germany". "The Publick Good" and "the Comon Necessity" are two figures standing in the doorway. Within is a large gathering of ecclesiastical and secular princes as well as the nine Electors, the most recent addition to the Electorate being the Elector of Hanover, as of 1692. The Elector of Hanover at the time the map was made was to become George I of Great Britain. The present map was part of Herman Moll's magnificent folio work, a New and Compleat Atlas. Moll was the most important cartographer working in London during his era, a career that spanned over fifty years. His origins have been a source of great scholarly debate; however, the prevailing opinion suggests that he hailed from the Hanseatic port city of Bremen, Germany. Joining a number of his countrymen, he fled the turmoil of the Scanian Wars for London, and in 1678 is first recorded as working there as an engraver for Moses Pitt on the production of the English Atlas. It was not long before Moll found himself as a charter member of London's most interesting social circle, which congregated at Jonathan's Coffee House at Number 20 Exchange Alley, Cornhill. It was at this establishment that speculators met to trade equities (most notoriously South Sea Company shares). Moll's coffeehouse circle included the scientist Robert Hooke, the archaeologist William Stuckley, the authors Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, and the intellectually-gifted pirates William Dampier, Woodes Rogers and William Hacke. From these friends, Moll gained a great deal of privileged information that was later conveyed in his cartographic works, some appearing in the works of these same figures. Moll was highly astute, both politically and commercially, and he was consistently able to craft maps and atlases that appealed to the particular fancy of wealthy individual patrons, as well as the popular trends of the day. In many cases, his works are amongst the very finest maps of their subjects ever created with toponymy in the English language. Furthermore, Moll is one of the few mapmakers who merits the term "Innovative". English mapmakers prior to Moll tried to imitate Dutch maps as nearly as possible, whereas Moll seems to have largely disregarded Dutch precedents. Removing all the Baroque stylistic elements, Moll replaced decoration with things that interested him about the places depicted, either pictorially or verbally. And he was right to do so. His notes and illustrations are more interesting than the putti and mythical gods of the late Dutch maps.

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