Martin Behaim

Martin Behaim (6 October 1459 – 29 July 1507), also known as and by various forms of , was a German textile merchant and cartographer. He served John II of Portugal as an adviser in matters of navigation and participated in a voyage to West Africa. He is now best known for his Erdapfel, the world's oldest known globe, which he produced for the Imperial City of Nuremberg in 1492.

Biography

Behaim was born in Nuremberg on 6 October 1459, the oldest son of Martin Behaim and Agnes Schopper. The elder Martin was a merchant involved in long-distance trade within Europe, including Venice; in 1461 he was elected a senator of Nuremberg. Their son, as a member of a prominent and prosperous family, likely received a good education at one of the best grammar schools in the city. Contrary to later assertions, it is unlikely that he was ever a student of the famous Renaissance mathematician and astronomer, Regiomontanus.

When his father died in 1474, Martin's uncle Leonhard sent him at 15 to Mechelen, Flanders to gain experience as a textile merchant. There he joined the business of Jorius van Dorpp, a vendor of clothing. In 1477 they visited Antwerp where van Dorpp sold his wares to a German merchant; later that same year Behaim attended the Frankfurt fair with Bartels von Eyb, a friend of the family. Writing to his uncle in 1478, Behaim expressed a desire to improve his business prospects by moving to Antwerp, a leading center of the cloth trade. The following year he moved to Antwerp and joined the cloth dye house of Fritz Heberlein, a native of Nuremberg. It is more likely that he participated in a trading voyage to Guinea led by João Afonso de Aveiro.

The world map depicted on the Behaim globe is based primarily on the geography of the second-century geographer Ptolemy. It also combines geographical information from other sources, including Marco Polo, John Mandeville, and Portuguese explorer Diogo Gomes. It is notable for lacking more current Portuguese geographic data which should have been available to Behaim and it contains numerous errors that did not reflect contemporary geographical understanding.

The completed globe, which came to be called Erdapfel (earth apple) by the townspeople, was originally housed in Nuremberg's city hall. In the 17th century the Behaim family took possession of the globe. It was inexpertly restored in 1823 and again in 1847, resulting in the corruption of many place-names and labels. The German National Museum in Nuremberg later took possession of the globe, which is commonly known as the Nuremberg Terrestrial Globe.

The antiquity of this globe and the year of its execution, on the eve of the discovery of the Americas, makes it not just the oldest globe but also represents an encyclopedia of Europe's knowledge of the known world in 1492.