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First Map to Use Name “America” Formally Presented to United States
Chancellor Angela Merkel formally handed over to the United States the 1507 map by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller that was the first to assign the name “America” to the continent in a ceremony with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer at the Library of Congress on Monday. Congressman Hoyer accepted this singular document on behalf of the American people and the Library of Congress, where it will become part of the Geography and Map Division. "Today is truly a great day," Chancellor Merkel said at the ceremony in the Great Hall of the library's Thomas Jefferson Building. "There is no more appropriate and dignified place for this map than this wonderful library," Merkel said. The 1507 map of the world is often referred to as “America’s birth certificate.” The German Government, in an extraordinary exception and in recognition of the long and deep ties that bind Germany and the United States, allowed the Library of Congress to acquire the Waldseemüller map in 2001.
Librarian of Congress James Hadley Billington called the map a "crown jewel" of the library's collection and thanked Germany for allowing such a treasure to be acquired and also acknowledged Prince Waldburg-Wolfegg, who's family sold the document to the library. "Everyone who visits this library will see this document as one of the most important items here," Billington said. For Congressman Hoyer the map is a reminder of how young America is, of the innumerable contributions that people of other continents have made to this country, and especially of German-American friendship. "This map and our friendship reflect our shared values and share aspirations," Hoyer said. "It is only a friend who would allow a document created in your country that means so much to our country to come here."
Naming the “New World” Martin Waldseemüller, a cartographer, humanist and cleric, was probably born around 1470 in Freiburg im Breisgau. He studied at the University of Freiburg, and in 1505 became part of an intellectual circle at St. Deodatus in the duchy of Lorraine (today Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, France). Here in 1507, after European explorers’ discovery of the “New World,” Waldseemüller produced a globe and a world map that were the first to depict a separate Western Hemisphere. He named the new continent “America” after Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer of the east coast of South America, whose travel reports had greatly impressed Waldseemüller.
The map is composed of 12 separate panels that together measure more than 4 feet by 8 feet. It bears the title, Universalis cosmographia secunda Ptholemei traditionem et Americi Vespucci aliorum que lustrationes (“drawing of the whole earth following the tradition of Ptolemy and the travels of Amerigo Vespucci and others”). When later criticisms arose as to whether the naming after Vespucci was dismissing Christopher Columbus' achievements, Waldseemüller seems to have had second thoughts. In the cartographer’s new edition of the world map, published in 1513, the Western Hemisphere is referred to as Terra Incognita (“unknown land”). But by then the reported 1,000 copies of the 1507 map had already spread the name “America” among Europeans. Waldseemüller's change of mind came too late, the continent had been baptized. Though descriptions of it were known, the actual Waldseemüller map remained missing for over 400 years. The single surviving copy was rediscovered in 1901 at Waldburg Castle in Wolfegg, Baden-Württemberg. The Waldburg family had acquired a portfolio of the 12 sheets from Johannes Schöner, a globe maker and student of Waldseemüller's who presumably had bought the copy for his own cartographic work. The rediscovery of this important map at the beginning of the 20th century marked an extraordinary occasion in cartographic scholarship and the documentation of human evolution. UNESCO added it to the Memory of the World Register in 2005.
In honor of the 500th anniversary of the Waldseemüller map, the German Federal Ministry of Finance issued a special stamp on April 12, 2007, celebrating the German cartographer and his most important work. Today, the Waldseemüller map is on display at the Library of Congress. With Chancellor Merkel’s ceremonial presentation of the map to House Majority Leader Hoyer on April 30, the Waldseemüller map officially belongs to the continent whose birth certificate it symbolizes. April 30, 2007 * photo by Victor Holt
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