Antique Map of Prussia and the South German States, Black's General Atlas, 1870

About this sheet

An antique map of Prussia and the south German states, the southern sheet of the pair, engraved on steel for Black's General Atlas of the World and published in Edinburgh by A. and C. Black in 1870. The sheet covers the southern half of the German lands, the country of Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Baden and Hesse together with the southern Prussian provinces, the upper Rhine and the Danube, and the approaches to Switzerland and the Austrian frontier. Dated to the issue of 1870, the map records the political geography of Germany in the last months before the proclamation of the German Empire in January 1871, when the southern kingdoms and grand duchies were still separate sovereign states outside the Prussian led confederation of the north. That makes it a genuinely useful historical document as well as a handsome one, since the arrangement of territories it sets out was swept away within a year of the plate being printed. The engraving is in fine steel line with original hand colour distinguishing the states, and the sheet is a natural choice for anyone with an interest in German history or with family roots in the south.

Black's General Atlas of the World was the standard British household atlas of the middle nineteenth century, issued in Edinburgh by the publishing house of Adam and Charles Black, the firm better known to most readers as the publisher of Sir Walter Scott and of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Its maps were engraved on steel, most of them under the direction of the Edinburgh cartographer John Bartholomew, whose clear lettering and restrained hill shading gave the atlas a legibility that its heavier rivals lacked. Successive issues were revised as boundaries moved and railways spread, so a sheet from Black's records the world as an educated Victorian reader understood it in the year the plate was printed.

Sheets from this atlas are sought after today both as reference cartography and as decorative material, the generous folio format suiting a wall quite as readily as a portfolio. Hung as a pair or a group, the plates make a handsome and genuinely informative wall.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with the centre fold as issued and light toning and faint soiling in the margins; the map itself is clean.

This is an original antique map, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.