Heinrich Kiepert
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
geographer
Geographer
A geographer is a scholar whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society.Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography...
, was born at Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
as the son of a wealthy businessman.
Already in his youth he traveled with his parents and had a particular interest in the geographic circumstances, which he carefully sketched. Among the friends of the family was the historian Leopold von Ranke, which advised the parents to support the boy's innate talent. The teacher and director of the gymnasium he attended was the young philologist August Meineke. He could fill the young Heinrich Kiepert with enthusiasm for the classical antiquity
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
. During this time Kiepert already criticized the faulty execution of historic maps in school books.
He was educated at the University of Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...
, studying especially history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
and geography. In 1840, in collaboration with Karl Ritter
Karl Ritter
Karl Ritter was a German diplomat, ambassador to Brazil, a member of the Nazi Party, Special Envoy to the Munich Agreement, a senior official in the Foreign Office during World War II, and convicted war criminal in the Ministries Trial.-Life:Karl Ritter was a graduate in law, and was appointed to...
, he issued his first work, Atlas von Hellas und den hellenischen Kolonien, which brought him at once into eminence in the sphere of ancient historical cartography
Cartography
Cartography is the study and practice of making maps. Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.The fundamental problems of traditional cartography are to:*Set the map's...
.
In 1848 his Historisch-geographischer Atlas der alten Welt appeared, and in. 1854 the first edition of the Atlas antiquus, which has obtained very wide recognition, being issued in English, French, Russian, Dutch and Italian.
In 1894 Kiepert produced the first part of a larger atlas of the ancient world under the title Formae orbis antiqui; his valuable maps in Corpus inscriptionum latinarum must also be mentioned. In 1877 his Lehrbuch der alten Geographie was published, and in 1879 Leitfaden der alten Geographie, which was translated into English (A Manual of Ancient Geography, 1881) and into French.
Among Kiepert's general works one of the most important was the excellent Neuer Handatlas über alle Teile der Erde (1855 et seq.), and he also compiled a large number of special and educational maps. Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...
was an area in which he took particular interest. He visited it four times in 1841-8; and his first map (1843–1846), together with his Karte des osmanischen Reiches in Asien (1844 and 1869), formed the highest authority for the geography of the region.
Kiepert was professor of geography in the University of Berlin from 1854. He died at Berlin on April 21, 1899. He left unpublished considerable material in various departments of his work, and with the assistance of this his son Richard
Richard Kiepert
Richard Kiepert was a German cartographer born in Weimar. He was the son of famed geographer Heinrich Kiepert .-Biography:...
(b. 1846), who followed his father's career, was enabled to issue a map of Asia Minor in 24 sheets, on a scale of 1:400,000 (1902 et seq.), and to carry on the issue of Formae orbis antiqui.
External links
Publications
- J. PartschJoseph PartschJoseph Partsch was a German geographer, born at Schreiberhau, Silesia. He studied at the University of Breslau, receiving his doctorate in 1874, and began teaching at the university, becoming later professor of geography. Here he remained until 1905, when on the death of Ratzel, he was called to...
"Heinrich Kiepert, ein Bild seines Lebens und seiner Arbeit," in Geographische Zeitschrift, volume vii (Leipzig, 1901)