What is believed to be the single surviving copy, now owned by the Library of Congress, remains extant because it was bound into a portfolio by Johannes Schöner (1477-1547), a German globe-maker, mathematician and astronomer, who probably acquired a copy of the map for his own cartographic enterprises. The portfolio, now known as the Schöner Sammelband and part of the Jay I. Kislak Collection at the Library, contained not only the 1507 world map, but also a unique copy of Waldseemüller’s other cartographic masterpiece, the 1516 Carta Marina, along with copies of Schöner’s terrestrial and celestial globe gores.
After Schöner’s death in 1543, the immediate fate of the portfolio containing the map was unknown, but sometime, probably in the mid-17th century, it was acquired by the family of Prince Waldburg-Wolfegg and kept in the family’s castle library in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, where it remained unknown to scholars until the beginning of the 20th century.
The portfolio was rediscovered there in 1901 by the Jesuit priest Josef Fischer, who was conducting research in the Waldburg collection. The portfolio’s rediscovery ended centuries of speculation about the 1507 map and its existence, and the episode is widely thought to be one of the most extraordinary moments in the history of cartographic scholarship.
Throughout the 20th century the Library of Congress expressed interest in acquiring the 1507 map, when, if ever, it was made available for sale. Through the combined efforts of many members of the Library’s staff over an 11-year period beginning in 1992, the map would finally make its way to America in 2003. In 1999, through the efforts of Margrit Krewson, a former European Division specialist at the Library, and Prince Waldburg-Wolfegg, the German national government and the Baden-Württemberg state government granted permission for this German national treasure to be sold to the Library of Congress.
In June 2001, Prince Waldburg-Wolfegg and the Library reached a final agreement on the sale of the map for the price of $10 million. Through the efforts of many donors, both public and private, and through the work of many staff members at the Library of Congress, America’s “Birth Certificate” finally made its way home in 2003, and is now on permanent display in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library. (See Information Bulletin, September 2003.)
