Kunstmanns Kostbare Karten (Kunstmann's Precious Charts)
University Library, LMU Munich
31 January to 06 May 2022
Thomas Horst is the curator of the exhibition Kunstmanns Kostbare Karten (Kunstmann's Precious Charts).
During a seminar by Thomas Horst (Department of Historical Basic Sciences and Historical Media Studies, LMU, and CIUHCT), a new exhibition was created in order to spotlight an almost forgotten but extremely versatile academic at the LMU: Friedrich Kunstmann (1811-1867) – historian, jurist, canonist and theologian. His research, related to cartography and the history of the church, as well as his long presence as a professor at the Portuguese royal court in Lisbon, inspired him to compile a relevant library collection (1,100 volumes, many of them in Portuguese), which is in the possession of the Library University, LMU Munich.
In addition to documents on Kunstmann's work in Portugal and at the LMU, selected objects from the collection of maps found in his estate are presented for the first time. These range from valuable original 16th-century engravings to contemporary reproductions and manuscript copies of maps, notably a Portuguese map of the Atlantic coast of Brazil and West Africa (1764).