Martin Behaim – alternatively Martin von Behaim or Martin of Bohemia – was an important fifteenth century German cartographer from Nuremberg in the Holy Roman Empire who played an important scientific role in King John II’s Portugal (1) and was closely involved with Christopher Columbus’ famous expeditions to the Americas. (2)
Behaim is best known for his creation of the ‘Erdapfel’ (aka ‘The Nuremberg Globe’) between 1490-1492 which is still extant to this day:
However, we also know that jews such as Cecil Roth have claimed that Behaim was in fact jewish since Roth claims in his best-selling ‘The Jewish Contribution to Civilization’ as follows:
‘The quadrant, used alone, was inadequate as an aid in navigation. In the heyday of the Portuguese maritime activity at the close of the fifteenth century, the scientists at the Court of King Joao II of Portugal advised him to find out whether it was possible to extend the scope of the mechanical devices hitherto employed, by adapting to nautical use the old planispheric astrolabe known to the Greeks. The King entrusted this task to a commission of three scientists. One of them was Martin Behaim (that is “the Bohemian”), said by some authorities to have been a Jew.’ (3)
The problem is this is complete and utter nonsense as Behaim was the son of his eponymous father Martin Behaim and his mother Agnes Schopper; Behaim’s father was an Imperial Councilman of Nuremberg and a prominent textile merchant in both the Holy Roman Empire and northern Italian states (notably Venice), while his father was from a family that had fled from Bohemia in 916 A.D. ‘due to religious persecution’ – (4) you can almost see where the unevidenced assumption that it was because ‘they were jewish’ came from in Roth’s unnamed ‘authorities’ but this is significantly before we have the first evidence of a jewish community in Bohemia – (5) and there is no documentary or textual evidence – not even recorded court gossip! – that Behaim was of jewish ancestry.
Thus, we can see that despite Roth’s claims: Martin Behaim was not jewish in the slightest!
References
(1) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Behaim,_Martin; https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/science-and-technology/geography-biographies/martin-behaim
(2) https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=kayserling&book=columbus&story=portugal
(3) Cecil Roth, 1940, ‘The Jewish Contribution to Civilization’, 1st Edition, Harper & Brothers: New York, p. 80
(4) John Gottlieb Morris, 1855, ‘Martin Behaim: The German Astronomer and Cosmographer of the Times of Columbus’, 1st Edition, John Murphy: Baltimore, p. 12; also see https://crouchrarebooks.com/mapmakers/behaim-martin/
(5) https://dbs.bh.org.il/place/czech-republic
Karl’s SubstackRead More
R1
T1
