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Updated: May 2, 2025
Among those whom Columbus may have met there, was the great German cosmographer from Nuremburg, Martin Behaim. Martin helped to improve the old-fashioned astrolabe, an instrument for taking the altitude of the sun; more important still, toward the end of 1492 he made the first globe, and indicated on it how one might sail west and reach Asiatic India.
The others also begged the sisters to come to them, and so did Councillors Schurstab, Behaim, Gross, Holzschuher, and Pirckheimer, who came, some with their wives and some singly, to look after the daughters of their imprisoned colleague.
This lady was a Behaim, of the same noble race as my mother, whom God keep; and what great pride she set on her ancient and noble blood she had plainly proven in the matter of her son's love-match.
The old magistrate and his wife, on the contrary, thought that they knew. They had helped the sisters to receive the first callers; but when Frau Barbara Behaim, a cousin of the late Frau Maria, had appeared, they gave up their post to her, and slipped quietly into the next room to escape the throng.
My design, in the above Extracts and Observations, I presume, hath been answered, which was to shew that the Spaniards have not an unquestionable right to the Continent of America, as the first Discoverers among the Europeans; for it appears from well attested and numerous Relations, Facts and Circumstances, that the Ancient Britons landed on the American Shores about 300 Years before either, Behaim, Columbus or Americus Vespucius.
That Magellan did not himself believe the strait was laid down in Behaim's chart from any authority is evident, from a circumstance mentioned by Pigafetta, who expressly informs us, that Magellan was resolved to prosecute his search after it to latitude 75°, had he not found it in latitude 52°. Now, as Behaim undoubtedly was the greatest cosmographer of the age, and had been employed to fit the astrolobe as a sea instrument, it is not to be supposed that, if he had good authority for the existence of a passage round South America, he would have left it in any chart he drew, with an uncertainty of 23 degrees.
He died in the night of the Monday after Laetare Sunday in 1404, and his wife my mother, God rest her, whose name was Christine, was born a Behaim; she had brought him my two brothers Herdegen and Kunz, and she died on the eve of Saint Catharine's day 1404; so that I lost my mother while I was but a babe, and God dealt hardly with me also in taking my father to Himself in His mercy, before I ever saw the light.
The people who probably helped him most in this were his brother Bartholomew and Martin Behaim, the great authority on scientific navigation, who had been living in Lisbon for some time and with whom Columbus was acquainted. Behaim, who was at this time about forty eight years of age, was born at Nuremberg, and was a pupil of Regiomontanus, the great German astronomer.
This Margery had inherited some of her father's artistic gifts; he is mentioned in Ulman Stromer's famous chronicle, where he is spoken of as "the Singer." It was to her mother, however, that she owed her bold spirit, for she was a Behaim, cousin to the famous traveller Behaim of Schwarzbach, whose mother is known to have been one of the Schopper family, daughter to Herdegen Schopper.
The house where Martin Behaim, four centuries ago, invented the sphere, and drew the first geographical chart, is still the house of a map-seller. In the house where cards were first manufactured, cards are now sold. In the very shops where clocks and watches were first seen, you may still buy clocks and watches.
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