Collection components

The Map Collection comprises approx. 185,000 map folios, including 11,500 navigational marine charts and 3,450 folded or rolled wall maps for schools.

The Collection includes

• world maps from the late 18^th century to the end of the 20^th century, which were collated to produce the company’s own maps, and which bear numerous annotations handwritten by Perthes cartographers.
• Perthes maps in all stages of production – from their draft versions through to their final  printed format.

The Collection is arranged according to an old system which was used at the end of the 19^th century. It indexes the holdings in 550 geographical and regional groups.

The holdings of the Map Collection have been preserved under the Map Cleaning project, and their historical organisational system has been reconstructed. Map holdings already processed by the project may be used on request.

Archived material

The archived material comprises

• the historical archive of the Justus Perthes Verlag (Justus Perthes publishing house) 1785–1953
• holdings of the VEB Hermann Haack Geographisch-Kartographische Anstalt Gotha (VEB Hermann Haack  Institute of Cartography and Geography, Gotha) 1953–1992
• part of the holdings of the Geographische Verlagsanstalt Justus Perthes Darmstadt (Justus Perthes Geographic Publishing House, Darmstadt) 1953–1992

The historical Archive of the Justus Perthes Publishing House covers approx. 120 metres. The holdings are sub-divided into five sections:

1. Editorial body of “Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen” (PGM) (“Petermann’s Geographical Observations”): correspondence, parts of the estates of cartographers, geographers and explorers of the 19th and 20th centuries
2. Staff and friends of the publishing house: correspondence, portions of the estates of staff members and authors published by the publishing house, collections of individual publications
3. Company and family archive: archived material specific to the management and administration of the publishing house, private family documents, bequests to family foundations
4. Image archive covering company and family history
5. Editorial body of the Gothaischer Hofkalender (Gotha Court Calendar): archived material relating to the publications on genealogical statistics: Gothaischer Hofkalender (Gotha Court Calendar), Almanach de Gotha (Gotha Almanac), genealogical pocket books, collections of coats of arms.

The holdings of the “PGM Editorial Body”, “Staff and Friends of the Publishers” and “Editorial Board of the Gotha Court Calendar” may be used on request in the special reading room of the Gotha Research Library. The “Family and Friends Archive” and the “Image Archive” are currently being indexed as part of a three-year project.

The Perthes Collection Archive contains a collection of 1,650 copper plates. The copper plates of each of the last editions of the publications, made using copperplate engraving, have been preserved almost in their entirety.

Copper plates for the following atlases and collections of maps have been preserved:

• Stielers Handatlas (Stieler’s Hand-Atlas)
• Berghaus’ Physikalischer Atlas (Berghaus’ Physical Atlas)
• Spruner-Menke, Historisch-Geographischer Handatlas (Historical Geographical Hand Atlas)
• Perthes pocket atlases
• van Kampen, Atlas antiquus
• Sydow-Wagner, Methodischer Schulatlas (Methodical School Atlas)
• Vogels Karte des Deutschen Reiches (Vogel’s Map of the German Empire) (27-folio edition; 33-folio edition)
• Vogels Karte von Mitteleuropa (Vogel’s Map of Central Europe) (general edition / flyer map)
• Berghaus’ Map of the World
• Maps for the Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Globes        

The holdings are currently being processed in an indexing project.

The copper plates for “Stielers Handatlas” (9th, 10th and 11th / international edition) have been entered in online databases as part of the publications cataloguing project. This holding can be researched online and used on request.

The holdings of the Gothaischer Hofkalender (Gotha Court Calendar), the Almanach de Gotha (Gotha Almanac) and the Genealogischen Taschenbücher des Adels (Genealogical Pocket Books of the Nobility) do not constitute an independent component of the Perthes Collection. The archived editorial material is kept in the Archive of the Publishing House. Part of the Editorial Library is housed in  the Library of the Publishing House but the main part of it was incorporated into the Genealogy/Statistics sections of the Gotha Research Library as long ago as the late 1940s.

The holdings of the Editorial Library have been recorded in online databases in the course of a cataloguing project. They can be reserved online and used in the special reading room of the Gotha Research Library.

In 2006, in an initiative to expand and raise the profile of the Perthes Collection, the Research Library acquired the working library of the geographer Dietmar Henze, author of the five-volume “Enzyklopädie der Entdecker und Erforscher der Erde” (“Encyclopaedia of the Earth’s Discoverers and Explorers”) (1978-2004, with a supplementary volume in 2011). The unique special collection focusing on the history of geography in the 19th and 20th centuries is currently being integrated into the Perthes Collection.

The book holdings of the working library can be reserved online and used in the special reading room of the Research Library. The archival holdings of the working library can be viewed in the special reading room, insofar as they are usable.