Behaim

Behaim is a German surname associated with a patrician family of Nuremberg. The most notable bearer is Martin Behaim (circa 1459–1507), a navigator, merchant, and cosmographer who played a role in the early contacts between Europe and the wider world during the late 15th century.

Behaim spent time in Portugal and along the West African coast, gathering information used by European cartographers in the period preceding Columbus’s voyages. His most enduring achievement is the Erdapfel, the globe he produced in Nuremberg around 1490–1493. It is the oldest surviving globe and reflects the geographical knowledge available to Europeans before the widespread exploration of the Americas. The Erdapfel shows Europe, Africa, and Asia with a connected Indian Ocean, while the New World is either absent or only vaguely indicated, illustrating the limits of contemporary discovery.

The globe was created with input from Behaim’s travels and contemporary cartographic sources and remains a crucial source for historians studying late medieval to early modern geography. Today, the Erdapfel is housed in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg and is regarded as a key artifact in the history of cartography, demonstrating how European world maps were constructed on the basis of limited information and pre-Columbian knowledge.

In addition to Martin Behaim, the surname designates a lineage from Nuremberg, and the Behaim name is linked to the city’s historical mercantile and scholarly traditions.