which in that time belonged to the Holy Roman Empire. The maps were accompanied by the book Cosmographiae Introductio produced by the Vosgean Gymnasium. Of the one thousand copies that were printed, only one complete copy of the original is known to exist today. It is, in fact, a reprint in the form of a printer's proof from after 1516 instead of 1507, date of the first edition, of which there is no extant example. It was owned by Johannes Schöner (1477–1547), a Nuremberg astronomer, geographer, and cartographer. Its existence was unknown for a long time until its rediscovery in 1901 in the library of Prince Johannes zu Waldburg-Wolfegg in Schloss Wolfegg in Württemberg, Germany by the Jesuit historian and cartographer Joseph Fischer. It remained there until 2001 when the United States Library of Congress purchased it from Waldburg-Wolfegg-Waldsee for ten million dollars. Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Federal Republic of Germany symbolically turned over the Waldseemüller map on April 30, 2007, within the context of a formal ceremony at the Library of Congress, in Washington, DC. In her remarks, the chancellor stressed that the US contributions to the development of Germany in the postwar period tipped the scales in the decision to turn over the Waldseemüller map to the Library of Congress as a sign of transatlantic affinity and as an indication of the numerous German roots to the United States. Today another facsimile of the map is exhibited for the public by the House of Waldburg in their museum on Waldburg Castle in Upper Swabia. Since 2007, to the celebration of the 500 year jubilee of the first edition, the original map has been permanently displayed in the Library of Congress, within a specially-designed microclimate case. An argon atmosphere fills the case to give an anoxic environment. Prior to display, the entire map was the subject of a scientific analysis project using hyperspectral imaging with an advanced LED camera and illumination system to address preservation storage and display issues. In 2005 the Waldseemüller map was nominated by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington for inscription on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register and was inscribed on the register that same year. Nunn's analysis The geographers of Italy and Germany, like Martin Waldseemüller and his colleagues, were exponents of a theoretical geography, or cosmography. This means they appealed to theory where their knowledge of the American and Asiatic geography