How the outer cover was reconstructed...

Depiction of the earth on the outer cover is based on an earth globe of 68 centimetres diameter from W.J. Blaeuw (1571 – 1638) in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. It proved very lucky that this template had already been photographed several years ago, enabling the use of a complex, optical process o gain distortion-free globe “stripes”.

However, the stripes were in-part illegible due to traces of usage on the historic globe. Therefore, they were initially digitalised by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Calculations at Heidelberg University, extrapolated to the size of the Gottorf Globe and then “cleaned” using a specially written program. Dust and dirt were thus removed digitally whilst the fine map lines remained intact. 

Thus, painting templates with a scale of 1:1 came into being, which enabled direct transfer of the continents and the numerous narrative scenes by the Berlin painter Klaus Butzke on the outer cover of the Globe.