Franziska Haarhaus M.A.

Since 2025: Member of the board of the Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies (Verein für hessische Geschichte und Landeskunde e.V.)

Since 2023: Doctoral candidate in medieval history at the University of Kassel

Since 2023: Archivist at the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Dt. Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V.)

2015-2021: Project assistant at the German War Graves Commission, Public Relations Department

2017-2020: Master's degree in European History at the University of Kassel; thesis: ‘Atlases as a new form of knowledge organisation: Andrea Bianco's Atlante Nautico in 15th-century Venice’

2018-2020: Student representative on committees of Department 05 Social Sciences at the University of Kassel

2016-2018: Student assistant at Department 05 Social Sciences at the University of Kassel

2015: Intern at the Kassel City Archives

2013-2017: Bachelor's degree in History and German Studies at the University of Kassel, thesis: ‘Intervention documents from the Ottonian period. Materiality and writing’

Nautical artefacts. Practices and knowledge spaces of Venetian sailors 1400-1500 (working title).

Venetian portolan charts and atlases, as well as nautical manuscripts such as the Zibaldoni, are considered evidence of the flourishing trade and extensive communication network of the lagoon city; at the same time, they demonstrate the skills and knowledge of their producers. This doctoral project examines the practices of selected Italian navigators and cartographers of the 15th century and compares their nautical artefacts. It focuses on the influencing factors and motives that determined the production of the objects and their impact on contemporaries and posterity.

The nautical artefacts include the portolan charts of Albertin di Virgas (1409 and 1411-1415), Niccolo di Canal's Zibaldone (1350-1400), the portolan charts and atlases (1421) of the Cesani brothers and Giacomo Ziroldi (1426-1450), Michele da Rhodi's manuscripts Taccuino nautico (1434) and Raxion de' Marineri (1443-44, mistakenly attributed to Pietro di Versi until 2004), the Atlante Nautico (1436) and the portolan chart (1448) by Andrea Bianco, the atlas (1448) and the portolan chart (1470) by Nicolò Nicolai, and the maps and atlases (1426-1459) by Grazioso Benincasa. These artefacts and their contextualisation in 15th-century Venice will be used to show how the diverse theoretical and practical productions of sailors and cartographers developed relationally and influenced practice on Venetian galleys. The interplay of two methodological approaches, namely praxeology and materiality, allows us to view the artefacts as self-contained complete works and to analyse them in terms of their manufacturers, their fields of activity and their living conditions.

together with Ingrid Baumgärtner, Andrea Bianco's Atlante Nautico. On the organisation of geographical knowledge in the 15th century, in: Positionsbestimmungen. Mediävistik im kulturgeschichtlichen Kontinuum. Festschrift für Felicitas Schmieder, ed. by Gerda Brunnlechner, Nadine Holzmeier, Daniel Syrbe, Petra Waffner and Petra Widmer (Nova Mediaevalia), Göttingen 2025, pp. 47-74.

Franziska Haarhaus, Conference Report: 13. Kartengeschichtliches Kolloquium, in: H-Soz-Kult, 4 July 2025, https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/fdkn-155936.

January 2024: The workshop of Grazioso Benincasa: Practices of a cartographer in the 15th century, colloquium ‘News from the Middle Ages’, University of Kassel, Prof. Dr. Ingrid Baumgärtner and Prof. Dr. Christian Jaser.

May 2024: Grazioso Benincasa's portolan charts. Practices of a cartographer in the 15th century, 12th Colloquium on the History of Maps in Osnabrück, Christoph Mauntel, University of Osnabrück; Ingrid Baumgärtner, University of Kassel; Ute Schneider, University of Duisburg-Essen; Martina Stercken, University of Zurich.

September 2025: From rower to helmsman – hiring and social advancement opportunities in the Serenissima using the example of Michele da Rodi's Taccuino nautico (1432), study course “The sea as heterotopia.Is everything different at sea?”, German Study Centre Venice, Prof. Dr. Albrecht Cordes (Legal History, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main) and Dr. Philipp Höhn (Medieval History, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg).