From an early age, Rudolf Lietz, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, exhibited an extraordinary fascination with geography that would shape the trajectory of his life and curatorial endeavors. By the age of seven, growing up in Dusseldorf, he was already conscientiously recording the daily water levels of the Rhine in a small diary. “I took notes from the radio weather report following the early morning news before leaving for school,” he says. As he traveled to various locations, particularly islands, his curiosity inspired him to seek out older maps of each area, immersing himself in their histories. “What did it look like before? When was it inhabited? Was it ever conquered?” he’d wondered. Before long, his affinity for collecting ranging from the statistics listed in his notebook to coins to autographs and stamps found its best expression in antique maps. For Lietz, these maps are more than just..
