Petermann’s Anstalt had long been a kind of clearinghouse for the latest geographic knowledge. Exploration fueled his atlases; his atlases, in turn, fueled exploration. The Latin motto of his magazine was Ubique terrarum—“All around the world”—and the slogan was often accompanied by the ancient ouroboros symbol, a serpent consuming its own tail. The image reflected the kind of circular reasoning that lay at the heart of Petermann’s enterprise at Gotha: Knowledge of the world would feed ever more knowledge of the world.
