Günter Schilder

On 21 March 2019, the seventeenth Menno Hertzberger Prize was awarded to prof.em.dr. Günter Schilder for his entire oeuvre, in particular Early Dutch maritime cartography.

Günter Schilder can rightly be called the godfather of modern Dutch historical cartography and works closely with colleagues at home and abroad, many of whom were his students. One of Schilder's great achievements was the founding of Explokart, of which he was director from 1981 to 2007, a special unit of Utrecht University that focuses on examining cartographic documents from previous centuries, examining the relationships between exploratory voyages and the people and crafts involved in making the resulting maps. Up till 2002 Explokart published 20 cartobibliographies.

After gymnasium he studied geography and history. He obtained his doctorate on March 16, 1970 at the University of Vienna with his thesis Der Anteil der Niederländer an der Entdeckung von Australien bis Abel Jansz. Tasman und dessen Niederschlag in der Kartographie (The Dutch Participation in the Discovery of Australia till Abel Jansz. Tasman and its Reflection in Cartography). In 1971 he joined Utrecht University as an assistant to Cornelis Koeman. On March 10, 1981, he was appointed as professor at the Interfaculty of Geography and Prehistory of Utrecht University, where he took early emirate on September 1, 2004.

Günter Gerhard Schilder (Vienna, born February 18, 1942), is a Dutch leading historian of cartography and for many years held the world's only chair in the history of cartography at the Utrecht University from 1981 to 2004.