In contrast to other European countries there was no ‘longitude prize‘ in Germany. This is largely because no centralized German state existed until the late nineteenth century and shipping out of German ports mostly took place in Northern waters – from the North Sea and the Baltic and travelling no further than the Iberian peninsula and the Mediterranean.

In spite of this there is a considerable literature dealing with the longitude problem by German authors and in the German language. This talk will present some of the tracts and booklets produced from the mid-seventeenth to the late-eighteenth centuries and try to set them in the context of the available methods for finding the longitude and wider international discussions.