The Celestial Globe (H57842/29193) was donated to the Milwaukee Public Museum in 1903 along with its companion terrestrial globe (H59492) and a manual of cosmic and terrestrial observations (H57843). The globe was developed by Johann Oelrich Kroehnke (1810-1897), an immigrant to New Holstein, Wisconsin in 1847. Kroehnke was a merchant, farmer, and community leader, and was intensely interested in intellectual pursuits and education, often at the expense of his personal fortune. The globes were developed, hand-painted, and built in Germany in the late 1830s by Kroehnke and brought to Wisconsin where they were used to educate his family and others in his community. Geographic data was updated between 1890-1892 to coincide with American populations and New World geography found in the 1890 United States Census.
