In this manner, the reader opening the atlas had the text to the left and to the right the map to which the text belonged. But as the copies of this edition had, as it seems, to be in oblong folio, the translated text was glued not on the back of the map to which it belonged, but on the back of the preceding map. A Latin copy was taken, the whole text was translated into German, and this translation was pasted over the Latin text on the back of the maps. Strictly speaking, it cannot be called the first German edition, because it was not a German edition in the real sense of the word but an adaptation of the first Latin edition for the German reader. In 1926, the Prussian State Library bought for 480 Marks an interesting copy of A. Bagrow published his findings in Imago Mundi in 1937 in an article called 'The First German Ortelius', which he opens with the following observations: The story of the Koler Orteliuses was lost to history until the 1930s, when Leo Bagrow, one of the all-time great scholars of historical cartography, discovered an example among the recent acquisitions of the Prussian State Library. Johann Koler and 'the First German Ortelius'

This indicates the owner's ongoing interest in cartographic advancements and engagement with map sellers, publishers, and colorists. To do this, the early owner purchased separate examples of the maps from Ortelius, without text on their versos, and without fold lines, and had them colored and mounted to match the rest of the maps in the atlas. Unlike any of the three other known examples of the Koler atlas, in this example, the world and continents maps were updated in 1587. This attribution can be confirmed through the signing of the first printed leaf of the HAAB example with the initials 'G.M.' And while the coloring of the present example varies in some interesting ways (about which more later) it is clear that it was colored by the same hand or studio. Perhaps most importantly, two of the four known copies of Koler's modified atlas (including this example and the one at the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek), were given to the Nuremberg-based Illuminist (illuminator-colorist) Georg Mack the Elder to be elaborately hand-colored and heightened in gold and silver - well beyond the level encountered in any other Ortelius atlas. Thus he created the only Ortelius edition in which the reader could consult the descriptive text while also looking at the maps themselves. Sometime around 1572, the atlas was disbound by the Nuremberg publisher Johann Koler, who had the Latin text translated into German, and the whole atlas reconfigured in oblong folio, so that the text page sat to the left of the map it described. This can be confirmed by reading the backlit text on the versos of the maps.

The initial configuration of the atlas was as a black and white '1570A' Theatrum, one of the storied rarities of cartographic collecting.

It stands as a triumph of 16th-century artistry and bibliophily, having been modified several times after its initial publication in 1570, with each iteration bringing a new element of craftsmanship to the object. This previously unknown example of one of the foundational books of the Western Canon is entirely hand-colored and illuminated in gold and silver by the most celebrated colorist of the 16th century, Georg Mack, or a member of his workshop. This is the finest example in private hands of Abraham Ortelius's 1570A Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first edition, first issue, of the first modern atlas. The Finest Example in Private Hands of 'the First Large Modern Atlas' (PMM) African Islands, including Madagascar (65).