Cartography and Spatial Research in Austria 1918-1945

The project aims to investigate continuity and change in state supported and academic cartography in Austria from the founding of the Republic in 1918 to the beginning of the occupation in 1945. This research will contribute to three topic areas in general history and the history of science that are closely linked with one another: the history of cartography in the 20th century; the history of interdisciplinary regional research and the development of the social sciences and humanities before and during the Nazi era. The topic of space has recently become increasingly important for historical research; in this context space has come to be recognized as a complex construct, something not simply discovered by geographers and mapmakers but also created or imagined. Within the field of the history of spatial and regional research before and during the Nazi era the project focuses particularly on cartography, because work in this area yielded basic data for humanistic and social scientific spatial and regional research, and was also influenced to a significant extent by these disciplines. Large scale mapping projects, particularly those carried out within the framework of "South-East Research" during the Nazi period, took a self-consciously interdisciplinary direction; alongside geographers also ethnographers, sociologists, agronomists, historians, and laypeople were involved. The study will therefore employ an interdisciplinary approach, combining historical and geographical research methods. The study will focus particularly on continuities and changes within map producing institutions (state and military cartography, university cartography, and maps made by publishing houses) as well as changes in the content and form of the maps made between 1918 and 1945. The central hypothesis of the project is that the National Socialist takeover of power in Austria in 1938 did not lead to a fundamental change within Austrian cartography, but rather to an intensification of tendencies that had already been visible earlier, and especially to a considerable increase in human, material and financial resources made available by the state for cartographical and interdisciplinary regional and spatial research. In the process the relationship of science, politics and the state changed fundamentally; the initiative here as in other disciplines came primarily from scientists such as the Vienna geographer Hugo Hassinger, working together with allies in the Nazi state and party, so that earlier claims that politics imposed itself upon science must be questioned. The extent to which Austrian cartography and interdisciplinary regional and spatial research explicitly supported one of the central projects of National Socialism - the military domination of Europe -, and the impact of such an alliance with the regime on the quality of cartographical work are further central issues of the project.

The project aims to investigate continuity and change in state supported and academic cartography in Austria from the founding of the Republic in 1918 to the beginning of the occupation in 1945. This research will contribute to three topic areas in general history and the history of science that are closely linked with one another: the history of cartography in the 20th century; the history of interdisciplinary regional research and the development of the social sciences and humanities before and during the Nazi era. The topic of space has recently become increasingly important for historical research; in this context space has come to be recognized as a complex construct, something not simply discovered by geographers and mapmakers but also created or imagined. Within the field of the history of spatial and regional research before and during the Nazi era the project focuses particularly on cartography, because work in this area yielded basic data for humanistic and social scientific spatial and regional research, and was also influenced to a significant extent by these disciplines. Large scale mapping projects, particularly those carried out within the framework of "South-East Research" during the Nazi period, took a self-consciously interdisciplinary direction; alongside geographers also ethnographers, sociologists, agronomists, historians, and laypeople were involved. The study will therefore employ an interdisciplinary approach, combining historical and geographical research methods. The study will focus particularly on continuities and changes within map producing institutions (state and military cartography, university cartography, and maps made by publishing houses) as well as changes in the content and form of the maps made between 1918 and 1945. The central hypothesis of the project is that the National Socialist takeover of power in Austria in 1938 did not lead to a fundamental change within Austrian cartography, but rather to an intensification of tendencies that had already been visible earlier, and especially to a considerable increase in human, material and financial resources made available by the state for cartographical and interdisciplinary regional and spatial research. In the process the relationship of science, politics and the state changed fundamentally; the initiative here as in other disciplines came primarily from scientists such as the Vienna geographer Hugo Hassinger, working together with allies in the Nazi state and party, so that earlier claims that politics imposed itself upon science must be questioned. The extent to which Austrian cartography and interdisciplinary regional and spatial research explicitly supported one of the central projects of National Socialism - the military domination of Europe -, and the impact of such an alliance with the regime on the quality of cartographical work are further central issues of the project.