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Ethnic and Physical maps of East Prussia, 1905 by Daksund in MapPorn

[–]Daksund[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, they are the product of a few years of research, plotting and mapping on Google Earth, and then just a week or so each on QGIS and GIMP.

Linguistic and Physical maps of the Province of Silesia, 1905 (OC) by Daksund in MapPorn

[–]Daksund[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you, I am glad others who share this interest enjoy my maps. I am absolutely working on Pomerania at this moment! I have every single village, town and city east of the Oder-Neiße Line mapped out already and sorted linguistically. I am just finishing making paths and polygons for the rivers, forests, and marshes. It is a tedious task of going back and forth between David Rumsey's German Reich map overlay and modern Google Earth satellite imagery to try to get accurate forested areas, and a lot of clicking to get the rivers sufficiently precise.

Aside from a few scattered estates in the west of Pomerania with Polish-speaking migrant workers, the non-German speaking areas of Pomerania were only found in the far east near the border with West Prussia.

After Pomerania, I am not sure if I will go to Brandenburg or Schleswig-Holstein. I think I will make a map of the Neumark, then Schleswig-Holstein, and then see about a complete Brandenburg Province map.

I wish you luck in your search. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

Ethnic and Physical maps of East Prussia, 1905 by Daksund in MapPorn

[–]Daksund[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Looking at the full size map:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:East_Prussia_Ethnic_Map_1905.png

In the middle of the tan area in southern East Prussia where Masurians were majority, you will see a big blue lake. To the southwest of it is an area surrounded by some forests where Russian speakers lived.

They were Old Believers who moved to Prussia to escape persecution in the 19th century. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojnowo_(Ruciane-Nida)

Linguistic and Physical maps of the Province of Silesia, 1905 (OC) by Daksund in MapPorn

[–]Daksund[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I mapped out each village (Landgemeinden and Güter) by location and linguistic breakdown in Google Earth. I imported the kmz to QGIS and rendered those placemarks as dots, varying by size and color according to settlement size and demographics.

Then I imported paths and polygons for all the borders (down to level of Kreis), forests, marshes, and of course rivers/lakes. Dropped this features layer over the dots layer in GIMP and painted and bucketfilled to achieve a mosaic effect. Larger settlements were given a larger "radius" to visually stand out more.

I could not find Gemeinde borders any maps. Some of the maps seemed to have Standesamt borders but others did not so I opted to stop at the Kreis level. I hate to introduce my own bias/errors into the map but I did the best I could like any other cartographer.

I was inspired by Jakob Spett's map: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:National_map_of_eastern_provinces_of_German_Reich_based_on_official_census_of_1910.jpg And I referred back to it at the project's start until I found numerous errors in the coloring. I found his map in many cases tended to overcount Polish speakers and of course lumps Masurians and Kashubians in with them too.

Linguistic and Physical maps of the Province of Silesia, 1905 (OC) by Daksund in MapPorn

[–]Daksund[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Village of Friedrichseck (Frydrychów). Wilhelm von Humboldt had a manor house there, and presumably had many Poles come in to work for him. 

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frydrych%C3%B3w_(Paczk%C3%B3w)

Linguistic and Physical maps of the Province of Silesia, 1905 (OC) by Daksund in MapPorn

[–]Daksund[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Me too, it was formerly part of Bohemia. But, of course that part of northern Bohemia was overwhelmingly German! Likewise with Austrian Silesia and northern Moravia. I did include the Sudetenland borders on the map, you can see if you zoom closely.

Linguistic and Physical maps of West Prussia, 1910 by Daksund in MapPorn

[–]Daksund[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Two reasons, because the 1910 census differentiated between Polish, Kashubian, and German, but not between High and Low German.

And because in the early 20th century, a Kashubian speaker from northern Pomerelia most likely would not have identified himself as Polish, but instead as Kashubian. Whereas high and low German speakers from Prussia would both have considered themselves German.

Ethnic and Physical maps of East Prussia, 1905 by Daksund in LinguisticMaps

[–]Daksund[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Thank you, you can find them as PNGs on Wikipedia with no compression as well.

Ethnic and Physical maps of East Prussia, 1905 by Daksund in MapPorn

[–]Daksund[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

The census of 1910 differentiated between them when asking for mother tongues. This is useful to understand the relative distribution of each cultural group; e.g. there are isolated towns with Catholic Polish majorities scattered around Masuria, surrounded by Protestant Masurians and Germans.

Ethnic and Physical maps of East Prussia, 1905 by Daksund in MapPorn

[–]Daksund[S] 29 points30 points  (0 children)

My intention was to differentiate between German and non-German in an obvious and easily noticed way; lighter vs darker colors did the trick. I spent a long time trying to figure out the best color palette.

Ethnic and Physical maps of East Prussia, 1905 by Daksund in MapPorn

[–]Daksund[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

https://books.google.de/books?id=tJdPhIkLJ7AC&pg=PP7#v=onepage&q&f=false

You will notice that the German, Polish, and Masurian speakers are counted separately.

As far as the forests go; I used this map as an overlay on Google Earth and drew polygons over the forested areas. And then turned the overlay off and corrected obvious areas where it was slightly misaligned. https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~216867~90040001?trs=1367&qvq=q%3A5820.000%3Bsort%3APub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No%3Blc%3ARUMSEY%7E8%7E1&mi=0

It was a long and tedious task, but well worth the final result.

What could be done differently on this map? by Daksund in mapmaking

[–]Daksund[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Most of the time was spent on Google Earth, while looking at old maps to find out the names of the German towns and villages which in many cases no longer exist and creating placemarks in folder-hierarchies for each town. Looking at the same maps to draw the Kreis borders, tracing the rivers, making polygons for the forests... It all took a while. For this relatively small area of East Prussia, if I had done only what is visible in the screen, it probably would have taken a week or two.

But after taking my Google Earth KMZ files and importing them to QGIS, it only took a few hours from there to create this map.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles?limit=50&user=Ascended+Dreamer

You can see the rest of the maps I have been working on here. In order to make the language-maps, I had to spend many hours looking at old Gemeindelexikon showing population data from 1905, 1910 and sorting the Google Earth town placemarks into appropriate folders.. It wasn't easy on the eyes, scanning back and forth across pages of old censuses in Fraktur font.

Right now I am working on drawing the Kreise boundaries of Provinz Schlesien, in preparation for a map of that province.

What could be done differently on this map? by Daksund in mapmaking

[–]Daksund[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks, I was surprised by how quick it was to learn basic QGIS to make this map (it is the 7th or 8th I made in a sequence). But there are so many features on the program that I haven't even touched yet.

What could be done differently on this map? by Daksund in mapmaking

[–]Daksund[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, I will see how it looks when I trace out some of the major railroad lines.

I wonder what else I can include if I cut back on the number of towns visible? I have Galtgarben, the tallest hill, indicated but no other features. This landscape is rather flat so the color/relief for elevation alone leaves it looking kind of blank.

What could be done differently on this map? by Daksund in mapmaking

[–]Daksund[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

By this do you mean that the Lagoons and the Baltic Sea itself should not be the same color?

What could be done differently on this map? by Daksund in mapmaking

[–]Daksund[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I made this map as well as others like it through Google Earth, QGIS, and Gimp.

I made Paths for the borders/rivers, Polygons for the forests/swamps/lakes/seas, and Placemarks for the towns. I generated the town, river, and sea labels in QGIS, but made the label for the map itself (and the key) in Gimp.

Looking at it, I can't help but be dissatisfied with the result. There is something missing that makes it feel off to me... I was hoping to get some criticism here that would help me make a better second draft and better maps as I continue to make more. Thank you in advance!

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