Bosatlas
The Bosatlas is the most important and well-known Dutch school atlas . The first edition of the school atlas of the geheele aarde , written by Pieter Roelof Bos , appeared in 1877 by Wolters (now Noordhoff Uitgevers ), the 55th in 2016.
Bos took care of the first 15 editions himself, from 1877 until his death in 1902. From 1904 JF Niermeyer was responsible for updating, from 1923 BA Kwast. The 35th edition (1936) was edited by Kwast and P. Eibergen together, the latter only by the latter until 1956. FJ Ormeling was responsible for the 40th edition in 1959 up to the one in 1976, and since 1981 an author collective has signed.
Beginnings
Pieter Roelof Bos was one of the first candidates for teacher training for the young subject geography , which in 1868 became an exam subject for the Higher Citizens School (HBS). A lot of teaching materials were needed for the HBS, which was only set up in 1863.
After Bos had published a geography textbook with the publisher Wolters in 1875, a delivery of the planned, unfinished atlas of geheele aarde ten gebruike bij het onderwijs in de nieuwere aardrijkskunde (Atlas of the entire earth for use in teaching in modern geography; the double e in geheele later fell victim to a spelling reform). Bos wrote in the foreword that atlases primarily represented the ground, but he wanted to illustrate the connection between land and people. So he showed the population density and economy on a map of Austria-Hungary.
In 1877, however, the publisher brought out a less bulky atlas than Bos' original plan would have meant. Such an atlas would have been too expensive for students. The geheele aarde school atlas contained 27 sheets of maps with 64 maps, still without thematic maps and explanations. Two cards concerned the Netherlands. The "biographer" of the Bosatlas, Ferjan Ormeling, notes that Bos described the Netherlands very much from Groningen's point of view, because that province received numerous place names in the atlas, while other provinces were still almost empty.
Although twelve other school atlases were already on the market at the time, the inexpensive atlas from Bos was a great success. In the 1880s and 1890s, the author received a fee of two to three thousand guilders a year, double to three times a teacher's salary. From an editorial point of view, there was a close contextual connection between the atlas and the textbook written by Bos.
In the years up to 1902, when Bos was still responsible for the atlas himself, maps of Dutch provinces and more countries in Asia were added. A new edition appeared almost every year, each time with many changes according to the wishes of the educational sector. Bos' dislike of the Greenwich prime meridian, agreed in 1884, led to a long-term coexistence of this and the old Ferro meridian . His experimentation with reversing the colors for height values also met with incomprehension: He colored the depths dark and the heights light, because this is easier to read in artificial light.
Niermeyer period 1902–1923
Bos' successor as Atlas editor was JF Niermeyer (1866-1923), who worked in 1902 as a geography teacher in Rotterdam. In 1908 he became a professor in Utrecht. In contrast to Bos, Niermeyer was not very enthusiastic about German cartographers, whom he found too systematic. Instead of the predominance of nature as a factor, Niermeyer wanted to describe the interaction between man and nature. The Bosatlas went in the direction of economic geography.
Niermeyer was less experimental than Bos, but he improved the maps of the Dutch East Indies , his own field of research, and brought more information about the deep sea and submarine telegraph cables into the atlas. He also introduced that the previously unused backs of the colored cards were filled in with black and white cards.
In addition to the First World War , which quickly made the national borders out of date, the famous Bos tegen Bos trial also fell during the Niermeyer era . The Noordhoff publishing house, which incidentally was located on the same street in Groningen as the Wolters publishing house, published a full edige school atlas of the geheele aarde in 1909 . The editor's name was R. Bos (not related to the founder of the Bosatlas). Twice, in 1911 and 1913, Wolters sued the competition unsuccessfully for plagiarism, allegedly half of the maps had been taken from the Bosatlas. According to the court, Wolters' lawyers could not prove that the Noordhoff maps could only have been drawn up using the Bosatlas. Noordhoff's lawyers believed that the Noordhoff Atlas was based on the same sources as the Bosatlas and that geographical information could not be subject to copyright.
Period of Kwast and Eibergen 1923–1955
The textbook author and geography teacher BA Kwast (1870–1936) gave the atlas the name Bos-Niermeyer Schoolatlas der gehele aarde . Ormeling suspects that Niermeyer, who is of little significance for the history of the atlas, was promoted to the title because of his scientific reputation. Kwast not only wanted to align the Bosatlas according to the methods of the Wolter publishing house, in addition, in his opinion, an atlas should remain an atlas, with the clearest possible representation of the earth's surface with relief, rivers, etc.
Kwast's successor P. Eibergen (1890–1972) was responsible for the Bosatlas until 1955. He initially gave the Dutch East Indies even more space than his predecessor, which was now used for more comparisons, instead of the previous examples from Europe and America. The 35th edition exists in an edition from 1936 and also from 1939, with the latest developments in Germany and the Balkans being reported. In order not to have to glorify the Third Reich, no new atlas was published during the occupation (1940–1945), but work was done on numerous maps.
Meanwhile, the Bosatlas lagged behind the development. There was a lack of standardization of map symbols and criticism was made of the lack of aerial photographs and a range of thematic maps that would have been useful in class.
FJ Ormeling's time 1955–1977
The geography teacher FJ Ormeling (1912–2002; the father of the Bosatlas historian) had studied social geography in the 1930s and was then a geography teacher. During the war against Indonesia and afterwards he worked as a cartographer in Djakarta . As early as 1952, it was included in the future complete renovation of the Bosatlas. This had become necessary, among other things, because of new competition.
Even the first edition under FJ Ormeling (the 40th) from 1959 brought changes in the form of new themed cards, and the editions that followed followed. Since 1961 motorways outside the Netherlands have also been shown. Some of the colonies had to give way to new emigration countries such as Canada. The last edition under his name, from 1976, bound the register part in the atlas itself and appeared for the first time in four-color printing.
With the collective of authors since 1977
After a merger in 1968, the publishing house of the Bosatlas was called Wolters-Noordhoff, and since 1980 its atlases have been published in the Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties department . The 1981 edition got a completely new look with clear contours, as we know it today. The Netherlands was given a particularly large number of thematic maps. Again, later editions had to take into account changes in Dutch society and the world, such as immigration to the Netherlands.
Since 2007 the publishing house of the Bosatlas no longer trades with the name Wolters . After the Wolters Kluwer publishing group sold the school book sector to a British private equity fund, Wolters Noordhoff had to do without the traditional name. The Groninger Verlag remains the home of the Bosatlas.
literature
- Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877-heden) , Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties: Groningen 2005
supporting documents
- ↑ Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877 – heden) . Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties, Groningen 2005, ISBN 90-01-12227-2 , p. 8.
- ↑ Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877-heden) , Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties: Groningen 2005, p. 12.
- ↑ Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877-heden) , Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties: Groningen 2005, p. 14.
- ↑ Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877-heden) , Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties: Groningen 2005, p. 8/14.
- ↑ Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877-heden) , Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties: Groningen 2005, pp. 18-20.
- ↑ Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877-heden) , Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties: Groningen 2005, pp. 28-30.
- ↑ Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877-heden) , Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties: Groningen 2005, pp. 32/33.
- ↑ Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877-heden) , Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties: Groningen 2005, pp. 40/42.
- ↑ Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877-heden) , Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties: Groningen 2005, p. 50/51.
- ↑ Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877-heden) , Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties: Groningen 2005, p. 52/53.
- ↑ Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877-heden) , Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties: Groningen 2005, pp. 56/58.
- ↑ Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877-heden) , Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties: Groningen 2005, p. 65.
- ↑ Ferjan Ormeling: Biography van de Bosatlas (1877-heden) , Wolters-Noordhoff Atlasproducties: Groningen 2005, pp. 68–71.