Reich Office for Land Registration

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The Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme (RfL) in Berlin was the central surveying authority of the northern German states from 1921 to 1934 and of the German Reich from 1934 to 1945 . The Prussian State Reception as part of the Great General Staff is considered the predecessor institution . The results of the work, i.e. coordinates of the trigonometric points, heights of the leveling points and the various map series, were used less for military use than before 1933, but to the same extent, if not predominantly for public or private purposes.

The extensive staff of the Landesaufnahme could not be taken over into the Reichswehr after the First World War . The Prussian land survey was its essential parts, therefore, along with the former Saxon Topographic office first on October 1, 1919 as the civilian authorities of the Reich under the name "land survey, Branch Berlin" under the responsibility of the Reich Minister of the Interior adopted and on 11 July 1921 in the Renamed Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme. The conversion into the Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme went smoothly in so far as the Prussian Landesaufnahme had long since outgrown its originally purely military tasks.

On October 1, 1921, the Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme employed 602 people.

Service building

The Moltkebrücke around 1900, view into Moltkestrasse with the General Staff building on the right

The Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme had its seat in Berlin. Since the Reich Ministry of the Interior moved into most of the rooms of the former General Staff building after 1919 and the land survey had to give way to the annex built especially for it next to the General Staff building during the First World War , the RfL was after the first in the first few years World War I spread over seven buildings. It was not until the spring of 1924 that the management of the RfL with the departments for trigonometry , topography , photogrammetry and cartography was relocated as a scientific part of the RfL to the old buildings at the corner of Lindenstrasse 37 and Oranienstrasse 101/102. These rooms were vacated by the move of the Reich Debt Administration to the neighboring new building. In the Moltkestrasse 5 building, only the department that dealt with the reproduction, printing and distribution of the cards remained. This building stood between the Moltkebrücke and today's Federal Chancellery . The stocks of instruments and devices - as well as the mechanics' workshop - were housed in suitable rooms at Lindenstrasse 35. At that time, in addition to these service buildings, rooms at Wilhelmstrasse 9 and Puttkamerstrasse 19 were also used. A permanent exhibition for schools and other interested parties had been set up in the rooms at Oranienstrasse 101/102 since 1925.

The service buildings in Berlin were destroyed during the war between 1943 and 1945.

Only the branch “Landesaufnahme Sachsen” affiliated to the RfL was located in Dresden . As a branch of the Reich Office, the Saxony State Office also kept the offices in the former three-storey pioneer barracks "König-Johann-Kaserne", which it had been using since 1899. The former office building at Koenigsbrücker Strasse 86 at the corner of Stauffenbergallee in Albertstadt is now used by the Sachsen Landesfunkhaus des Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR). After extensive renovation, the exterior of the historic barracks was largely retained in its facade profiling and division of the windows and today it houses offices, editorial and production areas of the radio station MDR 1 Radio Sachsen.

organization

The Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme consisted of the following departments:

  • Central Department
  • Trigonometric department (triangulation, fine weighing, publication of measurement results)
  • Topographical department (production of the base map 1: 5000, new recordings 1:25 000, correction of the measuring table sheets)
  • Photogrammetric department
  • Cartographic Department

The Reich Office had roughly the function of the later Institute for Applied Geodesy (the so-called IfAG ) or today's BKG and - in contrast to the current responsibility of the federal states for geodesy - a strictly central role in the administration of the surveying networks , including the territories conquered during the war. In addition, it had to fulfill numerous research tasks , in particular to support the military surveying service .

The main surveying departments (HVA) established by law in 1938 collaborated on these tasks, but the President of the RfL could only issue instructions in technical matters and participate in the supervision of the HVA.

The following HVA passed:

No. District Seat
I. East Prussia, Bialystok District Koenigsberg
II Silesia, Sudetenland Reg.-Bez. Troppau Wroclaw
III Saxony, Sudetenland Reg.-Bez. Aussig Dresden
IV Berlin, Brandenburg Potsdam
V Pomerania Szczecin
VI Hamburg, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein Hamburg
VII Bremen, Oldenburg, Braunschweig, Schaumburg-Lippe, Hanover Province Hanover
VIII Thuringia, Anhalt, Province of Saxony Magdeburg
IX Lippe, Westphalia province, Osnabrück district Münster / Westf.
X Rhine Province Cologne
XI Hessen, Hessen-Nassau, Saarland, Rhineland Palatinate Wiesbaden
XII Württemberg, Baden Stuttgart
XIII Bavaria, Sudetenland Reg.-Bez. Eger Munich
XIV Austria (Alpine and Donaugaue) Vienna
XV Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia Danzig
XVI Reichsgau Wartheland Poses

Regardless of its partially political orientation, the Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme made great contributions to basic geodetic research and made a major contribution to the later standardization of the Central European surveying networks . A geodetic reference system that is still important today , the ED50 , is largely based on the work of the Berlin experts who were brought in from all parts of the Reich and almost all of them were appointed to the top performers in post-war Germany and to numerous professorships . This fact, which has arisen from a largely lack of “politically harmless” top researchers, is not dissimilar to the beginnings of space travel , based on numerous curricula, submissions, delayed or prevented projects or appointments . Some of those affected (who are also politically reluctant) are the later geodesy professors of Germany and Austria Erwin Gigas , Friedrich Hauer , Max Kneissl , Karl Ledersteger and Helmut Wolf .

literature

  • Oskar Albrecht: Contributions to military surveying and mapping and military geography in Prussia (1803-1921) . In: Geoinformationsdienst der Bundeswehr , issue 1, 2004.
  • Wolfgang Torge: History of geodesy in Germany . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019056-4 .
  • The Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme and its map series . RfL publishing house, Berlin 1931.
  • (Author's copy): The Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme and its activities , explanations and photos. RfL publishing house, Berlin.
  • Communications from the Reich Office for Land Recording . 8th year, No. 2. Verlag des RfL, Berlin 1932.
  • Ministry of the Interior (ed.): Plan booklet Great German Reich , overview of Landesvermessungs- and cartography with a supplement systems. Stollbergsche Buchdruckerei, Gotha 1944.
  • Richard von Müller: The Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme from the end of the war to the spring of 1934 . Special issue 13 on the communications of the Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme , Berlin 1936.
  • Herbert Lang: Germany's surveying and mapping . Aspects of its development since the founding of the empire in 1871. Schütze Engler Weber Verlag, Dresden 2008, ISBN 978-3-936203-10-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. Plan booklet of the Greater German Empire
  2. see Military Geographic Institute