Wittgenstein Forest Atlas
The Wittgenstein Forest Atlas is a 280-year-old map series that depicts almost the entire area of the former county of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein and was apparently completed as a unique specimen in 1739 . It is privately owned by the Princely Archives of the Wittgenstein Rent Chamber in Bad Laasphe .
Emergence
When Count Friedrich zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein took over the business of government in the southern county of Wittgenstein in 1735, he initiated the continuation of the surveying work of the count's territory that had already been commissioned by his father August David , which was then completed four years later. The result of the surveying work, which lasted 15 years with interruptions, was a forest report completed in 1739 with the title General and Special Charts sambt Graentz Description of the Reichsgrafschoff Witgenstein.
Participating surveyors
Notes on the authorship of the map series are not found in the atlas , but are taken from other files in the archive, e.g. B. Pension bills tapped. The surveyors Adam Blum (from Herborn?) And a person named Wigell were identified as participating surveyors . Notes on the recording technique are missing from the atlas not least to avoid imitations.
Structure of the map series
It is a leather-bound atlas with gold-colored letters measuring 63 × 47 cm, which contains 61 sheets with painted color cards, border profiles, handwritten explanations of text and tables.
Above the atlas title, the initial letters FGZSHuW were used to refer to the ruling sovereign, Friedrich Graf zu Sayn Hohenstein and Wittgenstein, at the time of publication .
Already on the first page there is a legend with the universal explanation of the colors of all the following charts . A distinction was made between Hochgräffliche Herrschäftliche Acker, Hochgräffliche Herrschäftliche Miesen, Unterthanen fields, Unterthanen meadows, high or beech forest, high oak forest, birch and low forest, quarries and swamps .
This is followed by the two units of measurement used, the Wittgensteiner Werkschuh (0.2898 meters) and the Rheinische Werkschuh (0.2973 meters).
As an introduction, an almost six-page geographical description of the Reichsgrafschoff Witgenstein was chosen and the internal structure of the territory into ten forest districts ( Erndtebrück , Rüppershausen , Weidenhausen , Feudingerhütte , Fischelbach , Laaspherhütte , Laasphe, Niederlaasphe , Arfeld and Elsoff ) was pointed out.
The main part contains the hand-painted and colored maps on ten double pages in the division of the forest districts mentioned. Each illustration of a forest is followed by additional pages with exact descriptions of the forest parcels, the listing of the respective field names , information on the total size in square rods and the proportion of the respective wood species. The selected scale is about 1:14 200 after decimal conversion. The topographical facts shown are impressive. The size and course of the blue-painted waters are clearly recognizable, houses in the village group and also individual buildings appear as red, rectangular floor plan markings, whereby every building that was present at the time of the survey was obviously drawn. Land names were rarely entered on the map; however, a numbering system refers to the corridor descriptions attached after the respective map.
At the end of the map, the external borders of the state, primarily to the then Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt, are shown.
rating
The atlas from 1739 is the first large-scale map of the entire territory of the southern county of Wittgenstein. With the precise survey of the existing forest areas, the basis was laid for a regulated management of the Wittgenstein forests. While the forest structure is only hinted at in a large number of historical maps, a quantitative recording and small-scale subdivision of the stands was carried out here, thus creating the basis for a spatial and temporally fixed land use plan. The order to map the territory was made for purely fiscal reasons. The county, which is far away from the major traffic routes, was only partially suitable for agriculture, poor in natural resources and, in its economic development in the 17th and 18th centuries, relied almost exclusively on the income from forestry.
The historian Günther Wrede had viewed the atlas during the preparatory work for his dissertation, Territorial History of the County of Wittgenstein , submitted in 1925, and mentioned it with praise. The atlas was lost in the archives of Wittgenstein Castle for decades and reappeared during the preparatory work and the inventory for a major auction in 1950. In addition to its cartographic and forest historical significance, it is a valuable document for historical regional studies and cultural landscape research in the 18th century.
literature
- Helmut Nuhn: General and special charts of the Reichsgrafschaft Wittgenstein 1739. A remarkable document on historical cartography, economic history and regional studies of the Hessian-Westphalian low mountain range. In: Reports on German regional studies, Federal Research Center for Regional Studies and Regional Planning, Volume 45, Issue 2, July 1971, Bonn-Bad Godesberg.
- Wilhelm Hartnack : Wittgenstein's special map from 1739 - a masterpiece of cartography from the early 18th century. Laasphe 1963 (unpublished).
Individual evidence
- ^ Wilhelm Hartnack: Wittgenstein's special map of 1739 - a masterpiece of cartography of the early 18th century. Laasphe, 1963 (unpublished), p. 15.
- ^ Günther Wrede: Territorialgeschichte der Grafschaft Wittgenstein, NG Elwert'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung , Marburg 1927, p. 40.
- ↑ Helmut Nuhn: General and special charts of the Reichsgrafschaft Wittgenstein 1739. A remarkable document on historical cartography, economic history and regional studies of the Hessian-Westphalian low mountain range. In: Reports on German regional studies, Federal Research Center for Regional Studies and Regional Planning, Volume 45, Issue 2, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 1971, p. 212.