Digital Atlas of Political Images of Space in East Central Europe in the 20th Century

For the past two decades, the “renaissance of space“ has been an important development for research in the historic and cultural sciences as well as in critical geography and cartography. “Space”, a term that acquired a negative connotation because of its use in national-socialist geopolicy, undergoes a change of meaning in the “visual” and “spatial turn”. Maps are not seen as an actual representation of reality anymore, but instead they are analyzed as a form of space-related imagination, i.e. as a result of a creative process to which, among others, cartographers, civil servants, the military, and journalists contributed. Thus, the choice of map-extracts, the hiding and highlighting of certain aspects, the psychology of colour, the languages of maps, the way in which they are arranged, and the relationship between them and texts and images connected to them are brought into focus.

In this respect, East Central Europe is a good example for the diversity of converging and competing images of space. Historic and ideological ruptures, flight, expulsion and migration, collapse and genesis of states, and boundary-shifts led to the establishment of certain regional, cultural, but also global images of space which were manifested in medial and cartographic representations and, in certain contexts, have remained unchanged until today.

Analyzing these images of space in an interdisciplinary approach, visualizing, deconstructing and rendering them transparent with the available technical and multimedial means still remains a desideratum. In the interdisciplinary joint-project “Digital Atlas of Political Images of Space in East Central Europe in the 20th Century” (DAPRO), the Herder-Institute wishes to fill this gap in collaboration with the Georg-Eckert-Institute for International Textbook Research (Braunschweig), the Leibniz-Institute for Regional Geography (Leipzig), and the Knowledge Media Research Center (Tübingen).

As a web-based, interactive platform for learning, teaching and research, the digital atlas, which will be developed in the joint-project, will be put at the disposal of students, professors, teachers and the interested layman under the name “Geoimaginaries” in the mid-2015. The atlas will give users an insight to the “workshop of the cartographer” and thus illustrate the mechanisms behind the production of maps. It will contain a number of user-friendly entry opportunities into the topic, which will permit users to depart on a journey in and through “spaces”, which they will have the opportunity to discover, deconstruct, and design themselves.