Das ganze Deutschland soll es sein! [It Should/Shall All Be Germany]
- Title:
- Das ganze Deutschland soll es sein! [It Should/Shall All Be Germany]
- Alternate Title:
- Das ganze Deutschland soll es sein!
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Lange, Dr. Dr. Friedrich
- Other Creators:
- Printer: Reimer, Dieter (Vohsen, Ernst)
- Date:
- 1923
- Posted Date:
- 2015-08-25
- ID Number:
- 2040.01
- File Name:
- PJM_2040_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1920 - 1939
- Subject:
- Between the Wars
Unusual Graphics/Text - Measurement:
- 45 x 29 (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- In the 1920s, Germany needed cartographic support for its claims that the Treaty of Versailles had been unfair. Language based maps alone would not support German claims to the ceded eastern territories, particularly in Poland, and pre-war boundaries would not support interests in ethnic areas beyond, in Austria and Eastern Europe. The "politically motivated" solution was a series of "composite ethnographic" maps. Herb 1997, 106. "Their purpose was not to give evidence for the German character of these areas, but to portray their exclusion from the German state as an injustice. These maps did not argue, they accused." Ibid.
"Das ganze Deutschland soll es sein!" was one of "the most widely disseminated" maps of this kind. Ibid. It is "a microcosm of the stylistic evolution of the field during the Weimer (and Nazi) periods." Murphy 1997, 168. All of Austria is treated as German. Other areas within the limit of the "Whole of Germany" (colored slightly differently), are identified as the "Severed and withheld Areas" (in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Denmark, France, and Belgium) as well as German-language areas of Switzerland and Luxembourg. While the German-speaking enclaves in other countries are shown, the message of this map is clearly reinforced by the three inset maps below, ranging from the "Shell" of Germany to the "Whole." "Both the title of the entire map . . . and of the inset . . . convey unmistakably the message that all the regions shown are, by rights, German." Ibid. The map was published by the Austro-German Volksbund (nationalist "Peoples' League"), based in Berlin. Herb (1997, 107) dates the map to 1923, but some indications suggest 1925. In any case, as a result of protests from other countries, the German Foreign Office pressured the Volksbund to stop distributing it in 1929. Ibid. 108-109.
The map was produced by one of the leading figures in Nazi cartography, Dr. Dr. Friedrich Lange. (Lange had two doctoral degrees, and insisted on being described as "Dr. Dr." Herb 1997, 91.) The collection includes a number of Lange's maps: ID #1264 (87,545,000 Germans in Europe); ID #1286 (Map of German Culture in the West); ID #1257.01 (Berlin a Border State on Three Sides); ID #1257.02 (The Eastern Front German States); ID #2040 (Das ganze Deutschland soll es sein!)
For a similar - and conceptually more defensible - map, see Albrecht Penck's 1925 "Deutscher Volks- und Kurturboden," ID #1216.
For further information on the Collector’s Notes and a Feedback/Contact Link, see https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/about-collection-personal-statement and https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/feedback-and-contact - Repository:
- Private Collection of PJ Mode
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.