The cartographic implementation of the historical maps is based on the work done for the printed version, The Atlas of European Historiography. The Making of a Profession 1800–2005, published in 2010 by Ilaria Porciani and Lutz Raphael.
Therefore, here described is the cartographic workflow for the printed Atlas edition. To provide the printed historical maps of Europe for eight time periods (1830, 1850, 1878, 1900, 1928,1955, 1980 and 2005) as well as individual country maps with historical borders a geographic information system (GIS) was used (ESRI ArcGIS).
For the map of 2005, free available geographic and administrative base data (country shapes, water bodies, cities, places and recent boundaries of Europe 2005) have been imported.
The historical country boundaries of the earlier years prior to 2005 were drawn up on the basis of approved historical atlases like Stielers Handatlas, editions from 1891, 1926-27, 1928-30 (Perthes-Verlag Gotha), and Andrees allgemeiner Handatlas, 1866 -1940 (Bielefeld [et al.] : Velhagen & Klasing).
These printed map sheets were scanned, imported and georeferenced as raster data in GIS within a current cartographic coordinate system. From these raster data new digital and editable map layers of the historical boundaries have been created.
The cartographic symbols for the thematic layers of institutions and higher education were combined with a xml-structure database (TUSTEP) for further informations.
Michael Grün
