Every Bridge and Meadow: The Austro-Hungarian Empire in 19th Century Maps

Are you Austria-hungry for maps of Austria-Hungary? If so, you are in luck! The Geography and Map Division, in collaboration with the Collections Digitization Division, recently completed digitization of a large (and I mean large) set of maps. The new digital collection comprises all editions of all sheets of the Spezialkarte der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie, a detailed topographic survey of the country at a 1:75,000 scale, held in the Geography and Map Division for a grand total of 6,346 digital images.

The bulk of the Spezialkarte was published in Vienna by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy’s K.u.K. Militärgeographisches Institut. Later sheets were produced by successor agencies in Germany after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I. The sheets in the Geography and Map Division’s collections generally date between the 1870s and the 1940s, with multiple editions existing for most sheets.

The dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary existed from 1867 to 1918, a period of considerable change in central and eastern Europe. The empire was multiethnic, with large Hungarian, German, Czech, Jewish, Romanian, Ukrainian, and various other populations. Dozens of languages were spoken daily; this multilingual situation is reflected in the Spezialkarte, which frequently provides translations for place names.

For an example, let’s look at the hometown of 20^th-century cartographer Erwin Raisz. His obituary in Annals of the Association of American Geographers lists his birthplace as Lőcse, Hungary. Lőcse appears on the 1912 edition of sheet 4365 of the Spezialkarte. Beneath the name Lőcse, the German name for the town appears: Leutschau.

In this 1894 edition, however, Leutschau is given prominence, with the Hungarian Lőcse and Slovak Levoce appearing in parentheses. Today, the town is located in Slovakia, and can be found on modern maps with the spelling Levoča.

Trying to locate a place name within Austria-Hungary is often not straightforward; different languages may have been used more at different times, or authorities may refer to a German or Hungarian version of a place name while inhabitants called it something else in the local language. Genealogists with documents referencing an ancestor’s birthplace in “Austria” may in fact be looking for a town within modern Croatia, Romania, or the Czech Republic. Gazetteers such as the Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon von Oesterreich-Ungarn can help with this, as they often include alternative language versions of place names. Older gazetteers may list the Comitat and Bezirk in which the town is located; modern gazetteers frequently include geographic coordinates. The research guide Cartographic Resources for Genealogical Research: Eastern Europe and Russia has more information on using this map set for genealogical research.

Aside from its usefulness in locating toponyms, the Spezialkarte provides a fascinating snapshot of land use in this part of Europe during the period of coverage. A peek at the map key, found in the beginning of the set, shows the dazzling variety of features depicted on these maps:

As an example for non-German readers, the section labeled “Culturen” shows the symbols used to distinguish between (from left to right) arable land, meadows and pastures, vineyards, hop gardens, rice fields, individual trees and groups of trees, bushes, sheds, forest with cut-throughs, fruit and vegetable gardens, and sand. Myriad symbols are used throughout the maps to indicate natural and human-made features.

As the maps span several decades, interesting comparisons can be made across maps of the same area, with the caveat that use of symbols may have varied over time. For an example, let’s look at the area of Moschendorf, Austria, and Pinkamindszent, Hungary, in 1896 (top) and 1935 (bottom):

The German-named “Allerheiligen” in 1896 becomes Hungarian “Pinkamindszent” in 1935, and gains a railroad and a chapel. Several areas of trees to the east of Moschendorf, labeled “Saroslaki erdo” (Saroslak forest) in the 1896 map, have disappeared by 1935, as has the label. And the change in the symbol for the church in Moschendorf from a circle to a triangle indicates that by 1935 it was being used as a trigonometrical survey point.

With such a wealth of information contained in these maps, we’ve provided multiple ways to access them. In addition to the digitized sheets, an earlier, experimental digitized version of the set can be downloaded as a dataset from LC Labs. The Austro-Hungarian map set data package contains 4,998 georeferenced TIFF image files (as well as non-georeferenced versions). And, of course, the maps can be viewed in person in the Geography and Map Reading Room.

Learn More:

• Find tips for using this set for genealogical research in our research guide Cartographic Resources for Genealogical Research: Eastern Europe and Russia
• Download the set as an experimental data package