German Empire Topographic Maps at 1:100,000 Scale, 1878-1909

675 map sheets constitute the first large-scale topographic series covering the territory of the German Empire, completed in 1909. The maps were produced in a polyhedral projection, with each sheet covering an area of approximately 35 km by 28 km. The Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie is the authoritative organization for this historical cartographic work.

Use Cases

• Analyze historical land use and settlement patterns based on the detailed topographic features.
• Study changes in administrative and physical geography of the German Empire based on the uniform map series.
• Digitize and georeference historical map sheets for integration with modern GIS datasets.
• Train machine learning models for historical map feature recognition based on the standardized cartographic symbols.

Strengths

• Covers the entire territory of the historical German Empire across 675 standardized sheets.
• Provides a detailed scale of 1:100,000, offering a consistent view of topography and settlements.
• Represents a foundational and long-authoritative cartographic series, as noted in the description.

Limitations

• Last updated 1938-01-01 00:00:00; freshness should be verified.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The description metadata is limited; actual data quality and file formats require manual inspection.

Provenance

Source

Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie

Collection Method

Cartographic production by the states of Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, and Saxony.

Time Range

Production decided 1878, series completed 1909.

Freshness

1938-01-01

Geography

Territory of the German Empire as of the early 20th century.