Understanding the Basis of Schmitt’s Map of South Germany: Georeferencing the Sketches of Staržinsky and Sarret (Late 1790’s)

Eszter Kiss and Gábor Timár ()
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Eszter Kiss: National Coordination, Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy, Richard-Strauss-Allee 11, 60598 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Gábor Timár: Department of Geophysics and Space Science, Institute of Geography and Earth Science, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter Sétány 1/c, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary

Geographies, 2024, vol. 4, issue 3, 1-13

Abstract: Schmitt’s map was one of the outstanding survey products of the late 18th century, produced through Habsburg military mapping in the shadow of the Napoleonic Wars in the area of today’s southern Germany and some neighboring regions. The main geodetic basis for the map work was the series of surveys in Germany conducted by C.-F. Cassini de Thury in the 1760s. However, this was only a horizontal control for part of Schmitt’s map. The Cassini survey chains were linked in the 1790s by a complementary survey in the northern part of the map work: the Staržinsky-Sarret survey, which is the subject of this study. The authors have searched through the archive summary drafts of this survey. The georeferencing of the photographed sketches in the Cassini projection was feasible with surprisingly low error. By using the global SRTM elevation database, it was possible to identify the points/summits of the Staržinsky-Sarret survey between which visibility is possible. Thus, despite the fact that only one of the seven map sketches examined explicitly presents a triangulation structure, we present a possible triangulation pattern that could have been used to provide geodetic control in the northern part of the Schmitt map. The authors consider this survey as the basis for the assumption that georeferencing the Schmitt map in its own projection is possible in this area with relatively small residual errors.

Keywords: Staržinsky-Sarret survey; Schmitt’s map; 18th century; georeferenced; historical cartography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q15 Q5 Q53 Q54 Q56 Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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