Tip of the month: Map Archive of the Polish Military Institute of Geography 1919 - 1939
When Poland regained its independence in 1918 it faced a challenge of making a new set of maps for a new country. Its first task was to form a coherent and updated system from the maps of Polish territory originally drawn by the partitioning powers (German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires). By 1939 all 482 sheets for the area of pre-war Poland were published, together with around 280 additional sheets (”wyłącznie do użytku służbowego” or “for internal use only”) to cover the adjacent areas of neighbouring countries, i.e. USSR, Lithuania, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. Nowadays these maps are a source of information about pre-WW2 Poland. They can be used e.g. to locate villages which have long disappeared from the ground or to find former names of streets and buildings on historical city maps.
A private, non-profit projekt provides free online access to scanned maps and other materials published and owned by the “WIG” (Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny).
