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).
http://english.mapywig.org/
Half a century after the “Zimmermann” Johann Georg Knie (1794-1859) published a new and well-structured gazetteer of Silesia including the following data:
- place name in german and its variants in Polish, Sorbian, Czech
- form of settlement (hamlet, village, town)
- civil and church jurisdictions over those places
- location
- manor, population size, religious denominations, schools
- economy, infrastructure
- list of abbreviations, pronunciation of Polish terms
Knie, Johann Georg, Alphabetisch-Statistisch-Topographische Uebersicht aller Dörfer, Flecken, Städte und andern Orte der Königl. Preuß. Provinz Schlesien, mit Einschluß des ganzen jetzt zur Provinz gehörenden Markgrafthums Ober-Lausitz, und der Grafschaft Glatz: nebst beigefügter Nachweisung von der Eintheilung des Landes nach den verschiedenen Zweigen der Civil-Verwaltung, Breslau 1830
Historical gazetteers are an important reference for local history and genealogy. Names of places and their belonging to church-, administration- and jurisdiction districts changed often in former Silesian areas. Friedrich Albert Zimmermann discribed already at the end of the 18. century towns and villages of the following duchies and counties of Prussian-Silesia in 13 volumes of his geographical directory: vol. 1: Duchy of Brieg (Brzeg), vol. 2: Upper Silesia I, vol. 3: Upper Silesia II, vol. 4: Duchy of Münsterberg, vol 5: Duchy of Schweidnitz, vol. 6: Duchy of Jauer, vol. 7: Duchies of Sagan and Wohlau and the Counties of Militsch and Wartenberg, vol. 8: Duchy of Liegnitz, vol. 9: County of Glatz, vol. 10: Duchy of Glogau, vol. 11: City of Breslau, vol. 12: Duchy of Breslau, Band 13: place and subject index and a chronicle of Oberglogau.
To browse the single volumes online at Silesian Digital Library it is necessary to install the djvu-Browser-Plugin.
