Where could I find a map of the communes for Bavaria region before 1930?

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Accepted answer

Update

Here is a 1931 overview map of Bavaria (click on the link Zur historischen Karte im DigiTool-Viewer) appearing to show the municipal (ie gemeinden) divisions, labelled as Bezirksamtsgr(enze). Your required time-frame is uncertain, so I am not sure if that is early enough for your need.

enter image description here

Translations:

  • Landesgrenze => national borders
  • Kreisgrenze => circle borders
  • Bezirksamtsgr(enze) => district borders
  • Stadtgrenze => city limits
  • Ausserdem sind noch die Eisenbahnknoten punkte u. Endstationen bezeichnet => Additionally, the railway nodes and terminals are designated

The Bavarian State Library Online has four centuries of Bavarian maps available to view online or order digitally on DVD. Most pages of the site are only in German.

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I don't know enough German, or enough about the gemeinden, to effectively search this resource for the map you are interested in.

It's worth noting that Prince-Elector (later King) Maximilian I Joseph commissioned a 1:50,000 scale topographical survey of his kingdom from around 1805, with most of the maps completed before the mass construction of railways in the 1840's. These maps are available on this site and are a great resource for Napoleonic researchers. Here is the Regensburg surroundings as it was in the early 1830's (click on the link Zur historischen Karte im DigiTool-Viewer).

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Upvote:2

For a project like this you might want to consider that just the list of all those Gemeinden fills a book with more than 300 pages:

Friedrich Zahn: "Gemeinde-Verzeichnis für das Königreich Bayern nach der Volkszählung vom 1. Dezember 1910 und dem Gebietsstand vom 1. Juni 1911", Lindauer: München, 1911. 380 pages

Bavaria is quite big and now has 2056 Gemeinden. For the time frame in question that number goes up to over 7123 (Wikipedia starting point for the year 1952, prior to 1930 those number is still higher) entities whose boundaries would have to be painted into a map.

enter image description here Source: Manfred Krapf: "Eingemeindungen", Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, 2018
Image shows: Poster "Population, area and number of municipalities in the administrative districts of Bavaria 1971" (before the start of the territorial reform) (Archive for Christian Social Policy)

That means that just the district Cham has how much Gemeinden? enter image description here -> 38 subdivisions. 39 today:

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The present day subdivision into Gemeinden is on this Wikipedia page: Liste der Städte und Gemeinden in Bayern.

enter image description here

See the sometimes very complicated boundaries and the high level of detail required in a zoomable vector format; that is how deep you have to zoom in to make out anything precise. And this is present day – after a lot of simplification and territorial reform. I included the pixel format here in the biggest resolution Wikipedia allows (revealed on click). The result is pretty uselsss in my eyes. Earlier maps must include not only a lot of adddtional boundaries corresponding to the more than 7000 Gemeinden. Those older maps also would have to account for the sometimes irrationally medieval looking wobbly boundaries and a number of exclaves/enclaves, and quite a number of unincorprated territories: territory that is not part of any Gemeinde but still would have had boundaries to them. The needed detail just for boundary lines increases therefore quite significantly. If you then want include just the names or any other feature you need a lot of ink. Those territorial reforms were not entirely futile after all.

"That is a bit much for printed material on one map", thought Mr Luber in 1880 and split that up into government district level. That was then published in 8 maps:

L Luber: "Übersichts-Karte der Gemeinden, Amtsgerichte und Bezirke des Königreichs Bayern: nach dem Stande des Jahres 1880"

Titel: Übersichts-Karte der Gemeinden, Amtsgerichte und Bezirke des Königreichs Bayern ...: nach dem Stande des Jahres 1880 Maßstab : Ca. 1:300 000 Verf./Bet.Person: Luber, L. Institution: Bayern ...: Statistisches Bureau Angaben zum Verlag: [München] ...: 1880 Fußnote: Inselkarten BSB-ID: 175088 B3Kat-ID: BV011539726 OCLC-Nr.: 643501908 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek bsb-muenchen.de)

Those are split along the administrative Regierungsbezirke level: Oberbayern, Niederbayern, Oberpfalz und Regensburg, Oberfranken, Unterfanken und Aschaffenburg, Schwaben und Neuburg, Mittelfranken, Pfalz.

These maps are available, but only offline. You might of course digitize them yourself, then stitch them together. If that is intended to be printed somewhere in an article or book that seems not very feasible.

To get much more detail then that –– and too big a choice already, from a still incomplete project started in 1906 –– you might need to have to turn to the official Historical Atlas of Bavaria:

Historischer Atlas von Bayern
The Historical Atlas of Bavaria (HAB) is a historical atlas composed of individual volumes and documents the ownership, rule and administration of all organisational levels in present-day Bavaria from early history to the present day as a historical-topographical description of the country. The volumes of this project mainly contain texts, statistics and maps. Not all atlas volumes have been published yet.

But some of them are online, especially the older ones.


There is quite a nice tool provided by the state of Bavaria here:

Geoportal BayernAtlas
example using timetravel mode and topic "Verwaltungsgrenzen - Gemeinden, Verwaltungsgemeinschaften, gemeindefreie Gebiete":

enter image description here

But do note that the borders are just the now valid ones:

enter image description here Small bit of Landkreis Landsberg

The former smallest Gemeinde of Beuern sits right on the new border between Greifenberg and Eresing which absorbed the territory of Beuern in 1978.

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