My limited understanding of German WWII mapping is that each armof the German Military (Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht) had there ownmapping departments. The Wehrmacht agency was called “Arbeitsstab für Kriegskartenund Vermessungswesens” which loosely translates to “Department for Military Cartographyand Surveying’. It is possible that pre-war it was called ‘Arbeitsstab fürKarten und Vermessungswesen’ (Department for Cartography and Surveying). 

Reviewing the bundesarchiv.de we get a bit more information:

https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/basys2-invenio/direktlink/32569730-da32-4b15-878b-b115ffe7562a/

Pre war itwas known as the 9th Abt.GenStdH (9. Abteilung Heeresvermessungswesen undMilitärgeographie des Generalstabs des Heeres bearbeitet  or 9th Army Surveying Department and MilitaryGeography of the General Staff of the Army) and was responsible for all civilianand military mapping.

With thestart of WWII it become known as Abteilung fürKriegskarten- und Vermessungswesen or Department for War Mapping/MilitaryCartography and Surveying. The HQ was in Berlin and responsibilities were splitinto regions (East – with depot’s in Warsaw, Riga, Chew and Krakow), South East– with depot’s in Prague, Belgrade and Athens) and (West – Paris and Brussels).In the later years of the war – 1944- the HQ moved to Vienna. Just before theend of the war there was another restructure (I imagine that there was not muchleft to restructure) and become known as the Der Chef Wehrmacht-Kartenwesen.

As noted there seemed to be a lot of re-printed European and colonialmaps (Africa etc) and I suspect this was due to the fact that after Germany hadinvaded the France, Belgium and Holland, they quite likely had access to the originallithos of the respective nation’s archives. It was quite common for both theAllies and the Axis powers to create re-prints with native language overlays.

I remember as an undergraduate, the University of Canterbury (NZ)  library having a set of ‘Operation Sea Lion’invasion maps that were OS maps with German translation, overlays and grid’s.

A significant collection of “Arbeitsstab für Kriegskarten undVermessungswesens” maps and indexes are held in various European archives. Forexample:

https://search.arch.be/en/zoeken-naar-archieven

http://www.kb.dk/maps/kortsa/2012/jul/kortatlas/subject207/en/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&locale=en&search_field=all_fields&q=Vermessungswesen&notBefore=&notAfter=
NADA and LoC also have some of the series.
Hope the above helps
Greg.








    On Tuesday, 4 December 2018, 12:27:24 PM AEST, Heiko Muhr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:  
 
 
Arbeitsstab für Karten- u. Vermessungswesen, Brüssel.

No authorized corporate name heading exists, but some OCLCrecords use the following name heading:

Germany. Heer. Arbeitsstab für Karten-und Vermessungswesen

I wonder if that is correct, though:

One really surprising thing is that the prefix “Kriegs-“ or theword “Krieg“ or the abbreviation ”Mil.” do not appear anywhere in the corporate name. That was, as far as I have seen, standard practice for corporate names of the various mappingoperations of the Wehrmacht.

Might this mean this is a Brussels interagency working group set up by various German corporate bodies thathad a broader set of purposes? 

Just based on the material it produced I would say theprimary purpose undoubtedly would have been to provide maps useful to themilitary and military administrators that were part of the occupation government and extracting resources and were concerned with mapping the infrastructure. But there are other reprinted maps which do not fit the pattern, including lots of maps of the Belgian Congo, so the purpose might have been broader: TheArbeitsstab mined Belgian mapping collections broadly and used existing Belgianresources to reprint and publish maps, extract useful information for a variety of purposes,etc.

The items in OCLC all date from 1940 to 1942 and are chieflyreprints of Belgian maps. But some sets were resized and edited to conform to Germanstandards, like  

24510Belgien : ǂb Deutsche Heereskarte.

255  Scale 1:50,000.

500  German map basedon Belgian 1:40,000 Series.

OCLC #44817798

What is really surprising is the level of interest in reprinting maps of theBelgian Congo, its mineral-rich Katanga province, and also particularly in Ruanda-Urundi (= present-day Rwandaand Burundi) an area administered by Belgium under a League of Nations mandateafter WW I, formerly part of German East Arica. There are ethnographic maps that were reprinted and hydrographic maps of Lake Kivu, etc. Undoubtedly someone was mining Belgian collections with the intention to extract as much information as possible about Ruanda-Urundi, maybe becauseit was assumed that region would fall back under German control at an eventual peace settlement.

One 500 note in an OCLC record for a 1942 map gives a slightly different name heading.That might indicate a change in who oversaw this body, and how it transitionedinto a body under sole military control. 

"Druck: Arbeitsstab f. Kriegskarten-u. Vermessungswesenbeim Mil. Befh. in Belg. u. i. N. Fr."

That record lists “Mil. Geo-Gruppe beim Mil. Befh. in Belg. u.i. N. Fr.” as issuing body.

OCLC #556753133

 

A collection record from the German Federal Archives in the ArchivesPortal Europe contains an outline of the structural setup of the German army’s militarymapping organization for Feb. 16, 1944

For Brüssel (= Brussels, Belgium) the record lists a majorpresence of mapping-related resources:

Kriegskarten- und Vermessungsamt 9 mit Heereskartenlager 579und 586

There is no reference to the “Arbeitsstab für Karten-undVermessungswesen” but it was almost certainly defunct by that time.




Source:

https://www.archivesportaleurope.net/ead-display/-/ead/pl/aicode/DE-1958/type/fa/id/DE-1958_32569730-da32-4b15-878b-b115ffe7562a

Collection identifier: BArch RH 5

Collection name: OKH / Chef des Kriegskarten- undVermessungswesens

1921-1945 

Location:  Bundesarchiv(Abteilung Militärarchiv, Wiesentalstraße 10, 79115 Freiburg, [log in to unmask])

 

Another related collection is fragmentary.

Little ofthe administrative record of subaltern offices and individual mapping units survived World War II.

https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/LGRGIAXSX2NGCS64FNPM523UOLKXRBKI

Dienststellen und Einheiten des Kriegskarten- undVermessungswesens des Heeres (Bestand)

Bestandssignatur: BArch, RH 43

 

--Heiko

Heiko Mühr

Map Metadata and Curatorial Specialist

Earth Sciences & Map Library
50 McCone Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-6000

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On Mon, Dec 3, 2018 at 6:08 AM Zellmer, Linda <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hello,
I am wondering if anyone on the list knows anything about the Arbeitsstab fur Karten und Vermessungswesen. I gather it was part of the German Army during World War II. My Library has a map of Belgium (1937) that they apparently reprinted in 1941.
Any information on this group would be greatly appreciated. Linda Zellmer
-- 
Linda Zellmer
Government Information & Data Services Librarian
Liaison to Natural & Physical Sciences & Agriculture
415 Malpass Library
Macomb, IL 61455
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Phone: 309-298-2723
Fax: 309-298-2791