My limited understanding of German WWII mapping is that each arm of the German Military (Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht) had there own mapping departments. The Wehrmacht agency was called “Arbeitsstab für Kriegskarten und Vermessungswesens” which loosely translates to “Department for Military Cartography and Surveying’. It is possible that pre-war it was called ‘Arbeitsstab für Karten 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 it was known as the 9th Abt.GenStdH (9. Abteilung Heeresvermessungswesen und Militärgeographie des Generalstabs des Heeres bearbeitet or 9th Army Surveying Department and Military Geography of the General Staff of the Army) and was responsible for all civilian and military mapping.
With the start of WWII it become known as Abteilung für Kriegskarten- und Vermessungswesen or Department for War Mapping/Military Cartography and Surveying. The HQ was in Berlin and responsibilities were split into 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 the end of the war there was another restructure (I imagine that there was not much left to restructure) and become known as the Der Chef Wehrmacht-Kartenwesen.
As noted there seemed to be a lot of re-printed European and colonial maps (Africa etc) and I suspect this was due to the fact that after Germany had invaded the France, Belgium and Holland, they quite likely had access to the original lithos of the respective nation’s archives. It was quite common for both the Allies 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 und Vermessungswesens” maps and indexes are held in various European archives. For example:
https://search.arch.be/en/zoeken-naar-archieven
Arbeitsstab für Karten- u. Vermessungswesen, Brüssel.
No authorized corporate name heading exists, but some OCLC records 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 the word “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 mapping operations of the Wehrmacht.
Might this mean this is a Brussels interagency working group set up by various German corporate bodies that had a broader set of purposes?
Just based on the material it produced I would say the primary purpose undoubtedly would have been to provide maps useful to the military 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: The Arbeitsstab mined Belgian mapping collections broadly and used existing Belgian resources 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 chiefly reprints of Belgian maps. But some sets were resized and edited to conform to German standards, like
24510Belgien : ǂb Deutsche Heereskarte.
255 Scale 1:50,000.
500 German map based on Belgian 1:40,000 Series.
OCLC #44817798
What is really surprising is the level of interest in reprinting maps of the Belgian Congo, its mineral-rich Katanga province, and also particularly in Ruanda-Urundi (= present-day Rwanda and Burundi) an area administered by Belgium under a League of Nations mandate after 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 transitioned into a body under sole military control.
"Druck: Arbeitsstab f. Kriegskarten-u. Vermessungswesen beim 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 Archives Portal Europe contains an outline of the structural setup of the German army’s military mapping organization for Feb. 16, 1944
For Brüssel (= Brussels, Belgium) the record lists a major presence of mapping-related resources:
Kriegskarten- und Vermessungsamt 9 mit Heereskartenlager 579 und 586
There is no reference to the “Arbeitsstab für Karten-und Vermessungswesen” but it was almost certainly defunct by that time.
Source:
Collection identifier: BArch RH 5
Collection name: OKH / Chef des Kriegskarten- und Vermessungswesens
1921-1945
Location: Bundesarchiv (Abteilung Militärarchiv, Wiesentalstraße 10, 79115 Freiburg, [log in to unmask])
Another related collection is fragmentary.
Little of the 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- und Vermessungswesens des Heeres (Bestand)
Bestandssignatur: BArch, RH 43
--Heiko
Heiko Mühr
Map Metadata and Curatorial Specialist
Earth Sciences & Map Library
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University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-6000
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
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