In the context of the research project "Database of German military and paramilitary units in Greece 1941-1944/45" and in the context of an international collaboration between the National Research Foundation (NIH), the University of Osnabrück and the National Center for Social Research (EKKE), creates the first digital map of Greece within the administrative boundaries of 1940.
What is a digital map?
A digital historical map is much more than just a digital representation of an old map:A digital map is a flexible digital map template that can be fed by georeferenced datasets (so-called attributes, such as population numbers , birth and death rates, voting behavior, etc.) within a Geographic Information System (GIS) in order to enable dynamic visualization and evaluation of a wide variety of data. For this purpose, each place (villages, municipalities, cities, etc.) is assigned a specific identification code in order to ensure the correct and accurate geographical distribution of the information.
Why was there no such digital standard map for Greece until now?
The problem with historical maps is that, not only must the features be digitally readable (eg by transferring inventories to a database), but also that the standard map must be modeled according to its historical limits. Current maps cannot be used for this purpose, as administrative structures have changed repeatedly and significantly since the 1940s, e.g. by amalgamation or division of municipalities. The task of creating such a digital map template was therefore the biggest hurdle:To enable the use of digital methods in historical research, a large amount of information classified in databases must first be made available digitally. This becomes possible only with the use of significant financial resources. However, this work has now been implemented as part of the research project "Database of German military and paramilitary units in Greece 1941-1944/45".
How was the work done?
The digital model map created now is the result of an intensive Greek-German collaboration between the following project partners:
-Institute of Historical Research of the National Research Foundation (IIE/EIE)
-Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies, University of Osnabrück
-National Center for Social Research (EKKE)
As you will see below, the map also includes the Dodecanese due to a national population reference:
Page:/Technical, theoretical and also methodological problems arose, which needed to be solved. Specifically, the first challenge was the complete digitization of the 1940 Greek population census, consisting of almost 11,000 locations (including the islands of the then Italian Dodecanese), in the form of a machine-readable Excel table. In a further step, a more recent digital map template (in this case from 1997) had to be adjusted to the administrative boundaries of 1940. At this stage, it was necessary to take into account several thousand changes in municipal boundaries, for which the team he turned to the Government Gazette (FEK) as a source. With the ArcGIS mapping program, the existing map template could then be adjusted to the 1940 territorial boundaries, township by township.
What are the areas of application of this digital map?
The field of application of historical digital maps is particularly wide. The research project "Database of German military and paramilitary units in Greece 1941-1944/45" aims to analyze the German occupation during the Second World War at the local level. To do this, one needs not only accurate information about the troops themselves, but also about the occupied territory and its inhabitants, for example, to show troop movements and analyze the corresponding occupation density.
But beyond the basic core of the project, the model map will be further developed, so that it is available to the Greek and international research community:The application area extends to various fields, such as research on the consequences of war, the history of immigration, the history of demography, the Greek civil war, etc.
What is the research project "Database of German military and paramilitary units in Greece 1941-1944/45"?
For the first time in Europe, a cartographic database will be created on the subject of the presence of German troops in an occupied country during the Second World War. Although the period of German occupation is of great importance in the collective memory of today's Greek society, so far there is no systematic record of all German military and paramilitary units in Greece. This is the aim of the research project "Database of German Military and Paramilitary Units in Greece 1941-1944/45", which is being conducted at the Institute for Historical Research of the National Research Foundation. The database:
• will help identify German units involved in war crimes,
• will clarify the numerical range of the German units that were in Greece,
• will explain the structures of military and paramilitary units.
The recorded data, which comes mainly from German archives, as well as from Greek local literature publications and from witnesses, will be put into a geographic information system (GIS) application. This web application will allow the Portal visitor to use the database through personalized queries. The database will be accessible to the general public and will serve not only for academic research, but also for local and regional history initiatives, school programs, etc.
The project has been running since May 2019 and is due to be completed in 2022-2023.
The implementation of the Research Project "Database of German military and paramilitary units in Greece 1941-1944/45" is financed by the German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from resources of the Hellenic-German Fund for the Future.
More information about the research project
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