WMS NW Prussian Card Recording 1. 25 000, original photo 1836-1850

After the political reorganisation of Europe by the Congress of Vienna (1814 to 1815), the reason for the production of the Prussian original reception was the need to create a uniform map for the territory of the Kingdom of Prussia. When after the liberation wars Prussia received the majority of its old territory back and the Rhine province and the province of Westphalia, among other things, were added to the Prussian military, only the Tranchot maps left behind by Napoleon were available to the Prussian military. Therefore, in 1818, the Prussian General Staff decided to carry out a new comprehensive topographical admission of the western provinces and the rest of the state. Under the direction of the Major General Freiherr von Müffling, young officers in the rank of lieutenants were assigned to the reception and mapping work. Each sheet was marked with the rank and name of the receiving officer. Work began in the province of Westphalia in 1836, in the province of Rhineland from 1842. The measuring table with compass, water level and diopter ruler served as technical devices. With this simple technique for today’s conditions, the leaves of the original recording were created in captivating accuracy. They were then worked out in colour with great drawing precision. The original recording was initially guarded as a military secret and was used only for the processing of the General Staff Card 1:100,000. However, as civil authorities increasingly demanded a release of the military maps, e.g. to facilitate planning for road and railway construction, it was decided from 1868 to reproduce and publish the existing sheets. Originally, the original recording had its own numbering system without leaf names. For reasons of simplification, the reproductions were later provided with the sheet numbers and leaf names of today’s DTK25. Sheet 4506 Duisburg is a colour reconstruction of the map sheet that has been lost since 1945, with the colour scheme determined from the gray value levels of a handed-over monochrome copy as well as the adjacent map sheets. — Stand: 06.06.2012