Prussian Card Recording NW 1: 25 000, new photo 1891-1912

Over a period of almost 50 years since the beginning of the country’s inception, the original recordings had not been reproduced, even because of the lack of military and civilian interest. It was only around 1860 that the interest of the civil side changed. Especially on the side of mining there was a real desire for maps in scale 1: 25.000. From 1868 onwards, the General Staff made these card sheets available to the Prussian Ministry of Commerce, which were originally intended to be used only for the derivation of follow-up scales. However, since the now published map sheets had already been included between 1836-1850 and only 20 years later without further updates, they were rejected in some parts of Prussia. In the following years, the call for current maps became more and more urgent. The foundation stone for the new recording was laid. From 1875 onwards, the entire Prussian territory was re-incorporated, now in the unit of measurement agreed by the International Meter Convention of 1875. Only the blade cutting, the projection and the scale were taken over from the primordial table sheets. Terrain reproduction was no longer carried out in a snap representation, but for the first time in the form of height-layer lines, whereby a level area called normal zero was introduced as the reference point for a uniform elevation indication throughout Germany. Compared to the original recording, this new recording clearly shows the modern cartographic design principles, such as the structure of the road network, the representation and limitation of vegetation, the reproduction of the administrative districts, the inscription and the edge of the leaf, which still characterise the content and appearance of the official topographical map works. The production method was mainly the engraving on copper or the drawing on lithography stone. Originally, the new recording had its own numbering system, which was later adapted to the sheet numbers and sheet names of today’s DTK25 for reasons of simplification.