Abstract Summary
Around 1900, Germany housed several large commercial firms for map making, such as Justus Perthes in Gotha and Velhagen & Klasing in Leipzig. The first especially had a large impact on academic climatography through its scientific flagship journal Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen. This, together with the daily weather maps produced by the climatographer Wladimir Köppen at the Deutsche Seewarte from 1876, gave scientific map making in the German climate sciences an academic prestige never before possessed, even in the time of Humboldt. According to Nils Güttler, the mass-produced maps of the late nineteenth century produced new scientific principles and gave scientists and their audiences a seemingly objective Totaleindrück that data and thick description were not able to give. In the early twentieth century, however, meteorology and climatology developed into dynamical sciences thanks to the new practice of aerology, the more-than-daily collection of atmospheric data from weather balloons at different heights. Climatological maps increasingly had to compete with other forms of representation, especially mathematical formulas and diagrams. How should one represent altitude or development over time? Techniques had developed to add more than latitude and longitude on maps, such as isolines, colors, and arrows, but sometimes formulas and altitude diagrams were better in giving a Totaleindrück. I will examine the different strategies of climatological data representation by German aerologists such as Wladimir Köppen and Alfred Wegener and the Norwegian Vilhelm Bjerknes who taught in Germany, to show that ultimately maps had advantages over diagrams and especially formulas: a larger audience.
