The cartographic representations of the Swiss National Exhibition of 1939 and the question of a geographical national atlas

Summary

In the available opening and closing sections, Ernst Winkler reviews the extensive use of maps at the Swiss National Exhibition of 1939 and discusses a proposed Swiss geographical national atlas. He credits maps with enriching the exhibition’s presentation while cautioning against conflating cartography with geography. Missing information on exhibits, including scales and authorship, and the interruption caused by military mobilization restricted his inventory largely to titles, with possible omissions. The list broadly follows a regional-geographical framework while keeping each exhibition department’s maps together; visible entries cover the natural environment, population, languages, industries, agriculture, and land improvement. The closing sections offer technical and organizational recommendations. Content, symbols, and colours should be coordinated for clarity. Winkler suggests a format of approximately 35–37 × 46–49 cm, principal maps of Switzerland at 1:500,000, smaller-scale supplementary maps for comparison and the display of correlations, and large-scale plans for landscape microstructures. He advocates equal-area projections and a common projection for maps at the same scale, without settling on a specific projection. He envisages several years of preparation, voluntary scholarly surveying and compilation, and predominantly state funding for committee, printing, and publishing expenses. He also assigns the project a cultural role in expressing cooperation among disciplines, national independence, and tolerant humanity. These are proposals for an atlas; the supplied material does not document its completion.