Ethnic Maps in the Workers Atlas by Alexander Radó
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Jeney, J.
1TU DRESDEN Email: janos_gyoergy.jeney@tu-dresden.de
Abstract
Alexander Radó (Hungarian: Radó Sándor), the author of the Atlas für Politiken Wirtschaft Arbeiterbewegung was born in Budapest in 1899. He joined the Communist Party of Hungary in 1918. In 1919, during the 133 day long communist regime in Hungary, he joined the Hungarian Red Army. After the fall of the communist government on 1 August 1919, he fled to Vienna. In 1922 he moved to Germany. In 1923 he joined the illegal German Communist movement in Leipzig and became the commander of the Saxonian Proletarian Selfdefense Force. After the crushing of the Hamburg uprising in 1924, he fled to Moscow, where he was accepted as an expert of geography. He later returned to Germany. It is assumed that at this time he became a Soviet agent. In 1930 he published the Workers Atlas, which appeared in German, English and Japanese. In this atlas many maps concerning human geography appeared, amongst others maps of the distribution of ethnic groups in the different countries of Europe. The atlas included ethnic maps, including those of Germany, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania and Czechoslovakia. Since the atlas was printed in black and white, the representation of the different ethnic groups was possible only by using different hatching methods. Radó used a black surface as one category while all the other categories were surfaces using various types of hatching. Unfortunately the black surface suppresses the other surfaces, as it is much darker than hatched surfaces. The maps have very small scales and low resolutions. They provide a very inexact picture of the ethnic structure of a given region, since those areas with very heterogeneous ethnic structures appear as homogeneous surfaces, therefore the map user gets an incorrect picture, seeing it as an area where only one ethnic group lives. A further problem is that small hatched surfaces on black surfaces are often confusing, as it is hard to decide what type of hatching was used. All place names on the maps used the German exonyms where these were available, otherwise the official place names were used. It is very hard to compare the maps in this Atlas to other maps, as the scale in this atlas is much smaller than that commonly used on other ethnic maps. In spite of this, the picture communicated to the user in such a comparison can be very useful. If the maps in this atlas are compared with the ethnic map made by Károly Kogutowitcz in 1929, which is clearly more detailed, it can be seen that the ethnic structure of the Banat, as well as parts of western and southern Transylvania have a much more heterogeneous ethnic structure than that which can be seen on the ethnic map of Romania on page 125 of the Imperialism part Workers Movement atlas. On the map made by Károly Kogutowitcz it can clearly be seen that the area between Oradea (German: Großwardein, Hungarian: Nagyvárad) and Cluj-Napoca (Romanian until 1974: Cluj, German: Klausenburg, Hungarian: Kolozsvár) has a much more heterogeneous ethnic structure than the picture given to us by the ethnic maps in the atlas made by Alexander Radó. Similarly in the region of Brașov (German: Kronstadt, Hungarian: Brassó) by looking at the map in the atlas of Radó we get the impression that it is inhabited only by Germans. On the map made by Kogutowitcz we see that Germans, Hungarians and Romanians live in that region. The area of Timișoara (German: Temeswar, Hungarian: Temesvár) has an even more colourful picture. According to the map made by Kogutowitcz Hungarians, Germans, Rommanians and Serbs live around the town, while north of the town there are Hungarians and Germans. The map in the Atlas made by Radó implies that only Romanians live in the town, while to the north of the town it is only inhabited by Germans. The other areas of this map, as well as the other maps in the Atlas have similar differences in the picture of the ethnic structure when compared to other more detailed maps.