Historical urban studies frequently study the city as a palimpsest. This is a speaking
metaphor in the case of wartime destruction and rebuilding. During the bombing and
subsequent rebuilding processes, buildings were damaged, destroyed and partly rebuild.
The UrbanMetaMapping research consortium examines war damage maps from the
Second World War and other thematic urban maps covering Central and Central Eastern
Europe, investigating urban mapping as a cultural practice of transformation, the social
and spatial development, and how heritage was mapped and historical consciousness
formed.
The city of Nürnberg, Germany, was heavily damaged in successive air raids during WWII.
This especially included the inner city with its many historically significant buildings. From
1942 onwards, the Nürnberg administration concentrated its disaster control efforts on
the historic centre. This is evidenced by a newly created cadastral map, covering the area
of the walled city, with a granularity that identifies each building, including side buildings.
This map served as a basis map for war damage maps from air raids as well as for
thematic maps, e.g. stated historic values (“Nürnberg” 2023).
By comparing written sources and maps from the Nuremberg archives, we study the
processes of disaster prevention, disaster relief and reconstruction directed by the city
administration between 1942 and 1952. During this period, Nürnberg underwent a
transformation from a centre of National Socialism (“Stadt der Reichsparteitage”) through
the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (1946–1949) to democratic regional centre. Throughout
this period, the regulations for demolition, reconstruction and dismantling of damaged
buildings organised by the city administration show considerable continuity, including the
urban planning for reconstruction dating back to 1943. Until recently these complex and
intertwined processes of planning, rubble clearance and rebuilding against the
background of political change have been studied separately from each other.
Using traditional art historical comparative methods, we analysed the reconstruction
strategies for selected town squares, streets and the urban landscapes in general and
specifically the preservation of damaged historical buildings in particular (Enss 2022,
Knauer 2023, Knauer and Enss 2022). For a comprehensive study of the walled city of
Nürnberg, especially the investigation of traces of the intertwined processes, we now
resort to a GIS-based approach. We also use this as a case study for the question of how
GIS can support studies of historical maps and which methods are most promising.
The various maps of air raids, historical values, reconstruction plans, etc., superimposed
on the cadastral base map, constitute a multi-layered paper database, that holds all kinds
of thematic information, but is tedious to analyse manually, especially in terms of cross-
comparison between maps. Georeferencing and vectorising the maps into a GIS database
allows for attainable access and quantitative analysis, from the temporal sequences of
damage on one hand to the relationships between different thematic data, such as the
declared historic value of buildings.
With GIS we create our own multi-thematic maps. The data from the different paper maps
is attributed to the geo-objects (buildings), which allows the selection and visualisation of
complex queries such as: show all buildings mapped as destroyed and as historically
valuable. Due to our exploratory approach, visualising these cross-references between
different data points is crucial, for our own research as well as for dissemination.
Additionally, the publication of maps created from GIS is possible without navigating the
complex copyright situation of the original maps. A quantitative evaluation of these
queries, e.g. how many buildings or what percentage of the total area have features X and
Y, provides a tangible measure of these findings.
Having all the data from the different maps combined allows us to check for internal
consistency: on the one hand we can check whether the data from successive maps are
coherent, and on the other hand we can test for hidden interdependencies. In the
Nürnberg air raid maps, we found that buildings shown as destroyed on one map were
shown as intact on a later map, which is an example of internal inconsistency. Comparing
the degree of destruction with additional information like the historical value of a building
can reveal hidden biases.
We plan to integrate additional data sources, such as georeferenced statistical data from
the period, as well as results from GIS-based research at other scales (Ludwig and
Alvanides 2023).
GIS gives us a view of the data from the paper maps that was not easily accessible before,
as it allows us to reveal, query, and visualise unexpected relationships. We therefore
encourage the application of building level GIS to other historical city maps.

Bibliography

Enss, Carmen M. 2022. ‘Erbeprozesse Bei Den Aufbauplanungen Für Städte in Den 1940er Jahren:
Schadensaufnahmen, Inventarisation, Aufbau’. Forum Stadt 1: 51–62.
Ludwig, Carol, and Seraphim Alvanides. 2023. ‘A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of the Urban Fabric of
Nuremberg From the 1940s Onwards Using Historical Maps’. Urban Planning 8 (1).
https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v8i1.6084.
Knauer, Birgit. 2023. ‘Kapitel 7 . Definition Und Transformation von Erbe Im Rahmen Der
Wiederaufbauplanung’. In Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten Deutschland, edited by Carmen M. Enss
and Birgit Knauer, 66–79. De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035625011-008.
Knauer, Birgit, and Carmen M Enss. 2022. ‘Wiederaufbauplanung und Heritage Making im
kriegszerstörten Nürnberg. Historische Stadtkarten als Quelle der Stadtforschung’. Moderne
Stadtgeschichte, no. 1: 133–60.
"Nürnberg" In Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten Deutschland: Stadtkartierung und Heritage Making im
Wiederaufbau um 1945 edited by Carmen M. Enss and Birgit Knauer, 196-232. Berlin, Boston:
Birkhäuser, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035625011-016