Karte der Gegend um den Walensee - Eduard Imhof 1938

Abstract

The Swiss Eduard Imhof (1895–1986) was the founder of the Institute of Cartography at ETH Zurich and a cartography professor between 1925 and 1965. He authored numerous maps and atlases, such as the “Atlas of Switzerland”. In the 1930ies, he also had a major influence on the design and the choice of scales of the new official National Map Series. Imhof was very much up to the clarity of cartographic map representations. He advocated an elaborated and balanced mixture of map elements. A classical topographic map should consist of “immediate”, image-like elements such as the shaded relief, and fictitious, “indirect” elements like line art. In his 2 x 4.8 m gouache wall painting “A Map of the Area around the Walensee” (1:10,000) of 1938, he tried to achieve a naturalistic of the landscape with more immediate elements. It may be compared to today’s texture-based landscape renderings.