2006 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A Study on the Application of Central Place Theory to the Occupied Area of East, Poland by Nazi Germany.
| Project/Area Number |
17520544
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Human geography
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| Research Institution | Tokyo Metropolitan University |
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Principal Investigator |
SUGIURA Yoshio Tokyo Metropolitan University, Graduate School of Urban Environmental Sciences, Proofessor, 都市環境科学研究科, 教授 (00117714)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
HARAYAMA Michiko Tokyo Metropolitan University, Graduate School of Urban Environmental Sciences, Assistant Professor, 都市環境科学研究科, 助教 (00117722)
ISHIZAKI Kenji Nara Women University, Faculty of Letters, Associate Professor, 文学部, 准教授 (10281239)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2005 – 2006
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| Keywords | central place theory / Nazi Germany / Christaller / history of geography |
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| Research Abstract |
1. Before 1937 when Nazi Germany occupied Poland, Upper Shlesia branch of the Reich Association for Area Research had drawn up a plan to reorganize central place networks crossing the border and covering even Polish territories. The central places were planned as the strategic stronghold keeping Polish and other races under German control.
2. It was not easy that central place theory was accepted by Nazi Germany as the settlement location model for the planning framework to reorganize settlements in the occupied area of East, Poland. In 1938 the study group on central places chaired by Christaller was founded in the Reich Association for Area Research, where the applicability of central place theory was discussed to the settlement relocation planning in the future occupied area of East. Of group members, leading disputants were Gottfried Feder who could publish Neue Stadt in no time, economist Friedrich Biilow, and geographer Walter Geisler: Feder seemed to support central place theory; Biilow criticized the theory since it was incompatible with Nazism in that it was constructed positing the liberalistic economy; Geisler disagreed with Christaller who had deduced the hexagonal structure of settlements on uniform space. To these criticisms, as a result Christaller proposed mixed central place theory while changing the tone of argument into pro-Nazism in the papers published in the latter half of 1930s through the first half of 1940s.
3. Actually there was an exemplar as a model for applying central place theory to the occupied area of East, Poland. It was the application to the planning to locate settlements in the IJsselmeerpolders, which was undertaken by technocrats concerned with national land planning in the Netherlands in the 1930s through 1940s. Making good use of their experience which they had accumulated in the occupied area of West, the Netherlands, Nazi Germany intended to plan the settlement relocation in the occupied area of East.
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