Description
This very large, attractive and information-packed poster map was published in 1928 in Warsaw to showcased Poland’s transportation and communication systems. Importantly, during the era of the Second Polish Republic (1918-39), in which the country had remerged as an independent nation for the first time since the 19th century, Poland had expansive boundaries to the east that took in parts of what is now Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine; as such, places like Lwów (today Lviv, Ukraine) and Wilno (today Vilnius, Lithuania) were then major Polish cities.
The map is surmounted by a pleasing Art Deco title cartouche showing stylized planes, trains, and automobiles. Poland is divided into its voivodships (provinces), each shaded in its own hue, while every city and town of any import is noted, while major rivers are delineated. As described in the legend, upper left (given in both Polish and French), the map shows all railways (noting different gauges, with distances marked in kilometres between junctions); different levels of highways / major roads; post and telegraph offices; seaports; while the bold pink lines between key points indicate flight routes, with circles marking the locations of aerodromes. In the lower left corner are a series of insets detailing the transportation routes around six of Poland’s major cities (Warsaw, Katowice, Lwów, Kraków, Toruń and Poznań).
The text on the bottom of the composition details the ‘Administrative Divisions of Poland’, plus transportation information in and out of Warsaw.
The map is extremely rare, as very few examples seem to have survived due to its large size and fragile nature. We can trace only a single institutional example, held by the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; while we have not been able to find any sales records for any other examples.
References: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin: Kart. Q 16919/16, OCLC: 1227682290; Wiktor ORLICKI, Bibljografja geograficzna za lata 1928-1933 (Cracow: Orbis, 1935), p. 35.
