Monthly Archives: November 2014

A Call for Help: Puzzling About Places pt. II

Now after a year of working on the German newspapers, I have finished the full descriptions of the first half of the century. As per usuall, many peculiarities were found and more questions remain to be answered. One of them has to do with historic place names. Newspapers often report the last occurrences from very small towns and settlements and with shifting political boundaries mainly in the western part of Eastern Europe in the regions of Bohemia, Silesia, Lusatia, and Prussia, it is very unclear to which places the headlines make a reference to. Often, reading the news report will reveal the area where the news originated from and laborious search in the Czech Old Maps project  and Walter Sperling´s Geographische Namen in den böhmischen Ländern has helped to solve some of the toponymic brain-twisters, yet others remain unclear.

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