Sprawozdania i oceny: Geograficzno statystyczny atlas Polski

Summary

This review appraises Eugeniusz Romer's Geograficzno-statystyczny Atlas Polski (1916), placing it as the most important wartime publication on Poland. Pawłowski argues that the Atlas's scientific value rests on its enormous erudition, use of sources from the three partitioning powers, and above all on Romer's isarithmic method, borrowed from climatology. By replacing the conventional mosaic of administrative districts with continuous isolines, this method relates economic and social phenomena to natural morphology, freeing anthropogeography from statistical dogmatism. The Atlas, although popular-scientific in form, is anchored by references and is technically excellent: clear drawing, harmonious colors, and concise texts. It maps Poland within her 1772 borders together with historically Polish territories; Pawłowski defends this choice against critics and insists that historical and ethnographic claims make Poland's boundaries unambiguous. The map content is divided into three groups: strictly physiographic maps, maps with mixed physical and human content, and maps of demographic and cultural problems. Among striking findings are Poland's flat-land character, the cultural dominance in western Polish agriculture (the Prussian partition yields 2.5 times more than the fertile black soils of Podolia and Ukraine), dense population in the south, favorable Polish demographic dynamics compared with Germany, and Polish landownership and electoral strength in the eastern borderlands. The review concludes that Romer's Atlas combines outstanding scientific achievement with civic service: it presents in an accessible but rigorous form the geographical, demographic, economic, and historical evidence of Poland's right to the whole country.