Collectio Felbar: a valuable treasury of cartographic heritage
Graphical visualization of the geographical reality is a challenge that cartographers have encountered since the ancient times and have had varying degrees of success when dealing with it. The old maps reflect geographical knowledge of the displayed space, cartographic procedures and techniques as well as the intention of their author or the institutions that commissioned and / or organized their making. Each map is therefore a complex intellectual design in which a geographical reality is intertwined with elements of traditional images in which reminiscences of older periods predominate while strong influences of political aspirations are not uncommon. Spatial collage making based on the sources of the reconstructed past also coloured by legends, the known present and possible (desired) future has often resulted in miraculous outcomes of questionable educational purpose as well as different social and economic utilitarian relevance.
Interpreting such maps is a challenge that is not easy to deal with, and therefore it is difficult to draw unmistakable and definite conclusions. Namely, on many maps it is difficult to separate the contents that could unequivocally indicate the scope and quality of knowledge and the presented space, from those that are interpolated with various other intentions and within which ignorance, concealment, deliberate concealment and distortion are hidden. Regardless of these difficulties when decoding old maps, they are an extremely important source for the reconstruction of spatial relationships between geographical objects, the real and imaginary ones, with greater or lesser success graphically represented, while being factually simple or symbolically enriched.
The old maps are stored in different places, in different ways and for different purposes. Whether they are a part of the official documentation on the space they present forming functional units with the accompanying documents from the moment of their creation, whether they are treated as attractive artefacts of the historical and artistic expression, whether they are a part of specialized collections filled with a systematic corpus of cartographic works regardless of where and when they were created, the old handwritten and printed maps rightly attract the attention of the wider community. Alongside globes they are the most common representations and symbols of geographical knowledge that introduce an observer or researcher into the world of past times by showing locations of various historic events or an experience of a location in a historical period or even just a moment. Therefore, they have been a complex subject of research and an object of interest of those who want to own them, more or less aware of their geographical, historical and artistic significance as well as those who want to systematically explore them regardless of their organizational and legal status within a private, archival, museological and library system which they belong to. Often, the very private collections are rich with precious old maps, what makes them a meeting place for their owners and scientists. These encounters result in mutual benefits: the person who owns the map learns from the scientist its value in terms of the scope of geodetic knowledge and technology, geographical content and some important event or person that the map is associated with, while scientists often find unique or rare maps within private owners’ collections that become sources to be used as basis for various researches in the field of geography, geodesy, history, art history, linguistics and many other scientific disciplines. Privately owned maps can usually be a part of an older family heritage or part of a collection that can be found on the art market, a market especially ‘lively’ and globally developed as there is an opportunity to sell and buy old maps. One of the recent ones, and in terms of quantity and quality the most prominent private collections of old maps depicting today's Croatia and neighbouring countries ranging from the 16th century to the mid-19th century is the one owned by Ewald Felbar from Austria. Working for the Croatian subsidiaries of large Austrian banks and insurance companies, he has developed a special fondness for Croatia, for people and landscapes that maintain a centuries-old relationship between man and nature, where there is a contact spot for the Adriatic, the Dinaric Alps and Pannonia. The winds from various European centers brought to Croatia an aerosol of the Mediterranean and Central European culture, permeating the domestic and foreign atmosphere in which people live and work in a luxurious environment of great biodiversity and many elements of cultural heritage.
An insight into the Croatian historical landscapes is achieved in a special way through old maps. This certainly prompted Mr. Felbar, when on break from his many business commitments, to search for early modern cartographic representations and books that show and describe the experience of the contact with the Croatian space, which for centuries was fragmented among the European powers. It was a multiple frontier - on the margins in relation to the socio-economic cores of the imperial systems and on the scene of their permanent confrontations. The perception of the Croatian space in the European cartographic centers was strongly influenced by the Habsburg-Venetian-Ottoman conflicts, which prompted tectonic political and geographical changes. The perspectives and intentions of foreign political elites in the context of these events have greatly influenced the depth and scope of insight into the geographical features of Croatia.
Many European cartographers between 1500 and 1800 tried to depict a space that was known only in its basic outlines within the framework of Ptolemy's imaginarium Fifth Map of Europe. However, until Ivan Lučić, the contact area of the Adriatic-Dinaric-Danubian inhabited by the Croatian ethnic corpus was not treated in the European cartography, nor was it presented as a single geographical unit. Different parts of Croatia were presented on several types of maps with regard to the method of production, type, scale, spatial coverage, but also the political and cultural surrounding within which they were created. While Venice, Vienna and Rome were the primary cartographic centers where the geographical image of individual Croatian regions was originally formed and visualized on maps, other European cartographic metropolises (such as Paris and Amsterdam) were secondary centers where the contents of Italian and Austrian maps were compiled. Patterns (for example, in terms of geographical names) were taken over, which were aggregated into aesthetically refined but functionally inconsistent mosaics for the purpose of depicting larger areas (the Adriatic, Danube, Habsburg-Ottoman battlefields, etc.). On more than 400 such maps from Felbar's collection it is possible to follow the gradual crystallization of the geographical picture of Croatia, which, given the richness of content and clarity of cartographic expression, was getting better and better.
Most of the old maps in Felbar’s collection are printed maps that were created before systematic geodetic surveys. Such maps on a small scale and with a high degree of cartographic generalization provided only a general insight into the basic elements of geographical reality, primarily relief, waters and settlements, and much less often vegetation and roads. Illuminated and therefore better portrayed were those parts of today's Croatia that were more strongly integrated into the Western European political and economic systems, such as the narrow Adriatic belt and northwestern Croatia, while in the shadows and therefore more sparsely portrayed were areas further from the Dalmatian coast, Lika, Slavonia and other regions that had longer been under the Ottoman rule.
In that period, the geographical data was richer on handwritten maps of smaller spatial units created in domestic surveying workshops and military headquarters on the basis of topographic observations and partial measurements with the aim of determining land ownership relations, interstate demarcations and visualization of significant elements of military infrastructure and other relevant military-geographical contents. These maps were much better in terms of spatial data reliability than printed maps, but methodologically and cartographically they were not uniform nor did they cover entire regions, so they did not form parts of a functionally meaningful composite. In addition, their purpose was spatially or sectorally localized and they were not used to create geographical maps showing a larger area, so their content remains hidden in the archives of the administrative and political centers, out of sight of the large European cartography. And almost everything relevant what this cartography provides while depicting today's Croatia during the Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque, Rococo and Classicism, can be found in the cartographic collection of E. Felbar.
This unique collection has been systematized and cataloged according to modern standards and presented to the general public on the website prepared in the Croatian, German and English language. Each map is accompanied by its metadata (author, title, place and time of publication, as well as the publisher and format of the map), a brief description of its contents and a biography of its author. Scientific and professional processing of the maps was done by the most prominent scientists among the Croatian historians of cartography - dr. sc. Mirela Slukan Altić, and dr.sc. Dubravka Mlinarić. Their expertise greatly contributed to Mr. Felbar's noble intention to share these precious cartographic monuments with many old maps enthusiasts. The support of the Croatian Cartographic Society, which recognized the cultural and scientific significance of Felbar's collection, was also provided.
Although the old maps are not given in high resolution on the website, which would allow for review and detailed interpretation of their contents, it is necessary to emphasize Mr. Felbar's willingness to unconditionally give each map in the highest resolution upon request from the academic community. In this way, he contributes to the exchange and dissemination of knowledge about old maps, and assuming the role of a culture and science mediator, in a special way to the cooperation between two nations whose destinies were intertwined and intertwoven for centuries. Mr. E. Felbar has rightly deserved the honorary title of the Ambassador of Austrian-Croatian Friendship with his cartographic collection, a valuable treasury of cartographic heritage, and a fruitful communication with the scientific community.
Prof. dr. sc. Josip Faričić
University of Zadar, Department of Geography, Zadar
European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Salzburg