Der Geographische Formenwandel: Studien zur Landschaftssystematik

American Geographical Society

Der Geographische Formenwandel: Studien zur Landschaftssystematik by Hermann LautensachReview by: John LeighlyGeographical Review, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Apr., 1954), pp. 304-307Published by: American Geographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/212365 .

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304 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

by the publication date of the book, it is understood that significant parts have been made available periodically since I950.

The two chapters dealing with early and contemporary patterns of land tenure are excellent. The fusion of the Spanish system of great landed estates and the original Indian system of communal holdings is dispassionately handled, and the evolution of the contemporary pattern is detailed with subtlety and care. The findings of recent field in- vestigations by anthropologists and geographers are merged with Leonard's own ex- haustive knowledge to make this, in the opinion of the reviewer, one of the most original contributions to the understanding of this critical problem.

In dealing with social institutions the author, a sociologist, is naturally at his profes- sional best. His treatment of marriage and the family, education and the school, religion and the church, and government and politics portrays concisely what the Bolivian is and why he reacts as he does to internal and external pressures favoring modification of the present relationships.

An amusing part of the book, and yet one of the most revealing, is "The Indian Stereotype," containing typical interviews between government officials and Indian serfs on a great landed estate. The evasiveness, crafty intelligence, patience, and malingering tactics of the Bolivian colonio, often wrongly interpreted by the white man as stupidity, must be encountered to be fully appreciated. Centuries of bitter experience have taught the Indian to reduce intercourse with the white man to the bare minimum in order to protect his small parcel of land or what remains of last year's harvest. Is it surprising, therefore, that these people mistrust the white man's resurgent interest in their welfare and remain unreceptive to modern innovations, particularly the recent attempts to tie them to inter- national markets through a government they distrust?

Unfortunately, the many excellent photographs obtained by the author lose definition by not being printed on glossy paper. Tables are clearly presented, but the maps are crudely drawn by geographic standards, and some of them are illegible.

This book on the people and institutions of Bolivia, together with similar studies by Smith on Brazil, Taylor on Argentina, Whetten on Mexico, Nelson on Cuba, and Crist on the Cauca Valley of Colombia, is an important contribution to the growing body of analytical literature on current economic, political, and social problems of Latin America. -FRANK L. KELLER

DER GEOGRAPHISCHE FORMENWANDEL: Studien zur Landschaftssystematik.

By HERMANN LAUTENSACH. viii and I9I pp.; maps, diagrs., index. Colloquiumttl

Geographicumin: Vortrizge des Bonnler Geographischen Kolloquitins ziurn Geddchtnis at Ferdinand voIn Richthofen, Vol. 3. Ferd. Diimmlers Verlag, Bonn, I952. 9 x 6'4 inches.

"The basic intention of this book is methodologic. Its purpose is to develop a new geographic idea to its ultimate consequences, to demonstrate its application in practice, and thus to stimulate my colleagues to pursue it further in other parts of the earth." Thus its author characterizes this monograph. His Formenwandel is not, as the reader might guess at first thought, metamorphosis, which implies change with time; Wandel is here qualitative and quantitative variation over the surface of the earth. A "geographic form" is any constituent of "the total physiognomically perceptible geographic material of the earth's surface. . . , regardless of whether it is a purely inorganic product or partly of



GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS 305

biologic or cultural origin." The meaning of the term thus coincides with the sense in which Carl Sauer used "form" in his "Morphology of Landscape."

The method Lautensach presents and illustrates in detail by applying it to the Iberian Peninsula and Korea is a systematic procedure for defining the areal variation of such geographic forms as vary continuously or quasi-continuously over the earth's surface. These include most of the forms that geographers have habitually dealt with. Their distribution is regelhaft (that is, definable rather than capricious), but not in all instances gesetzmrssig (subject to rational deduction). The spatial distribution of some forms, such as the climatic elements, can be deduced in sense if not in magnitude, but that of others, such as vegetation, cultivation of the land, or population, cannot. The forms that dis- play continuous and definable variation do not exhaust the entire "geographic substance" of the earth's surface or that of its constituent parts; it is the remaining constituents that ultimately, in combination with the "regularly" varying ones, give uniqueness to the individual parts of the earth.

The variations of any form are related to, though not always dependent on, the fundamental differentiation of the earth's surface, which is taken as the differentiation according to latitude, zonal circulation of the atmosphere, distribution of land and water, and relief. The earth's surface, thus differentiated, is the frame within which the variations of the geographic forms are to be defined, and by which, when possible, they are to be explained. On the land there are four directions in which the forms vary "regularly": (i) with latitude; (2) with distance east or west from the western and eastern margins of a land mass; (3) with distance from the center to the periphery of a land mass; and (4) with elevation. In passing from one point to another on the surface of the earth, two or more of these attributes of the frame of variation, which Lautensach calls the "categories" of variation, may change simultaneously. In their effects on the variation of the forms they then "interfere," strengthening or weakening each other, as when meridional mountain ranges carry into lower latitudes, at their higher elevations, the forms of vegetation found at low elevations in high latitudes; in this example, elevation weakens the effect of decreasing latitude and strengthens the effect of increasing latitude.

Variation in each of the four directions is defined by identifying "phases," either gradations in intensity or qualitative differences, which are denoted by literal symbols. On the accompanying maps, areas corresponding to the several phases are separated by boundaries drawn according to the divisions between phases. A division may be based on one dominant form or more than one, or in one part of a boundary on one form and elsewhere on another. When superimposed, the boundaries divide the earth's surface into districts, each of which is characterized by its phases in the fourfold variation and can be designated by a combination of the appropriate letters. This combination de- scribes the district to the extent that its qualities are included among the forms considered. A sufficient number of forms is recognized, and division into phases carried far enough, to give each district a formula that differs from that applied to any other. Gradations are not established on a world-wide scale, but only within major areas (Grossriiitne) within which the variation of each form is consistent and definable by a simple criterion. The method is thus flexible, and free from crippling schematism.

An explanation out of context of the formula applied to a particular unit area re- quires more than a few words but must be attempted. For example, the basin of the



3 o6 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

Ebro inland from the marginal highlands of Catalonia is designated St1L2zHi/H2. The first distinction, denoted by St,, is latitudinal. In the Iberian Peninsula the principal re- flection of latitude is a southward intensification of summer dryness. The valley of the Ebro is in the first zone, counting southward from the zone in which there is no dry season, of summer drought (St, sonmmertrocken), in which less than 30 millimeters of precipitation falls in any of one to three months. The second distinction, related to posi- tion on a line running from west to east, is between the Atlantic and Levantine aspects of the peninsula. The valley of the Ebro is in the second Levantine zone, L2, the Cata- lonian coast being LI. The third distinction is between center and periphery of the land mass. In the Iberian Peninsula this distinction is not major, or continental, but minor, within the peninsula itself The valley of the Ebro is central within the peninsula, and such a minor distinction is denoted by a small rather than a capital letter: z, (minor) zentral. The Catalonian fringe is p, (minor) peripher. Finally, H1/H2 signifies that the region lies within the first two of the three height zones (Hihenstufen) of the peninsula: 0 to 5oo and 500 to I500 meters above sea level. The coastal fringe to the east includes the same two zones of elevation, so that its complete formula is St1L1pH1/H2.

Lautensach's method is thus one by which landscapes (Landschaften) are identified as areas having certain combinations of phases within the systematic variations of significant forms. As in Sauer's terminology, the landscape is the areal embodiment of a defined type. Each of the ultimate divisions of the earth's surface also constitutes a unique (idiographic, or, perhaps better, idiomorphic) region, in the sense of traditional regional geography. The unique region Lautensach calls a Land, to distinguish it from the coin- cident Landschaft, the areal expression of a type. The characterization and description of the Land lie outside his method, but the method provides a solid foundation on which such a treatment of the Land can be built.

So brief a summary cannot do justice to Lautensach's carefully written book, the value of which is greatly increased by the examples he works out. It deserves close study by anyone concerned with the central methodologic problem of geography in the nine- teenth and twentieth centuries: the preservation, against the now far-advanced attrition of earth lore by the specialized sciences, of what is valuable in the contemplation of the earth from the viewpoint of natural history. Lautensach's attitude toward this problem is not disinterested. He hopes tlhat the method he presents may check a tendency he observes among his German colleagues toward expending their energies on special in- vestigations in which the unity and traditional character of geography are sacrificed.

In a nearly simultaneous publication (Die Isanomalenkarte der Jahresschwankung der Lufttemperatur: Ein Beitrag zur allgemeinen analytischen Formenwandellehre, Peter-

mnanns Geogr. Mitt., Vol. 96, I952, pp. I45-I55) Lautensach has presented a specimen

of the first step, Forinenwandelanalyse, in the application of his method on a world-wide scale. Although his map of anomaly of the annual range of temperature is interesting, neither it nor the discussion of it is satisfactory in the present state of knowledge of the physical processes behind the variations the map exhibits. "Theory cues the mind to insight," wrote Hartley Grattan recently. Where theory is neglected or inadequate, as in this demonstration of Lautensach's approach, the reader's craving for insight remains almost as unsatisfied as by prescientific description. The distribution of an individual form is evidently best discussed in its own terms and interpreted by appeal to whatever



GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS 307

factors are operative in the particular context. Lautensach's four categories, distances along axes of significant coordinates, seldom include all these factors except by implica- tion. Cartographic array and verbal exposition of the variation of an individual form, Formenwandelanalyse, contribute insight only when the exposition is couched in the terms appropriate to the particular form under scrutiny. When the distributions of several forms are combined in Formenwvandelsynthese, as in the maps that accompany the book under review here, the insight imparted is of a different kind. Reading Lautensach's exposition, one is not certain whether it is the method or the author's thorough knowledge, especially of the Iberian Peninsula, combined with skillful writing that conveys this insight. The method undoubtedly provides a useful framework on which the mind can hang facts. But it certainly demands of an author no less knowledge and literary skill than good regional exposition of the traditional sort, which yields the same kind of insight. It provides no royal road, but, like the traditional method, offers instead a stony mountain trail passable only by the strong and well trained.-JOHN LEIGHLY

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY OF OHIO. By ALFREDJ. WRIGHT. 2I7 pp.; maps, diagrs., ills., bibliogr., index. Ohio Division of Geol. Survey Bull. So (4th Ser.), Columbus, I953. $I.00. II x 82 inches.

This monograph, prepared for the sesquicentennial of the State of Ohio (i803-I953),

should appeal to the pride of the Ohioan. It was written by a native whose family was associated with the earliest history of the state; the material is well organized and informa- tive and presents the economic development of the state to its present maturity with care- ful evaluation and a pride devoid of blatancy. Manufacturing, commerce, mining, and agriculture are stressed as the major sources of livelihood and wealth: though Ohio is the thirty-fifth state in area, it is tenth in agriculture.

The first five of the io chapters are systematic in treatment; the remainder are regional. A short introductory chapter orients the presentation and touches on factors often taken for granted, such as the relation of the principal land grants to the present-day occupance. Ohio is complicated by at least i i major original land grants, all of which have left distinctive marks on the culture. The evolutionary importance of the state's situation is brought briefly but sharply by a few paragraphs under the headings of "As the French Saw It," "As the Tidewater Colonists Saw It," "As the Southerners Saw It," and "As the Canadians See It." Natural environmental factors as well as settlement, supported by numerous maps, are presented in the Introduction.

In keeping with an evolutionary viewpoint, historical antecedents introduce the agricultural chapter, in which soils, types of farming areas, individual crops and livestock, and the place of agriculture in an industrial state are discussed. Wright points out the significance of mining and minerals in industry to the growth and prosperity of the state and to its manufacturing and stresses the evolutionary and regional aspects of manufacturing. Steel and rubber are discussed with some completeness; other industries are dealt with in the appropriate regional chapters. The chapter on "Development of Ohio Commerce" is largely concerned with the importance of various means of transportation, including the early roads, turnpikes, and canals as well as modern highways, railroads, airlines, and pipelines. Emphasis is placed on Lake Erie ports and shipping and the Ohio River and its traffic.



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Der Geographische Formenwandel: Studien zur Landschaftssystematik