The Turn to Functionalism of German Urban Geography and Dawning Central Place Studies

<p>The purpose of this paper is to consider aspects of emergent central place studies during the transitional turn of German urban geography from morphology to functionalism. The investigation was focused on five points: 1) controversy about urban geography, 2) reviews of “Central Places in Southern Germany”, 3) Bobek’s criticism of central place theory, 4) heated discussions on Christaller’s presentation at the 1938 International Geographical Congress in Amsterdam, and 5) several central place studies in the 1930s and urban monographs citing “Central Places in Southern Germany”. The results are summarized as follows. After the occurrence of disputes on urban geography in the mid-1920s through early 1930s, the functional approach which Bobek put forward, making good use of the results of economic geography, was gradually accepted among German geographers with an interest in urban studies, while being repelled by Geisler and Dörries, both of whom regarded as important the morphological study of landscape. Christaller, one of the scholars influenced by functional approach, prepared his own view about the two issues revealed by the above-mentioned controversy ―― the conceptual definition of city for geography and the methodology of urban geography ――, termed urban settlement as central place, and completed his “Central Places in Southern Germany” (1933) that theoretically dealt with the location of central places from the viewpoint of economic geography. Book reviews of “Central Places in Southern Germany” appeared not only in German journals, but also in non-German journals. Generally, reviewers in Germany and countries under its linguistic influence did not negatively evaluate Christaller’s book: appreciating its scientific value, some reviewers were likely to consider it as a potential breakthrough in urban geography; another reviewer favorably alluded to an application of central place theory to the national land planning. On the other hand, Bobek, who had already put forward an idea akin to central place theory previous to Christaller, quickly noticed that central place theory was not a perfect location theory of urban settlements in that the distribution of central places in the western industrial district of southern Germany deviated from that predicted by the theory. Christaller and Bobek incidentally presented their own views on the function of urban settlements at the same session of the 1938 International Geographical Congress in Amsterdam. At that session, especially French and Dutch geographers criticized Christaller’s methodology that assumed as if the location of urban settlements were mechanistically elucidated by a natural-scientific way of thinking. In the session paper, illustrating that there were many cities in the world whose chief aim was not to supply goods and services to surrounding rural areas, Bobek once more argued that central place theory was not sufficient for a universal location theory of urban settlements. It seems that this paper (Bobek 1938) consequently contributed to induce German urban geographers to assume a prudent attitude in appreciating central place theory, with his rising reputation in the academic world of postwar German geography. Indeed no empirical studies of central place theory existed except for Schlier (1937) in prewar and wartime Germany, so there had not yet been an independent research area of central place studies. However, “Central Places in Southern Germany” was cited by some urban monographs, into which studies on hinterland or urban sphere of influence were newly introduced in terms of functionalism; even a nonurban geographer like Hartke paid an attention to central place theory.</p>