DIE DEUTSCHE SOZIALGEOGRAPHIE IN IHRER THEORETISCHEN KONZEPTION UND IN IHREM VERHÄLTNIS ZU SOZIOLOGIE UND GEOGRAPHIE DES MENSCHEN

• Published in: Geographische Zeitschrift 1977-09, Vol.65 (3), p.161-187
• Main Authors: Maier, J., Paesler, R., Ruppert, K., Schaffer, F., Wirth, Eugen
• Format: Article
• Language: ger
• ISSN: 0016-7479

Since World War II the two German geographers Hans Bobek and Wolfgang Hartke have developed the social geography as a new, most influential trend of contemporary German human geography. Hartke's disciples Karl Ruppert and Franz Schaffer have systematized Bobek's and Hartke's ideas and have created a frame of reference which has been largely adopted by German school=geography and which has found its way into many textbooks. It is shown in this paper that there are several inconsistencies in the conceptual framework of German social geography and that the theoretical approaches of modern sociology, social anthropology and modern locational and spatial analysis were neglected. Regardless of this deficiency of the frame of reference, pioneering empirical research work was published in the field of German social geography in the past 25 years. New approaches, subjects, and methods of geography were introduced with the geography of recreational behavior, the geography of communication and travel behavior, and the social geography of educational behavior. These empirical studies and their more specific perspectives and interests are scarcely known outside German-speaking countries, though Anglo-American geography could get important new impulses from them.