Title Central Place Theory After 1945 and the Production of Scientific Innocence
Author(s) Laboratory of Military Ecotones
Affiliation New Euro Vision: exhibitions, marketing, research s.r.o.
Country Chech Republic
Contribution type case study; empirical study; conceptual paper; methodological paper
Thematic area • Theory, Methodology, and Evidence
Conference framework connection • Analytical Track AT-01 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-02 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-03 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-04 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-05 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-06 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-07 — provisional title to be defined
Abstract Central place theory is commonly presented as an abstract model explaining the hierarchy and spatial distribution of settlements. This paper examines a different historical interpretation: the theory was developed within the early National Socialist project of constructing a new state and territorial order, and its practical meaning became explicit in Walter Christaller's work on the reorganization of conquered Eastern territories. Christaller worked in the Planning and Soil Department connected to Heinrich Himmler's Reich Commissariat for the Strengthening of German Nationhood. His task was not detached observation but the design of a settlement and administrative system for territories undergoing forced demographic transformation.
The analysis does not claim that central place theory caused the Holocaust or that a formal spatial model alone explains National Socialist mass violence. It examines the functional relation between spatial expertise and a state project in which deportation, dispossession, forced displacement, extermination, and German settlement formed interconnected components of territorial reconstruction. The persecution, deportation, and murder of Jewish populations, together with the expulsion and forced displacement of Polish, Ukrainian, and other non-German populations, produced the politically imagined 'empty' space on which an ideal hierarchy of German settlements could be implemented. Extermination camps formed part of this wider machinery of racial and demographic clearance. The static character of the theory is therefore interpreted not as a contradiction but as part of its historical temporality: after conquest and demographic clearance, a final rational order was to replace the existing historical geography.
This interpretation is not without precedent. Historical and critical studies have described Christaller as a 'desk killer' and documented his institutional participation in Himmler's planning apparatus. The paper extends this line of analysis to the post-war reception of the theory. During the quantitative revolution, the 'new geography' sought earlier success stories for theoretical and model-based geography. Von Thunen was reduced largely to concentric rings, while Christaller was reconstructed through hexagons, hierarchies, and market principles. In both cases, complex works were selectively reformulated to create an ancestry for the new disciplinary programme. In Christaller's case, this process also removed the National Socialist conditions of production and application from the scientific meaning of the theory.
Particular attention is given to Christaller's later autobiographical account of how he 'discovered' central place theory. The opportunity to provide an authoritative origin story helped replace the continuous history of a career embedded in National Socialist planning with the narrative of an individual theoretical discovery. The paper treats this transformation not as a personal accusation but as a study of scientific careerism, disciplinary memory, and the capacity of scientific communities to preserve a useful intellectual product by reconstructing its past. The result was not simple forgetting. It was the production of scientific innocence: a politically situated project became a neutral classic of post-war geography.
Key points • Central place theory is examined as a product designed within the National Socialist project of territorial and demographic reconstruction, not as a neutral abstraction later misused by the regime.
• Christaller's employment in Himmler's planning apparatus connected spatial theory directly to the reorganization of conquered Eastern territories.
• Population removal, dispossession, forced displacement, and extermination created the material precondition for implementing an idealized German settlement order; the theory did not itself cause these crimes.
• The static structure of the theory expressed a projected final order after conquest and demographic clearance rather than an interest in continuing historical transformation.
• The new geography selectively reconstructed Christaller and von Thunen as predecessors of formal spatial science by reducing their works to portable diagrams and models.
• Post-war geography did not merely forget the National Socialist context of central place theory; it produced a new disciplinary account in which that context appeared irrelevant to the theory's scientific meaning.
Keywords Walter Christaller; central place theory; National Socialism; Generalplan Ost; scientific responsibility; history of geography; spatial planning; disciplinary memory; quantitative revolution; scientific innocence
Main discussion question How did a theory developed within the National Socialist project of organizing conquered and demographically cleared territories become a politically neutral classic of post-war geography?
OJS publication link https://pollution-diseases-ojs.org/index.php/pd/article/view/84
Note. Analytical TracksIn addition to the main thematic areas, the conference programme will include several cross-cutting analytical tracks. These tracks will be defined during the preparation of the programme, based on the submitted abstracts and the emerging links between presentations.At the preliminary stage, abstracts may be assigned to provisional analytical tracks marked as AT-01 to AT-07. Final track titles will be announced after the Scientific Committee has reviewed the submitted materials.