The Munich School of Social Geography

1873 and thus only five years after the Technical University of Munich (TUM) was founded, the Munich's oldest Chair of Geography was established. However, Hermann Guthe tragically died just a few months after his appointment. Friedrich Ratzel was arguably the most well known individual of the early years, holding the chair from 1879 before following the call to Leipzig in 1886. Ratzel is regarded as the founder of anthropogeography, diffusionism, political geography and geopolitics .

However, he is also known beyond the boundaries of his discipline for coining the term Lebensraum . Among his more renouwned followers was Karl Haushofer , who taught as an associate professor at LMU from 1919 . Ratzel was succeeded by Siegmund Günther , a representative of physical geography, making the trained mathematician and physicist a standout in the otherwise strongly anthropogeographical history of the institute.

In 1931, Wilhelm Credner succeeded the retired G. Greif (1919-1931) in the chair. In 1948, Credner accepted the call to the LMU. There he was to establish a new Chair of Economic Geography at the Faculty of Political Sciences & Economics. Although Credner was primarily remembered by posterity as an economic geographer, he was also a proven expert on (South-East) Asia and was to publish a large number of works on this region.

Back at TUM, Credner's permanent successor was Wolfgang Hartke (1952-1975), who is not only regarded as one of the outstanding personalities of German anthropogeography but also as one of the foundational figures of social geography in Germany. His indicator approach , in conjunction with the functionalist approach of the Viennese geographer Hans Bobek, was to form the conceptual basis of the Munich School of Social Geography and leave a lasting mark on geography as a social science discipline.

Alongside the economic geographer Karl Ruppert, Hartke's successor Günter Heinritz (1975-2006) is also associated with the Munich School . Under Heinritz, the Institute remained a focal point for social anthropogeography as well as dedicated to the study of cities and regions. However, this period also marked an institutional turning point. In 2002 the Geographical Institute moved from TUM to LMU.

Five years later the Department of Geography was founded. Claudia Binder (2011-2016) expanded the scope of Munich's oldest geographical chair (Human-Environment Relations). She was succeeded by Matthias Garschagen in 2019, who brought a shift towards Asia continuing Credners legacy. The TUM's Social Geographic tradition is carried on by Henrike Rau (with an emphasis on sustainability research).