Carte - La Suisse à vol d'oiseau

This 1915 lithograph shows Switzerland as seen from the German shores of Lake Constance, along a central axis from Constance to St. Moritz, crossing mountains and meadows until reaching Lake Iseo in Italy. The Swiss Confederation, surrounded by the belligerents of the First World War, begins to see itself as an "island" that needs to be preserved from a foreign "flood". Aerial photography, developed by all military powers since the early 20th century, was not used for the creation of this "bird's-eye view", which was solely the product of the imagination of graphic geographers.