Verbrannte Orte / Scorched Places API

Introduction and Goals

Verbrannte Orte (https://verbrannte-orte.de) is an online project by photographer Jan Schenck (http://picturex.net) in cooperation with augmented logic, mapping places of the nazi book burnings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_book_burnings) in 1933.

One goal of this project is to make both geodata and contextual information available in various machine readable formats. For a start, information is available in GeoRSS( XML ) and GeoJSON.

API v1 (2021) is a major update, offering a multitude of methods to access the data.

API v0 (deprecated)

API Endpoints

There are two API endpoints available for version 0:

A list of places (including dates, location details and links) in GeoRSS Simple:
https://verbrannte-orte.de/api/georss
A List of places (including dates, location details and links) in GeoJSON
https://verbrannte-orte.de/api/geojson

Date descriptions are currently in German.

For details about the used data formats please refer to:
GeoRSS Simple : http://www.georss.org/simple.html
GeoJSON : http://geojson.org/geojson-spec.html

API v1

Structured JSON API

API v1 was introduced in April 2021 and offers a detailed structured JSON API.

Methods

getPlaces

Request

Method	GET
Parameter	none
Example	https://api.verbrannte-orte.de/api/v1/getPlaces

Response

Returns an array of the places of the national-socialist book burnings. Places are ordered alphabetically by "title". Each entry has the following fields:

date	string	The day of the book burning in the format YYY-MM-DD, null when date is unknown.
date_de	string	German human readable day of the book burning.
date_en	string	English human readable day of the book burning.
has_document	boolean	Indicates if this Place has documents attached.
has_image	boolean	Indicates if this Place has images attached.
has_memorial_site	boolean	Indicates if this Place has a memorial site.
has_panorama	boolean	Indicates if this Place has a panorama attached.
identifier	string	Machine readable title.
latitude	double	Latitude of the Place
longitude	double	Longitude of the Place
link_de	string	hyperlink to this place on verbrannte-orte.de, German language
link_en	string	hyperlink to this place on verbrannte-orte.de, English language
phase_id	integer	associated phase, see getPhases
place_id	integer	the Place ID
title	string	title of the Place
updated	string	date when this item was last changed, YYYY-MM-DD

getPlacesByDate

This is a convenience method and returns the same structure as getPlaces, but with the items ordered by the "date" field.

Request

Method	GET
Parameter	none
Example	https://api.verbrannte-orte.de/api/v1/getPlacesByDate

Response

see getPlaces for fields returned.

getPlace

Request

Method	GET
Parameter	id	(integer) place_id
Example	https://api.verbrannte-orte.de/api/v1/getPlace?id=38

Response

Returns a single entry with information of a Place. A Place has the following fields:

address_historic

string

historic address, if different from today's

address_today

string

current address of the place

date

string

The day of the book burning in the format YYY-MM-DD, null when date is unknown.

date_de

string

German human readable day of the book burning.

date_en

string

English human readable day of the book burning.

document

array

each entry offers basic information about a Document associated with this place

document_id	string	th document ID (uuid v4 format)
title	string	document title

has_document

boolean

Indicates if this Place has documents attached.

has_image

boolean

Indicates if this Place has images attached.

has_memorial_site

boolean

Indicates if this Place has a memorial site.

has_panorama

boolean

Indicates if this Place has a panorama attached.

identifier

string

Machine readable title.

image

array

each entry offers basic information about an image associated with this place

caption_de	string	image caption, German
caption_en	string	image caption, English
large	string	link to image, large
medium	string	link to image, medium
small	string	link to image, small

intro_de

string

Description of the place, German.

intro_en

string

Description of the place, English

latitude

double

Latitude of the Place

longitude

double

Longitude of the Place

memorial_site_address_de

string

address of the memorial site, German

memorial_site_address_en

string

address of the memorial site, English

panorama_image

string

link to the panorama preview

panorama_image_large

string

link to the panorama, large

panorama_image_medium

string

link to the panorama, medium

panorama_image_small

string

link to the panorama, small

phase_id

integer

associated phase, see getPhases

place_id

integer

the Place ID

reference

array

string array of references, sources

title

string

title/name of the place

updated

string

date when this item was last changed, YYYY-MM-DD

status

integer

200 if found, 404 if place does not exist

getDocument

Request

Method	GET
Parameter	document_id	ID (uuid) of the Document
Example	https://api.verbrannte-orte.de/api/v1/getDocument?id=3a93272f-3f72-4b9a-b487-f0843c234f0a

Response

Returns a single entry with information about a Document. A Document has the following fields:

body_de

string

if the document has text, this field contains the text-only.

body_de_html

string

if the document has text, this field contains the text with html markup.

document_id

string

the Document ID, uuid v4 format

image

string

each entry offers basic information about an image associated with this document

caption_de	string	image caption, German
uri	string	hyperlink to the document image

link_de

string

link to the document, German language

link_en

string

link to the document, English language

place_id

integer

the ID of the place this document is associated with

title

string

document title

updated

string

date when this item was last changed, YYYY-MM-DD

doSearch

Request

Method	GET
Parameter	q	query string
Parameter	lang	language (de, en)
Example	https://api.verbrannte-orte.de/api/v1/doSearch?q=hamburg&lang=en

Response

title	string	title of the result item
content	string	a text snippet of the matched item
url	string	a hyperlink to the page on verbrannte-orte.de

getTowns

Request

Method	GET
Parameter	document_id	ID (uuid) of the Document
Example	https://api.verbrannte-orte.de/api/v1/getTowns

Response

identifier

string

machine-readable title of the town

longitude

double

Longitude of the town

latitude

double

Latitude of the town

place

array

identifier	string	machine-readable title
link_de	string	link to the place, German language
link_en	string	link to the place, English language
place_id	integer	the Place ID
title	string	the Place title

place_count

integer

number of places associated with this town

title

string

Town title

town_id

integer

the Town ID

updated

string

date when this item was last changed, YYYY-MM-DD

getTown

Request

Method	GET
Parameter	id	(integer) town_id
Example	https://api.verbrannte-orte.de/api/v1/getTown?id=13

Response

identifier

string

machine-readable title of the town

latitude

double

Latitude of the town

longitude

double

Longitude of the town

place

array

longitude	double	Longitude of the place
latitude	double	Latitude of the place
link_de	string	link to the place, German language
link_en	string	link to the place, English language
place_id	integer	the Place ID
title	string	the Place title

title

string

Town title

town_id

integer

the Town ID

updated

string

date when this item was last changed, YYYY-MM-DD

getQuotations

"quotations" are a collection of historic quotes.

Request

Method	GET
Parameter
Example	https://api.verbrannte-orte.de/api/v1/getQuotations

Response

name	string	name of the person quoted
name_extra_de	string	extra info, e.g. "eyewitness", German
name_extra_en	string	extra info, e.g. "eyewitness", English
quote_de	string	the actual quote, German
quote_en	string	the actual quote, English
quote_id	integer	id of this quote

getPhases

All places are grouped into phases. this method returns a description of those phases.

Request

Method	GET
Parameter
Example	https://api.verbrannte-orte.de/api/v1/getPhases

Response

Returns an array of "phases" and descriptions.

phase_id	integer	id of the phase
description_de	string	description of the phase, German
description_en	string	description of the phase, English

getImages

A list of all images (photography) associated with places.

Request

Method	GET
Parameter
Example	https://api.verbrannte-orte.de/api/v1/getImages

getGeoRSS (XML)

A GeoRSS list of places.

Method	GET
Parameter
Example	https://api.verbrannte-orte.de/api/v1/getGeoRSS

Contact

For technical questions, bug reports and suggestions please contact dev /at/ augmentedlogic.com

Privacy

API requests are temporarily logged to provide quality of service.

License

All supplied data is (c) 2014 by Jan Schenck under Open Database Licence
http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/