Streit, Karl
STREIT, KARL
Founder of ecclesiastical cartography; b. Dittersbäckel, Aug. 5, 1874; d. Maria Enzersdorf, Austria, May 31, 1935. He was associated with William Schmidt, SVD, in producing and promoting the magazine Anthropos. In 1930 he founded the Cartographical Institute to study geographical and statistical aspects of the Catholic Church. For a great portion of his active life he lived at Steyl, Holland. He published his Katholische Missionsatlas in 1906. This is a mission atlas, with a statistical supplement. It gives detailed statistics of every mission area and mission-sending society, population, baptized Catholics, priests, brothers, sisters, catechists, schools, etc. His second well-known work was Atlas Hierarchicus (1913, 2nd ed. 1929). This is a survey of all the Catholic dioceses of the world with their divisions, indexing 20,000 cities and mission stations. It has 36 large-scale maps. This monumental work has been translated into five languages. It is a most complete collection of statistics concerning the Catholic Church, with historical and
ethnological notices. He also wrote: Sprachfamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde (1926). Streit was a member of the Society of the Divine Word.
Bibliography: j. dindinger, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner, 10 v. (2nd ed. Freiburg 1957–65) 9:862–863.
[j. a. mccoy]