Über den kartographischen Vierfarbensatz. (Mit 23 Figuren im Text)
The type of a face f of a planar map is a sequence of degrees of vertices of f as they are encountered when traversing the boundary of f. A set 𝒯 of face types is found such that in any normal planar map there is a face with type from 𝒯. The set 𝒯 has four infinite series of types as, in a certain sense, the minimum possible number. An analogous result is applied to obtain new upper bounds for the cyclic chromatic number of 3-connected planar maps.
All maps of type (m,n) are covered by a universal map M(m,n) which lies on one of the three simply connected Riemann surfaces; in fact M(m,n) covers all maps of type (r,s) where r|m and s|n. In this paper we construct a tessellation M which is universal for all maps on all surfaces. We also consider the tessellation M(8,3) which covers all triangular maps. This coincides with the well-known Farey tessellation and we find many connections between M(8,3) and M.