I'm worried at the proliferation of categories. You will not be able to create enough of them. And then they will become so fine-grained that each one only covers very few cases.
It may be good to step back, and think about the purpose of these categories. What should their purpose be, and how can they be designed so it can work? The hierarchy of categories is both good, and bad. Also, each person will interpret the hierarchy in their own personal way. How to keep it efficient, robust, and also effective for who does the categorisation, and those that make use of it?
From my user perspective: it is easy for me to just type in 'Menslage' as location in the categorisation box. But how to get from there to the history of political 'boxes' it fit into. And then from there to find the emigration/immigration categories.
Also .. till now, your categories are not visible on the profiles that are being tagged. That seems problematic. You are putting work in, nobody sees it, and some people may even mess it up again. But what is it for?
So, please go on. But I'm a bit unsure and skeptical about how (fine-grained) categorisation can work in practice.
What I would appreciate, reducing things to just Menslage, is some easy access to the history of local political geometry. What was the Russian-doll set of administrative/political boxes it fit into, and how did it change over time? Ideally, there would be a fine-grained video of a map that I could zoom in on, both in space and in time. And of course it all starts from one universal label, valid for long timescales, like 'Menslage'.
Sorry, if I'm going too philosophical on this, and for too long :-)
