Zur problematik der nationalatlanten

Summary

This article examines the conceptual, methodological, and practical problems associated with “national atlases,” taking as its immediate context the 1959 Moscow meeting of the International Geographical Union’s Commission on National Atlases and drawing on atlas projects from a variety of countries and regions. It argues that the term “national atlas,” although widely adopted during the preceding two decades and often promoted as a state’s cartographic calling card, does not denote a stable or clearly delimited scientific category. Atlas projects differ substantially in territorial extent, base-map scale, degree of generalization, treatment of source material, intellectual tradition, and intended use. Some primarily support spatial planning, resource utilization, and economic analysis; others seek a geographical synthesis of the natural environment, population, society, economy, historical development, and functional relations within a region. Political boundaries and national status therefore provide an inadequate basis for classifying such works. The close similarity in geographical conception and cartographic purpose between the Atlas of Belgium, explicitly presented as a national atlas, and subnational works such as the Atlas of Lower Saxony or the Atlas of Lower Austria demonstrates the limitation of the conventional label. The author consequently proposes the broader and more precise concept of the “complex regional atlas.” The fundamental challenge lies not in graphic technique alone—symbols, lines, colors, and other elements of cartographic language appear to have reached a relatively mature stage—but in the atlas’s purpose, epistemological framework, and balance between analytical mapping and regional synthesis. A successful regional atlas should preserve the individuality of a territory while representing recurrent and typical features in ways that permit systematic comparison. The Soviet contributions discussed in the article seek greater comparability without suppressing regional distinctiveness. Recommendations include coordinating principal scale groups and map projections; improving consistency in hypsometric intervals, terrain generalization, and geomorphological legends; distinguishing demographic, socioeconomic, and ethnographic approaches to population; combining selected climatic variables; using comparable indices; and presenting agriculture and industry through both specialized sectoral maps and simplified general maps. Major population maps should, where possible, employ the same scales as principal physical and economic maps. The article ultimately distinguishes between objective differences, which arise from the physical, cultural, socioeconomic, and dimensional characteristics of territories, and avoidable differences caused by the subjective choices of individual cartographers. The former must be respected to prevent misguided uniformity, whereas the latter can be reduced through international agreement on projections, symbols, legends, scales, and methods. Standardization should thus remain flexible and functional, serving scientific comparison, regional understanding, and practical planning rather than imposing mechanical sameness. Decisions such as the choice among physiognomic, floristic, or combined vegetation maps must still depend on purpose, scale, available space, and financial constraints.