Atlas der Donauländer

Atlas der Donauländer (Atlas of the Danubian Countries) was edited by Josef Breu at the Austrian Institute of East and Southeast European Studies in Vienna, with contributions from geographers across the region. Breu’s 1967 account traced the project to W. Krallert’s initiative in 1957 and described its aim as a comparative survey of contemporary conditions in the middle and lower Danube region and adjoining areas. Published in installments during 1970–1989 and completed in 1989, the atlas covered physical geography, population, social conditions, economy, and transport. Predominantly at 1:2,000,000, its large-format maps were accompanied by diagrams, tables, and explanatory texts in German, English, French, and Russian. Later installments addressed climate, commuting, land use, crops, tourism, runoff, mineral resources, and livestock. A comparative multilingual geographical-name index by Elisabeth Tomasi and Josef Breu appeared in 1989. Reviewers praised the reconciliation of heterogeneous national sources while noting incompatible statistics, missing data, uneven reference dates, and declining currency during the long publication period.