The atlas of the German Democratic Republic

Summary

This article systematically introduces the organization, compilation, structure, and cartographic principles of the Atlas of the German Democratic Republic, a national atlas published by the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in cooperation with VEB Hermann Haack. Produced through the collaboration of approximately 200 authors, nearly 20 cartographic editors, and numerous technical specialists, the atlas incorporates findings from long-term geographical research and extensive data processing. Its preparation also stimulated further research and enabled results initially developed for mapping purposes to be applied more broadly in scholarship and planning. The atlas is intended both to provide differentiated information on the natural environment, population, settlements, economy, transport, and social infrastructure of the GDR and to construct an integrated cartographic representation of the country—a regional geography expressed through maps. Comprising 106 maps on 58 sheets at four principal scales, it is divided into seven thematic groups and includes legends in German, Russian, English, French, and Spanish, thereby fulfilling the international informational function expected of a national atlas. The authors distinguish two fundamental tasks of national and complex regional atlases: communicating detailed information about spatially differentiated phenomena and generating knowledge of landscape and territorial structures by revealing relationships among natural and socioeconomic components. They criticize approaches that reduce complex spatial realities to an excessive number of isolated quantitative maps and instead emphasize synthesis, integration, typification, comparability, and coordinated visual design. The atlas therefore combines analytical specialist maps with complex-analytical overview maps, while maintaining consistency in scale, map frame, symbols, color, generalization, and legend construction. Content selection and graphic treatment are adapted to the character of each topic but remain subordinate to the unity of the atlas as a whole. Particular attention is given to the overview map “Economy,” which synthesizes the regional distribution and structural composition of productive forces through carefully selected indicators, settlement-based diagrams, differentiated signatures, and a restrained representation of major railways, motorways, trunk roads, and ports. Supplementary diagrams present employment shares by economic sector for the GDR and its districts. The map’s informational value derives not from maximum data density but from the coordinated depiction of essential economic characteristics and their territorial relationships, aligned with the atlas’s detailed specialist maps. Overall, the article presents the Atlas GDR as both a major collective scientific publication and a methodological contribution to medium- and small-scale thematic cartography, demonstrating how unified design and complex spatial analysis can transform diverse empirical materials into a coherent model of national territory.