Austrian regional and national atlases and their importance for the advancement of thematic cartography

This article reviews the development of regional and national atlases in Austria and examines their contribution to the progress of thematic cartography. The author identifies three distinct phases: a period before 1850 dominated by topographic maps; a phase from 1850 to World War I, during which liberalism and the industrial revolution spurred a proliferation of thematic atlases, such as the Industrial Atlas of the Austrian Empire; and a post-war era after 1918, where regional atlases evolved from simple analytical statements to complex-analytical and synthetic representations after 1950. The article argues that atlas compilation work has significantly advanced cartographic methodology and helped establish cartography as an independent scientific discipline. It also highlights the theoretical contributions of scholars like Peucker and Eckert, and cites post-WWII achievements such as the Atlas of Lower Austria and Vienna, noting that contemporary cartography is moving toward new forms based on coordinate-bound statistics, grid systems, and electronic data processing.