Character and efficacy of national atlases, in particular of the atlas DDR

Summary

Emphasis is laid on the characterization of national atlases as exact means of information and communication which are visually easy to handle. Besides a true-to-scale location of the features of particular objects and groups of objects national atlases offer the opportunity of obtaining starting points for the registration of spatial structures and functions by means of analysing the positional interconnections of these objects and groups of objects, without anticipating causal connections. The static of the maps, which is often considered as a negative characteristics of national atlases, increases the value and efficacy of this category of atlases instead of decreasing them.