Prikaz: Atlas der Donauländer

This review evaluates the first ten maps of the Atlas of the Danubian Countries, issued in 1971–1972 by the Austrian Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, with particular attention to the atlas’s design, cartographic methods, data quality, and scholarly significance. The projected work comprises 46 double-sheet maps with accompanying explanatory texts, organized into three sections: natural foundations, population, and economy and transport. Its principal strengths are comprehensive spatial coverage, thematic breadth, critical documentation, and a flexible publication format that permits revision as maps become outdated. The review examines maps of topography and relief, urban development from 1930 to 1960, age structure, occupational composition, administrative organization, electricity capacity and networks, and industrial employment and production. It commends the harmonious visual design, careful selection of information, accurate nomenclature and transcription, and critical handling of uneven national statistics. Collectively, the maps reveal major regional contrasts: agricultural predominance in the southeast, industrialization advancing from the northwest, divergent patterns of urban growth and demographic aging, labor migration toward areas of greater employment, and rapid expansion of electricity and industrial capacity in several socialist states. The reviewer nevertheless notes limitations, including the questionable exclusion of Austria from supplementary comparisons, missing Albanian data on occupations, and the potentially misleading effect of exaggerated hypsometric representation for nonspecialists. Overall, the published sheets demonstrate that the institute is carrying out an exceptionally ambitious project with rigor and success. The atlas is judged a foundational resource for understanding the heterogeneity of the Danubian and Southeast European region and a valuable stimulus for the preparation of much-needed national atlases.