Handbook of the birds of Central Europe

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The Handbook of the Birds of Central Europe (HBV) is a German-language, scientific handbook about the Central European birds. State borders were used to delimit the Central European area. The states Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Switzerland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary and the Principality of Liechtenstein are understood as Central Europe.

Emergence

It was originally conceived as the successor to Günther Niethammer's Handbuch der Deutschen Vogelkunde , which was published in three volumes in 1937, 1938 and 1942. Work on it began in 1958 by Kurt Bauer . In 1962, Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim was asked by Erwin Stresemann and Bauer to take part in the revision. Glutz von Blotzheim agreed to this, but insisted on the new title Handbook of the Birds of Central Europe , on a concept that was greatly expanded compared to Niethammer's ideas and on the involvement of external experts. The result of the 14-volume HBV, which appeared in 1966, was something completely new and independent, above all through the illustrations by the animal painters involved, such as Jörg Kühn , Winfried D. Daunicht and, in a particularly formative way, Friedhelm Weick . Some volumes had to be divided due to their size, so that the HBV consists of 22 individual volumes plus register volume. The complete manual is also available as a PDF on CD-ROM .

The manual is still regarded as the standard work of Central European ornithology.

Overview

The HBV has the full title:

Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim (Hrsg.): Handbook of the birds of Central Europe . Edited by Kurt M. Bauer and Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim, among others. 14 volumes in 23 parts. Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main 1966ff., Aula-Verlag , Wiesbaden 1985ff. (2nd Edition).

The individual volumes are:

CD-ROM edition

  • Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim (Hrsg.): Handbook of the birds of Central Europe . With a lexicon of ornithological terms by Ralf Wassmann. Vogelzug-Verlag, Wiebelsheim 2004, ISBN 3-923527-00-4 (CD-ROM for Windows, MacOS, Unix, etc., as PDF file: 15,718 book pages with 3200 images).

Reviews

"The" Handbook of Birds of Central Europe "is considered to be the generally binding reference work and the most important source of information to which anyone who seriously deals with the ornithology of this geographical area should refer. Its wealth of information marks a new era in European ornithology. As one of the most influential ornithologists of his time, Ernst Mayr judged very early on: "... the handbook is a work of such sovereign mastership ... that it can truly be said to be in a class all by itself. There is really nothing quite like it in the ornithological literature of the entire world "(" The manual is a work of such unsurpassable mastery ... that it truly forms a class of its own. There is really nothing like it in the ornithological literature around the world ")."

- Karl Schulze-Hagen, the ornithological observer

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Schulze-Hagen, The "Handbook of the Birds of Central Europe" - its importance yesterday, today, tomorrow. In: Der Ornithologische Beobachter, Volume 110, Issue 3, September 2013, pp. 232f.