The journal offers state of the art reports on recent trends and developments in specific fields of geography and comprehensive and critical reviews of new geographical publications.

Former editors: Hans Heinrich Blotevogel, Julius Büdel, Bernd Diekkrüger, Richard Dikau, Eckart Ehlers, Helmut Hahn, Wolfgang Hartke, Peter Höllermann, Wolfgang Kuls, Wilhelm Lauer, Hermann Lautensach, Herbert Lehmann, Herbert Louis, Horst Mensching, Hans Mortensen, Gottfried Pfeiffer, Winfried Schenk, Carl Troll, Matthias Winiger.

As Carl Troll wrote in 1964 in a retrospective,[2] the foundation of a new journal for geography resulted rather unintentionally out of the uncertain situation of the first post-war years.

The main idea was to continue Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen as well as the "Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin" as the two oldest and internationally most respected geographical journals.

The abbreviated form "Erdkunde" resulted from the fact that the licensing regulations initially did not permit designations such as "Zeitschrift", "Gesellschaft" and "Berlin".

In the following years, the newly founded journal underwent a quite changeful development, as was well documented in a review of its 50-year history by Hans Böhm and Eckart Ehlers.