For the purposes of the book, the Central European region is defined as the states of Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Switzerland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Liechtenstein.
The Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas was originally conceived as a successor to Günther Niethammer's Handbuch der deutschen Vogelkunde (Handbook of German Ornithology), which was published in three volumes in 1937, 1938, and 1942.
In 1962, Swiss zoologist Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim was asked by Bauer and Erwin Stresemann to take part in writing the book, and became its second editor.
Gathering information for the book was difficult owing to the lack of regional ornithological groups at the time.
The resulting volumes of the first edition were published starting in 1966, and stood out from any previous works, especially in the illustrations by animal and bird painters and illustrators that included: Jörg Kühn, D. Winfried Daunicht, and Friedhelm Weick.