Gabor:  on alf.nbi.dk       latex book.tex                    produces:

This is TeX, Version 3.1415 (C version 6.1)
(book.tex
LaTeX Version 2.09 <25 March 1992>
! Undefined control sequence.
l.24 \documentclass
           &nbs p;       [11pt,twoside,fleqn]{book}

if ( -d /usr/local/TeX/bin/alphaev5-osf4.0d ) then
  set path = (/usr/local/TeX/bin/alphaev5-osf4.0d $path)
endif

Gabor: on my machine     latex book.tex      complains about

basedirectory.tex

and
setenv TEXINPUTS
./:..::$HOME/tex/texinputs/:$HOME/DasBuch/book/:$HOME/DasBuch/book/inputs/

does not work since there is no setenv.

A) "basedirectory.tex:"

1) in your homedirectory (e.g. /home/vattay) create a subdirectory
   "tex" and then a  subsubdirectory "texinputs"
   (e.g. /home/vattay/tex/texinputs/ )

 2) create in  /home/vattay/tex/texinputs/
     a file called "basedirectory.tex"

 3) Into this file, you  should copy or write the line
      \providecommand{\basedirectory}{galahad^^40bookfile}

     in case "galahad" is    "your_machine_name"

  or \providecommand{\basedirectory}{alf^^40bookfile}

    in case it is "alf" etc.

 4) a)  The command "setenv" works in some UNIX-shells (I think csh and ksh).
      There you can  include
     setenv TEXINPUTS ./:..::$HOME/tex/texinputs/:$HOME/DasBuch/book/:$HOME/DasBuch/book/inputs/

     into your input file .cshrc  or .kshrc etc.

     b) In the bash-shell this does not work. There
         the corresponding command is
 export TEXINPUTS=./:..::$HOME/tex/texinputs/:$HOME/DasBuch/book/:$HOME/DasBuch/boo k/inputs/

 [Note the equation sign!]

 You can write it into your .bashrc file. I actually splitted the command in my .bashrc into two:

   TEXINPUTS=./:..::$HOME/tex/texinputs/:$HOME/DasBuch/book/:$HOME/DasBuch/boo k/inputs/
    export TEXINPUTS

5) After these changes and after following the rest of Predrag's download prescriptions,
     I could latex the book.tex file in the directory /home/wirzba/DasBuch/book
     without problems (There are some complaints/warnings about the labels, though, which
      do not go away even after latexing the file twice or more).

Andreas:
      I still have a problem with downloading the file book.pdf or bookRaw.pdf.
      On my notebook with a very recent Linux setup (S.uS.E. 6.4), I could not
      use the saved pdf-files, since some fonts are missing. This might be
      fonts  special of the "Windows adobe" setup. I can still read the pdf files
      interactively via Netscape, but cannot save them in a readable fashion

Predrag:
    that's strange - I embeded the fonts in the pdf file. Try printing it not to a printer
     but to a postscript file, see if fonts are OK there (you will lose crosslinking by
      hypertext, though).