In the Middle Ages, Old Occitan (formerly “Old Provençal”) was a literary and cultural language, the influence of which extended far beyond the frontiers of Southern France. It was also the language of the troubadours, whose songs had a decisive impact on the love poetry of the European literatures during the Middle Ages.
The only comprehensive portrayal of the Old Occitan vocabulary to have…
From 2012 to 2025, the project explores the beginning and end of the Roman era in the central Alpine region. Through excavation projects in Pfaffenhofen (North Tyrol) and San Martino/San Silvestro (Trentino), the project opens up new archaeological source material from two important transitional periods. In Pfaffenhofen-Hörtenberg, the largest Iron Age settlement in North Tyrol is being…
Ceiling and mural paintings are constitutive elements in the design of baroque interiors. Unlike all other forms of pictorial art, these truly three-dimensional artistic media define early modern architecture literally from above, through colourful and complex iconographic programmes: in ecclesiastical as well as secular environments, in residential palaces and ceremonial halls, churches and…
As part of the Union Académique Internationale’s research project launched in 1921, the Interacademic Commission for the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum (CVA) publishes the holdings of Greek, Etruscan, and Italian antique clay vessels in German museums. The time frame covers the period from the Minoan-Mycenaean to the Hellenistic period, i. e. from about 1500 BCE to the beginning of Common Era. However,…
In the course of the project the works of the so called “Austrian Bible translator”, who created a comprehensive bible-translation and commenting about 200 years before Luther, are edited and made accessible. Since the 14th century, the “century of the layman-bible”, large parts of the Latin Vulgate and the accompanying exegetic and catechetic explanations have been increasingly translated into…
Medieval and early modern inscriptions crafted before 1650, in Latin and German language, situated in German-speaking areas are at the heart of this project. Inscriptions are significant and unique historical sources because they are often preserved in an authentic state and in their original setting. For the premodern era, script which was affixed to stone, wood, metal, glass as well as textiles…
The Verfasserlexikon represents a fundamental and encompassing work of reference on German literature of the Middle Ages as well as a selection of German, Latin writing authors of the period. It contains more than 5000 articles by numerous scholars from Germany and abroad, arranged alphabetically by author and anonymous work title.
All German-language authors and works from the beginning of…
The WMU makes available the vocabulary of the German language of documents which came into use in the 13th century. The dictionary supplements the lexica and grammars of Middle High German for an excerpt of 13th-century prose, which were predominantly compiled on the basis of poetic texts.
The aim of this research project is to work on the Reichstage from 1532 - 1555, i.e. to index and record, edit and publish the relevant, widely scattered archive material, in order to make a source of central importance for the German and European history of the epoch of Emperor Charles V and the Reformation usable. In addition to its value for the study of general and political history, the…
The aim of the project is a systematic analysis of the course and mechanisms of the so-called Alexandrian Schism (1159-1177), which is to be evaluated as a model and comparative case for overarching questions about scenarios of division and escalation with a large spatial extent, with a multi-causal background and with confrontational camp formations at the most diverse levels, as well as for…
The research project “Die frühbuddhistischen Handschriften aus Gandhāra: religiöse Literatur an der Schnittstelle von Indien, Zentralasien und China” was established in 2012. On the basis of philological and historical methods, it provides new insight into the early history of Buddhism on its way to becoming a world religion. The project studies manuscripts found in the 1990s in northern Pakistan…
The Commission for the Corpus of Greek Documents, established by the founder of Byzantine Studies, Karl Krumbacher, has been collecting and researching Greek documents of the Middle Ages (330 - 1453 AD) since 1900. Initially, the work was focused on the imperial charters as the most important genre of document. The systematic indexing was carried out in five extensive volumes (1924 - 1995, partly…
In international collaboration with researchers from the USA, Canada, and Austria, the project produces the critical edition of the sentence commentaries of the Dominican theologian Richard Fishacre (founded in Oxford in the 1240s) and the Franciscan theologian Robert Cowton (founded about 1309-1311 in Oxford). The edition of the Sentences Commentary of the Franciscan Wilhelm de la Mare (written…
The project currently attends to the complete edition of the works of Ernst Troeltsch, a classical diagnostician of modern culture. His wide-ranging oeuvre has been widely effective in various disciplinary discussions.
The task of the project is to produce a critical edition of the works, the handwritten estate and correspondence of the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 - 1814). This represents an essential contribution to the visualisation of German philosophy of Classicism and an instrument of current worldwide philosophical discussion. In addition, „Kollegnachschriften“ are published in a separate…
The task of the project is the development of a historico-critical edition and annotation of letters by and to the philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743 - 1819). Genuine and fictitious letters characterised Jacobi's work. A epistolary novel (Allwill), a novel with interspersed letters (Woldemar), epistles and about 2800 recorded letters testify to the meaning he gave to this literary form of…
This project undertakes a systematic survey of the tens of thousands of letters written by and addressed to learned physicians in the German-speaking area between 1500 and 1700, which have come down to us in numerous libraries and archives in Germany and abroad. These letters, many of which have gone unnoticed so far in historical scholarship, are valuable sources for the study of a wide range of…
The project focuses on alpine glaciers and their role in the continental hydrologic cycle, as climate indicators and their interaction with the solid earth. In addition to many years of intensive research work on the Vernagtferner, the "house glacier" in the Ötztal Alps, investigations are being carried out in various glacier regions, e.g. Iceland, Norway, the Pamir, and the Karakorum. Along with…
For the critical edition of the Greek prose writings by the Byzantine theologian John of Damascus (700- ca. 750) the authentic works and the works attributed to him are edited, including the Barlaam novel, which is traditionally written under his name and was completed in 2008. The work is coordinated by the Patristic Commission of the German Academies of Sciences, whose aim is to produce critical…
The task of the project is to collect and edit the documents (diplomas and mandates) of Emperor Friedrich II († 1250) according to the guidelines of the “Monumenta Germania Historica”. It is the most comprehensive edition of the Diploma series with about 2,600 documents (original and copied pieces, without deperdita).
The project has the double dimension of the edition of the documents of Emperor…