The task of the Research Centre is to select the edition of the manuscript estate of the important explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769 - 1859), the complete edition of his dependent publications, and the historical analysis of the scientific heritage. Extensive collections of copies of letters from and to Humboldt as well as of his travel diaries have been created for this purpose. These and…
Since 1965, Année Politique Suisse (APS) has offered a precise, objective and concentrated account of developments in Swiss politics and society. We follow a political business from its launch to a possible referendum and its implementation, we report on important social controversies, synthesize practice-relevant studies and reports, follow groundbreaking court rulings, developments in the party…
I margini del libro ("The Margins of the Book") is an international project to explore and catalogue dedication texts in the Italian tradition (2002-2006 supported by the SNSF and in collaboration with the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern, Germany). The Electronic Archive of the Italian Dedication (AIDI), accessible online since July 2004, provides all interested parties with a…
Within the framework of the project, the works of Averroes (1126 - 1198) translated into Latin are to be critically edited. Averroes is Ibn Ruschd, an Arabic-speaking Hispanic Muslim who studied and edited the scientific literature of his time available to him. In particular, his commentaries on Aristotle were translated from Arabic into Latin (later also into Hebrew) from the first half of the…
The Berliner Klassik project will examine whether an interdisciplinary reconstruction of Berlin's unusual cultural heyday between 1786 and 1815 can provide an alternative to the Weimar-Jenaic Classicism. To this end, known and less known works and events of this epoch will be related to their internal and external correspondence and oppositions, their socio-cultural prerequisites and their…
Martin Buber (1878–1965) is arguably the most significant and still internationally influential thinker of the modern German-Jewish cultural and intellectual world, »alongside Einstein and Freud [...] one of the best-known Jews of the twentieth century«. In addition to Buber's writings in his diverse spheres of activity, it is in particular the correspondence (approx. 40,000 letters) with almost…
Ecclesiastical law had a lasting influence on Western and Central Europe until the 20th century and contributed fundamentally to the emergence of common European legal foundations. The ways in which these influences were transmitted are manifold and go back a long way. For it was not only since the 12th century - as is often claimed - that Europe developed into a unified area in many respects in…
The historical significance of Christian Gottfried Nees von Esenbecks (1776 - 1858) lies in his scientific life's work as a botanist, zoologist and natural philosopher and in his committed socio-political effects. His life and work is in many ways a mirror of the scientific as well as the general history of the first half of the 19th century. Especially in his extensive correspondence lies the key…
The German Dictionary is a historical dictionary of the meaning of the New High German language. It contains the common German vocabulary from the middle of the 15th century to the present in alphabetical order. It was planned and started by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, who are regarded as the founders of German studies. According to their imagination and model, the dictionary presents…
The aim of the project is to produce a critical, annotated edition of the scientific writings of the Göttingen physicist and philosopher Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799). Lichtenberg was one of the most respected experimental physicists of his time and was also active in many other scientific disciplines. His writings are highly significant testimonies and sources for the history of the…
The Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales (EM) is a handbook on historical and comparative narrative research. It comprehensively presents the results of one and a half centuries of international research work in the field of folk narrative traditions in the past and present. The work focuses on the oral and literary narrative forms of Europe and the cultures influenced by Europe, but also endeavours to…
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 ad hoc group "Facticity of the World", established in 2017, takes up the current discussion on "post-truth politics". The often conscious denial of reality in political discourse challenges science just as much as the negligent handling of truths. For it is precisely one of the tasks of science to inform the public about facts and connections, on the basis of which democratic decisions can…
Gottfried Semper’s two volume «Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts, or Practical Aesthetics» (1860/63) is presented for the first time in a critical digital edition. All its different stages are made available as digital facsimiles and transcriptions: manuscripts, fair copies, proofs, prints and their variants, drawings for illustrations, woodcut proofs.
The "ground plan" of the history of German poetry from its sources is the basic work of German literary historical research that was simultaneously developed and grown with the subject. The aim is to explore and process all the essential historical facts and data on the development of German literature from its beginning to the end of the 19th century. The chronological presentation of the…
Based on a contractual agreement, the historical-critical Hegel edition of the Academy will be produced in the Hegel Archive, an institution of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. The edition has three sections: the first section has been the subject of the work of the last three decades. Eighteen of the twenty-two volumes planned for the first section, containing Hegel's publications and manuscripts,…
The Historical Lexicon of Switzerland (HLS) is a scientific reference work that presents the history of Switzerland from prehistory to the present in a generally comprehensible form. The encyclopedia is published simultaneously in the national languages German, French and Italian. The entries in the HLS are divided into personal articles, family articles, articles on places and rooms, and…
The task of the project is to compile the German and foreign-language new publications on all subject areas of German history on the basis of the autopsy principle as completely as possible and to make them accessible in form and content. The reporting period covers the period from the birth of Christ to the present day. It covers the entire range of scientific publications such as monographs,…
The project aims to investigate and document the contacts and transfers between the literatures among themselves and between the literatures and other cultural fields, mediated by institutions (associations, publishers, journals, etc.) and individuals for the period from 1885 to 1913 and in the geographical region of Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Russia, Poland, Scandinavia and England. Based…