The academy project “Alexander von Humboldt auf Reisen. Wissenschaft aus der Bewegung” comprises the complete edition of Alexander von Humboldt’s manuscripts on the topic of travel at the interface of cultural and natural sciences. This includes travel journals, diaries, memoirs, publications in the countries and regions visited as well as correspondence. The focus of the project lies on the…
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…
The binational research project “Arthur Schnitzler digital. Digitale historisch-kritische Edition (Werke 1905 bis 1931)” is carried out by scientists of the Bergische University Wuppertal, the University of Cambridge, the University College London, and the University of Bristol in cooperation with the Cambridge University Library, the German literary archive Marbach, and the Trier Centre for…
By linking two new, reciprocally interrelated research approaches – Genetic Text Criticism and the Digital Edition – the highly complex dynamics of compositional processes in Beethoven’s oeuvre, for the investigation of which source tradition and indexing provide ideal conditions, are to be explored, documented, and reproduced in exemplary digital editions in a new way.
The new Weber Complete Edition is based on the current status of musicological editing processes, with a clear focus on the historical aspect in addition to the critical aspect. It presents all of Weber’s musical works, including the piano excerpts from his own and foreign works as well as his arrangements of his own and foreign works, taking into account all available sources. Fragmentary…
For the first time, the research and edition project “Controversia et Confessio” systematically reappraises the theological controversies triggered by the Augsburg Interim and the Leipzig Alternative Draft of 1548, which could only be largely resolved by the large-scale theological unification of the Conoria Formula and the Konkordienbuch 1577/80. In these disputes, an early modern “culture of…
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…
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…
While other European cultural nations have comprehensive etymological dictionaries, German, one of the world’s most common languages in quantitative terms, lacks a large scientific etymological dictionary. For this reason, the “German etymology of semantic fields in a European Context (DWEE)” wants to close this gap on the one hand: This applies particularly to words that have only appeared since…
The comprehensive Dictionary of historical German (and West Germanic) Legal Language explains and illustrates legally relevant vocabulary from the beginning of German written tradition (around AD 400) to 1815. Its basis is formed by an archive of roughly 2.5 million word quotations.
A volume of the Dictionary comprises 5 double fascicles of 320 columns each. The fascicles appear on a yearly…
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 School of Salamanca or “Spanish late scholasticism” of the 16th and early 17th centuries is one of the most influential epochs of early modern European thought because of its importance for jurisprudence and political philosophy. The project has two objectives: Firstly, to digitally record and present the central texts of the “School of Salamanca” in an overall corpus that follows uniform…
The Coptic-Sahidic Bible is one of the most important literary witnesses of Christianity in the eastern Mediterranean. The Coptic Old Testament, which essentially dates back to the 4th century, is one of the earliest and most extensive versions of the Greek Septuagint (LXX). The translation of the Bible into Coptic was source and inspiration for the entire Coptic-Christian literature of Egypt. In…
The decrees of the Frankish rulers are known as capitularies because of their subdivision into chapters (lat. capitula). They are amongst the most important sources for the history of the Frankish kingdoms. They are instructions similar to laws, ordinances or provisions, regulating political, military, ecclesiastical, social, economic and cultural matters.
The project “Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg” (i.e. “Epigraphic Database Heidelberg”, or EDH for short) was established in 1986 with a duration of five years under the auspices of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Program, and further funded from 1991 onwards by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. Since 1993, it has been a research project at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences with a duration until 2020.…
The project, which is located at the Ernst Haeckel House of the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, focuses on the edition of the entire correspondence of the evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) and thus one of the most important correspondences of scientific culture around 1900.
The archive of the Haeckel-Haus houses almost the entire personal and scientific legacy of Haeckel…
Over a period of three centuries - from the first half of the 16th century until 1806 - the imperial Aulic Council was one of the most important institutions of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. As high court, supreme feudal house, administration institution of the imperial privileges and as political advisory body of the emperor the institution shaped the destiny of Central Europe in…
The project “Johann Friedrich Blumenbach –Online” (www.blumenbach-online.de) aims at making the rise of German science within the European context visible, and at supplying a missing part in accessible primary source material on the cultural history of the time: the publications of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. This is particularly significant with regard to an essential aspect of this period: the…
LEI aims to document and etymologically comment on the entire vocabulary of Italoromania from a historical perspective. The project was founded in 1968 by Max Pfister. Since 2001 it has been managed by Max Pfister together with Wolfgang Schweickard. So far, 16 large-format volumes have been published. The LEI can also be accessed online via open access at a later date than the print output. LEI…
Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) is, apart from Max Weber, the most important German sociologist of the 20th century. His social theory and theory of society, continuously developed over a period of 30 years, is internationally outstanding. The extensive body of Luhmann’s literary estate, which the University of Bielefeld was able to acquire in 2010, sheds light on the author and the edifice of his…