For some years now, research has turned increasingly to the history of the European monarchy. Only recently, the theory of a continuous decline of the monarchy since the French Revolution of 1789 was fundamentally challenged. The monarchies had been a historical phenomenon of previously underestimated flexibility and efficiency, which was able to assert itself in the age of constitutionalism and…
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…
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 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 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…
Since 2005, e-codices has been editing medieval and modern manuscripts on the Internet as the digital manuscript library of Switzerland. Its high-quality and innovative presentation makes it a nationally and internationally recognized research tool. Currently 2'480 manuscripts from 97 libraries are online (as of October 26, 2020). The project is freely accessible (Open Access). The goal is to…
Robert and Clara Schumann: The great pair of musicians of German romanticism has left a lasting impression on the cultural history of the 19th century. The contacts to almost all the important musicians of the time, but also to poets and painters, to publishers, to friends, and family members are reflected in an extensive correspondence, about which Robert Schumann kept meticulous books. As a…
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 “DGS-Korpus” aimis at the systematic registration and documentation of the German sign language in its lively diversity and the creation of an electronic dictionary based on the corpus data. The dictionary will be an important reference book for everyone who will use the German sign language as a tool for communication and additionally for DGS-learners and linguists. Exceeding the…
The project “Galen als Vollender, Interpret und Vermittler der antiken Medizin” edits, translates, and comments on medical texts by Galen, which - from today’s perspective - are in the field of tension between the natural sciences and the humanities.
Galen von Pergamon, who worked in Rome in the 2nd century CE as medical advisor to Emperor Marcus Aurelius, became with his extensive oeuvre the…
Das Forschungsprojekt Johann Caspar Lavater – Historisch-kritische Edition ausgewählter Briefwechsel (JCLB) digitalisiert und erfasst den Bestand der weit über 20'000 Briefe von und an Lavater, um in einer Web-basierten Online-Edition davon ausgewählte Briefwechsel zu edieren und Lavaters gesamte Korrespondenz erstmals synoptisch in ihrer ganzen Komplexität und ihrem Umfang für die Forschung zu…
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…
The “Neue Johannes Brahms Gesamtausgabe” brings forward Johannes Brahms’ compositional oeuvre in a historical-critical edition. Included are alternative versions, that remained unpublished by the composer, as well as adaptations by the composer of his own and external works. The goal of the edition is the reproduction of authentic texts, which are relieved from typing-, copying, and engraving…
Subject of the research project is the complete critical edition of the two-part treatise on the psychical pneuma written by the Byzantine physician and scholar John Zacharias (about 1275–1328) with a German translation and its contextualization in medical and intellectual history as well as the history of its reception. This work is of central importance especially for the history of psychology,…
The name of Dionysius the Areopagite refers to the Athenian, who according to Acts 17:34 was converted by St. Paul’s speech on the Areopagus and then followed him. The name was adopted by a prolific unknown author around 500 A.D., with a vast number of writings based on the tremendous influence of his synthesizing of neo-platonic philosophy and Christian theology. The manuscript tradition is a…
The research project is supervised by an institution of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Its objective is the establishment of a tripartite analytic-semantic handbook, which essentially provides a new foundation for the history of towns and urbanization during the premodern period. Additionally, it constitutes an important instrument for a multitude of historically oriented…
The research project “Runische Schriftlichkeit in den germanischen Sprachen / Runic Writing in the Germanic Languages (RuneS)” investigates the oldest writing system in the Germanic languages, the runic script. As a means of communication this script was used in different variants in large regions of Europe (with centres in what is now Germany and the Netherlands, in Great Britain and…
The Swiss Idioticon is an institute for the research and documentation of the German language and its dialects in Switzerland. Its main task is the development of the dictionary of the Swiss-German language (Swiss Idiotikon) in printed and digital form. This work describes Alemannic vocabulary in Switzerland from the late Middle Ages to the 21st century. It is the largest regional dictionary in…
The Egyptian-Coptic language is the human language with the longest documented lifetime, clocking at 4,500 years prior to its extinction. Its vocabulary reflects the knowledge and worldviews of one of the formative cultures of the ancient world. In order to explore the linguistic and cultural evidence of this historical episteme, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) and…