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 letters of Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705), the founder of Lutheran Pietism, are not only first-rate sources for research on the beginnings of Pietism, the most important renewal movement of Protestantism since the Reformation, but also for the church and cultural history of the early modern period. Some of them are handwritten records and can be found in archives and libraries far beyond…
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 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…
Most of the sources that we have on the history of the late antiquity are lost and can at best be recovered in extracts through the reference from subsequent authors, who sometimes lived half a millennium later. The late antiquity is of great importance for the political and cultural development of Europe that cannot be overestimated: within this epoch highly dramatic events occured that one can…
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…
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 aim of the project of the Saxon Academy of Sciences “Europäische Traditionen - Enzyklopädie jüdischer Kulturen” is the development and conceptual penetration of Jewish life worlds in Europe from the early modern period to the middle of the 20th century. It is based on the “Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture”. Completed in 2017, the work, which contains around 800 articles in seven…
The purpose of the project is to create an edition of the collected works of the historian of philosophy and religious philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 - 1872). Especially through his criticism of Hegel, in his writing "Das Wesen des Christentums“ as well as the drafts for a "Philosophie der Zukunft" and his "Vorlesungen über das Wesen der Religion“ Ludwig Feuerbach has a lasting influence on…
The aim of the long-term project is the systematic reconstruction and editing of Early Medieval certificates and letters (Formulae) as well as research into formulaic writing in Western Europe before the 11th century. It is rooted at the interface of history, Latin philology and legal history and examines sources which are of great importance for the study of Early Medieval society. The Formulae…
The reciprocal word pair “Forschungskontinuität und Kontinuitätsforschung” (continuity of research and research of continuity) in the project-title outlines the significant difficulties and opportunities of the traditional, but not unproblematic history of the archaeological sciences in landscapes, that are very rich in findings and important for the development of northern and eastern Europe.…
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834) is one of the most important figures of spiritual life in Germany in the classical epoch around 1800, and his work continues to have a multidisciplinary and international impact up to the present day.
After the defeat of Prussia in 1806 and the dissolution of the University of Halle, where he had been professor of theology and philosophy and…
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 aim of the project “Gelehrte Journale und Zeitungen als Netzwerke des Wissens im Zeitalter der Aufklärung”, running since 2011, consists in indexing the major representatives of interdisciplinary polyhistoric German-language periodicals and making them accessible as digital copies. The long-term research project of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, carried out in Göttingen, Leipzig and…
The task of the project “Germania Sacra” is to gain access and to publish the diverse and comprehensive written sources, which give evidence of the history of the Church of the Holy Roman Empire and its institutions. For this purpose, the source material of archives and libraries is published in the form of reference books. The reference books provide an extensive description of the dioceses,…
The „Goethe-Wörterbuch“ is a dictionary that analyses the use of words in the texts of a single author, presenting Goethe’s entire vocabulary in alphabetical order. On the basis of approximately three million archive slips on about 90.000 headwords, it displays their multiple usage in systematically structured entries, with selected quotations to verify and illustrate the differentiated meanings.…
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.
Written sources are – like art and buildings – integral parts of the cultural heritage, whose preservation, indexing and provision are central social duties. The knowledge of the past is principally based on texts, that more or less accidentally escaped destruction. These records preserve the knowledge, the faith, the tales, the visions and dreams of the people. They give testimony of past…