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…
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 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,…
Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) counts among the most significant 20th century philosophers of the German language. Having earned a doctorate in medicine and a second degree (habilitation) in psychology, he held a professorial chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg until his dismissal by the National Socialist regime in 1937. In 1948, Jaspers followed a call to a chair at the University of…
The „Katalog der deutschsprachigen illustrierten Handschriften des Mittelalters", KdiH, (Catalogue of German-Language Illustrated Medieval Manuscripts) provides a basis for the text-image-research in the German lands. It focuses on the specific interplay and multi-facetted interdependencies of text and image. Art historians and textual scholars of German vernacular texts work hand in hand,…
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is said to be the last polymath. This is reflected by his diverse and mostly unpublished work. Until today, there is no complete edition which forced researchers to rely on deficient partial editions from the 19th century. The project aims at a complete edition of G. W. Leibniz’ writings and of his letters. The handwritten literary remains are to a large…
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…
The project “Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya (TWKM)” is funded with 5,42 Million Euros and is set to run for 15 years. It is located at the institute for Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology of the University Bonn. The project manager is Professor Dr. Nikolai Grube, who is an internationally renowned expert in the field of Maya research and a member of the North…
The staff of the project “Turfanforschung” edits central Iranian and old Turkic texts from the Turfanian text corpus (Turfansammlung). The texts of the “Turfansammlung” originated from the Central Asian oases along the silk road and date from the 7th to the 14th century CE. In the year 1902, the former Prussian Academy of Sciences received a considerable amount of texts from an expedition to East…
Uwe Johnson (1934-1984) is one of the most important authors of German in the era of two-state identity. His novels tell of German history in a context far beyond Germany. With his essays and articles, Johnson developed the position of a “public intellectual”. His highly literary correspondence is on an equal footing with the literary work, commenting critically on post-war history in an…