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…
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…
The editions of the German texts of the Middle Ages are compiled partly by staff of the Berlin office and partly by authors from all over the world. The current editions deal with medieval verse epics (Albrecht's Jüngerer Titurel), verse or prose chronicles (Christherre-Chronik, Weltchronik Heinrichs von München, Eisenacher Stadtchronik und Thüringische Landeschronik von Johannes Rothe),…
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…
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,…
Documentary handbook on the tradition of ancient and medieval literature in the early modern period. A bibliographical and at the same time documentary repertory is being compiled, which covers the entire field of the literary reception history of antiquity and the Middle Ages for the period between 1500 and 1630, including later reprints (up to the 19th century). In accordance with the…
With the systematic publication of the library catalogues, which were written in Germany and Switzerland until about 1500, the project contributes to the recording of the intellectual heritage of the Middle Ages and to its accessibility for research.
During the project period of six years, it is planned on the one hand to publish the complete edition of Albrecht von Haller's reviews (including more than 9'000 in the leading German-language review organ Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen) as a central, but still largely unknown part of his oeuvre. On the other hand, a well-founded selection of approximately 8,000 letters related to the content of…
As part of a new project, the BBAW has been devoting itself since January 2004 to "Prussia as a Cultural State" and thus to the ambiguous image of Prussia in history. The range of interpretations extends from the militarily organized authoritarian state to the tolerant enlightenment state to the multi-ethnic integration state. The BBAW's approach to Prussian history not only corresponds to its…
Since 1898 the Law Sources Foundation of the Swiss Lawyers Society edits a collection of law sources which had been created on Swiss territory up to 1798, the Collection of Swiss Law Sources. The Collection contains materials from the early Middle Ages until early modern times (1798). Over 130 volumes, or more than 80'000 pages of source material and comments from all language regions of…
The numerous philosophical, theological and homiletic writings of the Saxon pastor Valentin Weigel (1533-1588) circulated initially in handwriting and were - to some extent - only printed at the beginning and end of the 17th century. On the basis of Lutheran-reformational piety, they combine, among other things, neoplatonic and medieval mystical influences with ideas of Renaissance humanism,…
In view of outdated Russian-German standard works, for which there will be no replacement in the foreseeable future here, as in Russia, as well as the normative character of previous bilingual Russian dictionaries, the Russian-German dictionary represents a desideratum of great cultural-political significance. The task is to create a complete dictionary on a new and philologically reliable basis,…