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 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum contains the Latin inscriptions from the entire space of the former Roman Empire in a geographical and systematic order; since its foundation by Theodor Mommsen, it has been the authoritative documentation of the epigraphic heritage of Roman antiquity. Today, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum has about 180,000 inscriptions and supplementary volumes with plates…
In the course of the project the works of the so called “Austrian Bible translator”, who created a comprehensive bible-translation and commenting about 200 years before Luther, are edited and made accessible. Since the 14th century, the “century of the layman-bible”, large parts of the Latin Vulgate and the accompanying exegetic and catechetic explanations have been increasingly translated into…
The DWDS dictionary is based on the six-volume “Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache” and on other sources, such as on parts of the “Großes Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache” published by the Dudenverlag. It provides the user with state-of-the-art spelling, pronunciation in form of audio files and a wide range of information on the form, usage and meaning of approximately 210,000 keywords.…
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.…
The "ground plan" of the history of German poetry from its sources is the basic work of German literary historical research that was simultaneously developed and grown with the subject. The aim is to explore and process all the essential historical facts and data on the development of German literature from its beginning to the end of the 19th century. The chronological presentation of the…
The Historical Dictionary of Philosophy documents the use of terms from philosophy and neighbouring disciplines in their historical development. It does not include articles on persons as well as the representation of factual connections and historical epochs. Also taken into account are sciences outside of the current disciplinary structure of Philosophy, provided that they have emerged from…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
The aim of the project is to create a dictionary for the "Corpus der altdeutschen Originalurkunden", which comprises the Middle High German charters up to the year 1300. The dictionary is intended to supplement the legal language material on which it is based existing Middle High German dictionaries and an excerpt from the represent Middle High German legal and business language. Besides the…