Current statusDigital Letter Edition A. W. Schlegel

Description Among the most important German-speaking authors, critics and scholars of the Romantic period, August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767-1845) is both the most versatile and the most underrated. The deficits in the indexing of his estate since the Second World War have also caused its neglect in research. With the completion of the estate preserved at the SLUB Dresden in 1998, the establishment of the Dresden Digitisation Centre and the cooperative development of a digitisation workflow also for estates and letters, excellent conditions for indexing according to the latest technical and editorial methods were created for this project at the SLUB Dresden.

The project aims to index, digitise and edit all letters to and from Schlegel in Dresden and elsewhere. The result is now

• 2,922 already printed letters
• 3,423 Dresden Schlegel autographs
• Schlegel autographs from 40 other international institutions

can be researched in the Digital Edition.

Previous research results have been built upon, while at the same time the database has been considerably expanded. The reference project with the components of estate indexing, the digital presentation of the handwritten and printed letters, including the provision of the necessary workflows, as well as the new edition of all letters, guarantees the connectivity for further edition projects. It enables a reformulation of the term "European Romanticism", since Schlegel, more than any other German-speaking Romantic, was networked throughout Europe throughout his life. The project contributes substantially to the history of knowledge in the 19th century and underlines the importance of the medium "letter" in the differentiating disciplines of the humanities.

The project is being carried out in cooperation with the Institute for Modern German Literature at Phillips University Marburg and the Competence Centre for Electronic Indexing and Publication at the University of Trier.

Duration 2012-2014 2015-2017 2018-2020

Supported by the German ResearchFoundation - project number 204094077