The online database Berlin-Bibliography, which is provided by the Center of Berlin Studies at the Central and Regional Library Berlin, contains bibliographical references to literature (monographs and articles) about Berlin from 1985 onwards. Predecessors of this database are printed series, that were published in both parts of the divided city of Berlin:
[Unser] Berlin [Hauptstadt der DDR] in Buch und Zeitschrift / Stadtbibliothek Berlin
Berlin-Bibliographie / Historische Kommission zu Berlin
The Munich Digitisation Centre (MDZ) handles the digitisation and online publication of the cultural heritage preserved by the Bavarian State Library and by other institutions. It provides one of the largest and fastest growing digital collections in Germany.
The Digital Collections reflect the traditional special collection fields of the library: History, Classical Antiquity, Eastern Europe, Musicology. It comprises manuscripts, early prints, modern books, maps and photographic collections as well as journals and newspapers.
At the occasion of the upcoming “Tag der Archive” several German archives open their doors to the public on the first weekend in march (6-7 March 2010). This years motto is “In Search of Clues”.
But also on weekdays it is possible to visit guided tours and exibitions featuring treasures from their own collections.
The “Biographical Portal” is a cooperative project of the Bavarian State Library, the Historical Committee at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Foundation Historical Dictionary of Switzerland. A joint index makes available the following biographical dictionaries:
In this way, more than 100,000 scholarly biographies of persons from all social backgrounds and nearly all periods of German, Austrian, and Swiss history may be accessed. Further national and regional biographical works of reference are planned for future inclusion in the portal.
Berlin Wall fragment at Bernauer Straße (Picture by A. Genest)
The image most people have of the Berlin Wall today is based on this view of its western face, covered in graffiti and drawings. From the East-German point of view, it was the last in a series of insurmountable obstacles, cordoned off and concealed from sight.
A new online documentation “Memorial Landscape of the Berlin Wall” is provided by the Dept. of Conservation at Brandenburg University of Technology that strives to fill in this gap between image and reality, a reality that has become history and is nearly not visible today in downtown Berlin.
The interactive map is going to be released also in an English version.
The Thesaurus Professionum now contains about 23.000 entries for occupational titles found in Early Modern funeral sermons and similar texts in German libraries and archives.
Illustration: Amman, Jost, Sachs, Hans: Eygentliche Beschreibung aller Stände auff Erden, hoher und nidriger, geistlicher und weltlicher, aller Künsten, Handwercken und Händeln …
Durch d. weitberümpten Hans Sachsen gantz fleissig beschrieben u. in teutsche Reimen gefasset, Frankfurt am Mayn: Feyerabend 1568
thanks to http://www.digitalis.uni-koeln.de/
Neu und richtiger Grundt Riß des heiligen Römischen Reichs freyer Stadt Cöllen im Jahr 1752 verfertiget … von J. V. Reinhardt …
Since March 7th, the initiative “Digital Historical Archive Cologne” offers the opportunity to upload copies of the material from the collapsed municipal archive. This way, users can help to restore the documents.
http://www.historischesarchivkoeln.de/index.php?lang=en
Memorial tablet for the soldiers killed during the War of the Sixth Coalition (prootestant church St. Ägidius, Hergisdorf, Saxony Anhalt)
Data of baptism, mariage, and death of military personnel and often their families were kept in regimental and garrison church registers. For genealogical research in this kind of sources it is helpful to know the place or region of enlistment, the approximate dates of service, and the exact regiment.
A printed directory of the 4087 preserved military church records available in about 156 different archives or rectories in Germany can be found in:
Wolfgang Eger: Verzeichnis der Militärkirchenbücher in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Neustadt an der Aisch, 2 Bände, 1993/96
Round 1900 Georg Dehio established a guide to the German architectural monuments (Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler). It is a comprehensive reference book for people interested in the history of arts. At the same time the “Dehio” can serve as a detailed and compact guide for discovering architectural treasures off the beaten tourist tracks.
The “Dehio” series is expanded and updated constantly. Meanwhile buildings of the 19th century, of the modern era as well as technical monuments are part of this reference book. Information about single monuments are amended by introductions to municipal history of larger towns and cities considering which take into consideration also aspects of preservation and urban development. Maps, indexes of street and place names, registers of objects and artists and and a glossary make the use of the “Dehio” very easy and comfortable.
Reclams art guides (Reclams Kunstführer) are a similar series of reference books to art monuments. They are less encyclopaedic and addressed to a broader readership. Therefore they contain photographs and information about museums, collections, etc. The series was published between 1958 and 1994 and contains volumes to Germany (without the regions of the former GDR), Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Turkey.
The transliteration of characters from non-Latin scripts differs from target language to target language and from purpose to purpose (literal/phonetic). The encoding of special characters that are used in these transliterations does as well.
The online-converter 2cyr.com now provides a tool for the automatic transliteration of languages written in Kyrillic to Latin script and vice versa. It is also possible to use an individually created transliteration for special needs.
For the lack of a common one-to-one encoding of characters within one transliteration system the machine-based conversion of bibliographic data is difficult. Nevertheless 2cyr.com is a useful instrument and with the help of a screen keyboard it is possible to make requests to Unicode-based library catalogues, bibliographical databases, search engines in general and paste the received information to the own reference management software.
individuelle Anpassung der Umschrift für jedes einzelne Zeichen
