Historical adress books are an important reference for research in the field of regional, social and economic history as well as for genealogy. Libraries, archives and non profit-projects make these sources accessible for online use. We would like to draw attention to the Breslau Address Book from 1935, which is provided by the Silesian Digital Library. The address book contains a mercantile directory, lists of community facilities and all kinds of associations and organizations.
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.
Half a century after the “Zimmermann” Johann Georg Knie (1794-1859) published a new and well-structured gazetteer of Silesia including the following data:
place name in german and its variants in Polish, Sorbian, Czech
form of settlement (hamlet, village, town)
civil and church jurisdictions over those places
location
manor, population size, religious denominations, schools
economy, infrastructure
list of abbreviations, pronunciation of Polish terms
Historical gazetteers are an important reference for local history and genealogy. Names of places and their belonging to church-, administration- and jurisdiction districts changed often in former Silesian areas. Friedrich Albert Zimmermann discribed already at the end of the 18. century towns and villages of the following duchies and counties of Prussian-Silesia in 13 volumes of his geographical directory: vol. 1: Duchy of Brieg (Brzeg), vol. 2: Upper Silesia I, vol. 3: Upper Silesia II, vol. 4: Duchy of Münsterberg, vol 5: Duchy of Schweidnitz, vol. 6: Duchy of Jauer, vol. 7: Duchies of Sagan and Wohlau and the Counties of Militsch and Wartenberg, vol. 8: Duchy of Liegnitz, vol. 9: County of Glatz, vol. 10: Duchy of Glogau, vol. 11: City of Breslau, vol. 12: Duchy of Breslau, Band 13: place and subject index and a chronicle of Oberglogau.
To browse the single volumes online at Silesian Digital Library it is necessary to install the djvu-Browser-Plugin.
Eulogies, which were written and published on the occasion of birthdays, baptism, wedding, inauguration, anniversaries or death, form a unique biographic source. Printed funeral sermons for aristocrats, citizens and dignitaries were very popular in the Protestant cultural area between 1550 and 1750. They usually contain names, dates, places, relatives, life histories, and sometimes also information about the following generations.
The Research Centre for Personnel Writings at the Philipps University Marburg has made this source accessible for online-use by providing bibliographical data such as: names of the deceased, the widows and the preachers, place names, dates of funerals and the publication of the sermon, etc.
Picture: Title page of the funeral sermon for Samuel Sultze from Naumburg, Title Page Catalogue of Funural Sermons and other Personal Writings of the University Library Wroclaw/Breslau, Sign. 421542
Discovery of America. - Copper engraving, 65 x 101 mm. In: Der Mensch von Anbeginn bis auf unsre Zeiten / Hempel, Friedrich Wilhelm. - Leipzig, 1809 = [1809]. - S. 174/175, Pictura Paedagogica Online, Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung, IDN=b0014875berl
The image database Pictura Paedagogica - a co-operation between the Library for Research of Educational History (BBF), Berlin and the Institute for Applied Educational Science and General Didactics at the University of Hildesheim, provides access to illustrations from children’s and schoolbooks, bibles and atlases, postcards and magazines of the 15th-20th century.
Woodcuts, copper- and steel-engravings, also photographs can be searched by title, names, subjects or by time chart. In addition to a free working-copy of the picture (an image with a resolution of 75 dpi) it is possible to order a high-quality reproduction.
Wikisource like Wikipedia is an on-line project of the Wikimedia Foundation which is based on the MediaWiki-Software. Texts, pictures, audio recordings stored and jointly edited there are free of copyright, either because this has expired or because the text has been released under a free license. Wikisource is splitted up into language domains, e.g. English, German, French, Hebrew (ויקיטקסט), Polish (Wikiźródła) and Russian (Викитека).
The Illustration above depicting medieval Rome is from the Nuremberg Chronicle, a current project of German Wikisource.
Eulogies, which were written and published on the occasion of birthdays, baptism, wedding, inauguration, anniversaries or death, form a unique biographic source. Printed funeral sermons for aristocrats, citizens and dignitaries were very popular in the Protestant cultural area between 1550 and 1750. They usually contain names, dates, places, relatives, life histories, and sometimes also information about the following generations.
