Spines of early prints at Thurn und Taxis Hofbibliothek Regensburg (Foto: A. Genest)
Published annually from 1785 onwards until 1944 by Justus Perthes Publishing House in Gotha the Almanach de Gotha (Gothaischer genealogischer Hofkalender) was regarded as an authority in the classification of monarchies, ducal houses, families of former rulers, and royalty. The serial was revived in 1951 by Starke Publishing in Limburg (Western Germany) as Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels (GHdA). Rambow Genealogie provides a well-structured overview of digitized volumes that are available online free of charge: http://www.rambow.de/adelslexika.html
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.
A new virtual academic bookstore/library has been founded: The platform, called PaperC.de, provides free access to academic texts and can be searched by key word, author, title or ISBN. Users can pay extra for certain services, like copying and pasting, printing pages, or marking certain passages. Those who purchase the publisher’s print editions have the opportunity to download and work with the online edition free of charge.
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
Knie, Johann Georg, Alphabetisch-Statistisch-Topographische Uebersicht aller Dörfer, Flecken, Städte und andern Orte der Königl. Preuß. Provinz Schlesien, mit Einschluß des ganzen jetzt zur Provinz gehörenden Markgrafthums Ober-Lausitz, und der Grafschaft Glatz: nebst beigefügter Nachweisung von der Eintheilung des Landes nach den verschiedenen Zweigen der Civil-Verwaltung, Breslau 1830
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.
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.
Litlink: preview to version 3.0
As the quantity of software for managing bibliographical references and information increased during the past years the range of products makes it necessary to define criteria for choosing one or the other. These criteria are for example the variety of import and export file formats, citation styles, options to manage many different information in a complex software structure, usability, database connectivity, good net binding, and last but not least independence from the Internet.
Individual needs play a substantial role in the choice of a software. Therefore it is important to figure them out clearly and to test different programs. The free software “Litlink” has been developed especially for the requirements of historians. It combines facilities for managing bibliographical references relating them to articles, reviews, photographs etc with those ones that are necessary to administerate archival materials and references. Litlink is a multi-dimensional slip box that offers almost unlimited linkage possibilities.
The Deutsches Wörterbuch (”German dictionary”) is still considered the standard reference for German etymology. It was started by the Grimm Brothers in 1838 and the first major step in creating a standardized German language since Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible to German.
When the project finally was finished in 1961, the dictionary contains 32 volumes and includes about 350,000 main entries.
Editions: Grimm, Jacob / Grimm, Wilhelm: Deutsches Wörterbuch
- original: Hirzel, ISBN 978-3-7401-0000-1, 4990 €
- paperback reprint: dtv, ISBN 978-3-423-59045-7, 499 €
- CD-ROM: Zweitausendeins, ISBN 978-3-86150-639-3, 49,90 €
- online: Universität Trier, DBW-Online, free
Current results in scientific research are particularly published and discussed in journals and anthologies.
Online catalogs of libraries very often do not contain bibliographical references to articles. The latter can be found in databases related to specific fields of research.
These databases mostly are not available online, but Litdok provided by the Herder-Institut Marburg is. Litdok contains bibliographical references to articles on the history of East Central Europe. A user interface
with the possibility to choose between ten languages and multilingual subject headings offer a comfortable search for literature in different languages.
The Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy offers reproductions of maps of the eastern regions that belong to Germany before 1918. Topograhic maps (1: 25 000,
1: 100 000) as well as general maps of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia (1: 300 000) can be purchased online.
The data base “historical place names” provides information about various different names of villages and cities in the past and about the affiliation of the settlements to administrative districts.
