Digital Editing at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH) - yesterday, today, tomorrow

by Dr Bernd Posselt

Tuesday Oct 22, 2024, 3:00 PM → 5:00 PM Europe/Berlin

Hybrid Event: Lecture Hall (Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory / online)

As a long-established institution for the study of medieval history, the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH) looks back on over two hundred years of source-oriented foundational work. Medieval text sources (historical works, charters, legal texts, etc.) are made accessible in critical editions and supplemented by search tools. Beginning with the first Scriptores volume, several hundred books have been published since 1826. Over the last three decades, digital approaches have transformed the field of editing, and they have increasingly influenced the methods and publications of the MGH. The projects and the tasks associated with them (such as retro-digitization, data modeling, database programming, and digital editions) are diverse and come with challenges. This lecture aims to provide insight into the digital side of the MGH, its current status, and also the open questions that remain.

Dr. Bernd Posselt works as a researcher at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Hisr research interests are topographical and historiographical literature of humanism as well as scholarly digital editions.