Indexing and Digitisation of the Baron von Hüpsch Collection

The relevance to scholarship of this internationally well connected 18th-century collector, physician, scientist, Enlightenment philosopher, reformer and polymath made him a key figure in his native Cologne in the latter part of the century, or, more precisely, during the Sattelzeit.

As part of the research project focusing on von Hüpsch as a collector, doctor and proponent of the Enlightenment, the digitisation of the Hüpsch literary estate has been completed as of December 2021 and approximately 95% of it has been indexed in the Kalliope estate database.

The holding have been structured as follows:

• Life documents
• Work manuscripts
• Correspondence
• Collections
• Hüpsch as a doctor
• Documents concerning Simon von Geldern
• Printed matter
• Damaged and disordered papers and letters

The currently approximately 2,350 units of description in Kalliopeas well as the approximately 20,000 digitised items in the Digital Collections of the ULB Darmstadt form the authoritative and indispensable basis for all subsequent research work based on these materials.

Apart from that, digital indexing of the collection, based on the latest concepts of the digital humanities, will ultimately permit innovative methods of access to this important and hitherto neglected collector from Cologne.