The German letter in the 18th century

Cooperation project by the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies at the University of Halle, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the Darmstadt University and State Library

The multi-stage project aims to establish a cooperative network, create a representative digital collection of letter data and texts, and to set up a portal. Letters from the 18th century that originated or were sent within in the German-speaking world are to be considered for the body. This potentially includes every language, with German, Latin and French predominating. The letters are to be made accessible by means of metadata, digital image copies and full texts.

The aim of the first project phase is to create a reliable body and a data set. This is intended to furnish the research with a reliable data basis by integrating the scattered and previously non-homogenised data. Existing infrastructures such as the web service correspSearch are to be used to create a comprehensive data collection and information portal for a participatory letter identification system that supports the digital humanities.

The collection of the letter metadata and provision of digital images and full texts are to be undertaken at ULB Darmstadt as part of the subproject.

The project is funded by the German Research Foundation in the program “Digitisation and Indexing”.