Colophons in medieval German manuscripts

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Margit Dahm; Professor Dr. Timo Felber
• Subject Area: German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature)
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 449436113

The project aims a systematical collection and investigation of colophons in the German manuscripts of the Middle Ages. Colophons, therefore notes of the scribes which are mostly found at the end of manuscripts respectively of the contained texts, can contain several information on the origin of the codex; above all the name of the scribe as well as place and date of production. Besides this pragmatic information, colophons often contain different forms of commenting on the process of writing, the written text, the used templates or on the scribe himself. With these comments and reflections, colophons are not only a specific form of paratext, they are also media of literary commenting and one of the few sources that allow conclusions on the text comprehension and the self-conception of medieval scribes.Up to the present, in German studies a documentation of the colophon-inventory in medieval German manuscripts as well as research works dealing extensively with the meaningfulness of colophons for the medieval scribes and the production conditions of medieval manuscripts, are research desiderata. The project aims to collect and evaluate the colophons of a significant part of the German manuscript-heritage from the 12th to the 15th century. For this purpose, a systematical research for colophon-containing manuscripts in the catalogues of central libraries is planned. The transcripts of the colophons and the meta-data of the respective manuscripts will be pooled in a digital data-collection using a structured data collection schema.Furthermore, the individual records are equipped via preconfigured options menus with several information and typifications, for example on the contents of the colophon-texts or on the types of texts in the individual codices. The data collection will be freely disposable in open access. A web application with specifically tailored evaluation features, including content-related evaluation possibilities, enables the request and statistical analysis of various quantitative as well as qualitative parameters. On the basis of the recorded data, for example discrepancies in the frequency or the contents of colophons between different literary genres can be evaluated and interpreted. Synchronic as well as diachronic questions can be pursued, for example the development of the relative frequency of the colophon-inventory, in total or in selected corpora, can be evaluated. At the same time, the data collection shall be the base for an extensive analysis of the text type colophon which shall be captured in its specific patterns and conventions as well as in its genesis and diachronic transformations.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants