Digital Edition of Max Brod’s Diaries

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Sandra Richter, since 11/2023; Professorin Dr. Alice Staskova
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 514496747

The primary aim of the project is to generate a comprehensive, open access digital edition of Max Brod’s personal diaries. In 2019, following a long legal battle, Brod's literary estate (Nachlass) has been handed down to the National Library of Israel (NLI) in Jerusalem, thus paving the way to its well overdue publication. The Nachlass contains unpublished manuscripts spanning decades, from 1909 until the author’s death in 1968, including personal notes, travel diaries, and diary excerpts. The projected digital edition will thus grant scholars and other interested parties full access to valuable materials such as facsimiles, precise transcriptions of manuscripts, text encoding with XML/TEI, as well as to thoroughly researched glossaries and commentaries. The excerpts from Brod’s diaries written between 1913-1924, for example, are significant not only because they are all that remains from Brod’s diaries dating from this period (as the complete diaries were left back in Prague when Brod immigrated to Palestine, and later destroyed during the Nazi occupation), but also because they were pertinent to his work on Kafka’s biography, and indeed partly based on the latter’s own personal diaries. As such, they are able to shed new light on both of these giant cultural icons. The Brod Edition will be hosted by the ‘EdView-Portal’, developed and maintained by the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach (DLA). Using the advanced search tools facilitated by the EdView-TEI schema, which has been specifically designed for this platform and successfully implemented in the digital edition of Harry Graf Kessler's diaries, Brod’s Diaries Edition will be searchable platform wide and across different types of texts, formats, and archival collections. This would allow researchers, for example, to generate cross-references between excerpts of Brod’s diaries and other platform-based collections, such as Brod's private correspondences (scheduled for publication at a later date) or the ‘personal writings’ of other authors. The project represents a major contribution to ‘histoire croisée’ research approaches and indeed enhances our ability to engage with historical-cultural networks that transcend the individual author’s work. It allows us to examine themes pertaining to the poetics of culture, and the histories and discourses of exile in fresh and creative ways. Moreover, employing standards such as XML/TEI, Integrated Authority File (GND) and geodata, the digital Brod edition embodies the principle of interconnectivity that lies at the heart of Max Brod's work as an important figure of cultural mediation and enabling.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Israel
• Cooperation Partner: Privatdozent Dr. Stefan Litt
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Roland S. Kamzelak, until 11/2023 (†)