Cataloguing and digitization of the early modern german manuscripts of the former Fürstlich Fürstenbergische Hofbibliothek of Donaueschingen kept at the Wuerttembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart

• Applicant: Dr. Rupert Schaab
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics ; Protestant Theology ; Early Modern History ; Roman Catholic Theology ; History of Science
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 533849937

In 1993, the state of Baden-Württemberg acquired the manuscript collection of the Fürstlich Fürstenbergische Hofbibliothek in Donaueschingen. The extensive holdings were distributed to the state libraries in Baden (Karlsruhe) and Württemberg (Stuttgart) primarily according to linguistic criteria. Since then, the medieval textual witnesses in German and their later copies have been kept at the BLB in Karlsruhe. Approximately 330 German manuscript volumes from the 16th - 19th centuries as well as the remaining manuscripts in languages such as Latin, French and Italian from the Middle Ages to the end of the 19th century were transferred to the WLB Stuttgart. In the project applied for here, the 161 German-language manuscripts from the 16th and 17th centuries are to be catalogued and digitized first. The selected holdings include richly illuminated pieces such as the Zimmernsche Chronik as well as lesser-known textual witnesses from various fields, including linguistic-historical outlines, devotional literature, legal and medical texts, and chronicles. Although these manuscripts are included in Karl August Barack's catalog published in Tübingen in 1865 under the title "Die Handschriften der Fürstlich-Fürstenbergischen Hofbibliothek zu Donaueschingen," the descriptions do not correspond to the current state of research or to today's scholarly standards. The division of the manuscripts into two locations, based on linguistic and chronological aspects, has meant that historically evolved provenance connections have been torn apart in certain places. With the cataloguing and digitization of the Stuttgart inventory segment, a virtual synopsis with the medieval German-language manuscripts stored in Karlsruhe will be possible, the processing and digitization of which has already been largely completed. The comprehensive research of these spatially separated sub-collections will thus be facilitated many times over.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)