Carnival, dancing and masks: The Nuremberg Schembartlauf 1449–1539 (The Nuremberg Schembartlauf – digital)

• Applicants: Dr. Jochen Apel; Professor Dr. Daniel Hess
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; Early Modern History ; Art History ; Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 573612555

Performed from 1449 to 1539 and famous far beyond the city limits, the Nuremberg Schembartlauf was considered the highlight of the carnival celebrations. Spectators came from near and far to watch the parade. To the amusement of the population, masked participants ran through the city's alleys and set off fireworks. As the central event of an urban festival, the Schembartlauf, like its documentation in the Schembart books and their later tradition, served to represent urban society and, above all, the important families of Nuremberg. According to current research, the Schembartläufe have been preserved in 128 mostly richly illustrated manuscripts and on 23 individual sheets (created between approx. 1525 and 1750). Most of it is kept in public institutions in the Nuremberg metropolitan region, with the entire collection distributed among around 40 institutions worldwide. The project, jointly proposed by the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, and Heidelberg University Library, aims to produce an innovative digital text and image edition of the Schembartlauf tradition. The Heidelberg University Library is responsible for all phases of the edition within the framework of its heiEDITIONS infrastructure: from data storage to the use of eScriptorium for text recognition and transcription, TEI XML modelling, XML processing including standard data enrichment and visualisation, and long-term data publication in accordance with the FAIR principles. The detailed art-historical cataloguing of more than 4,000 illustrations will enable direct comparisons of the culturally and art-historically significant pictorial tradition. Since none of the manuscripts produced over a period of 200 years are dated, the 28 Schembart books in the GNM collection will be subjected to watermark analysis in order to establish a more reliable basis for dating. In addition to the Schembart books themselves, relevant contemporary municipal legal and administrative sources will be integrated into the edition as important and reliable sources on the festival. The Schembart project thus aims to lay the groundwork and make a decisive contribution to finding reliable answers to further questions, e.g. about costumes in the late Middle Ages, the actual significance of the Schembart books, or the connection to local carnival plays. Motif borrowing, common roots in customs, and the examination of urban law and order offer initial points of reference here. Some sources are already available online as digital facsimiles via the new portal 'Der Nürnberger Schembartlauf'. The aim is to make the sources comprehensively available in synoptic form and to provide codicological, textual and pictorial analysis, thereby placing academic research into the chronicle Schembart books on a more solid footing in the future.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Co-Investigators: Dr. Maria Effinger; Dr. Johannes Pommeranz