Germany's Historical Sources in the Middle Ages up to the Middle of the Thirteenth Century

Wattenbach, Wilhelm, 1819-1897Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.2
Word count
1.3M words
Chapters
131

Tags

Foreign Language Books Historical ClassicsWorld History Historical ReappraisalGerman HistorySource ResearchAcademic MonographAcademic StudyManuscript StudiesTextual ResearchMiddle AgesChurch HistorySocial Observation

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter bis zur Mitte des dreizehntenAuthor: Wattenbach, Wilhelm, 1819-1897,Language: German, Class: DD: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Germany, Release Date: Jun 20, 2017

Editor's review

This is a classic reference work on the study of medieval German historical sources; its author, Wilhelm Wattenbach, systematically surveys the sources for German history up to the mid-thirteenth century. Its value lies not in narrative history but in identifying for researchers the nature, date and reliability of primary materials, making it an essential gateway into the field of medieval German history. A bibliographical work written in German, it embodies the rigorous tradition of nineteenth-century empirical historiography, with clear entries and meticulous textual criticism. Reading it requires some German and a foundation in medieval history; it is suited as a desk reference for thesis writing or specialized research rather than as a book to read straight through. This electronic edition comes from Project Gutenberg and is convenient for searching and excerpting, but lacks the overall feel of browsing the print volume; it is best used alongside the relevant primary sources.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the introduction and table of contents first to understand the book's organization, then consult chapters by research topic.
  2. Read alongside specific primary sources or modern critical editions, rather than merely memorizing titles without engaging the content.
  3. Keep a notebook recording the date, author and edition of key sources for later reference.
  4. Given the abundance of German terminology, keep a specialized German dictionary for history at hand and set aside difficult entries for later close reading.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

Is this a general history of Germany? No. It is a bibliographical work on historical sources, focused on introducing and verifying the provenance, dating and value of medieval German historical documents rather than narrating historical events. Readers use it to locate primary materials and then read the sources themselves to learn the facts.
Can it be read without any German? The original is written in German, with terminology and titles largely in German; reading it without any German would be extremely difficult. Some German reading ability is advisable, or translation tools may assist with lookups, though the details of textual criticism would still be hard to grasp fully.
How is the electronic edition best used? The electronic edition is convenient for full-text searching and excerpting source entries, making it a handy research tool for quick verification. Bibliographical works, however, often require cross-referencing back and forth; reading on a computer or tablet and organizing search results with note-taking software is recommended.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Wattenbach, Wilhelm, 1819-1897 Author

Wilhelm Wattenbach (1819-1897) was a German historian of the Middle Ages, known for compiling and critically examining sources for medieval German history. His representative work, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter bis zur Mitte des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (Sources of German History in the Middle Ages up to the Mid-Thirteenth Century), systematically surveys the origins, authors, and transmission of historical writing in German lands up to the mid-thirteenth century, and remains an important reference work for the study of medieval historiography and German history. Because public information is limited, details of his life, appointments, and honors cannot be verified here; this introduction therefore focuses on the scholarly profile indicated by the work recorded in the library's holdings. He emphasized the critical analysis of primary sources and the tracing of historical provenance, and his writing is notable for its empirical and catalog-like rigor. The book has long been consulted by scholars of European medieval history and has had a lasting influence on the development of source studies.