Historical Commission at the
Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities
The
Commission's
brief is to "publish source material and accounts of
German history", and for more than 150 years it has produced more than
650
volumes and thus made a major contribution to basic research into
history. As well as the traditional medium of the book, it is
increasingly making use of the
Internet.
Its
members
are leading historians from Germany, Austria and Switzerland (currently
41;
since
1858:
184). The Commission's
publication
and
research
projects range from the Middle Ages to contemporary history and
include political, economic and social history as well as the history
of civilisation and scholarship. The European context is also taken
into consideration in a variety of ways.
Every
year,
at the start of March, the
members
of the Commission meet in the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and
Humanities for their annual session to review the work of the previous
year and to discuss the future. At this annual session fundamental
decisions are made concerning new research projects and new members are
elected.
- The research
programme of the Historical
Commission
has been considerably expanded in the last few years, not least because
it has been possible to obtain outside funding; it currently focuses on
the following:
- Research into the Holy
Roman Empire of the German Nation, above all the editing of the Deutsche
Reichstagsakten (Documents of the Imperial German Diet) in four
series from the late Middle Ages to the Everlasting Diet of 1663
- Creating a central
source base for history of universities and scholarship by establishing
a prosopographic data base, accessible on the Internet, of the "learned
graduates" of the Old Empire (Repertorium Academicum Germanicum) in the period
from 1250 to 1550
- Research into the
political and social history of Germany in the 19th century, in
particular into the attempts at reform in the early years (Quellen zu den Reformen in den
Rheinbundstaaten
[Sources concerning reforms in the states in the Confederation of the
Rhine], for Bavaria Protokolle des Bayerischen
Staatsrats 1799–1817
[Minutes of the Bavarian State Council 1799–1817]) and into the Deutscher Bund (the German
Confederation) (1815–1866)
- Editions focussing on
scientific correspondence and the First World War (most recently,
amongst others the Kriegstagebuch
von Karl
Hampe 1914–1919
(Karl Hampe's war diary, 1914–1919) and Kaiser Wilhelm II. als Oberster
Kriegsherr im Ersten Weltkrieg. Quellen aus der militärischen
Umgebung des Kaisers 1914–1918
(Emperor Wilhelm II as supreme military commander in the First World
War. Sources from the Emperor’s military entourage, 1914–1918) in the
series Deutsche
Geschichtsquellen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts
(19th and 20th century German historical sources)
- Gesamtausgabe des Briefwechsels Leopold von
Rankes
(Collected edition of Leopold von Ranke’s correspondence), the first
publication of the entire correspondence (1813–1886) of the historian,
a theorist of scholarship who founded the subject and the
historical-critical method and is a central figure in the history of
scholarship in the 19th century
- The database project Rektoratsreden 1810–1968/69
an deutschen und Schweizer Universitäten und technischen
Hochschulen
(Rectoral adresses at German and Swiss universities 1810–1968/69)
- Editions concerning
contemporary history: publishing the Akten der Reichskanzlei. Regierung
Hitler 1933–1945 (Documents of the Reich Chancellery. Hitler's
Cabinet 1933–1945) and the Protokolle
des Bayerischen
Ministerrats 1945–1954
(Minutes of the Bavarian Council of Ministers 1945–1954) (in
collaboration with the Bundesarchiv
respectively the Office of
the General Director of
the
Bavarian State Archives)
- Digitalising the Akten der Reichskanzlei. Weimarer Republic
(Documents of the Reich Chancellery. Weimar Republic), which were
published in 23 volumes between 1968 and 1990 (similarly in
collaboration with the Bundesarchiv)
- Publishing the Neue
Deutsche Biographie
(NDB) (New German Biography), the central biographical dictionary
for the history of the German cultural area, covering all sectors of
public life – politics and the state, the economy and society, the
church, knowledge and the humanities – from the beginnings to the
present day. Since January 2008 the project "NDB/ADB-online",
financed by the DFG,
has
been in operation whose aim is to digitalise the c. 46,300 articles
of volumes 1–22 of the NDB (arranged alphabetically as far as the entry
on Karl
Friedrich
Schinkel, now as far as Maria
Stader)
and its predecessor, the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie
(Universal German Biography) (ADB; 56 volumes, 1875–1912). As a first
step the "images" of the articles are available online www.deutsche-biographie.de
(source: BSB). Since 2010 www.deutsche-biographie.de
enables an efficient and comfortably access the texts themselves.
- Assisting the coming
generation of academics by means of the Commission's research as well
as by publishing outstanding works (principally doctoral and
professorial dissertations) in the Schriftenreihe der
Historischen Kommission
(Series of the Historical Commission)
Copyright (C) 1997-2016 Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen
Akademie
der Wissenschaften, Neue Deutsche Biographie, Alfons-Goppel-Str. 11, D
- 80539 München.