Diplomatic apparatus of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

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Certificate of King Lothar III. for Riechenberg 1129 (app. dipl. Goett. 25)

The Diplomatic Apparatus (Apparatus diplomaticus) is a scientific institution of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen , whose beginnings go back to the 18th century . It includes over 1500 written documents from late antiquity , medieval and modern Europe as well as the Asian region. The documents are written in different historical levels of Latin , German , Ancient Greek , Hebrew , Arabic , Persian , Turkish , Coptic , Tamil and Sinhala . The Göttingen Diplomatic Apparatus is the largest collection of originals that is available and in use at a German university for teaching basic historical sciences , in particular diplomatics and palaeography .

Surname

The designation diplomatic apparatus is derived from the scientific document theory (diplomatics) and the technical term apparatus for a compilation of auxiliary and teaching materials in the academic field. Up to the beginning of the 19th century, “diplomatic” also described the practical application of knowledge of document theory by constitutional lawyers and administrative officials, since many medieval documents (diplomas) were valid legal titles well into the 19th century.

history

Johann Christoph Gatterer (1727–1799)

At the Reform University of Göttingen, founded in 1735, Johann David Koehler (1684–1755) also gave lectures on the “Doctrina diplomatica” as a professor of history. His successor, Johann Christoph Gatterer (1727–1799), who was appointed Professor of Philosophy and History in 1759 , placed his main focus on the historical auxiliary sciences (this term has been used in Göttingen since 1765), whereby diplomatics and the associated "diplomatic literacy" (Paleography) were at the center. Gatterer brought his own "Diplomatic Cabinet" with him to the university, a collection of documents that he continuously expanded in the course of his teaching in Göttingen. He was also given documents from the royal and electoral archives in Hanover for teaching purposes. Gatterer left his "Diplomatic Cabinet" to his son Christoph Wilhelm Jacob Gatterer (1759–1838), who taught as a professor in Heidelberg. It forms the basis of the so-called “ Gatterer apparatus ”, some of which has been in the Speyer State Archives since 1997 .

Gatterer's successor, the lawyer Carl Traugott Gottlob Schönemann (1765-1802), put on a new teaching collection, which the government in Hanover acquired in 1802 from Schönemann's estate for the University of Göttingen on the recommendation of the university board of trustees. The collection consisted of 66 original documents from the 13th to 17th centuries, including 12 papal documents, most of which came from the Göttingen area and the St. Cyriacus Monastery in Brunswick . In addition, there were parchment fragments, paper documents, letters, late medieval manuscripts, copperplate engravings and a collection of seals . To this day it forms the basis of the diplomatic apparatus, which was later expanded through further acquisitions and donations to Göttingen professors.

Thomas Christian Tychsen (1758–1834) took the opportunity to requisition several hundred documents for the diplomatic apparatus after the abolition of the monasteries and monasteries in the Kingdom of Westphalia in 1810 , which, however, had to be restituted after 1815 with the exception of a few copies. From Tychsen's estate, 72 medieval documents, including those from the Abdinghof monastery in Paderborn , and the psaltery (app. Dipl. Goett. 2 E) were transferred to the diplomatic apparatus .

Medieval Psaltery (App. Dipl. Goett. 2 E, fol. 7v-8r)

Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) taught diplomacy from 1835 until his relegation from the university in 1837 and bequeathed individual fragments of manuscripts from his private collection to the collection. Adolph Friedrich Heinrich Schaumann (1809–1882) created the lithographic "Göttingen writing tablets", which were widely used as a palaeographic aid in teaching at German universities. He granted more than 150 documents from the 12th to 16th centuries from the former Augustinian canons of Riechenberg near Goslar , which had been stored in the university library until then, unregistered . Also included in the diplomatic apparatus were documents from the estate of the Göttingen judiciary Friedrich Christian Bergmann (1785–1845). Further acquisitions were made under Wilhelm Konrad Hermann Müller (1812–1890), but in 1851 two documents from Heinrich the Lion from the Riechenberg holdings had to be assigned to the Royal Archives in Hanover . Ernst Steindorff (1839–1895) acquired twelve Venetian documents for the diplomatic apparatus in 1884 and set up an extensive reference library with the most important palaeographic and diplomatic table works. Paul Fridolin Kehr (1860–1944) expanded this to include rare table works from early papal documents, as his project of the Regesta Pontificum Romanorum was at times closely linked to the diplomatic apparatus. In 1906 ten papal documents and seven notarial instruments from the former Cistercian monastery Brondolo in Veneto from the 13th century were added from the collection of the Berlin banker Alexander Meyer Cohn (1853–1904) via the Prussian government . In 1923, Wilhelm Meyer (1845–1917), from Göttingen, gave 273 primarily modern documents of Italian and German origins, including 35 papal documents from the 16th to 19th centuries. Since then, only a few individual items have been added to the collection, including one of the oldest original consecration certificates from 1275 for the Werden an der Ruhr monastery (app. Dipl. Goett. Urk. 496).

Seal of Bishop Adelog of Hildesheim 1178 (App. Dipl. Goett. 64)

In 1926, the Göttingen library councilor Alfred Hessel (1877–1939) received an honorary professor for teaching historical auxiliary sciences. He was removed from office in 1935 because of his Jewish descent and was forced into retirement. The library of the diplomatic apparatus was outsourced during the Second World War, with considerable losses in September 1945. In 2007, the Diplomatic Apparatus, which had had the additional designation "Institute for Historical Auxiliary Sciences" since 1967, was dissolved as an "operating unit" of the Philosophical Faculty. Since then it has been administered by the Department of Medieval and Modern History and directed by Hedwig Röckelein , Professor of Medieval and Modern History in Göttingen since 1999. In 2012, the Diplomatic Apparatus moved into the newly established Cultural Studies Center (KWZ) of the Georg-August University in Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14. The last 10 years have been dedicated to the conservation and digitization of the holdings of the Diplomatic Apparatus. In 2013 the documents, manuscripts and fragments were completely digitized and made available online via Monasterium.net , and in 2016 the original seals were digitized.

Head of the diplomatic apparatus since 1759

Deed of consecration for the Werden an der Ruhr monastery in 1275 (App. Dipl. Goett. 496)
1759-1799 Johann Christoph Gatterer
1799-1802 Carl Traugott Gottlob Schönemann
1802-1834 Thomas Christian Tychsen
1835-1837 Jacob Grimm
1840-1847 Adolph Friedrich Heinrich Schaumann
1847-1874 Wilhelm Konrad Hermann Müller
1874-1895 Ernst Steindorff
1891-1913 Wilhelm Meyer (Co-Director)
1895-1903 Paul Fridolin Kehr
1908-1936 / 45 Karl Brandi
1924-1935 Alfred Hessel (co-director)
1939-1940 Hans-Walter Klewitz
1945-1949 Leonid Arbusov
1949-1963 Percy Ernst Schramm
1964 Hermann Heimpel
1964-1976 Hans Goetting
1977-1997 Matthias Thiel
1997-2007 Wolfgang Petke
Since 2007 Hedwig Röckelein

Stocks

Donation document from Bishop Konrad for the Halberstadt Cathedral 1208 (app. Dipl. Goett. 78)

In September 2017, the diplomatic apparatus comprised 960 documents (the oldest from the 11th century), 548 fragments of parchment and paper (the oldest from the 9th century) and four codices . He also owns a wax tablet , two palm leaf manuscripts and several papyri . The seal collection includes 67 loose original seals, 144 seal casts and a collection of early modern letter seals. The latter is supplemented by a loan from the Göttingen City Museum , consisting of an extensive collection of letter seals from the 18th and 19th centuries. In addition to the originals, there is a large inventory of documentary and palaeographic table works as well as a special library of approx. 5700 volumes and six current journals.

Papyrus fragment of a dictionary from the 6th century (App. Dipl. Goett. 8 C)

The stock of documents includes 13 medieval royal documents and 32 medieval papal documents. The oldest genuine document is a diploma from 1129, issued by King Lothar III. for the Augustinian Canons of Riechenberg (App. dipl. Goett. Urk. 25). App. dipl. God. Document 78, a donation document from Bishop Konrad von Krosigk for the Halberstadt Cathedral from 1208. It has been shown there in a video show since 2008 as the 'founding document' of the Halberstadt Cathedral Treasury. The device has 125 documents on the history of the city of Göttingen, dating from the 14th to the 18th century.

Fragment of Master Eckhart's sermons from the first quarter of the 14th century (app. Dipl. Goett. 10 E IX, 18)

Most of the collection of fragments originated from finds during the rebinding of older books in the Göttingen university library. Most of the fragments are still undeveloped. Among them are some cinnamon trees . From the holdings of the University of Helmstedt, which was dissolved in 1810, two papyrus fragments (app. Dipl. Goett. 8 C) came into the diplomatic apparatus, which were labeled with a Greek-Latin dictionary in the 6th century. Another papyrus fragment (app. Dipl. Goett. 8 B) was identified as a find from a mummy tomb near Thebes with the help of colleagues from the seminar for Egyptology and Coptic Studies in 2013; it originated around 1000 BC And contains an extract from an Egyptian book of the dead. The fragment App. dipl. God. 10 E IX, 18 was recognized a few years ago by Germanic colleagues as a remnant of a manuscript from the sermons of Meister Eckhart (around 1260–1328) (Sermon 5b after Quint), which was published in the first quarter of the 14th century - while the famous mystic was still alive - was written.

use

The holdings of the diplomatic apparatus can be used for teaching on request and viewed for research. The library is fully cataloged via the Göttingen University Catalog (GUK) and can be used as reference inventory in the departmental library of the Cultural Studies Center (BBK). The tables are secreted and can be borrowed for teaching on request.

literature

  • Hans Goetting : History of the Diplomatic Apparatus of the University of Göttingen. In: Archivalische Zeitschrift 65 (1969), pp. 11-46.
  • Mark Mersiowsky : Baroque collective pride, cabinets of rarities, flotsam of secularization or multimedia of the Enlightenment? Diplomatic-paleographic apparatus in the 18th and early 19th centuries. In: Erika Eisenlohr, Peter Worm (ed.): Works from the Marburg auxiliary science institute (= elementa diplomatica. Vol. 8). University Library, Marburg 2000, pp. 229–241.
  • Wolfgang Petke : From the history of the diplomatic apparatus. In: Göttinger Jahrbuch 50 (2002), pp. 123–148.
  • Hedwig Röckelein , Jörg Bölling: Diplomatic apparatus. In: Georg-August University of Göttingen (ed.): The collections, museums and gardens of the University of Göttingen. Universitätsverlag, Göttingen 2013, pp. 24-25 (English edition: Hedwig Röckelein, Jörg Bölling: Apparatus Diplomaticus. In: Georg-August-University Goettingen (ed.): The Collections, Museums and Gardens of Göttingen University , University Press, Göttingen 2015, pp. 24-25).
  • Hedwig Röckelein : On the digitization of university teaching collections. In: Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 149 (2013), pp. 171–184.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Petke: Alfred Hessel (1877-1939). Medievalist and librarian in Göttingen. In: Armin Kohnle, Frank Engelhausen (ed.): Between science and politics. Studies on German university history. Festschrift for Eike Wolgast. Steiner, Stuttgart 2001, pp. 387-414.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Petke: From the history of the diplomatic apparatus. In: Göttinger Jahrbuch. 50 (2002), pp. 132-140.
  3. ↑ Göttingen University Catalog (GUK)