Johann Friedrich Blumenbach - Online

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach - Online
category Research project
period 2010–
carrier Academy of Sciences in Göttingen
Location Goettingen , Germany
Homepage www.blumenbach-online.de

The Johann Friedrich Blumenbach - Online project is an edition project of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . The aim of the project is a digital edition of the publications and scientific collections of the Göttingen natural scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840).

History and structure of the project

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach: Handbook of natural history . 6th edition, 1799. Blumenbach's handbook was a standard work for naturalists across Europe around 1800.

The project is part of the academies program of the Union of German Academies of Sciences , the largest humanities research program in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is designed to run for 15 years and began its work in January 2010. It is conceived as a cooperation between three main institutional partners: the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, the Georg-August University of Göttingen - in particular as the owner of the Blumenbach collections of natural history objects -, and the Göttingen State and University Library (SUB Göttingen) as the repository for the vast majority of written Blumenbachiana and as a partner in the development of modern research and information infrastructures. The Göttingen Digitization Center (GDZ) located at the library is also involved . The project is based in Göttingen.

Subject and objective of the project

The project Johann Friedrich Blumenbach - Online processes the publications and the natural history collections of the Göttingen naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840). The aim is a digital edition of his works and the objects in the collection. The project includes a digital new edition of Blumenbach's original texts along with their translations and subsequent editions, a reconstruction of his collection of natural history objects, the linking of digitized texts and objects through hyperlinks, the indexing of Blumenbach's correspondence and biographical studies on Blumenbach. It thus makes a contribution to the development of the primary sources of the cultural history of the Late Enlightenment and Romanticism. This is particularly significant in view of the emergence of modern natural sciences in this epoch.

Historical background

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Copper engraving by Johann Daniel Laurens (1804) after a painting by Johann Werner Kobolt (1793).

The scientific work of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach belongs to the context of the scientific upheavals of the time between the middle of the 18th and the middle of the 19th century. Comparable to the Copernican turn three hundred years earlier, these upheavals in the bio and geosciences reduced the relative importance of human existence. While early modern astronomy did this with regard to space, the temporal dimension of existence was discussed in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was about what Wolf Lepenies called “the end of natural history”, i.e. the transition from a static, atemporal natural history to a temporalized history of nature. It was recognized that the history of the earth also encompasses a prehistoric phase, and that the geological age of the earth, which is estimated to be higher and higher, was far beyond the biblical chronology. a. advancing the secularization of the earth and life sciences.

Working method and goal setting

High-resolution color digital copies (digital facsimiles) and electronic text versions, so-called "full texts", are created from all of Blumenbach's publications. The full texts can be searched and analyzed with computer programs and contain coded additional information (structure markings in document format TEI P5 Best Practice Level 3; semantic markings according to TEI P5 Best Practice Level 5). These codes, which are not visible to the reader, support digital tools for analyzing the text.

The approx. 5,000 objects in the collection that have been preserved from Blumenbach's time are documented in a database (2D and 3D images), scientifically identified and made accessible in terms of the history of science. B. by determining the location, donor or time of collection receipt.

An online portal with digital tools for searching, comparing and analyzing the material will be created for the use of the full texts and the database of the collection objects. Since 2018, preliminary, searchable text versions of Blumenbach's publications and extensive accompanying material have been available on the project's website (complete bibliography; directory of contemporary reviews of the most important monographs of Blumenbach; biographical information; thematically structured bibliography of research literature on Blumenbach; directories of correspondence, lecture announcements and student lecture notes) available.

literature

  • Martina Kerzel, Mike Reich, Heiko Weber: The edition "Johann Friedrich Blumenbach - online" of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. In: Heike Neuroth, Norbert Lossau, Andrea Rapp (eds.): Evolution of the information infrastructure. Cooperation between library and science. Glückstadt: vwh Verlag / Göttingen: Universitätsverlag 2013, ISBN 978-3-86488-043-8 , pp. 107-136 ( researchgate.net PDF).
  • Claudia Kroke: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Bibliography of his writings (= writings on the history of the University of Göttingen. Volume 2). With the collaboration of Wolfgang Böker and Reimer Eck. Universitäts-Verlag, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-941875-64-7 ( rep.adw-goe.de PDF).
  • Gerhard Lauer , Heiko Weber: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach - Online. In: Nicolaas Rupke , Gerhard Lauer (ed.): Johann Friedrich Blumenbach: Race and Natural History, 1750-1850. Routledge, London 2019, ISBN 978-1-138-73842-3 .
  • Martin Liebetruth: Digitize Blumenbach. Insights into the digitization workshop. In: Heike Neuroth, Andrea Rapp, Sibylle Söring (eds.): TextGrid: From the community - for the community. Werner Hülsbusch Verlag, Glückstadt 2015, doi: 10.3249 / webdoc-3947 , ISBN 978-3-86488-077-3 , pp. 57-62.
  • Mike Reich, Annina Böhme, Lea Dagmar Numberger-Thuy: "Preziosen Any Color" - Object digitization of the natural history collections by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840). In: Philippia. 15 (2), 2012, pp. 153-168, ISSN  0343-7620 ( PDF on ZOBODAT ).
  • Nicolaas Rupke , Wolfgang Böker: The observation of nature from the perspective of Blumenbach - the legacy of the greatest Göttingen collector is digitized. In: Georgia Augusta. Science magazine of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen 8 (2012), pp. 84–90, ISSN  0016-8157 ( uni-goettingen.de ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolf Lepenies: The end of natural history. Change of cultural self-evident in the sciences of the 18th and 19th centuries. Munich 1976.