Klaus Graf (historian)

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Klaus Graf (2019)

Klaus Martin Graf (born February 21, 1958 in Schwäbisch Gmünd ) is a German mediaevalist and archivist . Graf gained a reputation beyond specialist circles through a controversial position on copyright in the use of cultural assets and as a proponent of Open Access .

Career

Graf, son of Herta Graf , studied history at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen , where he received his doctorate in 1987 with a dissertation on Thomas Lirer and the Gmünder Kaiserchronik , supervised by Hansmartin Decker-Hauff . After working at the Collaborative Research Center for Comparative Historical Urban Research in Münster and further training at the Marburg Archive School ( Assessor of the Archive Service 1989), he worked for a short time as an archivist in the university archive of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . He later worked as a research assistant at the Universities of Bielefeld and Freiburg .

Since 2004 he has been the managing director of the RWTH Aachen University Archives. He is also a lecturer at the Chair for Medieval History at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau and at the Early Modern Age teaching and research area at RWTH Aachen University .

Research priorities

Graf's research focuses on questions of regional and territorial identity formation (“regionalism”), especially Swabia , as well as aristocratic history, culture of remembrance and historiography . In addition, he deals with urban and regional history , with a special focus on Schwäbisch Gmünd and East Württemberg .

Further areas of work are the research of legends and the history of the witch hunt . He has published over 200 articles on these topics in specialist journals and edited volumes (almost all of which are available online). Graf also worked as an author on various specialist lexicons, such as the Lexicon of the Middle Ages , the Author's Lexicon , the Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales and the Encyclopedia of Modern Times . As an author, he wrote a large number of articles for the art chronicle .

In 2015 he published the discovery of a second manuscript of Jakob Püterich's letter of honor (1462) in the RWTH Aachen University's early modern blog . According to the Medieval Studies portal Mediaevum.de, this was "[v] probably the first time in the history of the humanities [that] such an important discovery [was] scientifically documented in a blog rather than in a journal".

Positions

Commitment to the protection and use of cultural assets

In addition to his historical research work, Graf is best known for his contributions to the management, use and protection of cultural property . For example, on image rights for historical photos, conditions of use for manuscript libraries or the protection of historical book collections in private ownership, especially in aristocratic libraries , as well as the related legal issues, especially in the area of archive law . Graf also tries to protect the holdings in the area of ​​public libraries and archives, for example in 2012 he protested against the sale of 6,000 volumes from the Stralsund City Archive's holdings that had been collected since the 16th century.

Copyright and right of use

In the wider public, Graf positioned himself as an advocate of Open Access, especially for cultural goods and free access to information in public administrations, especially in the context of the Freedom of Information Act . In this context he appears as a critic of the current copyright practice and of grievances in the German library system. Graf is an opponent of the reproduction fees of public archives and the practice of image source marketing in many archives and museums.

The historian is committed to using the possibilities of the Internet medium for modern historical and archival studies and operates his own information services, especially the Archivalia weblog ( ISSN 2197-7291 ). He is the co-founder and administrator of the Witch Research mailing list .  

Publications (selection)

Web links

Commons : Klaus Graf  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Klaus Graf: Fiction and History: The alleged chronicle of Wenzel Gruber, Greisenklage, Johann Holland's tournament rhymes and a second transmission of Jakob Püterich's letter of honor in the Trenbach Chronicle (1590) , in: Früheuzeit-Blog der RWTH from February 10, 2015 .
  2. ↑ New manuscript from Püterich's letter of honor . Mediaevum.de, February 10, 2015.
  3. ↑ Jürgen Zander / Ralf Michael Thilo / Klaus Graf / Jürgen Christoph Gödan: Legal problems when using manuscript libraries. Further considerations on the legal admissibility of special conditions of use , in: Bibliotheksdienst 29 (1995), pp. 296–321, here: III., Pp. 304–313 full text .
  4. ↑ Destruction of irreplaceable sources. The protection of historical book holdings in private ownership urgently needs to be improved , in: Mitteilungen des Deutschen Germanistenverbandes 42 (1995), no. 2, pp. 44–48 full text ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ).
  5. ↑ Central German cultural assets decimated: gloss and misery of the Apel collection (essay and others) ( online ).
  6. ↑ Fürstenhaus Ysenburg-Büdingen sells off cultural assets (essay and others) ( online ).
  7. ↑ Article on the sale of Stralsund archives on ndr.de from November 7, 2012 ( Memento from November 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
  8. ↑ Historian Dr. Klaus Graf visits Bolzano City Archives, September 18, 2013 .
  9. ↑ Thomas Aigner : Web review on: Archivalia . In: H-Soz-u-Kult , January 30, 2004.
  10. ↑ Witches Research mailing list .
personal data
SURNAME Count, Klaus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Graf, Klaus Martin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and archivist
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwäbisch Gmünd