Collected biography

A collective biography is a biographical work that, in contrast to the individual biography, depicts the life stories of several people. A special form of the collective biography is the biographical reference work , which is characterized by the characteristics of the information medium, namely the indexing aids necessary for selective searches (index, alphabetical order, search function, etc.).

The collective biography differs from biographical works in which the life stories of several people are dealt with in context, such as the family biography, in that the life stories are presented independently of one another (typically each in a separate chapter or section).

In the titles of collective biographies the term life pictures appears frequently . In a broader sense, the term characterizes thematic collections of images of life with a more or less subjective selection and form of presentation, in the narrower sense biographical book series with collected biographies, in which a volume appears again and again without a fixed conclusion if enough biographies are available. Examples of such series are life pictures from Baden-Württemberg (Stuttgart 1994 ff.) Or contemporary history in life pictures from German Catholicism of the 19th and 20th centuries (Münster 1973 ff.).

literature

• Klaus Schreiber: Biographische Informationsmittel: Typology with examples: Reviews of 836 general and technical collective biographies from the beginning of the nineties to the end of 1998. Vol. 1. German Library Institute, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-87068-549-2 , p. 25 f. , 34.
• Konrad Umlauf: Modern book studies: books in libraries and in bookshops today. 2nd edition Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3447041765 , p. 85.