Directed by Martin Steinmann, Basel University Library.
This institute was intended to improve participants’ ability to conduct original research involving the use of German manuscripts dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and covered these principal areas:
Paleography: The study of the development of German hands of the period, proceeding roughly on chronological order and progressing from easier to more difficult scripts. The main emphases was on reading, transcribing, an dinterpreting documents of various genres. Practical exercises were combined with discussion of the historical and cultural backgrounds from which these materials emerged.
Bibliography: An introduction to the essential tools for the study of various aspects of early modern German culture, with special attention to the catalogues and bibliographies that exist or are being prepared to help locate original sources, both manuscript and printed, in European libraries and archives.
Text editing: Some attention was also paid to the principles and techniques involved in passing from the manuscript to the modern critical edition. Comparison of manuscript copies of a text with early printed editions was among the editorial practices illustrated in the course.
A series of adjunct lectures supplemented the institute’s meetings:
June 24: Archival Research in Administrative History
James Vann, University of Michigan
July 1: The Use of a Radioactive Source in Watermark Detection
David Buisseret, Newberry Library (now professor emeritus, University of Texas at Austin)
July 12: Working with German Legal Manuscripts
Steven Rowan, University of Missouri-Saint Louis
July 19: The Newberry Library Catalogue of Pre-1500 Manuscripts
Paul Saenger, Newberry Library and Northwestern University
July 26: Working in the Archive of the German Democratic Republic
Gerald Strauss, Indiana University
Learn more about Center for Renaissance Studies programs.