Theodor Fontane’s Notebooks: A ‘Digital Genetic-Critical and Commented Edition’

Abstract

The scholarly digital edition of the Theodor Fontane: Notizbücher provides open access, for the first time, to the full scope of the 19th-century German writer’s notebooks. The project has a strong focus on the materiality of the documents, which is reflected not only in meticulous diplomatic transcriptions of Fontane’s notes, presented in their material contexts, but also in an extremely detailed documentation of the editorial principles and guidelines. The edition, thus, situates itself in an increased scholarly interest in materiality and mediality in the humanities since the ‘material turn’. Particularly, the edition contributes to a reassessment of the genre of the notebook as a portable “writing lab”. Notwithstanding these major achievements, questions remain regarding the present status and future development of the digital edition project, which was funded from 2011 to 2019. The edition interface is still a beta version and work on the scholarly commentary seems unfinished. This review ends with some specific suggestions on how to improve the digital edition’s accessibility and the reusability of its data.

Keywords

• 19th century
• beta status
• diplomatic transcription
• documentation
• genetic edition
• materiality
• notebook
• work in progress