Ferdinand Gregorovius: Poesie and Science. Collected German and Italian Letters

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Baumeister
• Subject Area: History of Science ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2017 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 357732283

Despite his efforts to withhold this part of his estate from the public, Ferdinand Gregorovius has left behind more thal 3,000 letters, which, in addition to his historiographical and literary oeuvre, are extremely important – even in the literary sense. The project was able to achieve the goal set in the current funding phase to publish a selection of 600 to 700 German and Italian letters of Gregorovius as a critical edition in the original German and Italian and to comment them comprehensively – and even exceeded it in important points. But compared to the original assumption, the material base has almost doubled overall, so that the goal sought in the initial application for a term of 48 month has to be reformulated. The aim of the research project is now to expand the selection to 1,500 letters of Gregorovius. His correspondence with scholars, nobles, politicians, writers, artists and publishers represents a unique document of European cultural and scientific history in the 19th century. His correspondence also gives over decades insights into the political upheavals in Italy and Germany. They provide a concrete insight into the wide-ranging transnational, but also personal networks and working conditions of a private scholar. The letters are indispensable for the genesis and understanding of his works between literature and science as and for the identification of his numerous anonymously published articles in magazines and daily newspapers. The publicist and commentator of current affairs now takes the side of the historian, as he has alsways been seen above all, and gains its own meaning and size.All of the research data of the project, as well as the software used, will be provided on open access platforms and under free licenses. This guarantees that the project can be utilized for further research in the digital humanities and beyond. Both the edition work and comments are based on a previously created database of all publications of the works of Gregorovius and a source archive, created at the same time, in which, in addition to all printed letters to and from Gregorovius, his entire works (often published anonymously in periodicals), as well as translations and the complete research literature (includingcontemporary reviews) are collected, which makes the archive highly useful for the project.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants