Subject Guides: Open Access Resources in German Studies (OARGS): Primary Sources

Portals and Guides to Primary Sources Online

Deutsches Bundesarchiv - Digitalisierte Bestände (German Federal Archive - Digitized Holdings) A massive online collection of digitized manuscripts, documents, images and films of the Bundesarchiv, but it still represents a relatively small percentage of the total holdings. German and English search interfaces.
EuroDocs - Online Sources for European History. A portal to rich primary sources for the history of Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland in facsimile, transcription, translation or by other means.There are separate guides for the Shoah (Holocaust), pan-European phenomena and a total of more than four dozen European countries. The guides are mainly chronological but have separate sections for themes and genres (e.g. newspapers, government documents, heraldry, census data, maps), plus regional, local and family historical sources. Each entry has a short annotation. Part of BYU digital collections.
German History in Documents and Images Primary source materials on Germany's political, social and cultural history from 1500 to the present, separately divided into ten time periods. All source texts are translated into English. An initiative of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. English and German interfaces.

Primary Sources Online for Language and Literature

Arthur Schnitzler Critical Digital Edition Cambridge University Libraries, in partnership with the German Literary Archive at Marbach, the Center for Digital Humanities at the University of Trier and the Arthur-Schnitzler-Archive Freiburg, present Arthur Schnitzler's work (1905-1931) in a Digital Critical Edition. Ongoing work is being conducted by scholars at the Bergische University Wuppertal, the University of Cambridge, and University College London. The edition project is funded by the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Germany and the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK, with additional support from the host institutions and other organisations.
Deutsches Textarchiv - DTA (German Text Archive) Separate German-language texts from numerous disciplines including belles lettres, sourced from the early 16th to the early 20th century. As a whole, they form a reference corpus for the New High German language.
e-codices Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland With support from various foundations and first based on 130 manuscripts from the Abbey Library at St. Gallen, the Virtual Manuscript Library has grown to include many Swiss libraries and collections. Well-annotated browsing images and a full-text search are available in English, German, French and Italian.
Emblematica Online The concise yet potent text and image combinations of Emblems (motto + pictura + epigram) invite, and require, decoding. Important collections worldwide have come together online: Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the universities of Glasgow, Utrecht and others.
Heinrich-Heine Portal Heine's collected works and letters (and more) in an electronic scholarly edition crafted mainly from the works of the Düsseldorfer Heine-Ausgabe (DHA: 1973-1997) and the correspondence from the Heine-Säkularausgabe (HSA: 1970-1984).
Musil Online Robert Musil's novel, "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften," is presented online from numerous source angles (various editions, hybid edition, printings and posthumous papers) and with a scholarly apparatus. From the Robert-Musil-Institut für Literaturforschung at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria.
Sophie Digital Library of Works by German-Speaking Women An open-access, full-text-searchable source of literature written by German-speaking women from medieval times through the early 20th century. Around 6500 original works and parallel transcriptions where possible. Begun in the BYU German Department and later transferred to the BYU institutional repository.

Primary Sources Online for History and Culture

1848 Flugschriften im Netz (1848 Pamphlets Online) The revolutionary year represented in small publications distributed in the streets and squares. Well over 2,000 separate items, discoverable by year, city, author, even by keywords indicating humor or illustrations. From the digital collections of Goethe University, Frankfurt a. M. German and English interfaces.
DigiBaeck - Archival Materials, Memoirs and Manuscripts Most of the Leo Baeck Institute's documentation of German-Jewish life from the 18th century to the present (personal documents, correspondence, family and community histories, genealogical materials, business records, and nearly 5,000 memoirs and manuscripts) is online. English and German interfaces.
Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland With Switzerland a central and neutral location for diplomacy, this database offers digitized versions of documents and treaties. Other types of information and information are also available. Search interfaces in German, French, Italian and English.
Eisenhower Communiqués (Daily SHAEF Dispatches) Lt. Col. D. Reed Jordan, head of the Communiqué Section, PR Division, of SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force Europe) saved all individual daily battle reports (Normandy to Germany) from D-Day to the end of WW2. Now browsable and searchable as part of BYU Digital Collections.
German Foreign Ministry Archives, 1867-1920 Discovered during the Allied advance through Germany in 1945, this 400-ton load of documents was analyzed and microfilmed at Whaddon Hall, England from 1948-1958. It has now been made digitally available to all by the Center for Research Libraries (CRL).
Monumenta Germaniae Historica - dMGH Thanks to the DFG (German Research Foundation) and Bavarian State Library, all older volumes of MGH sources are accessible and full-text searchable. New editions will appear in digital format after a moving-wall embargo of two years. The digital version is a book reproduction that is fully citable.
Verhandlungen des Deutschen Reichstags (Protocols and Transcripts of German Reichstag Assemblies) Three separate collections of Reichstag stenographic reports during the times of (a) the North German Confederation / Zollparlamente (1867-1895); (b) the German Empire (1895-1918); and (c) Weimar Republic/National Socialism (1918-1942). German and English interfaces.
World War I Primary Document Archive Assembled by volunteers of the World War I Military History List (WWI-L), this archive is hosted at BYU. Chronologically arranged documents are supplemented by sections on treaties and official papers, diaries, books and commentaries, the maritime war, the medical front and links to other WWI sites.