The Nuremberg Municipal Museums - Dürer holdings and digitization
In the course of the project, the extensive holdings by and after Albrecht Dürer from the of the Nuremberg Municipal Museums city of Nuremberg will be processed. The municipal art holdings include a collection of paintings and sculptures, an extensive collection of graphic art, and a collection of coins and medals. Under the former head of the Graphic Collection and deputy director of the Museums of the City of Nuremberg, Matthias Mende, the graphic complete works and the artistic afterlife of Dürer formed a focal point in terms of content.
It was Mende who published a 700-page Dürer bibliography for the 500th Dürer anniversary in 1971.
Today, the art collections often own not only one copy of individual Dürer prints, but several, which come from different collection contexts. The art collections are also among the largest lenders to the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (GNM) in Nuremberg. The GNM preserves prints by Dürer from their holdings as well as unique works, including a drawn coat of arms of Willibald Pirckheimer and the large-format ideal portraits of the emperors Charlemagne and Sigismund. In the course of the project, high-resolution digital copies of the Dürer holdings will be made and integrated into the digital infrastructure at Heidelberg University Library.
Click here for a list of the objects of the collection that have already been indexed.
Albrecht Dürer House Foundation e.V. - Digitization of the Special Collection Dürer's Afterlife
The Albrecht Dürer House Foundation e.V., whose extensive library on Dürer's life and work as well as special collection on his artistic afterlife are maintained and administered by the Kunstsammlungen der Stadt Nürnberg, is a supporter of the project.
Since its foundation in the course of the celebrations of Dürer's 400th birthday in 1871, its main task has been to collect, preserve and communicate Dürer's life, work and influence.
The Albrecht Dürer House, which is now part of the Nuremberg Municipal Museums, played an important role in this from the very beginning. Until his death in 1528, the Nuremberg master lived and worked in the half-timbered house at Tiergärtnertor in Nuremberg, which he was able to buy thanks to his already comfortable position during his lifetime. As early as the beginning of the 19th century, it established itself as an artist's memorial, which subsequently received new impetus with each anniversary celebration. As early as 1826, the publisher and Dürer devotee Friedrich Campe (1777-1846) bought the legendary house for the city of Nuremberg in order to preserve it as a monument (cf. Campe 1828, p. 185). As early as the Dürer anniversary year of 1828, it served as an artists' museum and advanced to become a meeting place for his followers. In 1971, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the artist's birth, a modern exhibition building was erected there, which underwent a redesign in 2010, supported by the then 100-year-old Albrecht Dürer House Foundation e.V. in terms of content and funding. In the course of the duerer.online project, high-resolution digital copies of the foundation's holdings are being made and integrated into the digital infrastructure at Heidelberg University Library.
Click here for a list of the objects of the Foundation that have already been indexed.
Heidelberg University Library - Technical Tools and Infrastructure
In the context of the specialized information service Art, Photography, Design - arthistoricum.net, which it operates, Heidelberg University Library is responsible not only for the digitization of historical book collections but also, among other things, for activities in the field of electronic publishing in open access and can look back on many years of experience in these areas. Thus, in addition to various platforms for the publication of e-journals, e-books or editions, possibilities for the sustainable archiving of multimedia research data for collaborative use are also available.
For duerer.online, the Scientific Communication Infrastructure (WissKI) is used. This is a virtual research environment that enables the development of applications in the field of digital humanities using current standards. In addition to a partially synoptic TEI-supported edition of the written estate, a core collection from Dürer's complete works and their afterlife will be documented as a data basis. The focus here is on the holdings of the project and cooperation partners Art Collections of the Nuremberg Municipal Museums, Albrecht Dürer House Foundation e.V., Germanischen Nationalmuseum (Nuremberg) and Albertina (Vienna), which are explicitly mentioned in the artist's written legacy.
The documentation and semantic indexing of the data is based on CIDOC CRM as a standard recognized ontology for cultural heritage (ISO 21127), using specialized thesauri as well as the Integrated Authority File (GND). The integration into arthistoricum.net, the specialized information service for art, design and photography at Heidelberg University Library, guarantees the connectivity and sustainability of the results.
Supporting Institutions
During the application process, various institutions and their staff already supported the development of the virtual research environment duerer.online and promised their expertise and the accessibility of their holdings.
Bamberg State Library
Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum
Nuremberg, Stadtbibliothek im Bildungscampus
Vienna, Albertina
Zurich, University – SNF-Research Project "Hybride Zeiten – Temporale Dynamiken 1400–1600"
Based on the infrastructure