Currently, institution data on approx. 380 auction houses from Germany, Austria and Switzerland active in the years 1901 to 1945 are documented and can be searched via browser tags and a search function.

In addition to institution names, addresses and the key players involved (owners, managing directors, experts, auctioneers, curators, etc.), there are also thematic focuses and further information on the history of the institutions as well as relevant research literature.

Auction House Helbing Researchers are currently aware of around 1,100 so-called hand copies and protocol catalogues of the auction catalogues of the Munich gallery Hugo Helbing, which was active in the auction business from 1887 to 1937. Within the framework of a DFG project of the ZI Munich and the UB Heidelberg, these exceptionally important sources are being digitized and made accessible to scholars.

If you are interested in participating in GSI, you are welcome to join the team of authors. Please send a request to:  effinger@ub.uni-heidelberg.de

The employed software is WissKI, which is based on the CMS DRUPAL, a semantic ontology model based on CIDOC-CRM as well as controlled vocabularies.

GSI is an information system on the auction houses, galleries and antiquarian bookshops operating in Germany, Austria and Switzerland before 1945 and their players. Company data is systematically documented and linked to the digitized catalogues made available online via "German Sales". It’s design is dynamic and it is continuously updated online.

The semantic, ontology-based index aims to visualise the networks of companies and key players in the art market as well as to make the content stored in a TripleStore available in RDF/XML format (Linked Open Data) for other projects.