Europe’s identity mapped through correspondence
The period between 1842 and 1897 was crucial in European history and culture. It witnessed important events such as the emergence of art history as well as serious political conflict in France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The correspondence with Jacob Burckhardt also discussed the effects of modernism, including the culture of museums, art exhibitions and the first universal accounts of the clash between industrial culture and neo-humanist ideals of education. The EU-funded project EUROCORR (The European correspondence to Jacob Burckhardt) created the platform Burckhardtsource.org – a digital library hosting a new critical edition of the letters written to Burckhardt. It contains images of manuscripts collected by the researchers from European libraries and archives. A scanned image of each original letter is provided as is software with high resolution image files and zoom functions. As such, users can visualise the document and the editing it has undergone which will also help conserve the original documents. Letters can be downloaded and the related URLs can be saved as permalinks. The metadata includes physical characteristics of the manuscript as well as descriptions of the letter and envelope and from where it was written and sent and its destination. Accessing this data is useful for scholars for a detailed reconstruction of a particular letter. An abstract that summarises the contents of the letter is also included. Contents have been codified with semantic annotation which allows it to be gathered and stored in a structured manner and are inter-operational with the contents of other platforms.
Keywords
Jacob Burckhardt, European cultural history, nineteenth century
