Long-term Project for Coverage and Publication of Calendars in Order to Secure the Historical Tradition of the Younger Charters of the Threse (1400-1529) from Staatsarchiv (State Archive) Hamburg - renewal proposal II (project phase II)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jürgen Sarnowsky
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 261279329

Though the history of Hamburg concerns different relevant aspects discussed in German as well in international historical research, its late medieval development is still not well known. This is due to a lack of the preservation of original documents caused by the great fire in 1842 and by the evacuations during the Second World War. For the period after 1400, there are only a few, scattered editions. Nevertheless there is the Threse, the protection archive of the Hamburg town council, reaching back until the Middle Ages, which is a central corpus of documents which has been delivered from the past nearly without losses. It still awaits a modern assessment and edition. The archive materials in question contain charters from different regions of Europe and are made out by different authors. They concern imperial or papal ordinances, business in properties or law cases between private persons or with the regional nobility, allow insights into the correspondance of the law courts, peace treaties, the announcement of feuds and many other aspects. Modern research has thus only limited and difficult access to basic information concerning the growing territorial authority of the city, its role for the North Sea trade and the Northern European trade routes as well as its growing integration into political and diplomatic networks. German research interests set aside, this also relates to research on the Hanseatic relations, the comparative history of towns and on German-English relations. Therefore the project which is applied for will provide the compilation of the archive materials in form of a calendar which combines versions in print and online. The printed edition has the function to provide a permanent overview on the materials, in which longer calendars summarize the main content of the sources, mention all persons and places, describe the form of the documents, list printed editions and further traditions. The calendars will be indexed for different aspects. The online edition offers shorter calendars which are put in the context with other source from the same time and may be extended by full-text edtions. They shall allow later reworking and corrections to react on changing requirements of research. Thus, the project will for the first time scientifically and continuously prepare important materials for historical research and grant access in a standardised form and independent from place and time. It will thus render an important contribution to a better understanding of the European as well as the German history of the Later Middle Ages. In Phase II, for which is applied here, and which is scheduled for three years, the documents for the years 1441 to 1490 shall be made accessible. The projected final Phase III which is only intended to take two years, shall cover the years 1491 to 1529.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants