East Asia

Digitised Collections

Access to digitised collections in the context of the Special Subject Collections East and South-East Asia (Sondersammelgebiet Ost- und Südostasien; SSG):

SSG 6,25 Digital

With this ongoing project, the East Asia Department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin has started to digitise selected sections of its holdings. The DFG-funded project is made up of 5 parts of original language materials: the Tibetan texts of the Wadell Collection, the Manchu collection, the old Japan collection, the old China collection, and the Haenisch Collection.

As a sixth part, more than 4,000 titles of Western-language publications on East Asia that were published before 1912 are being digitised. Selections of the digitized materials are searchable down to individual chapters. First results from the Western inventory can be viewed and searched in the digital presentation of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. 

Collection of the Berlin Mongolian Maps

Access to the digitised collection of 181 Mongolian manuscript-maps from the special subject collection of the East Asia Department. The Berlin Mongolian maps date from the late Qing dynasty. They are published in the first volume of "Verzeichnis der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland", kindly supported by Franz Steiner Verlag.

The „Battle Copper Prints“ of the Qianlong 乾隆 (1736-1795) Emperor

The so-called “Battle Copper Prints” comprise a series of five sets with altogether 64 prints from copper engravings (tongbanhua 銅版畫), dating from the second half of the 18th century. They were produced under the aegis of the Qianlong emperor of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) and depict his military campaigns conducted both in the inner provinces and along the country’s frontiers.

Seen in their political context, the prints represent a distinct and exceptional pictorial genre and are telling documents of the self-dramatization of imperial state power and the will to exert ideological control over Chinese historiography. In the history of Chinese art, however, copper printing remained an episode.

Lao Manuscripts

The Digital Library of Lao Manuscripts (Digitale Bibliothek Lao Manuscripts, DLLM) collects scans of nearly 12,000 texts from all over Laos as well as numerous background information and makes them available for research. Partner institutions are the National Library of Laos, Passau University and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz. The project is financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) the the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Lexicon - Japan's Students in Germany

Dr. Rudolf Hartmann's Online Lexicon provides information (lifetime, university, subjects of study, etc.) about 2,700 Japanese who came to Germany to study after the opening of Japan in the course of the country's modernisation between 1868 and 1914.