The project

The German and the foreign law have been one of the most important collections of Berlin State Library, since it was founded in 1661. Therefore the library keeps the largest holdings of historical legal sources and scholarly law literature within the German speaking area.

Numerous books from the publication period from 1801-1900 are rare or unique literature. Particularly since the founding of the German Empire, the centrality of the Berlin State Library needs to be considered. During the 19th century, both common law and several particular laws co-existed with one another. Due to their limited scope and extent, their almost infinite variety was frequently disregarded by the research community. In order to neutralise this distortion of perception, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has been supporting systematic digitisation of the core of the State Library’s academic legal collection of German Territorial Law from 1801 to 1900. The respective holdings have a collection size of about 12,500 volumes and approximately 2.5 million pages. Together with some other national supported digitisation projects (see Links), which contents can be accessed worldwide and free as well, a solid base is being built up to provide the complete holdings of Berlin State Library’s German legal historic resources to the international research community in digital format in future.

The digitised materials can be searched on this project website, and via the Berlin State Library’s on-line catalogue, as well as by using the Alten Realkatalog’s contemporary systematic.

Access

Project-related search

• Complete digitized project content
• Complete digitized project content (Access via Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek)
• Complete digitized project content within the State Library’s historical holdings (including digitized materials of other libraries)
• Subject search within the State Library’s legal historical holdings (including digitized materials of other libraries)
• Partikularrechte
• Ortsrechte

Comprehensive search

• Free search within the Berlin State Library’s on-line catalogue
• Key word search within the bibliographic metadata of the State Library’s digital collections
• Free search by using the ViFa Recht International Discovery Service
• Free search within the Central Directory of Digitised Printed Works

Links

• ALEX: Historical legal and law texts on-line
• Legal journals 1703-1830
• 19th century legal journals
• Prussian legal sources – digital
• Themis: historical legal collections of Thuringia
• Imperial Law virtual platform 

Free on-demand digitisation service for Berlin State Library’s legal public domain works

• <intR>²DoD 

Related Links

• HU Berlin's digital collections

Contact

Scientific Information Service for International and Interdisciplinary Legal Research

Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Potsdamer Straße 33
D-10785 Berlin
e-mail: vifa-recht@sbb.spk-berlin.de

Poster presentations

50. Deutscher Historikertag, Göttingen
Gewinner und Verlierer 

5. Tag der Bibliotheken in Berlin und Brandenburg
http://www.bib-info.de/landesgruppen/berlin/tag-der-bibliotheken.html

Publications

Ivo Vogel/Elisabeth Schrecklinger: Retrospective Digitisation of Legal Sources in Germany, in: Legal Information Management 14 (2014), S. 105-109
DOI:http://dx.doi.org.595713270.erf.sbb.spk-berlin.de/10.1017/S1472669614000279

Elisabeth Schrecklinger: "Territorial Law goes future. Join it." at IALL Blog (April 2nd, 2015).