Forschungsplattform Fuggerzeitungen

The indexing and, more broadly, the entire work done on the Fuggerzeitungen has been funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) under the direction of PD Dr. Katrin Keller. The project has started in March 2011 and will last until February 2015. The project is hosted by the Austrian Institute of Historical Research (IÖG) and has been pursued in cooperation with the Collection of Manuscripts and old prints of the Austrian National Library in Vienna.

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Sources

The term Fuggerzeitungen often appears in studies on the history of media and communication, and is used in the German-speaking world as a general synonym for sixteenth-century handwritten newsletters. More precisely, however, the term refers to a body of such newsletters collected by the brothers Octavian Secundus (1549-1600) and Philipp Eduard  Fugger (1546-1618) . The newsletters contain reports from various European cities, but also from America, North Africa and Asia.

A basic assumption of the existing literature is that the Fuggerzeitungen were primarily a private medium or instrument of the Fuggers. This hypothesis also requires revision following recent studies on the birth and development of handwritten newspapers. The Fugger trading company may have played a certain role in the diffusion of the newspapers, but this should not be overestimated. The Fuggerzeitungen can be better understood as a fragment of the sixteenth-century media landscape that survived thanks to the collecting interests particularly of Octavian Secundus Fugger.

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Principles of Indexing

In the register of persons have been included all the direct and indirect mentions of a certain person in the whole text of each single newsletter. In case a person could not be identified, the original spelling from the primary source was transcribed and reported in the database.

Names of countries and regions, rivers, lakes and mountains, as well as the names of districts in the Holy Roman Empire were included in the register of places. The name of the city from which the newsletter was sent, was not included again in the list of places related to that newsletter. Names of cities were registred according to their current original name.

Under the list of places were also included terms related to “geographical aggregation of people” such as the Spaniards, the Persians, etc., but also the Uskoks and Cossacks. These were of course registred under the respective country/region. Historical geographic designations of countries (such as West Indies, Upper Hungary, Barbaria) were included in the original form from the sources, and not modernized since no clear alternative designation was found.
 

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Atlas Cosmographicae (Mercator) Europa

This section includes a detailed bibliography about handwritten newspapers and about Philipp Eduard and Octavian Secundus Fugger,the two collectors of the Viennese Fuggerzeitungen. Furthermore, here are included some historical maps to facilitate contextualisation of places otherwise shown on the maps according to modern political borders.

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Faksimile-Sammlung

On this page facsimiles of all volumes of the Fuggerzeitungen are available. Unfortunately, it was impossible to link the pictures with the data sheet for the single newspaper because of the lack of time and money. But thanks to the folio numbers it is possible to navigate in the picture stock.
Another option to access the facsimiles offers the project „ANNO – Austrian Newspapers Online“, organized by the Austrian National Library, and the catalogue of this library.

show Faksimiles