Digitizing of Jean Paul's complete letters from the critical edition

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Jean Paul belongs to one of the principal authors of German-language writing. Born in an era that communicated through extensive correspondence, such as we do now with social networks, he is also one of the greatest letter writers in terms of quality and volume. Thanks to the fact that he made and kept copies of his letters, his correspondence has been well preserved, numbering about 5000 letters.Jean Paul's letters were edited between 1952 and 1964 by Eduard Berend after his return from exile. This edition, that still meets academic standards with its thorough annotations and a supplement with an extensive annotated index, was the third section of the critical edition of Jean Paul¿s works. It started long before the Second World War.This third section of the critical edition of Jean Paul¿s works that contains his letters shall be presented in full as xml structured text freely available on the Internet. It will retain volume, page and line numbering and include metadata. This project is planned in cooperation with TELOTA (BBAW). The long-term availability of the results is guaranteed by the BBAW.Since 1992 the letters to Jean Paul have been edited as the fourth section of the critical edition of his works at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. A part of this editorial work has been to digitize and continuously revise Berend¿s index, thus creating a common access tool for both letter publications. This index corresponds to the current state of research and is available in the internet at the webpage of the Jean Paul Edition at the BBAW. Direct links from the digitized letters to the entries of the index not only open up a new kind of accessibility, but also add commentary to the letters. That is the decisive added value provided by this planned digital edition when compared to the print edition and to a pure digitization of the texts of letters.