Critical Online Edition of the Nuncial Reports of Eugenio Pacelli (1917-1929)

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Eugenio Pacelli, the later pope Pius XII (1939-1958), is one of the most controversial personalities of the 20th century. For some he simply is "Hitler's Pope" (J. Cornwall), for others he is "the greatest benefactor of the Jewish people" (P. Lapide). The never-ending, frequently heated debates on him and on the past of the Catholic Church in general show that until the present day these issues have remained important for the self-conception of the Catholics in the Federal Republic of Germany.Pacelli's contribution to the Vatican's politics in his role as nuncio in Germany from 1917 to 1929 and as cardinal secretary of state from 1930 to 1939 until his election to pope on 2nd March 1939 has not been sufficiently taken into account as far as his "silence" regarding the Holocaust is concerned. However, precisely those twelve years in Germany have been crucial in shaping his personal network, his patterns of perception and action and with it also his papal politics, especially vis-à-vis the Third Reich. Ever since 2003 and 2006 the comprehensive reports that Pacelli daily, sometimes even several times a day, dispatched to Rome as nuncio in Munich and Berlin, the hub of the Vatican's European and world politics, are accessible in the Vatican Secret Archives.These reports are by far more than just a detail of the background of Pius' XII "silence": they represent the most important coherent corpus of sources on German Catholicism during the Weimar years. They open up a new perspective on the development and on the role of the Catholic Church in the Weimar Republic, but also on the politics and everyday culture of those years in Germany and Europe. Moreover, they shed light on Pacelli's decision making processes as well as on the structures and personal networks of the nunciature. The basic research that the project offers is therefore not only relevant for the historical science and for theology, but also for other disciplines such as philology, jurisprudence and political and cultural sciences. In collaboration with the German Historical Institute in Rome (DHI) and the Vatican Secret Archives (ASV), Pacelli's reports (roughly 5.400) as well as the directives that he received from Rome (about 4.100) plus the pertaining attachments (about 5.500) are gathered, edited critically, commented, interpreted and made accessible to research and to the general international public (see www.pacelli-edition.de). The edition (of altogether about 19.500 documents) is obliged to the principles of Open Access and consequently uses the technical opportunities of a web-based data bank. This way, commentaries are repeatedly linked and the genesis of a draft including all its revision stages is illustrated in colour by means of the so-called "layer model". With such innovative solutions, which have been developed in cooperation with computer scientists, the project also contributes to the development of the technical infrastructure in the humanities.