Hermann Burger: Lokalbericht

Description

The SNSF project “Textgenetische Editio princeps von Hermann Burgers erstem Roman Lokalbericht (1970–72)”, based at the Swiss Literary Archives (SLA) in Bern, was realized in close collaboration with the CCeH. The first publication of Hermann Burger’s (1942–1989) novel debut, which remained unpublished during his lifetime, sheds new light on the development of this important author and makes an innovative contribution to digital text-genetic editing.

At the center of the project is Burger’s previously unpublished novel Lokalbericht, which the Swiss author wrote mainly in the summer of 1970 and whose typescript is now in his estate at the Swiss Literary Archives (Bern). The genesis of the novel, the circumstances of its non-publication and its significance for Burger’s later work were just as unexplored as the avant-texte and the private epitext: the notes, drafts and preliminary stages as well as the correspondence from the chronological and thematic context of the local report.

The project’s indexing of all these documents within the framework of a digital text-genetic edition allows a differentiated view of Burger’s literary production process. In combination with innovative visualization and research functions, it enables both researchers and Burger aficionados to read the text dynamically as a process of gradual completion: the context of the novel’s genesis can be clearly traced in the context of the unpublished estate, while the commentary provides background information and sometimes the connection to the later work. Complementary to the digital edition, a second project output was a reading version of the local report in book form (Edition Voldemeer 2016).

To create the digital edition, all surviving documents of the dossier génétique were transcribed and annotated using document-centered TEI encoding. The web application, which is based on the Kiln framework (Apache Cocoon, XSLT, Solr), presents the text encodings alongside high-resolution scans of the estate documents. The genetic dossier is also displayed in an interactive visualization, which can also be used as visual navigation for the edition.

Publications

Burger, Hermann (2016). Local report. Edited from the estate by Simon Zumsteg in collaboration with Peter Dängeli, Magnus Wieland and Irmgard Wirtz. Zurich: Edition Voldemeer; Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.

Dängeli, Peter / Theisen, Christian / Wieland, Magnus / Zumsteg, Simon (2016). “Visualizing the Gradual Production of a Text.” Poster at the DH Conference 2016, Krakow, July 11–16, 2016[PDF].

Dängeli, Peter / Wieland, Magnus / Zumsteg, Simon (2013). “Hermann Burger’s Unpublished First Novel as a Process of Gradual Production.” Poster at the 10th Conference of the European Society for Textual Scholarship (ESTS), Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris, November 22–24, 2013[PDF].

Dängeli, Peter / Zumsteg, Simon (2013). “Digital text-genetic edition of Hermann Burger’s first novel “Lokalbericht”.” Poster at the SAGW Conference Digital Humanities 2013, Kornhausforum Bern, November 19, 2013. Link: http://dh13.sagw.ch/de/dh13/poster/poster/zumsteg.html.

Wieland, Magnus / Zumsteg, Simon / Dängeli, Peter (2019). “Digital edition of Hermann Burger’s local report.” In: Textgenese in der digitalen Edition (= editio / Beihefte; Vol. 45), ed. by Anke Bosse, Walter Fanta and Astrid Böhm. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 265-280. DOI: 10.1515/9783110575996-017.

Wieland, Magnus / Zumsteg, Simon (2012). “Hermann Burger’s ‘Lokalbericht’: From archive fiction to archive edition.” In: German Studies in Switzerland 9, pp. 91-109[PDF].

Zumsteg, Simon (2013). “‘Lokalbericht’: On the project of the digital text-genetic edition of Hermann Burger’s first attempt at a novel.” In: Passim: Bulletin of the Swiss Literary Archives 12, pp. 14–15. Link: http://www.nb.admin.ch/sla/03131/03134/03260/04372/index.html.

Picture credits

Watercolor Obertorturm, Aarau, 1959 (Estate of Hermann Burger, Swiss Literary Archives, Bern).