There is consensus in Lessing research that a new edition of the works and letters of the Enlightenment thinker, playwright and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) is urgently needed. Numerous preliminary studies and conceptual proposals have outlined what such an edition might look like, most recently in the conference report Lessing digital: Studien für eine historisch-kritische Neuedition, published as a supplement to editio: International Yearbook of Scholarly Editing.

The new Lessing edition is now kicking off with this two-year project, which intends to produce an exemplary new edition of the freemason’s dialogue Ernst und Falk. Responsibility for the project is shared by six institutions. The focus at the Herzog August Bibliothek is on technical implementation. The aims include making selected textual evidence and relevant documents available on an online platform, facilitating interoperability by means of standardised metadata schemes and providing interfaces for text-mining applications. Implementation will be based on FAIR and OPEN data standards.

The edited texts will also be given CC licences, enabling further use for scholarly research in the field of digital humanities, for school textbook editions, for cultural data literacy projects and for artistic interpretations, in the theatre, for example. This planned digital Lessing edition thus promises added general value going far beyond the usual standard.

PURL: http://diglib.hab.de/?link=180

Funding: SPRUNG – Spitzenforschung in Niedersachsen
Duration: 1 December 2023 – 30 September 2025
Project participants: Oke-Lukas Möller (Herzog August Bibliothek), Dr Viktoria Take-Walter (Universität Göttingen)