DigiPortA – Digitalisation and indexing of pictorial materials in the archives of the Leibniz Association

In the department “Scientific collections” (including an image archive, map and document collections), the Herder Institute archives treasures of Eastern Central Europe’s cultural heritage. Around 2.000 pictures in the picture archive as well as 3.000 in the document collections bear relevance to the DigiPortA project as they draw attention, in particular, to the German part of this region’s cultural history. These are mainly graphic prints, photographs and photo-postcards, while the majority of image sources depict people from the Baltic. The graphic prints of people from the Baltic region are often the only remaining pictorial representations of certain individuals; a large number of painted portraits were destroyed or went missing during the course of the Second World War. In the light of this, the gathering of these cultural and historic treasures, and their accessibility to a wide user base, are major concerns of the project. Pictures are sourced from prominent Baltic collections, from Riga’s cathedral museum, from the former Kurland museum, the provincial museum in Mitau, as well as from the archive for Baltic knighthoods and other Baltic archives. Also accounted for are picture collections and estates from Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. In the process, a further section of the Herder Institute’s collection is being systematically opened up for the first time and if possible – without copyright infringement – being made accessible to users via the communal online database of the DigiportA project. The biographical information generated by the picture collections in relation to the professional and private structures of the population stand alongside the digital reconstructions of cultural areas (for example Gdansk or Mitau) and artistic landscapes (like Silesia). Together, these allow for a more consolidated understanding of the multi-national, social and cultural diversity of the region’s environments, which were in existence until fairly recently.

Over and above this, an opportunity has arisen for a trans-national link to Eastern European digital picture collections like the picture database of the National Library and State Archive in Latvia “Latvijas kultūras vēsture attēlos”. Sērija A: Portreti” and „Portreed Tartu Ülikooli Raamatukogus“ of the University of Tartu (in German: Dorpat, Estonia) as well as the Estonian and Latvian biographical archive resources Saaga and Raduraksti.