editing a Gesamtausgabe

[John King <fs6y097@public.uni-hamburg.de>]

>John King asked us for ideas about what features to add to the List. A
>searchable database of past postings was one of the replies. Indeed a good
>idea, particularly of interest to new List members who want to find out
>what has been discussed before they joined. 

I should be able to get this sorted within the next couple of months. I
think there are a number of readily available perl programs which would do
the job. But I so far lack experience with cgi-bin issues, but the time is
coming for me to stop chickening out. Get ready for the revamped "Ernst
Jünger in Cyberspace Mark III", due for release soon (no real substantial
changes, rather a design overhaul and corrections of dodgy spelling!).

>I would like to add a suggestion which is rather a daydream in the face of
>hard facts like Copyright and Too Much Work. If someone or some people took
>their scanners and put some or all of EJ's works on them and converted them
>into text documents (which are searchable with the "find" command) — anyone
>wanting to discuss, say, EJ's concept of the titans could have all relevant
>passages at his fingertips and be capable of genuinely informed arguments. 
>But since there is not only virtual reality but also real reality the
>latter will take its course on a different line. Some Forschungsguppe at

Now this would be a really good idea. Electronic texts have been a major
aspect of so-called "humanities computing" bzw "geisteswissenschatliche
Informatik" for some time now. On the one hand tools such as "TACT" can
produce rapid statistical analyses of texts - I have tried it out during a
seminar in the winter semester before last, but quite honestly the results,
although interesting, didn't really correspond to the way in which I deal
with texts. For a Kritische Ausgabe, an extensive SGML markup would, I
believe, be the best system based on a combination of writable CD-ROM and
Internet, such that the datasets can be a) manipulated by researchers and b)
updated by the editors who would be able to add much more in terms of
hypermedia based information about the text and context than is possible
with even the most extensive (and user-unfriendly) footnotes. One problem is
probably the short-term duration of technology - but it is to be hoped that
SGML and TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) standards will last a while. But
once the text is in electronic form, it can then be re-encoded and
re-packaged very easily.

A very interesting case would be the production of a critical edition of "In
Stahlgewittern". Here one would require a facsimile of the manuscript,
together with a transcription, followed by the texts of the subsequent
versions of the published text. A computer edition would take a lot of the
tedium out of comparing text versions by hand. Although the possibilities of
computer text analysis exceed simple search functions, we can already see
how useful such functions would be given the extent of Jünger's oeuvre. And
we haven't even seen the bulk of the correspondance still housed in Wilflingen.

Does anyone know anything about the impact of the Goethe CD-Rom edition on
Goethe research?

The other issue that Günter mentioned is that of copyright. I sincerely hope
that Klett-Cotta and Frau Jünger would look favourably on a critical edition
project. I am optimistic, given Ernst Jünger's own readiness to make his
manuscripts available even during his lifetime.

>some Germanistisches Seminar will take over and during the next thirty
>years will be publishing one weighty and costly volume of the Kritische
>Gesamtausgabe a long time after the other, with the general index to follow
>later in several supplementary volumes...

Like the Nietzsche Kritische Ausgabe with its very strange volume numbering
system :-)

Best wishes,

John


PS - I can't think of the "Titanic" places immediately. Another case for an
electronic edition! Maybe "Zwei Mal Halley". Certainly Jünger's diagnosis of
the shift between "modernity" and (post!?)-modernity in "Annäherungen" where
J analyses the profound cultural crisis experienced by the West in the years
before 1914. Potentially also "An der Zeitmauer". 

PPS - Thomas, I had *two* beers and still nearly fell asleep in the first
half. Kate Winslet rescues the film, IMHO :-) And Glückwunsch zum
Geburtstag, wenn auch nachträglich!
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John King
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