Watermarks of the Manuscripts in Klosterneuburg

The project` s major aim is the exact dating of all medieval paper manuscripts preserved at the library of the monastery Klosterneuburg. This shall be achieved with the help of the watermarks in the manuscripts of the monastery`s library and archive. All watermarks will be published as a text-image-database. Watermarks are prints caused by the figure on the wire-sieve. Since these wire-figures were in use only for a few years undated manuscripts can be dated when completely identical watermarks are found in dated ones. For recording watermarks beta-radiography is used. By this method only differences in thickness of the paper leaves are exposed to an X-ray film, while all the text written in black ink does not appear on the film. Only beta- radiography is able to supply precise photos of nearly every watermark. Every watermark-photo is scanned. Images and data relevant to manuscript, watermark and graphic of the watermark are stored in several databases. These are used by programs which among other things allow printouts of watermark-graphics together with all relevant data. For the near future several search-routines will be implemented. Images of watermarks and all data will be made available to interested institutions in 1999 by Internet and CD-ROM, in order to be able to consider suggestions during the term of the project. After three years the database will contain approximately 10.000 watermarks and will form a valuable complement to existing printed collections of watermarks.

The project`s major aim was the exact dating of 650 medieval paper manuscripts preserved at the library of the monastery of Klosterneuburg in Lower Austria. To achieve this all the watermarks of the undated manuscripts were compared not exclusively with watermark-tracings in printed repertories like "Piccard" but also with the watermarks of about 250 dated manuscripts in the library and archive of the Klosterneuburg monastery. On the basis of the watermarks from dated manuscripts which were recorded first it was possible to establish an accurate chronological order for more than 400 manuscripts because the major part of the dated watermarks could be traced in undated manuscripts. On the other hand only about 3 percent out of approximately 5000 different watermarks recorded so far were identified with tracings in printed repertories. This proves that dating manuscripts with the help of their watermarks is successful if referring to dated manuscripts of the same provenance (library and/or geographic region) in addition to printed repertories. Watermarks are prints caused by the figure on the wire-sieve which was used for manufacturing paper leaves. Since these sieves were in use only for a few years undated paper leaves can be dated if completely identical watermarks are to be found on dated ones. The usual way of recording watermarks is by hand tracings. As most of the watermarks in medieval manuscripts are covered partially by ink this method often fails. Therefore exclusively beta-radiography was used for reproducing all the watermarks in Klosterneuburg manuscripts. By this method only differences in thickness of the paper leaves are exposed to an X-ray film, while all the text written in black ink does not appear on the film. Only radiographic methods like beta-radiography are able to supply precise photos of nearly every watermark. All images and data relevant to manuscripts, watermarks and graphics of the watermarks are stored in a set of related tables. A set of software tools was implemented together with the database management in one system ("Watermark Processing and Database Toolkit"). The software tools include computer-aided measurement of metrical paramters, searching for identical watermarks and automation of a number of routine jobs. So far more than 10.000 photos of about 5000 different watermarks were made. Since 1999 photos of approximately 4.700 watermarks are accessible via Internet (http://www.oeaw.ac.at/ksbm/wz/wzma/). This collection of watermarks forms a valuable complement to existing printed collections of watermarks.