Ferdinand Ebner Edition

Research project P 14497 Ferdinand Ebner Edition Heinrich SCHMIDINGER 26.6.2000 I. Description of Project: The project concerns the whole corpus of Ferdinand Ebner`s (1882-1931) manuscripts, which are kept at the Brenner Archives in Innsbruck. The whole literary estate of Ebner is composed of nearly 1800 texts and contains his philosophical works, the diaries and noticebooks and many letters. This includes Ebner`s main work "Das Wort und die geistigen Realitäten. Pneumatologische Fragmente". In this text Ebner produces a new form of anthropology which is based on a dialogue-orientated understanding of human existence. II. The Problem to be Addressed/The State of Research: Up to now the most extensive edition of Ebner`s works was published by Franz Seyr in 1963-65. His main work was published the first time in 1921 by the Brenner Verlag and was often reprinted. In the meantime all of Ebner`s works are out of print, so that nothing of Ebner`s is available in German now. Due to the initiative of the university of Trient an Italian translation of Ebner`s main work, "Pneumatologische Fragmente", came out in 1998 followed by several monographs about Ebner. That is why the centre of the scientific research is at the time not in Austria, but in Italy. According to the fact that the Seyr- edition is merely a selection of the complete work and has no historic-critical commentary, the transcription and explanation of all the original texts can serve as a innovation for research on Ebner. It will not only enable readers to discover Ebner`s unknown works, but also many aspects of his thinking, which are not in the foreground of the known publications. A first step in this direction was the publication of the so-called "Mühlauer Tagebuch", a diary from 1920, which was transcribed with commentary at the Brenner Archives in 1999. This diary shows that an adequate interpretation of Ebner must consider the personal background as well as the developments in art and culture in Europe after the first world war. III. Proiect Goals: The goal of the project is a scholarly edition of the literary estate of Ferdinand Ebner, consisting of transcriptions of all his published and unpublished works, his diaries, letters, documents of his life and a commentary. Additionaly the publication of the important works is planned. IV. Methodology, Timetable, Work Schedule: As in the case of other projects the program "Folio Views" is used for the transcription and the commentary of the literary estate. With this program a lot of information can be searched simply. While working on the "Mühlauer Tagebuch" a structure for the data bank was developed, which includes the transcribed texts and the commentary. Planned for three years, the first 18 months of the project will be used to reconstruct the three versions of the main work, followed by the transcription and the commentary of the war diaries which should take 9 months and by the work on the letters which should also take 9 months. To facilitate this end will also be necessary to employ part-time assistance for collating the material. International cooperation with the university of Trient is foreseen.