Edition of Styrian documents (1192-1246)

The aim of the project ist the critical edition of those charters that are connected with Styrian history at the Babenberg rule. The purpose of this edition is the publication of reliable texts which answers modern demands and which is as complete as possible. This edition is to contain all sorts of documents which were issued by Styrians, addressed to Styrians respectively objects which concern Styria. Such an edition with reliable texts and reliable comments is a main requirement of historical research, i.e. by far going beyond Styrian matters. This project is part of a undertaking of the "Historische Landeskommission für Steiermark" having been on way for considerable time already, i.e. the new edition and the continuation of the "Urkundenbuch der Steiermark" which was started in 1875 by Josef Zahn, an which has long been out-datet concerning the period until 1260 and which in some respects was out-datet already when it was first published. It was in 1967 when Univ.-Prof. Dr. Friedrich Hausmann then being Head of the Department of Medieval History and Diplomatics at the University of Graz was entrusted by the "Historische Landeskommission für Steiermark" with the new edition of Zahn`s volumes 1-3 and the continuation beginning with vol. 5. Connected with this was the changing of Zahn`s concepts. In many years F. Hausmann piled up an impressing amount of material which has become known as "Sammlung Hausmann" to all historians working on this special field. In order to push on with the edition the new edition of Zahn`s volumes 1-3 was split up (in 2001) with the consent of all participants: F. Hausmann is working on the "Traditionsnotizen" and the first volume of charters (in the narrow sense of the word) until 1192. The applicant who has already participated in collecting material (apart from Austria in the Czech Republic, in Italy and in Slovenia) and who has already published various works has accepted to work on a new edition of the volumes 2 (1192-1246) and 3 (1246-1260). A good reason why the applicant is working on the new edition of that second part of Zahn`s volumes is the fact that the applicant has published (and continues publishing) a collection of documents of the Patriarchs auf Aquileia (until 1250) and can so profit from overlapping effects concerning both texts and indexes.

The project prepared the new edition of charters concerning the history of Styria in the Middle Ages. - The basic requirement of historical science are works in which texts are collected that have come down on us during the past. It is the purpose of those works to offer a reliable wording and necessary explanations of texts which are often incomplete, undated, hard to decipher and hard to comprehend, of texts which have been altered in later years and which are not always genuine. These works become obsolete if more texts are found after their date of publication, or if originals turn up and are registered as such instead of copies, or if editing errors can be cleared up (e.g. false dates). If those new discoveries transgress a certain limit a new edition becomes a must, just as is the case of this project in hand. This project deals with the styrian documents from the years 1192 to 1246, i.e. from the first period when Lower Austria and Styria were politically joined under the government of the Babenberg dynasty. The second volume of Josef v. Zahn`s collection of documents concerning the duchy of Styria which is being revised now was already severely criticized when it was published in 1879. Instead of the 470 items, respectively texts in Zahn`s collection there are now about 1300 texts available from the same period. One reason of this enormous increase are different criteria of acceptance. Another fact has to be appreciated: Prof. Hausmann has contributed a lot through his visiting various central European archives over all those years. And last but not least text-editions and scientific literature which appeared after Zahn`s collection have systematically been worked through. This enormous increase of the number of documents was by no means to be expected by anybody when the project was started and has so completely overthrown the work schedule. Therefore it was, alas, impossible to set up the texts of all those 1300 documents; only well over the half of the total 1300 were able to be arranged. Apart from the mere text production almost 3000 references to existing prints of Styrian documents are included, about 1500 references to regesta and almost 3000 references to relevant facts from scientific literature. But although the increase of the number of documents has rendered the editing process unfinished - contrary to original expectations - precautions have been made so that all that has been achieved so far will be a benefit to science very soon: The "Historische Landeskommission für Steiermark" under whose patronage the whole undertaking is put provides means to bring about a temporary conclusion: This version can be available for the authors who are now working on the volume of the central centuries of the Middle Ages which is part of the new Regional History of Styria. In this way reactions can be expected which the collection of documents can certainly benefit from.