Arthur Schnitzler - Critical Edition (Early Works) II

Due to the rather sorrowful state of most reading editions of the works of Arthur Schnitzler (1862 1931) a critical edition has been long overdue; bequeathed textual variants have for the most part not been published yet. Reasons for this lack of scientific consideration lie within the history of the bequest as such: 1938, Schnitzlers archive was saved from confiscation by the Gestapo and trans- ferred to Cambridge University Library, where the estate of works has been preserved ever since. The personal bequest (of letters and diary) was brought back to Vienna by Schnitzlers son and returning emigrant Heinrich; this part was entrusted to the German Literature Archive Marbach in 1982. Further parts of the bequest are currently stored in Vienna, Exeter, Geneva and Jerusalem amongst others. Furthermore, Schnitzlers handwriting is considered to be nearly illegible; thus, it took two decades (19812000) for the edition of his diary, the biggest bequest project to date, to be completed. In the course of the FWF-project Arthur Schnitzler Critical Edition (The Early Works) [P 22195- G20], duration: 1/3/201031/8/2014, the first critical editions of Lieutenant Gustl (2011), Anatol and Sterben (2012) were published, Liebelei will be published in May 2014, Frau Bertha Garlan (2014) is ready for printing (http://www.degruyter.com/view/serial/44030). It was decided for print publishing as the publishing house De Gruyter waived all print subvention fees. The overall edition consists of the facsimiles of the manuscripts together with their transcriptions, a reprint of the pub- lished texts with a display of all textual variants up to the authors last revised edition and an appendix of commentary and documents; all volumes are available as e-books as well. Based on the research questions and concluding results of that project, the critical edition of Schnitz- lers early works shall be resumed with variations to the means of text-recording. Collaboration with the approved AHRC-project Digital Critical Edition of Middle-Period Works (19051913), under the direction of Dr. Andrew Webber, is pursued, which will ensure the interoperable provision of data also with regard to the feasibility of further reading editions; this will be conducted in accordance with TEI P5 guidelines and the German Text Archives DTA base format. The corpus consists of five no- vellas of the collection Die Frau des Weisen, one-act cycle Reigen as well as the one-act plays Der grüne Kakadu, Paracelsus and Die Gefährtin. The respective scans will have to be pur- chased from the owning institutions (Cambridge University Library, German Literature Archive Mar- bach, National Library of Israel/Jerusalem and Bodmer Foundation/Geneva). Already, the autograph- scans for Die Frau des Weisen have been acquired with funding from the previous project and tran- scribed almost fully. This project aims at [1] the presentation of the genesis of the texts (conforming to the respective state of the written records), [2] the advancement of developed guidelines for transcription and depiction of textual layers and variants, as well as [3] a contextualisation of text-genesis and form of publication (magazine publishing, monograph, cycle or collection). The existing and planned volumes will put Schnitzler research on editorially assured ground for the first time ever.

The project goal consisted in digitizing the historical-critical edition of Arthur Schnitzlers Early Works (18801904); the aimed for hybrid edition provides both the advantages of printed volumes (as they have been published by de Gruyter since 2011) and long-term availability of the data. The adjustments were made following the Guidelines of the TEI and workflows for typesetting the edited text (from TEI to LaTex) as well as the transcriptions of the handwritten manuscripts (from XML to Indesign) have been developed. As genetic editions, the volumes juxtapose facsimiles of all handwritten text stages with corresponding transcriptions, which also include deletions, overwriting and unclear, shorthand-like characters. This side-by-side presentation is complemented by a reading text (based on the most reliable first prints), followed by a critical apparatus (considering editions up to the last published during his lifetime), a commentary as well as the documentation of material relating to the contexts of production and printing. The main difficulties facing the edition are Schnitzlers hardly legible handwriting and the complex situation of the literary estate (located in Cambridge University Library, Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach as well as various other archives); the necessary inquests are very time-consuming, especially concerning the history of prints. With the new edition at hand, for the first time scholars can retrace the genesis of Schnitzlers texts from first notes, to sketches and drafts, to the last version before publishing; particularly, in the case of Blumen, a highly complicated rearrangement of textual parts could be reconstructed. The following texts appeared in print: Frau Bertha Garlan (January 2015; prepared in the previous project), Die Frau des Weisen (March 2016), Die Toten schweigen (June 2016), Ein Abschied (September 2016), Der Ehrentag (April 2017), and Blumen (December 2017; after a further review process, being the first of the volumes also available as open access publication: http://e-book.fwf.ac.at/o:1135). In addition, three volumes were prepared for publication: Reigen (manuscripts kept at Bodmer Foundation, Geneva), Paracelsus (one manuscript kept at the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem), and Der grüne Kakadu. Above all, documenting the complicated publishing history of Reigen required much expenditure; furthermore, stage manuscripts of these texts were discovered and implemented in the edition. These volumes will be published at the end of 2018/beginning of 2019 as part of a new FWF project, which started on March 1, 2018.