Theories and Methods

Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.5, 2018

The Group Portraits and Typological Analysis of German Prosopography (Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie) within a Digital Humanities Framework (Abstract)

Wang Tao

German Prosopography (Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie) is an important reference work for information on German historical figures. Historians tend to focus on its practical value, rarely addressing the content of this large-scale reference set. The use of digital tools to mine prosopographical data reveals hidden information on German historical figures and may even bring up results that disagree with common knowledge, thus aiding our understanding of mainstream German historians’ construction of the imagined “German.” Large-scale analysis of the social networks reflected in the places of birth and death of these historical figures provides a “mortality map” that clearly shows the spread of major German historical cities from the south to the north. Researchers using a digital humanities framework to explore the information hidden in German Prosopography need not only to respect the objectivity of the digital method but also exercise an imagination that crosses historical contexts.