Digital Edition: AAC-FACKEL Online

Online Version: »Die Fackel. Herausgeber: Karl Kraus, Wien 1899-1936«

The Austrian Academy of Sciences is pleased to present:

AAC - Austrian Academy Corpus: AAC-FACKEL
Online Version: »Die Fackel. Herausgeber: Karl Kraus, Wien 1899-1936«
AAC Digital Edition No 1
www.aac.ac.at/fackel

The AAC digital edition of the journal »Die Fackel«, edited by Karl Kraus from 1899 to 1936, offers free online access to the 37 volumes, 415 issues, 922 numbers, comprising more than 22.500 pages and 6 million wordforms. The AAC-FACKEL contains a fully searchable database of the entire journal with various indexes, search tools and navigation aids in an innovative and highly functional graphic design interface, in which all pages of the original are available as digital texts and as facsimile images.


Editorial Notes

»DIE FACKEL«

»Die Fackel« ("The Torch") was published in Vienna from April 1899 to February 1936 and was almost entirely self-authored by the satirist Karl Kraus who used language and press criticism to attack society and culture. Karl Kraus was born on 28 April 1874 in Jičín (Bohemia) and died on 12 June 1936 in Vienna. The work of Karl Kraus, in its many forms and variations, of which the journal is the core, can be regarded as one of the most important, although almost untranslatable contributions to world literature. It is a source for the history of the time, for its language and its transgressions. Karl Kraus in his own typical and idiosyncratic manner dealt with the themes of journalism and war, of sex and crime, of politics and corruption, of literature and lying. The influential journal »Die Fackel« comprises in literally thousands of texts an enormous thematic variety in a great number of different text types, such as essays, notes, commentaries, aphorisms, poems, drama and other literary expressions.

The AAC-FACKEL is now online and so allows new methods of scholarly research and philological analysis of a text that is of crucial importance for the history and study of the German language. This complex edition based upon latest developments in text-technology offers new perspectives for literary studies. This philological digital edition of the AAC-FACKEL has been edited by the "AAC - Austrian Academy Corpus" and presents for the first time the entire contents of the journal in a fully searchable electronic format. The AAC-FACKEL is based on the original Vienna edition (Wiener Ausgabe) of »Die Fackel«. The variants to the Vienna edition, special issues, confiscated issues, extra editions and the like, as well as two issues with original handwritten corrections by Karl Kraus will be online shortly.

The set of original issues of the "Fackel" on which this digital edition is based, had been assembled by Gustav Glück (1902-1973). Additional and variant issues have been searched for and systematically collected by the AAC and the Fackellex departments of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Three complete original sets were available for digitisation and have been compared with various other original issues and with ten other complete sets found in libraries and antiquarian bookshops in Vienna as well as with the reprint edition.

The editorial work has been carried out in cooperation with the "Kommission zur Herausgabe eines Text-Wörterbuches zur Fackel (Fackellex)" department of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, responsible primarily for the Fackel text-dictionaries, of which the "Wörterbuch der Redensarten zu der von Karl Kraus 1899 bis 1936 herausgegebenen Zeitschrift 'Die Fackel'" appeared in 1999.

Online access to the Fackel-database is free of charge and offers registered readers, if they accept the terms of use, an innovative and highly functional interface to the corrected and annotated text. The AAC working group have created a complete electronic version in XML format, added philological and linguistic data to the text and provided additional information in this editition, making use of elements and features of corpus research in the field of textual studies in a new manner. The philological principles of scholarly digital editions within the AAC are determined by the conviction that the methods of corpus research will enable us to produce valuable resources and tools for scholars. The AAC has developed such model digital editions to meet these aims. The main task in developing these applications was to devise a design and a web interface such that access to the text and related information could be fully utilized.

All pages are accessible as electronic texts and as facsimile images of the original pages. Various indexes and search facilities are provided. A sophisticated contents display has been developed in order to show the reader the whole range of the journal ready to be explored. The edition interface has five individual frames synchronized within one single window. The frames can be opened and closed as required. The PARATEXT section situated within the first frame provides additional information about the background of the edition and scholarly essays about the journal. The SEARCH | INDEX section gives access to a variety of indexes, databases and full-text search mechanisms. The results of these queries and lists are displayed in the adjacent RESULTS section. The CONTENTS section provides access to the whole run of issues and all of the contents of the journal in chronological order. The TEXT section has a complex and powerful navigational bar at the top so that the reader can easily navigate and read within the journal either in text-mode or in image-mode from page to page, from text to text (soon to be implemented), from issue to issue, and with the help of hyperlinks.


SEARCH | INDEX

The AAC-FACKEL provides a fully searchable complete text of the journal with various philological indexes, search and navigation tools.

The text can be searched in the following four modes:
in full text search mode (FULL TEXT SEARCH),
by means of a list of word forms (WORD FORMS) and
of an inverted list of wordforms (WORD FORMS INVERTED).
The functionality of the indexes and the technical specifications of the edition are described in the PARATEXT section on the technical details.

The following indexes are in preparation:
1.) an index of TITLES including all texts of the entire journal,
2.) an index of ERRORS that were corrected by Karl Kraus in »Die Fackel«,
3.) an index of ERRORS that were not corrected by Karl Kraus but found and provided with suggested readings by the editors of the AAC-FACKEL,
4.) an index of VARIANTS of Fackel issues, including the later editions, all confiscated issues and censored passages as well as the various regional editions of »Die Fackel«,
5.) an index of INSERTS including all regular inserts that are considered as part of the text of »Die Fackel« together with other inserts, which were added on occasion, as well as additions,
6.) an index of ILLUSTRATIONS,
7.) an index of SPECIAL ISSUES, and
8.) an index of EXTRA EDITIONS, including seperateley reprinted articles from »Die Fackel«.
Finally, an extensive and complete index of NAMES mentioned in »Die Fackel«, together with philologically sampled additional data, is in preparation and will consist of the following parts:
9.) an index of PERSONAL NAMES, based upon the material collected by Franz Ögg, but corrected and very largely extended by the AAC working group, as well as
10.) an index of INSTITUTIONS,
11.) an index of FICTITIOUS NAMES,
12.) an index of PERIODICALS, and
13.) an index of WORKS of literature, works of art and so on.


»DIE FACKEL« CONTENTS

The contents list of this edition is in principle based on the original text titles given by Karl Kraus. The contents list is primarily based upon the titles given in »Die Fackel«. Secondly, it is based upon the sets of contents indexes in the 88 quarterly volumes (Quartalsbände) available only on subscription at the time, which were sought out from libraries and antiquarian bookshops by the editors. However, some of the rare early volumes have not yet been found. The content indexes of the quarterly volumes numbers 86 to 88 are from the estate of Karl Kraus's close friend Sidonie Nádherný von Borutin who compiled them after his death, and they have been provided by the Library of the Czech National Museum in Prague. In those cases where the original indexes have titles missing, those given in a list in the Vienna City Library, presumably edited by Oskar Samek, the lawyer of Kraus and the executor of his estate, have been used. For the titles of texts of authors other than Kraus, the "Register der Autoren und Beiträge von 300 Nummern", compiled by Ludwig Ullmann and published as an addition to the journal in 1910, has been used (but have not yet been integrated in the online edition). The contents list is complete, but will be updated, if new titles are ready for integration.

The contents list of the AAC digital edition has five different presentation formats: 1.) in normal typeface: text titles as given in »Die Fackel«, either in the texts or on the contents page, the titles of texts under sectional headings (such as Glossen und Notizen) are expandable; 2.) in brackets: text titles as given in the contents indexes by Karl Kraus from the quarterly volumes; 3.) in brackets: text titles as given in the Samek-Register and text titles from the Ullmann-Register, if neither »Die Fackel« nor the quarterly volumes have titles; 4.) in italic: incipits (in almost all cases the first line of the texts), if there are no text titles available at all; 5.) in brackets in English: (front cover), (back cover), (inside cover), (adverts) and (inserts).


»DIE FACKEL« TEXT

The reader can navigate the texts of »Die Fackel« in four ways in this digital edition: from page to page, from text to text (fully functioning in the Contents section, but not yet implemented in the TEXT section of the edition interface), from issue to issue, from volume to volume.

The reader can read the text in two ways: page by page as digital text or as facsimile image.

Active links in both directions are in preparation within the electronic texts, where there are references to other pages of »Die Fackel« (e.g. contents, errors, censored passages). Active links from the text pages of the original Vienna Edition to variant text pages, if the related variant issues are available for digitization by the AAC, are also in preparation: First editions with links to the later editions, second editions with links to the first editions, if the second editions are available, confiscated editions with links to the issues before confiscation, censored issues with links to the uncensored, links to variants of editions for the provinces (with variant cover pages), links to variants of the Munich and the Berlin editions (with variant cover pages and variant impressum pages), links to variants of the Czech and German editions (with variant cover pages, in most cases varying only in currency and price information). The sets of variants are not complete but will be added, if missing issues are found and ready for integration. In addition, links to two remarkable original issues with original handwritten corrections by Karl Kraus are also in preparation for this digital edition. (Not all of the available variants have yet been integrated in the online edition).


Contact:
Mag. Dr. Evelyn Breiteneder
Austrian Academy of Sciences
AAC-Austrian Academy Corpus
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1010 Vienna
T +43 1 51581-2337
F +43 1 51581-2339
Mobile +43 664 6127237
evelyn.breiteneder@oeaw.ac.at
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www.aac.ac.at


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