The project is aimed at developing and creating a digital edition of the magazine „Die Insel – Monatsschrift mit Buchschmuck und Illustrationen“ (“Die Insel. Monthly Review with book decoration and illustrations”). The project team plans to establish a fully searchable digital edition, based on the resources of the AAC (Austrian Academy Corpus), which will include all of the 36 magazine issues displayed as facsimile and transcription.

„Die Insel“, a German language magazine, was published between 1899 and 1902 as an “aesthetic-literary monthly periodical” and is considered to be one of the most important magazines of the Fin de Siècle and of modern German literature. Under an often-changing editorial team, the magazine saw the publication of texts by renowned authors such as Franz Blei, Richard Dehmel, Heinrich Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Felix Salten, Robert Walser and Frank Wedekind. It also features a number of translated texts, as well as artistic content in the form of illustrations, prints, woodcuts and other media. Lavish text decoration and typographical peculiarities are further features of the „Insel“.

The magazine with its sailboat signet would later lead to the establishment of the „Insel Verlag“, a famous German publishing house.

The edition project is part of the Literary and Print Culture Studies’ focus on the research of newspapers and magazines and will feature, along with image and text content, an index of person names, referring to authors, translators and illustrators contributing to the „Insel“, establishing a connection to the database PMB – Personen der Moderne Basis.