2. Journals and Egodocuments

The module Journals and Egodocuments includes calendars with handwritten entries by August Hermann Francke, dating from 1697 to 1703, his journals and journal fragments dating from 1691 to 1726, as well as Francke’s individual reports and fragments of reports, especially with regard to his travels. In the course of the DFG project "Cataloguing and digitalization of ego-documents of the Early Modern Age" (working period: 01.04.2018-31.03.2021) more autobiographical writings by Francke, e.g. his famous curriculum vitae, will be presented in the form of digital images and trancriptions.

Journals

August Hermann Francke’s journals from the Archive of the Francke Foundations, supplemented by means of fragments from the Berlin State Library, provide first-class resources as to Francke’s person and Halle Pietism. They not only document his daily workflow, but also the organisational administrative structure of his Foundations as well as their connection to the University of Halle and their global networking.

In total it concerns 15 chronologically-organised journals with minutes and facts, or fragments thereof, dating from 1691 until 31 August 1726. All documents dating from 1716 to 1725 are available in their entirety; those dating from 1691 to 1692, 1692, 1714, 1715 and 1726 have been handed down only in part. The journal of 1714 is available as a scholarly book edition, edited by Veronika Albrecht-Birkner and Udo Sträter.1

The journals from the Francke Foundations’s Archive comprise 5,779 sheets of paper. There are also 29 pages from the so-called Francke Estate preserved at the Berlin State Library. We extend a special word of gratitude to the Directors of the Berlin State Library for providing us with digital scans of these fragments and for permission to publish them on the Francke Portal. With the exception of the 1715 journal, which is in octave format, all journals consist of collections of sheets written on obverse and reverse in the historic chancellery, or folio format.

They largely originate from August Hermann Francke and Heinrich Julius Elers (1667-1728), the inspector of the Orphanage’s Bookshop. Their handwritings are very similar and cannot be clearly distinguished. Francke’s travel companion, the amanuensis Johann Ulrich Christian Köppen (1694-1763) and Francke’s son, Gotthilf August Francke (1696-1769), can be unequivocally verified as scribes of the journal of the “Reise ins Reich” of 1717-18. Several copyists, including the amanuensis Georg Friedrich Weise (1696-1781), worked on the 1725 journal. An exception is the rudimentary rendition of the 1715 journal, which consists of excerpts composed in connection with the unpublished Church History of Johann Heinrich Callenberg (1694-1760), who, however, merely wrote down the dates.

Digital deployment and transcription

All August Hermann Francke’s journals, calendars and travel accounts are presented in a digital format. The digitised sources and their transcriptions are available as a synopsis, but also separately.

The transcription aimed at reproducing the format of the text and the characters as faithful as possible. As far as the technical possibilities allowed, the same applies to the line and page formats.

Crossing module boundaries, the texts were linked to the Digital Collections of the August Hermann Francke Study Centre. Within the Francke Portal this applies to all August Hermann Francke’s publications included in the module Bibliography of Writings, the catalogue entries and digital copies of the journal inserts in the module Journal Inserts as well as the catalogue entries and digital copies of the correspondence in the module Epistolary.
A full-text search is available for research.

Please note:
The transcriptions follow the line breaks accurately and are depicted only in a window width of 1200 pixels or more. Lower pixel numbers lead to undesired automatic line breaks in the running text and even worse in the liner notes. Isolated variations in the formats may occur and are due to the utilisation of different browsers of various versions. Reducing the zoom factor is recommended, particularly in the case of a continuous text with liner notes on the left and right hand side.
For legal reasons, downloading digitised material is only possible for the journals and egodocuments from the Francke Foundations’ Archive.

Index of Persons

The tab Index of Persons is used to call up and list the names of persons included in the Journals / Egodocuments collection in alphabetical order. If you click on the name, the biography of the person is listed. Below that, up to three assigned titles are displayed in short form with a preview image and sorted by date. If necessary, further titles can be called up via the button [VIEW ALL]. Clicking on a short title or the preview image leads to the complete title display if the person is listed in the metadata. If a person is not in the title record but in the transcribed text of a manuscript, a preview with the text excerpt is called up first. Clicking on this will take you to the display of the page on which the person in question appears. Please note that persons appearing in the metadata of documents that have been transcribed are only displayed via the title record. It is recommended to search for the person you are looking for in the transcribed text using a separate search query in the field "Search in document".

It is also possible to search for biographies starting from the title record. For this purpose, persons who have a GND number are marked with a person symbol in the metadata. If a person does not have a GND number, no connection to the Bio-bibliographic Register can be made at this time. If a person is marked with a link in a transcribed text, this link leads directly to the biogram in the Bio-bibliographical Register.

Requesting your cooperation

We will be grateful if you would inform us of errors in the transcription of the journals. Please contact Dr. Jürgen Gröschl.

Gefördert durch die

  1. August Hermann Francke, Tagebuch 1714. Ed. by Veronika Albrecht-Birkner and Udo Sträter in cooperation with Carola Wessel † and Victoria Franke. Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen, 2014 (Hallesche Quellenpublikationen und Repertorien; 13).