Digitization, Cooperations
Digitising Florens Christian Rang’s personal papers
Project duration: since August 2013
Rang's address book with two entries for Walter Benjamin
The Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur took over the personal papers of Florens Christian Rang (1864–1924) as a donation for the Walter Benjamin Archive. During the last years of his life, Florens Christian Rang, German theologian, politician and writer, was one of Walter Benjamin’s close friends.
The papers not only include manuscripts on topics in Rang’s creative areas, but also his correspondence (with, for instance, Walter Benjamin, Martin Buber, Theodor Däubler, Richard Dehmel, Erich and Lucie Gutkind, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Franz Rosenzweig), translations, printed publications, personal documents, diaries and notebooks. In total, the holdings amount to approximately 7500 sheets. In a first project phase (August 2013–November 2014), all the diaries and notebooks were digitised. This involved 30 books (approx. 2,300 sheets), now accessible in a digital form in the reading room of the Walter Benjamin Archive. Since November 2015, digitisation has begun on individual works from the handwritten and typewritten bundles of papers. The reader computer terminals can already access materials on such topics as gnosis, Shakespeare, Rang’s Abrechnung mit Gott and Spinoza. The project aims to make the entire holdings of Rang’s personal papers available in a digital form for use in the reading room.
Project Management: Julia Bernhard, Prof. Dr. Erdmut Wizisla
Funded by the Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur
The digitised materials were produced by Die Kulturgutscanner.