Volume 28 of the Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB) is to be completed next year.

Its predecessor, the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, had 44 volumes from 1875 to 1899 and ten supplementary volumes by 1910.

There should no longer be such at the FIS, but there is a need for supplementation;

NDB-Online is supposed to remedy the situation.

For this reason, the leading Würzburg historian Peter Hoeres, as a member of the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, invited the biographical researchers from German-speaking countries to a digital conference.

The first volume of the NDB was published in 1953 with the active support of Federal President Theodor Heuss.

Since, as is customary in national biographies, only the deceased are listed, 69 years later, with the memorable examples of Hoeres, not only Adenauer, Adorno and Brandt are missing.

Some articles from NDB-Online are already available, including one written by Hoeres about the publisher of the FAZ Frank Schirrmacher, who died in 2014 and who is also recognized as a promoter of “journalistic talent” like Edo Reents.

Joachim Fest took over the dreaded Hitler article

Figures are new in digital format, modeled on the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Groups of people who have been underrepresented so far are also to be taken into account in NDB-Online. Hoeres named women, athletes and representatives of popular culture, as well as “second-tier people”.

In the FIS there are not only the Dutchman Rembrandt and the Flemish Rubens from Siegen, who were considered German at the time, but also a disproportionately large number of military personnel.

In the FIS, which is also funded by German industry, many entrepreneurs are represented who were long considered politically unencumbered;

National Socialists were initially not to be admitted, which proved to be impracticable.

Joachim Fest then wrote the dreaded article “Hitler” in 1972.

Thomas Vordermayer (Munich) reported on problematic NDB content.

In 1977 Otto Michel, the successor to the Tübingen chair, wrote an article about Gerhard Kittel, a scholar of the Old Testament who was burdened by the Nazis, in which he talked without distancing himself about “world Jewry”.

The article, an extreme isolated case, can also be found in NDB-Online as a historical document with an explanation, but the Marburg theologian Lukas Bormann is writing a new version.

Philipp von Cranach (Bern) reported on other experiences in the sister project Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz based on the article about Johann August (John) Sutter, at whose mill on the Sacramento River in the private colony Neu-Helvetien the California gold rush of 1848 began.

Since the "Black Lives Matter" movement, Sutter has been considered a slave owner and ruthless exploiter of the indigenous population;

the fall of the Sutter monument in Sacramento was also taken into account in the online edition.

"Sutter's Fort" also appears in Carl Barks' Donald Duck story "Im alten California", published in 1951, which depicts Indians in a relatively non-clichéd manner.

However, in the case of the heroic Sutter picture, Stefan Zweig ends up being an impoverished “bumbo” in a ridiculous uniform.

Some tools of biographical work have also become questionable today.

Sabine Hock from the Frankfurt biographical lexicon mentioned criticism of genealogical signs such as crosses for dates of death and asterisks for dates of birth.

One participant also saw an outdated "Christian-Central European" view here.

The attempt to replace these symbols with runes was not first made during National Socialism.

Christine Gruber (Vienna) from the Austrian Biographical Lexicon also questioned genealogical denominations for data protection reasons;

In his counter-speech, Hoeres pointed out that in this way secularization or a religious renaissance could be demonstrated.

Some lectures used a very technical, mostly English vocabulary, albeit with a recognizable southern German accent;

None of the participants had any problems with the digital format, but the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, which systematically refers to the national biographies in many places, was viewed by most with a sniff as not citable.

The absolute exception was Christian Sonderegger (Bern), director of the historical dictionary of Switzerland;

As he reported, he and his colleagues speak to relevant Wikipedia authors and make arrangements: "Every contribution to the biography is welcome to us." but hardly noticeable even in a younger academic audience.

Many participants had probably experienced for the first time that communication with the well-known digital encyclopedia is possible at all.