Calendars offer a vivid glimpse into everyday and social history from the Early Modern period onwards. First appearing around 1500, this genre experienced a significant boom during the Enlightenment, as calendars were closely linked to the education of broader segments of the population. Published annually, these calendars merged their original time-keeping purpose with a wealth of useful information and short stories. They were far more than just a list of astronomical data, holidays, and market dates. Their broad appeal came from practical tips for farming and housekeeping, weather forecasts, health and nutrition advice, and safety tips to prevent accidents. They also included moral stories, anecdotes, and even sensational murder or ghost stories, as well as postal rates, measurement tables, and interest rates—and even advice on the best time to trim hair and nails. Simply put: they contained everything that constitutes a popular mass medium today. Consequently, it is not surprising that the calendar evolved into a highly successful and long-lasting business model. Although some titles were only successful for a few volumes, some persist to this day, such as the renowned 'Lahrer Hinkende Bote'. This publication has existed for 223 years, reaching a circulation of nearly one million during its heyday around 1870, and is a prime example of the significant boom of calendars in the Upper Rhine region.
Often worn and read to pieces, these booklets were typically discarded after use. For this reason, they have often survived only as unique copies, in fragmentary form, and are highly scattered. Usually printed on wood-pulp paper, they present a conservation challenge and in many cases can no longer be made available for use in their original form.
The digital preservation and virtual reunification of this cultural heritage, which is significant not only for regional history, but in a broader sense, is an important task for the memory institutions that hold these collections.
Given the significance of the Upper Rhine calendars and almanacs from the 18th to the 20th century, the University Library and the Baden State Library have developed a joint project to make their complementary holdings accessible through digitisation and virtual reunification. By enabling full-text searches, the project ensures that the collection can be seamlessly integrated into cultural-studies research across historical and philological disciplines.
Both project partners have previously made selected titles from their calendar and almanac collections available digitally. The Baden State Library has already provided a comprehensive corpus of calendars centered around the Lahrer Hinkenden Bote, while the University Library has digitised the Freiburger Bote, thus a practical and entertaining home and economy calendar (1831–1862) and one of the 'classic' publications of the Freiburg publisher Friedrich Wagner. Together, this joint project will provide approximately 250 titles for research, teaching, and academic study.
Alongside the collections of the University Library and the Baden State Library, the project will also include the cataloguing and digitisation of titles from the City Archives of Freiburg and the University Library Heidelberg.