In 1894/95, a "Questionnaire for the collection of folk traditions" designed by the Freiburg university professors Elard Hugo Meyer, Friedrich Kluge and Fridrich Pfaff was sent to the 1,500 school towns in the Grand Duchy of Baden. A separate questionnaire was sent to the pastors to record the religious and ecclesiastical cultural area.
The return was about 20 %. Elard Hugo Meyer evaluated the questions on "customs and traditions" and published his work "Badisches Volksleben" in 1900. Since 1914 the questions on "Linguistics" and other answers concerning the dialect have been evaluated for the Badisches Wörterbuch.
Of the total of 7,400 preserved reply pages for 507 locations, the collection contains the digital copies of the 130 folders owned by the University. All other folders are kept in the Badisches Landesmuseum, Außenstelle Südbaden/Landesstelle für Volkskunde in Staufen.
Rudolf Post: Die Erhebungen zur Sammlung der Volksüberlieferungen Badens 1894/95 und die Anfänge des „Badischen Wörterbuchs“, in: Rudolf Bentzinger/Damaris Nübling /Rudolf Steffens (Hrsg.): Sprachgeschichte, Dialektologie, Onomastik, Volkskunde. Wolfgang Kleiber zum 70. Geburtstag (Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik. Beihefte. 115), Stuttgart 2001, S. 259–275.
Elard Hugo Meyer: Badisches Volksleben im 19. Jahrhundert (Forschungen und Berichte zur Volkskunde in Baden-Württemberg. Band 8), Stuttgart 1984 (ND).
