Guides: Germanic Languages & Literatures: Overview

Historical News

Frankfurter Allgemeine Archive
Online archive of the Frankfurter Allgemeine, 1949-present

German Classics

Bibliothek deutscher Klassiker
Large collection of German canonical texts in authoritative editions.
Goethes Werke
Complete 143 volumes of the definitive Weimar Edition. Includes Goethe's literary and scientific works, his diaries, and a complete collection of his letters.

Reference Works / Nachschlagwerke

KLG - Kritisches Lexikon zur deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur
Access to contemporary German-language literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Detailed essays give a survey of an author's work and influence and include bibliographies of the author's works and of secondary literature.
Historical Dictionary of German Literature to 1945
Chronology and bibliography of German literature, with entries on poetry, novels, historical narrative, philosophical writings, drama, and literary figures.
Literature Criticism Online
Literary reference work combining several literary commentary series, including Contemporary Literary Criticism, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, and others.
Deutsche Biographie
The online version of the Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB) and the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB) (1875-1912), with biographical entries, references to historical and biographical articles and books.
Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopaedie (DBE)
IDZ - Index Deutschsprachiger Zeitschriften 1750-1815
Index of 195 German-language publications from 1750-1815.
Virtuelle Deutsche Landesbibliographie
Subject bibliography for German regions
Berlin-Bibliographie
Covers a wide range of publications on all aspects of the city of Berlin, 1985-2002.
Zedlersches Lexikon
Historical 18th century encyclopedia. At 68 volumes, one of the largest printed encyclopedias ever, and first to include biographies of living people.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP)
A dynamic, scholarly online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer-reviewed publication of entries.

About this guide

Penn Libraries has substantial collections on the history and languages of the German-speaking world and Northern Europe. Germanic Languages and Literatures resources include databases and indexes; reference works, dictionaries, and bibliographies; graphic novels; digitized collections of primary sources; and Penn dissertations in Germanic Languages and Literatures.

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Library Catalogs

KVK - Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog

The Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog allows you to search simultaneously the holdings of many major libraries in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other European countries; it functions then as a sort of European Union Catalog, and a counterpart to the mainly US/Canadian WorldCat database.
WorldCat
WorldCat is the world's largest bibliographic database and a meta-search engine of catalogs from thousands of online member libraries of OCLC, the Online Computer Library Center, a non-profit cooperative library data that underpins library searches worldwide.

German Studies Databases

Bibliographie der deutschen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft (BDSL)
The most important bibliography of German literature and literary studies. Covers the years 1985-present. When searching, use umlauts and accents.
MLA International Bibliography
Covers literature, languages, folklore, and linguistics. Includes English and foreign languages.
Literature Resource Center
Biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism and reviews on writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world. Note: Penn has licensed two user "seats" for LRC.
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
Linguistics, literacy, language acquisition, speech and hearing, and language research.
Historical Abstracts
Historical coverage of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada).
International Medieval Bibliography
You will need to click on the "enter database" button to get to IMB. The International Medieval Bibliography (IMB), the world's leading bibliography of Medieval Studies and an essential tool for research and teaching on the Middle Ages, covers Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The database comprises articles from periodicals and volumes of conference proceedings, essays, Festschriften, and exhibition catalogs.
ITER: Gateway to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Medieval (400-1500) and Renaissance (1300-1700) studies
Digi20
Search digitized monographs in humanities and social sciences from the latter half of the 20th century. Project of Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
DigiZeitschriften
DigiZeitschriften provides full-text access to over 100 scholarly journals published in Germany or neighboring countries since the late 1700s. The journals are in German, English, or other European languages and date back to their first volumes. Fields most prominently represented are mathematics, literature, history, the arts, economics, and law. Other fields covered include education, geology, librarianship, music, religion, sciences, and sociology.
IBZ Online
The bibliography IBZ (Internationale Bibliographie der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Zeitschriftenliteratur) has been the leading international and interdisciplinary reference work documenting academic periodical literature in the humanities and social sciences for over a hundred years. Updated weekly.
EUR-Lex
Full-text European Union / European Community legislation, case law, and preparatory documents. Includes treaties between EU member states, international agreements, secondary legislation, and supplementary legislation, decisions of Community law courts and opinions of the Court of Justice of the EC and opinions of the Advocates General, and parliamentary questions.
Philosopher's Index
Provides indexing and abstracts from books and journals of philosophy and related fields. It covers the areas of ethics, aesthetics, social philosophy, political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, logic, and philosophy of mind as well as material on the philosophy of law, religion, science, history, language and education.
CAIRN Bouquet Général
Full-text French journals in the general humanities and social sciences.
Proquest Dissertations and Theses Fulltext (formerly Dissertation Abstracts)

Subject Guide

Charles Cobine

he/him

Contact:

Van Pelt Library 205

215-746-5830

Subjects: Cinema & Media Studies, German Studies

General Databases

Other European literature databases

Bibliographie de la littérature française
French and Francophone literary studies and criticism, 1998-present.
Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (DBNL)
Covers Dutch literature, linguistics and culture.
American Bibliography of Slavic and Eastern European Studies (ABSEES)
Covers Russian, Central and Eastern European Studies.
Swiss Literature Archive
Finding aids connected to Swiss-German literature and other Swiss linguistic regions.

Germanic Studies Links

Dictionaries

Wörterbuchnetz
Search across several German dictionaries of standard German and dialects.
Duden Online
Standard dictionary for the German language. In German only.
openthesaurus.de
Ein freies deutsches Wörterbuch für Synonyme

Germanic Languages & Literatures: Overview