Historical News
Frankfurter Allgemeine Archive
Online archive of the Frankfurter Allgemeine, 1949-present
German Classics
- Bibliothek deutscher KlassikerLarge collection of German canonical texts in authoritative editions.
- Goethes WerkeComplete 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 GegenwartsliteraturAccess 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 1945Chronology and bibliography of German literature, with entries on poetry, novels, historical narrative, philosophical writings, drama, and literary figures.
- Literature Criticism OnlineLiterary reference work combining several literary commentary series, including Contemporary Literary Criticism, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, and others.
- Deutsche BiographieThe 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.
- IDZ - Index Deutschsprachiger Zeitschriften 1750-1815Index of 195 German-language publications from 1750-1815.
- Virtuelle Deutsche LandesbibliographieSubject bibliography for German regions
- Berlin-BibliographieCovers a wide range of publications on all aspects of the city of Berlin, 1985-2002.
- Zedlersches LexikonHistorical 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.
German Film
- EUscreen "The EUscreen project aims to promote the use of television content to explore Europe's rich and diverse cultural history." Its aim is provide unified access to a collection of TV programming, sources, and articles for the academic study of the history of television, and to provide access to all digitized European cultural heritage materials by 2025. The core collection includes materials on twentieth-century Europe (70% of content), virtual exhibitions, and content provided by program partners. Partners include British Universities Film & Video Council; Česka Televize, Czech Republic; Cinecitta Luce, Italy; Danmarks Radio, Denmark; Deutsche Welle; Hellenic National Audiovisal Archive; Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, France; Kungliga Biblioteket, Sweden; Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid; Oesterreichische Rundfunk, Austria; TAIK, Finland; Telewizja Polska, Poland, among others.
- Film Index International An unmatched reference work for entertainment films and biographical information about directors, producers, actors and more, made in collaboration with the British Film Institute (BFI), it is based on the Summary of Film and Television (SIFT) database collated by the BFI over the past 70 years. Includes bibliographies that, unlike freely available resources such as the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), include scholarly and academic work in Cinema Studies. Entries include full cast and crew lists, searchable plot synopses, filmographies, biographical details, important dates, awards and prizes, and thorough bibliographies, with citations for original reviews from the time of a film's release as well as interviews, historical surveys and obituaries. Includes works of film from blockbusters to arthouse films from the present day back to the era early cinema and silent film. With more comprehensive coverage of international films--European, Asian, Latin American, African--than any other comparable index. Includes over 125,000 film records and over 800,000 person records.
- Filmlink.de "Online-Informationsressourcen der Film- und Fernsehwissenschaft"
About this guide
Penn Libraries has substantial collections on the history and languages of the German-speaking world and Northern Europe from the 18th century and early German emigration to Pennsylvania. 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.
Quick links: Borrowing Books | Interlibrary Loan | Suggest a Purchase
Library Catalogs
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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.
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WorldCatWorldCat 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.
Frequently Used Databases in German Studies
- Bibliographie der deutschen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft (BDSL)Comprising the printed volumes for the years 1985-2003, with more recent years being loaded on an ongoing basis.
- IBZ OnlineThe 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.
- MLA International BibliographyCovers literature, languages, folklore, and linguistics. Includes English and foreign languages.
- Literature Resource CenterBiographical 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.
- Deutsche Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert: Nationalsozialismus, Holocaust, Widerstand und Exil 1933-1945National Socialism, Holocaust, Resistance and Exile, 1933-1945, is a database containing primary sources on the Nationalist Socialist State and the NSDAP, Nazi ideology and propaganda, National Socialist justice and legislation, on resistance and persecution, and annihilation and expulsion in the "Third Reich".
- Historical AbstractsHistorical coverage of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada).
- ARTbibliographies ModernLiterature on artists and movements from Impressionism in the 19th century up to the recent works and trends. Covers painting, photography, sculpture, drawing, performance, installation works, video art and more, with emphasis on new and lesser-known artists, including foreign-language literature.
- Philosopher's IndexProvides 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.
- Worldwide Political Science AbstractsFull-text links and coverage includes all aspects of political science, as well as international relations and comparative politics.
- Linguistics and Language Behavior AbstractsLinguistics, literacy, language acquisition, speech and hearing, and language research.
- International Medieval BibliographyYou 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 RenaissanceMedieval (400-1500) and Renaissance (1300-1700) studies
- Periodicals Index OnlineHumanities and social sciences. The scope is international, including journals in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and other Western languages.
- DigiZeitschriftenDigiZeitschriften 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.
- Digi20Search digitized monographs in humanities and social sciences from the latter half of the 20th century. Project of Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
- EUR-LexFull-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.
- CAIRN Bouquet GénéralFull-text French journals in the general humanities and social sciences.
More Research Guides
Subject Guide
General Databases
Other European literature databases
- Bibliographie de la littérature françaiseFrench 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 ArchiveFinding aids connected to Swiss-German literature and other Swiss linguistic regions.
Germanic Studies Links
- The German Studies Collaboratory:
An Interdisciplinary Experiment To Transform German Studies - German Studies Guide (ACRL)
- Dutch Studies Guide (ACRL)
- Scandinavian Studies Guide (ACRL)
- Center for Research Libraries German Collections
- German Society of Pennsylvania
- American Swedish Historical Museum
- Penn Germanic Languages and Literatures
Dictionaries
- WörterbuchnetzSearch across several German dictionaries of standard German and dialects.
- Duden OnlineStandard dictionary for the German language. In German only.
- openthesaurus.deEin freies deutsches Wörterbuch für Synonyme
