Bullinger Digital

The project aims to digitally prepare the correspondence of the Zurich reformer Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575) and is based on the historical-critical Heinrich Bullinger Correspondence (Bullinger-Briefwechsel-Edition HBBW) and the information compiled by the HBBW project. In an online search system, the processed knowledge sources are made accessible together with the specially created digital copies of the manuscripts. To facilitate the search, the texts written in Early New High German will be normalized. In addition, a system for machine translation from Latin to German is being developed. Furthermore, methods of automatic handwriting recognition are being trained and compared in order to make the letters that have not yet been transcribed accessible as accurately as possible. "Bullinger digital" is led by the Institute for Computational Linguistics together with the Institute for Swiss Reformation History; the University of Bern, the University of Applied Sciences Fribourg, as well as the Zurich State Archives and the Zurich Central Library are project partners.

Project website: www.bullinger-digital.ch

Technical Tools

• Database / Search System: SQLite, Cantaloupe IIIF Server, Elasticsearch, React
• Automatic handwriting recognition: Transkribus, TrOCR
• Machine translation: Sockeye, Classical Language Tool Kit
• Self-developed programs for language identification and detection of code-switching

Usage Options

It is planned to store the data in TEI-compliant XML in order to ensure long-term availability, e.g. via TEI Publisher, after completion of "Bullinger digital". It should also be possible to integrate the data created by the HBBW edition in the future on an ongoing basis.

Project Responsibility

Prof. Dr. Martin Volk, Institute for Computational Linguistics

Prof. Dr. Peter Opitz, Institute for Swiss Reformation History

Back to overview Digital Edition Projects