Die HKA als Wissensspeicher: Von der analogen zur digitalen Marburger Büchner-Ausgabe – Ausblick und Rückblick

Abstract Toward the end of this year the “Marburger Büchner edition digitized” (MBA digital) will be made accessible to the general public. The MBA digital is based on a print version which was published in 18 volumes in the years 2000 to 2013 and it contains the complete corpus of Georg Büchner’s writings comprising all manuscripts, all prints of editorial interest, synoptic versions, text presentations highlighting Büchners use of historical sources, and (inversely) the text of the sources used by Büchner. It contains extensive forms of commentary pertaining to the texts, their textual genetics, their shades of meaning and their importance at the time of writing. The MBA digital is both a historical critical edition and a knowledge store („Wissensspeicher“) as one critic called it. The article provides an introduction into the various features of this knowledge store and outlines the main phases in its historical development first as a print product and finally as a digital product covering a time span of fifty years.