Kommentierung als Aufgabe der digitalen Briefedition

Abstract In the age of digital editions, editorial commentary needs to be discussed anew, especially since in practice the classical commentary on a particular passage appears to be a weak point of digital editions. The expected achievements of digital edition commentary (internal and external networking of the knowledge presented in the commentary; linking with standardised data; subsequent use of older, printed commentaries) are measured against the potential of letter commenting, i. e. the fact that letters comment each other; the connection of paradigmatic lemmas, emerging from registers, with syntagmatic lemmas, readable along the sequence of characters, with a favouring of the former option. While previous digital editions of letters were largely based on a print edition that had appeared either in parallel or in advance, future letter commentaries will further open the boundaries between intra- and extramural knowledge. In this context, Georg Vogeler’s concept of the ‘Semantic Digital Edition’ is discussed at the end.