A critical edition on historical principles of the works, letters and other writings in printed and digital form

This Edition of the Complete Works of Uwe Johnson is an Academy Project of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities at the University of Rostock. It will result in a critical edition on historical principles, in both printed and digital form, of the works, letters and other writings of Uwe Johnson. The project is funded jointly by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany and the Federal State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. This will be the first time an edition of the works of a contemporary author from the 20th century has been undertaken under the auspices of the Academy.

This Edition of the Complete Works of Uwe Johnson will provide researchers with a reliable and philologically punctilious textual basis for studying the literary works and other writings of Uwe Johnson. The author’s extensive correspondence will be given equal weight in terms of the space devoted to it and the care lavished on it. In the digital edition all the possibilities offered by multi-media technology will be used to present the genesis of a particular text, to make available the sources Johnson used while writing it and to provide information on its literary and historical contexts. The advantages of digital organisation lie in the synoptic linkage of texts with commentaries, sources and other material from across the different sections of the project. This will realise editorially the idea of a ‘single, complete oeuvre’, which was essential to Johnson’s work.

The Research Office of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities is located at the University of Rostock. Also participating in the project are the Johannes und Annitta Fries Stiftung, the Peter Suhrkamp Stiftung, the Suhrkamp Verlag and the Uwe Johnson-Gesellschaft.

The Academy research project “The Complete Works of Uwe Johnson” is part of the Academies' Programme , a research funding programme co-financed by the German federal government and individual federal states. Coordinated by the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities , the Programme intends to retrieve and explore our cultural heritage, to make it accessible and highlight its relevance to the present, as well as to preserve it for the future.