A treasure from Bavaria's past is now accessible to everyone online

In collaboration with the State Church Archive of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria and the digitization portal bavarikon, more than 300,000 pages from around 2,600 parishes were recorded and made available online. The Free State of Bavaria supported this project with a sum of over €210,000 as part of bavarikon, which is organized and operated by the Bavarian State Library. Marcus Mühlnikel, managing director of the IFLG, speaks of a “huge treasure” that is now open to researchers and the public alike. And he emphasizes with a smile: “This is not dry bureaucratic and administrative material, but fascinating reading material. The pastor also dealt with the ‘moral and ethical’ state of his parish, which gives us interesting insights into the living conditions and milieu of his parish.”

What makes the parish descriptions so valuable

Particularly exciting: Protestant pastors had to write their reports according to a fixed format. This makes it easy to compare parishes across Bavaria – a great benefit for researchers, local historians, and anyone interested in the history of their locality. Especially since the documents not only tell the history of the church, but also show life in Bavarian parishes in all its facets. After all, the texts also address the following points:
* The history of the parishes and their church buildings
* The biographies of the pastors, but also of the teachers and parish workers
*Inventories, administrative documents, and parish libraries
 *Religiousness, “morality,” community life, and social conditions
 *Family life, child-rearing, leisure activities, and political engagement of the population
 *Accidents, floods, diseases, or wars

A project with a signal effect

The IFLG designed and provided scientific support for the project, the State Church Archive provided the original sources, and bavarikon provided the funding and took care of the technical implementation. “With this project, we are making an important contribution to opening up historical source collections and to the digital transformation of the humanities,” said the project management. With over €210,000 in special funding from the Free State of Bavaria, the IFLG is also strengthening the visibility of the University of Bayreuth in the field of digital knowledge transfer. bavarikon is the digital treasure trove of the Free State of Bavaria, a joint project of the State Ministry of Science and the Arts and the State Ministry of Digital Affairs. With over 570,000 items of content from more than 200 cultural institutions, the online portal makes Bavaria's diverse cultural heritage accessible worldwide free of charge.

The link to the parish descriptions:
https://www.bavarikon.de/evangelische-pfarrbeschreibungen-bayern?lang=en