Capital of Culture Project "Timisoara Collection"

The focus of the two-year project is the digitization, full-text recognition and online publication of ca. 190,000 pages of the Temesvarer Zeitung (published 1852-1940, 1944-1949). According to Jörg Riecke, the periodical "is considered to be a politico-economically important information journal that was widely distributed in the Banat region.

Initially published by the Viennese government as the official gazette for the crown land of the Voivodeship of Serbia and Temes Banat, which was created as a result of the revolution of 1848/49, it was structurally similar to the official Viennese newspaper until the end of 1860 and also politically represented the perspective of the central power in Vienna. After the dissolution of the crown land and the incorporation of its territory into the Kingdom of Hungary, the Timisoara newspaper was privatized in 1861. Its first owner became Carl Hirschfeld, who had already been entrusted with its management in an official capacity from 1857-1858. In 1864 he sold it to Martin Uhrmann, but remained part of the editorial staff until 1866, when the newspaper was taken over by Michael Niamessny and was now to be dominated by the political direction of Hungarian equalization and Magyarization, embodied by Ferenc Deák's party. Until 1868, it held a monopoly position in Timisoara as a daily. 

The next major change came in 1912 with the merger of the Temesvarer Zeitung and the Neue Temesvarer Zeitung and the editorial takeover by the theater critic Anton Lovas, in the wake of which cultural topics in particular came even more to the fore.After the National Socialist seizure of power in Germany, the Temesvarer Zeitung supported opponents and persecuted persons of the regime and was banned between 1940 and 1944 due to its still mostly liberal attitude. It was able to resume its activities in the same year, but only until the centralization of the Romanian press in 1949.

The digitization of the most prominent national German-language newspaper of Timisoara is complemented by the completion of the Jewish weekly Neue Zeit (proven 1922-1940).Its holdings (1923-1930), which are already available in the DiFMOE Digital Library, originate from the BKM-funded IOS project "Jüdische deutschsprachige Periodika aus dem östlichen Europa. Digitization and Documentation of Historical Newspapers, Folk Calendars and Pictorial Representations of Eastern European Jews." According to the description of the Leibniz Institute for Research on Eastern and Southeastern Europe (IOS), "Die Neue Zeit [.] contains news from Germany and abroad on the issue of equality, the life of Jewish communities, and essayistic texts." In addition to the Neue Zeit, all other "legacy holdings" in the DiFMOE Digital Library with a direct connection to Timisoara will also be integrated into the new collection.
 
Namely, the Banater Deutsche Zeitung (1925-1941), the cultural journal Von der Heide (1909-1937), the Jewish Week (Zsido Hét, 1932), the Israelite Calendar (1926-1930) and the Jewish Yearbook (1935/36). Outside the BKM-funded measure, a self-financed contribution by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Stuttgart) completes the periodical part. From the holdings of the IFA library, the following newspapers thus become part of the Timisoara collection: Arbeiterzeitung, Banater Tagblatt, Deutschungarischer Volksfreund, Eisenring, Extrapost, Der Landbote, Schwäbische Volkspresse, Der Volksfreund and Volkswille. The temporal focus is on the interwar period, although attempts will be made to close existing gaps as far as possible with the help of the holdings of other cooperation partners. The Timisoara collection will be expanded by a selection of books, historical postcards, archival documents, photographs, maps and city plans as well as theater posters. The focused period spans from the 17th century to the first half of the 20th century. In individual cases, objects beyond this period will also be included, provided that the copyright and usage rights issues have been clarified. The titles selected or still to be selected are mainly those that were printed in Timisoara itself.

The research for bibliographically or archivally already indexed and further, less known or even unknown relevant sources is part of the project. This also includes works that were produced/published outside of Timisoara, but were written by Timisoara authors and/or have Timisoara as their subject.In the sense of qualitative processing of material already available digitally on Timisoara, the numerous existing advertisements from a part of the volumes of the Jewish weekly Neue Zeit are also extracted and integrated into the Timisoara collection as independent documents.In this way, the user will be given an impression of the diverse Jewish business world in the interwar period.

Since May 2023, a map search co-developed by DiFMOE as part of the Kramerius Consortium has been available for georeferenced image documents.As of middle of octobre 2023, 1,200 historical postcards and photographs from the Timisoara collection can already be accessed via this.A total of 240,000 pages are to be digitized as part of the BKM-funded measure.In addition, up to 40,000 newspaper pages will be provided by the library and the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations' own funds. Together with the 50,000 pages already created in the context of earlier projects, the Timisoara collection will have a total volume of about 330,000 pages.