As part of the geohumanities project “DigiKAR”, Monika Barget and Jaap Geraerts have worked with MA students from Mainz, Germany, to create a digital edition of early modern birth and apprenticeship letters.
The German-language edition includes a birth letter from the Duchy of Limburg and an interactive map highlighting people’s cross-border mobility between 1611 and 1800.
Apart from birth letters for women who came to Mainz to marry, birth letters now kept at the Mainz city archives were also written for travelling craftspeople and merchants. The apprenticeship letters from Mainz cover different professions from gardeners to stonemasons. One particularly interesting apprenticeship letter details the journeyman travels of 19-year-old Carl Anton Mayer from Mainz via Strasbourg and Switzerland to Lindau.
The “DigiKAR” team welcome feedback and corrections. Moreover, FASoS members interested in the modelling and visualisation of spatial data from the Holy Roman Empire may want to contact Monika Barget for an exchange of ideas.
