The manuscript RP3 of the Zentralbibliothek in Zurich contains six love letters, the ‘Zürcher Liebesbriefe’  (‘Zurich Love Letters’) and one Minneleich (a complex love song). The manuscript was written in German in the early 14th century. It was produced from parchment in a particularly small format of 6,9 x 3.5 cm. The miniature manuscript was discovered during construction works in a house in Zurich. Due to water damage the manuscript became partially illegible. In an early attempt to recover the text, in the 19th century, it was chemically treated with oak gall reagent which further irreparably damaged parts of the text and made future recovery attempts impossible until the emergence of multispectral imaging technology and the statistical image processing methods of today. Multispectral imaging of this manuscript was performed by CSMC in 2017 while working on another project at Zentralbibliothek Zurich. The suggestion came from the staff of the library without whom this project would not have been possible. Based on performed imaging and image processing work we were able to correct the older editions of the strongly damaged first love letter. The forthcoming publication gives the new reading of this text and focuses also on the codicological peculiarities and the significance of the of the manuscript of the ‘Zürcher Liebesbriefe‘ for the German literary history.

Publication:

Marco Heiles and Ivan Shevshuk: Zürcher Liebesbrief I. Neuedition nach Multispektralaufnahmen, in: Kleinigkeiten. Festschrift für Thomas Bein, edited by Jens Burkert. Berlin 2024. (forthcoming)

Data:

Images in preview are compressed and of lower quality. They are mainly intended to serve as thumbnails.

Original TIF images including the ones used for the publication, can be found in the PROCESSED folder (zip file).

More information on the manuscript:

Digital images and metadata: https://doi.org/10.7891/e-manuscripta-86215
Short description and bibliography: https://handschriftencensus.de/1364

The research for this project was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) within the Sonderforschungsbereich 950 (SFB 950). The research was conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at Universität Hamburg in collaboration with the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM).

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