Marginalien in der digitalen Edition: Bemerkungen zu Text und Autorschaft am Beispiel von Thomas Manns Nachlassbibliothek

Abstract

Writers’ libraries represent an overlap between a collection of works of various authorship with the genetic dossiers of literary texts by one single author. Annotations within and modifications of the printed text on the page of a book give rise to theoretical questions of authorship which come to a head in retro-digitisations of material libraries. Using the example of the digital database Thomas Mann Nachlassbibliothek Online , the article focuses on ‘text’ in its transition from handwritten marginalia on paper to its digital representation on screen. Which textual variants are constituted by annotations ranging from autograph to allograph in the library’s printed texts? In what way do editorial categorizations reduce their ambiguity? How are categorizations appearing in the edited representation on screen and how do they translate to machine readability? More pointedly: Which and whose text does the digital scholarly edition convey?