Teaching and instruction Lehrveranstaltungen und Unterweisung
The house colloquium is the Institute's oldest and most ordinary form of teaching: once a fortnight, on a Wednesday afternoon, one person speaks for forty minutes and the meeting discusses for forty, and that is the end of it. It has been held since 1959 and had reached its 418th meeting by December 2024, having been interrupted once, from March 2020 to May 2021. It was reduced from fortnightly to monthly in 2025 and suspended at the end of that year; there has been no meeting since 11 December 2024. There is no top table, no opening speech, and much of what is presented is unfinished work. The three other forms of instruction — the reading course on original documents, the object class, and the half-day given to those who transcribe for the Institute — are likewise suspended, the first two for want of students coming forward to a reading room that opens two days a week, the third because the DFG project is the only work still being transcribed.
1. The house colloquium: how it has changed
| Period | Form, and changes made |
|---|---|
| 1959–1974 | Fortnightly, on Wednesday afternoons, in the old cataloguing room in the west wing of the library. Those present were the Institute's staff and colleagues from the manuscript department, usually seven or eight. |
| 1974–1989 | Moved to the lecture room at the present address and fixed at 14.15 on a Wednesday; opened to scholars from outside the Institute in 1978. |
| 1989–1996 | Titles began to be entered meeting by meeting in the colloquium register (archive, KOL-1); before that the record was patchy. |
| 1996–2019 | Unchanged in form. From 2004 the outline of each paper has been posted on paper on the notice board in the main hall; nothing is circulated. |
| 2020–2021 | Interrupted for fourteen months. Three sets of outlines were exchanged in writing and are not counted as meetings. |
| From May 2021 | Back to the old form: fortnightly, Wednesdays at 14.15. The registration of arrivals introduced during the epidemic was dropped in April 2022. |
| Matter | Practice |
|---|---|
| Time | Wednesdays 14.15 to 16.00: forty minutes for the paper, forty for discussion, the rest for clearing up. Latecomers are not waited for. |
| Numbering | Meetings were numbered consecutively from the first in 1959; the last, on 11 December 2024, was no. 418. The numbering is not closed and will be taken up again if meetings resume. |
| Speakers | The divisions take turns, each member of staff speaking at least once in the academic year; corresponding associates and colleagues from partner institutions are invited two to four times a year. |
| Record | The title, the speaker and not more than three points of discussion; no verbatim record. The minute is filed in KOL-1 within three days. |
| Material | Unpublished material shown by a speaker is not quoted without permission, by members of the Institute as much as by anyone else. |
| Attendance | Open. The room holds thirty-two; a word by telephone or post the day before, giving your name and how many are coming, secures a seat. |
| Language | Usually German. Where a paper is to be given in English it is marked as such on the notice board. |
2. The next few meetings
| No. | Date | Speaker | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 415 | 6 Nov 2024 | L. Moebius | The headings of the subject index: eighteen rules and the cases they do not cover (held). |
| 416 | 20 Nov 2024 | M. Vogt | Types of marginal annotation: a first classification from a sample of 210 volumes (held). |
| 417 | 4 Dec 2024 | J. Lammers | First results from the fineness series of the Goslar mint, with charts for 480 measurements (held). |
| 418 | 11 Dec 2024 | S. Andersen | The trial of a revised reference number, on 4,000 entries made since 2016, and with it the academic office's account of the year's work. Last meeting held. |
The open afternoon in the repair workshop, last held on 10 April 2025, and the thirteenth colloquium are not in this table; the first was a workshop afternoon and the second is a colloquium proper. Both are dealt with on the diary page. Meetings were held on Wednesdays at 14.15; where a meeting would have fallen on a public holiday it was put back a week, and the change was noted on the notice board and here.
3. The reading course
The reading course is held jointly with the departments of history of two universities in the neighbourhood, once or twice a term, four consecutive days at a time, three hours a day. The person leading it chooses a number of originals, or images of them; those attending read in turn, construe sentence by sentence and raise difficulties as they go, and the leader explains script, abbreviations, vocabulary and historical point as they arise. There is no examination and no credit, though a university may count the hours towards an optional course under its own rules.
| Term | Material | Led by | Attendance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Winter 2024/25 | Fourteenth-century charters of the Lüneburg court, with practice in resolving abbreviations | L. Moebius | 9, of whom 7 students |
| Summer 2025 | Fifteenth-century account books and receipts, repeated by request | H. Schwabendiek | 6, of whom 5 students |
| Winter 2025/26 | Not held. The reading room opening two days a week made the four consecutive days impossible, and the universities were told in October 2025. | ||
| Summer 2024 | Fifteenth-century account books and receipts, including the conversion of measures | H. Schwabendiek | 7, of whom 5 students |
| Winter 2023/24 | Thirteenth-century charter hands and the language of seals | J. Peters | 11, of whom 9 students |
| Summer 2023 | Reading marginal notes in manuscripts, with an introduction to Middle Low German | M. Vogt | 8, of whom 6 students |
There is no charge, but those attending must register in advance and come to all four days. Not more than ten originals are issued for a course, and images are used for about two thirds of the material. Register with the academic office, giving your name, your department and what Latin and Middle Low German you can read. A weak reading knowledge is not a reason for exclusion, but bring a dictionary.
4. The object class
The object class is held once a term, in two parts. The first hour, at the charter desks in the reading room, is given by Division II and covers measuring a charter, recording folds and examining a seal. The second hour, in the balance room, is given by Divisions I and VI and covers weighing a coin, measuring its diameter and grading the wear of the die. Plain material from the Institute's own holdings is used, never showpieces. Each person fills in a record sheet as the class goes on, and the sheets are then compared with one another.
- Numbers. Six to ten at a time; beyond that, the next class.
- Equipment. Gloves, magnifiers, a graticule, the balance and record sheets are provided. Ink pens may not be brought in.
- What becomes of the sheets. One copy of each is kept by the Institute as a check on how consistently its own descriptions are made. Names may be left off.
- Registration. As for the reading course, except that the object class gives priority to younger colleagues from partner institutions and to students.
5. Instruction for transcribers
Division III gives a half-day course, three hours, for those who transcribe for the Institute. It covers the fourth edition of the editorial conventions, the rules for transcription, the use of the words for uncertainty, the form of index headings and the way images are cited. At the end each person is given a copy of the notes for transcribers (eight pages, on paper) and signs an undertaking about the use of the material.
| Course | Date | Attending | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sixth | 17 Mar 2022 | 4 | Held jointly with a partner archive; two members of the Institute travelled to that archive to give it. |
| Seventh | 9 Nov 2023 | 5 | For the checking of volume 2 of the Hildesheim monastery charters. |
| Eighth | 23 Jan 2025 | 8 | For DFG project WI-2024-07; applications were taken from December 2024. This is the only transcription work still in hand, and no further course is being arranged for the present. |
One practice that is nowhere written down. A visitor staying two weeks or longer is given a fixed place in the reading room, and beside it a small wooden board with their name and the subject of their research. The board is taken down when they leave and kept in the cupboard in the reading room, where there are now more than a hundred and forty of them, the oldest from 1988. Nobody has ever found a rule requiring this, and every duty officer since has done it. A visitor who would like a board to be made should mention it to the officer on duty.
Compiled by the academic office from the colloquium register (KOL-1) and the divisions' records of speakers; revised each term.
Page WI-VER-03 · compiled by M. Tiedemann · read by the director's office · last modified 18 September 2026