Summary of the impact

The Gutzkow project, co-directed by Lauster and Vonhoff of the Department of Modern Languages (German), has transformed public access to the author's work through open-access, on-line publication. The project, which combines specialist scholarship with innovative editing, has considerably enhanced public appreciation of a widened canon of 19^th-century German literature (impact 1). User testimonies, the international press, public acknowledgement and public involvement in events in the region reveal a significant renewal of public interest in Gutzkow. The editorial results of the Gutzkow project have been requested by an interdisciplinary linguistic digitization project in Berlin and will be fully integrated in this open access linguistic database (impact 2).

Underpinning research

As project founders, Professor Martina Lauster (Professor of German at Exeter from 2000-2008, currently Professor Emerita and Honorary University Fellow) and Professor Gert Vonhoff (Associate Professor of German, appointed 2001) have collaborated on the Gutzkow Editionsprojekt since 2001. It uniquely combines editorial progressiveness (internet-based work in progress) and technological innovation (the Kronos electronic publishing platform) with a critical interrogation of a largely neglected literary and journalistic corpus. Gutzkow had been the figurehead of the Young German movement which introduced European liberalism into German cultural life after the death of Goethe and Hegel. His writings continually promoted these moderate values when, after the failed revolution of 1848/49, the German intellectual elite broadly split into conservatism and socialism and as an effect sidelined his liberal agenda. This first modern edition of his complete works aims to re-establish Gutzkow as a major contributor to 19^th-century German culture.

In 2001, Lauster and Vonhoff launched the online-edition and edited the first volume introducing the Gutzkow project to the public (3.5). Since then both have acted as co-directors of the international Gutzkow project and secured external funding (3.7, 3.8). Lauster's main research interests in comparative literature of the nineteenth century, with a particular focus on the 'journalistic revolution' that began to affect all forms of writing and publishing from 1830 onwards, supports her research into Gutzkow's journalistic enterprises. A 2007 monograph reassessed the status of journalistic writing in nineteenth-century Europe (3.3) and forms the basis of her editing text and commentary of Gutzkow's contemporaneous overview Die Zeitgenossen in 2010. She is currently working on the development of intercultural networks of knowledge in the nineteenth century, and the place of Gutzkow within those networks.

Vonhoff's long-standing research interests in prose fiction and narratology and in scholarly editing have combined to bear fruit in the Gutzkow Editionsprojekt. An internationally recognised Gutzkow specialist (3.1, 3.6), Vonhoff focussed on setting up the hybrid edition in its early years (developing the website; securing a publishing contract). Together with Lauster, he now directs the Exeter-based website of the edition. In his 2007 monograph (3.4) Vonhoff developed categories which help to describe narrative evolution in a social context; this research helps specify Gutzkow's standing within narrative fiction. The efforts to raise the author's profile were rewarded by an excellent field of participants joining a conference held in Exeter in 2010 in anticipation of the bi-centenary of Gutzkow's birth; the proceedings were then published on the bi-centenary in March 2011 (3.2) with the support of Forum Vormärz Forschung, one of the leading literary societies for the 19^th century. Vonhoff is currently working on Gutzkow's novellas and literary criticism with the aim of enlarging the understanding of the innovative contexts of the 1830s. His major Leverhulme-funded research project (3.7) focuses on widening the reception of narrative prose after 1850 and will help to re-establish Gutzkow's place within our memory of the 19^th century.

References to the research

(indicative maximum of six references)

Evidence of the quality of the research is indicated by the fact that 1, 2 and 4 are the results of external grant funding, 2, 3 and 6 were rigorously peer-reviewed, and 3, 4, 5 and 6 were submitted to RAE2008.

Grants awarded to support the research outlined above:

7. G. Vonhoff (PI), `German Narrative Prose Fiction after 1850', Leverhulme Project Grant, 2009, £156,672. This project (2010-13) aims to remap German Realist prose, the history of early working-class prose and the question of whether one can speak of a white-collar workers' prose.

8. G. Vonhoff (PI), `Gutzkow Edition Project', Modern Humanities Research Association, 2002, £11,000. The funding was for a MHRA Research Associateship (Dr Catherine Minter, 2002-03) and was matched by University of Exeter funding of £11,000.

Details of the impact

Impact 1: Enhanced public appreciation of a widened canon of 19^th-century German literature

The project has impacted on public engagement with the 19^th-century German novel and its heritage. As the only editing project on this author that is currently available, it has redefined Gutzkow's place in the literary canon, transformed public access and raised Gutzkow's public profile. The project website was launched 22 Jan 2001. From January 2008 to June 2011, it is calculated from earlier figures that the site received more than 3,000 hits. In July 2011 a new counter was installed, which reveals 4,750 hits from that date to 30 July 2013 (5.3), suggesting increasing interest as the number of texts and commentaries available has expanded. Evidence of this transformed public profile can be found in the press. Germany's leading daily broadsheet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which has a daily circulation of approximately 362,000 and the highest distribution abroad of any German broadsheet, highlighted Gutzkow's relevance for today's readers on Gutzkow's bicentenary, 17 March 2011, stressing his `concept for a modern novel'. In addition, the project has revolutionised the Gutzkow corpus, placing journalistic texts and critical commentaries alongside his more widely-known literary works for the first time.

(a) Media Reports (Press and Radio)

When the project was first launched, non-academic reviews appeared in the international press, which highlighted the innovative nature of its peer editing and the re-location of Gutzkow in the public sphere rather than specialist literary domains; these aspects continue to attract interest in articles of leading papers up to the present day (5.7, 5.8), which call the concept behind the edition `ingenious' (5.7).

In 2008, an article in the leading German weekly newspaper Die Zeit (distribution of 500,000), took the publication of Gutzkow's influential novel Der Zauberer von Rom as a welcome opportunity to celebrate the fact that Gutzkow's `remarkable novels were being made available again' and this time for a wider audience and with a commentary (5.8).

The 2011 Gutzkow bicentenary was a further catalyst for public engagement with Gutzkow. Vonhoff and Lauster's 3.5 is the foundation of the project. This, together with the 9 volumes published so far (one of which is in its 2^nd edition), is acknowledged in the leading Swiss daily Tages-Anzeiger (distribution of 550,000) (5.7). The article refers to the `innovative concept of an "edition in progress", which uses the internet to produce publications that are financially affordable and are at the same time of the highest scholarly standard'. The columnist highlights the importance of the commentaries, `as without them readers will not be able to understand the works adequately any longer'.

Project member Ute Schneider was also interviewed by a regional German radio programme on SWR2, a culture channel produced for Baden-Württemberg and Rheinland-Pfalz, but broadcast nationwide with an estimated audience of 300,000 per day (5.9). She was asked about the conference in Mainz that celebrated Gutzkow's bicentenary, and acknowledged the role the Gutzkow edition has played for the revival of the author.

(b) Non-academic Readers

The project's combination of edited texts available in print and online, alongside the documents and commentaries published exclusively online, has proved particularly successful in drawing the attention of non-academic users. There has been a sea-change in readers' perceptions of Gutzkow. Readers' testimonies comment on peer editing; for example, a member of the Redaktion SPRACHKUNST made a suggestion for additional material in October 2009, and praised `the great potential' he saw in `the interactive online approach for commentaries' (5.2). A scientist reader from CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), Switzerland, contacted the project leaders in July 2008 with information about a reading of Gutzkow's novel Die Ritter vom Geiste in the "Klassikerforum", an online reading group (5.2, 5.4). Between 31/5/2008 and 24/9/2008 these forum users produced more than 15 pages of comments on their reading experience (5.4). Contributions include a general recognition of the importance of the novel as well as the author, the discussion of individual characters, and the frustration about not having a reliable edition of it easily available. A web counter shows more than 35,000 hits in this exchange between non-professional readers over this period, and the exchange led to direct approaches to various members of the project team. Other users of the edition contributed to the open-question section of the edition.

For the bicentenary, Vonhoff, alongside other leading researchers in the field, was invited to contribute two essays to the popular and highly-regarded online literary magazine literaturkritik.de (5.5). The March 2011 issue was dedicated specifically to Gutzkow. Together the two articles have been visited by 4,337 readers between 11 March 2011 and 30 July 2013.

The project is also referenced on a literary blog in December 2010 (5.6); the popularity of this blog in general is evidenced by its web counter which shows more than 900,000 hits since July 2010.

(c) Arts Organizations / Libraries and Archives

A member of the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg informed the project of a newly discovered letter exchange (May 2009) (5.2).

From 2008 to 2013, the Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg (Frankfurt/Main), which holds the literary estate of Gutzkow, spent 19,826 Euros on the conservation and restauration of archived letters to and from the author (21,500 pages), a direct consequence — as the Director of the Manuscript Department attested — of the increased interest in and usage of these holdings (5.1).

Impact 2: Request for full integration into a linguistic database of principal German texts from 1600 to 1900

In October 2012, the Deutsches Textarchiv in Berlin (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften), an interdisciplinary linguistic digitization project, requested access to the texts of the Gutzkow edition with the aim of fully integrating the results of the editorial work on Gutzkow's texts within their linguistically annotated public database. After negotiations and a general agreement with the publically financed body in early 2013 (5.10), first texts were made available in the testing section DTAQ (currently 265 registered users) of the DTA in January 2013. The linguistic portal of the DTA, where the texts finally will be made accessible, currently has more than 11,000 visitors with approx. 100,000 page hits per month. The collaboration is ongoing.

Sources to corroborate the impact

Correspondence

1. Letter by the Director of the Manuscipt Department of the Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg (Frankfurt/Main), dated 28.8.2013.
2. Emails from 2009: 18.10.09 from Redaktion SPRACHKUNST; 12.5.09 from Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg; email from 2008: 1.7.08 from a scientist (CERN) in Switzerland.

Websites

3. Counter for the homepage of the Gutzkow Project, since July 2011, with 4750 hits:
   http://extremetracking.com/open?login=gvekgho, [accessed 30/07/2013].
4. Klassiker forum reading group, available at:
   http://www.klassikerforum.de/index.php?topic=2709.0.
5. Gert Vonhoff, `Der Autor im zeitgenössischen Kontext', text and counter available at:
   http://www.literaturkritik.de/public/rezension.php?rez_id=15330&ausgabe=201103; and `Neue Wege der editorischen Arbeit', text and counter available at:
   http://www.literaturkritik.de/public/rezension.php?rez_id=15365&ausgabe=201103 literaturkritik.de [accessed 30/07/2013], together 4,337 hits.

Blog

6. http://loomings-jay.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/karl-gutzkow.html [accessed 30/07/2013].

Press

7. Rudolf Walther, `Der Mann hinter der skandalösen "Wally"', Tages-Anzeiger, 16 March 2011.
8. Rolf Vollmann, `Tempo: Rasend. Karl Gutzkows Romane sind wieder da. Ein Leseabenteuer', Die Zeit, 3 Jan 2008, S. 50, available at: http://www.zeit.de/2008/02/Tempo_Rasend [accessed 30/07/2013].

Radio

9. Ute Schneider interview on German radio programme: SWR 2, Aus dem Land — Musik und Literatur, broadcast 12 March 2011. Information about the programme available at: http://programm.ard.de/Programm/Radiosender/swr2-aus-dem-land--musik-und-literatur/eid_284676265389228?sender=28467&monat=10&jahr=2011&datum=2011-03-12&list=main&archiv=1#top; information about the average audience available at:
   http://www.swr.de/unternehmen/presse/pressemitteilungen/swr-erfolgreichster-radioanbieter/-/id=11165302/vv=print/pv=print/nid=11165302/did=11754974/1m505gi/index.html

Lingustic digitization

10. Emails from Deutsches Textarchiv, Berlin, dated 30.10.2012, 11.12.2012., 15.1.2013, 5.7.2013. Integration of Gutzkow texts in DTAQ:
    http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/dtaq/about; login data for registered testing site DTAQ:
    g.vonhoff@ex.ac.uk, password br99un13G.