The database was created in the context of the project "Nachkrieg und Mittelalter. Children's and Youth Literature (1945-1970)", which has been funded by the DFG since 2022 and is headed by Prof Dr Thomas Boyken at the University of Oldenburg. One research desideratum that the project aims to help reduce is the lack of an overview of medieval literature for children and young people between 1945 and 1970. As part of Sofie Dobbener's dissertation "The Middle Ages in Children's and Young Adult Literature between 1945 and 1970" (working title), a selection of texts that could be identified for this period will be analysed using quantitative and qualitative methods.

The database is based on medieval children's and young adult literature, i.e. historical narrative texts set in the Middle Ages (approx. 500-1500 AD) that are aimed at children or young people. The publication period covers the period from 1945 to 1970, including texts that were first published before 1945 and were republished after the Second World War.

While the dissertation is limited exclusively to original, genuinely German-language texts that were published in the West German occupation zone or the Federal Republic of Germany, the database also contains texts that were published in Switzerland or Austria. The database also contains translations and so-called 'rewrites'. For these texts, however, the present collection only provides an initial basis for further research. Texts published in the Soviet Occupation Zone or the German Democratic Republic are completely excluded from the database. A collection of sources can be found in the study by Wiebke Helm (2015).

An initial starting point in the search for texts was a review of relevant handbooks and encyclopaedias (e.g. Wild 2008; Hopster/Josting/Neuhaus 2005; Doderer 1993). The research contributions on historical children's and youth literature and on the reception of the Middle Ages (e.g. Schmideler 2012; Grosse/Rautenberg 1989; Schmidt 1989; Promies 1986) were also particularly useful for this corpus. Titles for the database were (occasionally) taken from these studies.

The majority of the titles came from a search of library directories and online catalogues. The catalogues of the children's and young adult book collection of the Institute for Youth Book Research at the University of Frankfurt, the collection of historical children's and young adult books at the University of Oldenburg, the Berlin State Library, the International Youth Library in Munich, the Lower Saxony State and University Library in Göttingen, the University and State Library in Cologne, the children's and young adult book collection of the Brunswick University Library and the German National Library were searched. The Seifert private collection, which is part of the collection of historical children's and young adult books at Göttingen University, was viewed on site as it is not accessible via an online catalogue. A combination of keyword and period searches was used for the research. Günther Bärnthaler's empirical study (1996) on 'medieval associations' of pupils (e.g. knights, castle, battle, war) served as a guide for the keywords searched, which was supplemented by further keywords of our own. Some of these additions were keywords that had already been created in the catalogues, others were keywords that were added by the students themselves and that emerged as relevant terms during the research.

In addition to the catalogue searches, a review of publishers' announcements also led to further hits. An additional comparison of the catalogued information and a further search in the Common Union Catalogue and in the interlibrary loan catalogue was carried out.

Research in catalogues and databases is the first central step in the search for possible texts. In the next step, it is necessary to check the hits for their actual thematic fit by examining the blurbs and content. Some texts identified during the research proved to be unsuitable for the research question. The following examples illustrate what these cases can look like.

Texts often appear relevant because of their title, but the content or the specific narrative plot is not set in the Middle Ages. Eckart Zur Nieden's Kolumbus macht eine Entdeckung (1967), for example, is not a novel about Christopher Columbus, but a children's detective story. The blurb already hints at this: "Savings bank robbery - as an urban play by a group of young people. The police are in the picture, but only about the group's intentions. They find out too late about the crooks who are taking advantage of the game. Instead of the players, robbers enter the counter and real paper money disappears from the safe instead of the old paper. Things get serious for everyone. But in the end, the gain outweighs the loss." (Kleine Brockhaus-Bücherei 1967) The novel Die Nibelungen sind an allem schuld (1966) by Eva Marder is also not an adaptation of the Nibelungen saga for children. Instead, it is an adventure story set in the present day in which children want to dive for the lost Nibelung treasure in the Rhine without making any explicit reference to the legend.

In addition to such cases, where it is quickly recognisable that their content is not suitable for a project on children's and young adult literature set in the Middle Ages, there are also texts that require a closer reading. This mainly concerns texts whose setting lies in a historical border area. The common localisation of the European Middle Ages in historiography is deliberately imprecise, with a period from approx. 500 to 1500 AD, as the use of more precise year dates would result in a restriction to specific historical events that are only representative of one area of historiography (cf. e.g. Knefelkamp 2022. p. 14 f.). In order to create a usable criterion for a text corpus from this periodisation, only texts whose narrative focus lies between the years 500 and 1500 are included. Texts that are mainly set in the marginal periods of medieval localisation, i.e. in the years shortly before 500 or shortly after 1500, are not included. For this reason, Hans Baumann's young adult novel Der Sohn des Columbus (1951), for example, is not listed in the database, as the plot does not begin until 1501 and focuses on Christopher Columbus' fourth voyage (1502-1504). Franz Bauer's reissued book Ursula, die Enkelin des Veit Stoß. Eine Erzählung aus dem Mittelalter (1945 [1941]) was also excluded, although the secondary title and the blurb explicitly refer to the Middle Ages. According to the blurb, the novel tells the story of an ostracised sculptor who moves "among the shining figures of medieval Nuremberg [sic]" (D. Gundert 1945), although a broader definition of the Middle Ages was used in these attributions, as the novel is set in the years 1502/1503.

In order to identify such borderline cases, it is often necessary to scrutinise the texts for corresponding chronological markers. However, this time-consuming task is necessary in order to ultimately be able to present a collection of texts that is as coherent as possible, on which a quantitative analysis can be based.