Prize Papers" research project launched

Starting signal for a historical research project that is one of the largest in Germany: The academy project "Prize Papers" was opened in Oldenburg Castle on Wednesday in front of around 130 guests from the worlds of science, politics and culture. Prof. Dr Dagmar Freist, historian at the University of Oldenburg, is the scientific director of the long-term project, which was recently included in the Academies' Programme - Germany's largest research programme in the humanities. Among the guests at the ceremony were high-ranking representatives of the project's cooperation partners, including the Vice President and Secretary General of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Prof Dr Jens Peter Laut and Dr Angelika Schade, the Director of the German Historical Institute London, Prof Dr Andreas Gestrich, and Jeff James, the Director of the National Archives London, where the papers are stored. " A very special moment" "The launch of the Prize Papers project is a very special moment - not only for our outstanding historians, but for the entire university. It fills me with pride and joy that the project has been accepted into the Academies' Programme," said University President Prof. Dr Dr Hans Michael Piper at the opening ceremony. Jens Peter Laut, Vice-President of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities, which is sponsoring the project, added: "The Göttingen Academy can also consider itself lucky to be able to take such an unusual and novel project under its wing." Jeff James, Keeper and Chief Executive of the National Archives London said: "The National Archives are committed to making their collections accessible to new audiences - not just in the UK but internationally. This highly exciting and ambitious project in co-operation with the University of Oldenburg will help us to achieve much more than we could on our own." The ceremony was rounded off with a musical programme: Veronika Skuplik and Maria Carrasco played sonatas by Jean-Lauren de Suffren, which were handed down in the Prize Papers. Nientje Schwabe from the Oldenburg State Theatre read selected letters from the archives. Her presentation shed moving light on the lives of individual men and women who had left Europe in the hope of a better life. Hundreds of thousands of documents from ship captures The Prize Papers comprise hundreds of thousands of letters, journals, logbooks, administrative files, freight lists and other documents from the period of the naval wars between 1600 and 1817. The collection is considered unique in its diversity and scope. At the beginning of the 20th century, archivists discovered the completely unsorted documents that had been stored in the Tower of London after the conclusion of the court cases associated with the naval wars and then forgotten. However, a systematic sifting and sorting of the entire collection only began in 2012, when Freist and her team came across the Prize Papers as part of a European research project. Over the next 20 years, an international team of researchers will now sort and digitise the Prize Papers and make them available to researchers and the public in a database. "This unique preservation of previously unsorted archive material means that no documents have ever been discarded," explains Dagmar Freist. This means that sources have been preserved that would otherwise not have survived - for example on topics such as slavery or with a special focus on certain social groups such as women, children or people with little literacy. "The Prize Papers will open up new perspectives on our history and our responsibility in a globalising world," continued Freist. The research project, which is based at the University of Oldenburg and organised by the Göttingen Academy, has a funding volume of 9.7 million euros. Several cooperation partners are involved: the National Archives London, the German Historical Institute London and the Central Library Network of the Common Library Network.