Biographical Portal

The Biographical Portal (German: Biographie-Portal) is a free online index to biographical reference works in the German language area. Intended to facilitate access to reliable biographical information, it contains entries for more than 160,000 biographies of persons from all social backgrounds and nearly all periods of German, Austrian, Swiss, Slovenian and South-East European history.

Biographical Portal
ProducerBavarian State Library, Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Foundation Historical Dictionary of Switzerland
LanguagesGerman, English, French, Italian, Slovenian
Access
CostFree
Coverage
Temporal coverageEarly Middle Ages to present
Geospatial coverageEurope
No. of records160,000
Links

The portal is a joint project of the Bavarian State Library, the Historical Committee at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Foundation Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.[1] Slovenska Biografija is published by Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The project is financed by the founding institutions[2] and access is free.

Index

The portal provides a common index to the following reference works:

The index can be searched using the following criteria:

  • Surname and forename (including variant names and pseudonyms)
  • Year of birth and/or death
  • Profession

Most entries are in German. The Swiss lexicon also contains entries in French and Italian, and the Slovenska Biografija contains entries in Slovenian.[3]

From the search results, users can access the full text of the biographies, either directly or via another site. An advantage of the common index is that it allows users to compare differences in biographical entries and supplement the information in one lexicon with that in others.[4] Further national and regional reference works are planned for future inclusion in the portal.[1]

Temporal coverage

All entries are for deceased persons only.[3] The newer German and Swiss lexicons reach into the present, but the ÖBL is limited to the period 1815–1950. The last date covered in the ÖBL is December 31, 1950, and the last biography is that of Karl Renner, first Chancellor of Austria, who died on that date.[3]

References
  1. "Biographie-Portal: About Us". Biographie-Portal. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
  2. "Biographie-Portal geht online" (in German). computerbild.de. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
  3. "120.000 Biographien im Internet" (in German). science.ORF.at. 26 November 2009. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
  4. Gruber, Christine; Feigl, Roland (2011). "Das " Biographie-Portal " – work in progress". Germanistik in der Schweiz (in German). 8: 217. Retrieved 2015-02-20.
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