Jeanne Hersch: digital reissue of writings

Jeanne Hersch (1910–2000) is one of Switzerland’s most renowned philosophers and was among the prominent Swiss intellectuals of the 20th century. Along with Hannah Arendt, she was a master student of Karl Jaspers, whose work she also made famous through her translations into French. However, she didn’t see herself as just an academic, but also as a publicist with a social conscience. This led to her oeuvre comprising both specialist philosophical work that belonged to a narrower academic field and numerous texts that were directed towards a wider public, in which she shared her views on the prevailing political and social issues and controversies. This exceptionally wide sphere of influence means that Hersch’s work is extremely relevant in terms of philosophy and cultural history. She repeatedly spoke out on matters relating to human rights and published the popular anthology ‘Birthright of Man’ for UNESCO. In her resolute battle against any form of totalitarianism and her passionate advocacy of democracy, human dignity and individual freedom, the relevance of her work has not diminished to this day.    

With few exceptions, Hersch’s writings are only available in their first publications and were often published by institutions and publishers that no longer exist. They are therefore very difficult to obtain; no complete works have been published to date.

The new digital edition of Jeanne Hersch’s writings compiles all of her texts together for the first time. The collection covers various genres, including treatises, articles in anthologies, newspaper and journal articles, and even interviews and recorded discussions with the philosopher. The texts are presented in their original versions, with systematic reference being made to any subsequent translations.

On the basis of current information, the edition comprises 314 texts in total. They are all presented in full here.

The digital reissue makes Hersch’s writings available to the interested public in an easily accessible way. The main aim is therefore to offer a reliable reading text that faithfully reproduces the original. In this way, we offer easy access and allow people to rediscover Hersch’s writings in a straightforward way that hopefully enhances their knowledge.

The people, organisations and works mentioned in the texts are identified and catalogued in specially compiled indexes. This offers an initial systematic approach to an in-depth examination of Hersch’s writings.

All texts have been processed in line with the TEI XML standard and have thereby been made easily accessible for subsequent academic use, too. Academics and researchers can use the texts we have created to analyse them further, and uncover and explain context and meaning, for example through annotations and comments. In this regard, the digital reissue of Jeanne Hersch’s writings can be seen as a work-in-progress edition. The carefully compiled digital texts, which are also catalogued using the various indexes, provide the perfect basis for future editorial projects.

Apart from a general introductory note, no further introductions or commentaries on the individual texts will be made during this project phase.

For the text markup, the digital reissue of the writings was compiled in accordance with the Transcription Guidelines issued by the German Text Archive (Deutsches Textarchiv, DTA). 

We are currently still working on our definitive front end. As soon as we have finished editing a sufficient number of texts, we will publish them on our project website.

This project is being carried out with the support of the Jeanne Hersch-Gesellschaft. More information on this association and the life and work of Jeanne Hersch can be found here (in German and French): http://www.jeanne-hersch-gesellschaft.ch/