COOPERATION POSTER CREATORS “Retro-editing” : The edition of an edition of the Karl Kraus legal papers IN THE PROJECT “INTERTEXTUALITY IN THE LEGAL PAPERS OF KARL KRAUS. A SCHOLARLY DIGITAL EDITION”, THE LEGAL PAPERS OF THE AUSTRIAN SATIRIST KARL KRAUS (1874- 1936) ARE BEING EDITED AND WILL BE PROVIDED DIGITALLY AND CONTEXTUALIZED WITH KRAUS’ OEUVRE AS A WHOLE. IN THIS POSTER, THE DIGITIZATION AND EDITING PROCESS OF THE PROJECT ARE DESCRIBED. AS THE PRECONDITIONS OF THIS DIGITAL EDITION ARE QUITE UNIQUE, THE POSTER FOCUSES ON THE PROJECT’S SPECIFIC INITIAL SITUATION, THE AVAILABLE MATERIAL, AND ITS PROCESSING AS WELL AS ON THE AIMS, GOALS, AND THE INTENDED OUTCOME (I.E. THE PLATFORM PROVIDING ACCESS TO THE DIGITAL EDITION) OF THE PROJECT. Vanessa Hannesschläger Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities / Austrian Academy of Sciences vanessa.hannesschlaeger@oeaw.ac.at INTERTEXTUALITY IN THE LEGAL PAPERS OF KARL KRAUS : A DIGITAL SCHOLARLY EDITION FWF project no. P 31138-G30 Introduction: Historical context While the Austrian Karl Kraus (1874-1936) is most commonly perceived as a satirist, writer, and editor of the magazine Die Fackel, his intensive preoccupation with justice was often observed and Walter Benjamin even declared: “No one will understand this man, unless one realises, that everything, without exception, language and purpose, for him happens in the sphere of law.”[1] Although Kraus’ attitude towards the courts in the Habsburg period had been predominantly critical, the constitutional reform of the Austrian Republic in 1919 and the abolition of death penalty marked a decisive break for the author. He especially welcomed the reform of the Press Law of 1922, which marked the beginning of a growing fondness for litigation. In the same year, Oskar Samek became his lawyer. In the course of the following 15 years (until Kraus’ death), they were involved in over 200 court actions together. Despite of Kraus’ commitment to the law, the influence legal proceedings had on his satire and the other way round was barely thoroughly researched – which was on the one hand due to the fact that cultural and literary historians often shy away from the interpretation of legal documents. Only Reinhard Merkel, a professor of criminal law, attempted to understand the connection of “Strafrecht und Satire” in Kraus’ Fackel from a jurisprudential point of view.[2] The second reason for the lack of research in this area is that the complex history of the Kraus papers, which were split up into several personal collections and taken to exile by Kraus’ (often jewish) friends and associates when they were forced to leave Austria during the time of the Nazi regime, was responsible for the long- lasting unavailability of the material documenting Kraus’ involvement with the law. The project described in this paper aims to bridge this gap by (re-)editing the papers documenting Kraus’ and Samek’s actions and making them available in an open access / open data / open source digital edition. Karl Kraus and Oskar Samek in court. The Kraus legal papers at the Vienna City Library. Initial position and starting point The material documenting Kraus’ and Samek’s court actions is held by the Vienna City Library. As this corpus consists of roughly 8000 sheets of paper, transcribing and editing all these documents in the course of a three year project with three persons (i.e. full time equivalents) staff would be unfeasible. Luckily, transcription is only a minor part of the project members’ tasks: In 1995, Hermann Böhm published the records of cases from the Karl Kraus papers as a ‘mixed edition’ (“Mischedition”) in four volumes[3] (of roughly 300 pages each). However, Böhm made a number of editorial decisions which are today out of date and not suited for a digital format, which is why a new edition of this material has become a desideratum among Kraus researchers as well as a wider research community interested in historical legal documents. While Böhm did a trem