When the first volume of the tenth edition was published in 2001, completely redesigned edition of the “Handbook of German History” appeared, the publisher and editor could not have imagined that it would take more than two decades before the content of the series would be completed with the publication of the last two volumes this spring. The series was originally scheduled to conclude in 2007 and with two fewer volumes. At the moment, the 25th volume of the mammoth work is being prepared, a comprehensive register of all volumes in which German history from late antiquity to the 2021 federal election is traced. This is certainly the last printed version of the handbook to be published in its entirety, because in the age of knowledge available at any time and anywhere via smartphones and Wikipedia, such ambitious edition projects on “real” paper have now become an anachronism.
Present and history: The last volume of “Gebhardt” runs until 2021. – Politics
