Researching Regional History

Are you interested in our regions's history and culture? Are you looking for information on Hessian places, regions and people? Here you will find some important research tools.

The most important research tool for literature on all topics related to Hesse.
The Hessische Bibliographie (HeBi, Hessian Bibliography) is based on all publications dealing with subjects connected to Hesse. It does not only encompass printed literature, but also maps, audiovisual and electronic publications. A great advantage over a conventional catalogue is that in addition to books, you can also find articles from journals and individual contributions from various collective works (festschrifts, handbooks, conference proceedings, etc.) in HeBi. At present you can search in HeBi for publications published from 1973 onwards.

For more information on the Hessian Bibliography, such as collection criteria and history, please visit the page of the Hessian Library Consortium (hebis).

If you want to search for literature published before 1973, you should consult the volumes edited by Karl E. Demandt (vols I–III: before 1964), Winfried Leist (vol 1: 1965–1967 and vol 2: 1968–1970) and Wolfgang Podehl (vol 3: 1971–1973). Fully searchable digital versions of these bibliographies are also available on the pages of the hebis consortium.

The Waldeckische Bibliographie (ed. Heinrich Hochgrebe, Waldeckischer Geschichtsverein e.V., Bad Arolsen 1998; online version Jürgen Römer 2010) references literature on the historic territory of Waldeck that was published from the 17th century to 1998.

• Printed version (1998)
• Online version (2010)

The Hessian Regional History Information System LAGIS (Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen) provides access to reliable information on the regional history of Hesse. It includes maps, historical views and descriptions of places, biographies, historical images, information on gravestones of large Jewish cemeteries, sources and much more - for example the regesta of the Landgraves of Hesse, the Historical Dictionary of Places (Historisches Ortslexikon) or the Central Hessian Book of Field Names (Mittelhessisches Flurnamenbuch).

These card indices, created by historian and librarian Philipp Losch (1869-1953) and customs director and amateur historian August Woringer (1855-1945), provide biographical information on persons from Hesse. Both card indices are accessible in digital form on ORKA.
The Losch card index contains information on civilians, the Woringer card index on military persons.

Arcinsys is the online research database of the Hessian state archives. It contains data records on almost 6 million archival units and 6,000 archival holdings. The database is being expanded constantly.