Winckelmann-Ausgabe

The life and work of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717‑1768), born in Stendal and active in Rome from 1755 onwards, have repeatedly provided archaeologists, art historians and literary scholars with food for thought and critical debate. However, there has been no scholarly edition of Winckelmann's works to date.

Consequently, the Winckelmann Society Stendal and the Department of Classical Archaeology at the Free University of Berlin began a critical revision in 1988 of Winckelmann's magnum opus, “Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums” (History of Ancient Art), as a joint German-German project financed by the Volkswagen Foundation. In 1992 the Saxony‑Anhalt state government commissioned the Winckelmann Society to continue the work as part of a complete edition. In 1996, the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature and the Erfurt Academy of Non-Profit Sciences, together with the Winckelmann Society Stendal, took over the publication of Johann Joachim Winckelmann's writings and bequest. The editorial office is located in Stendal, Germany, where the entire digitised manuscript legacy and a specialised library on Winckelmann are housed.

The edition is an interdisciplinary undertaking that takes into account archaeological, philological, art-historical and cultural-historical aspects of Winckelmann's work. Besides the text edition and linguistic commentary, it provides scholarly notes on the monuments, persons, events and cited works mentioned by Winckelmann. The commentary not only records the current state of research but also seeks to identify and explain any errors or misinterpretations in Winckelmann’s own knowledge, placing them within the broader intellectual and chronological context. Cross‑references to parallel passages in other works, letters or manuscripts illuminate the connections between individual texts, the whole oeuvre and Winckelmann’s biography.

Additional merits of the edition include that it makes extensive parts of the still unpublished handwritten estate accessible for the first time and also reproduces all the antiquities discussed by Winckelmann in photographs or engravings for the first time. The images can also be online: since 2000, they have been available in the database "Antiken, die Winckelmann kannte" (Antiquities Known to Winckelmann), published by Verlag Biering & Brinkmann, Munich; the link is available at:www.dyabola.de).