Related Research – Transcribed Blandowski & Krefft letters online

Over the last years, our project has worked closely with MfN’s “Transkriptionswerkstatt” (transcription workshop), a group of volunteers transcribing historic handwritten documents from the archive at the Museum für Naturkunde (MfN) (see our in-depth reports on working with the group in a series of blog posts by Anna Rudi Citizen Scientists Creating Knowledge: Report on a Collaborative Transcription Workshop – Part I: Introduction).

In March 2025, transcripts of a number of documents connected to William Blandowski, Gerard Krefft, Museum Melbourne and the Australian Museum that are held in the MfN’s archive were published online via Transkribus Sites. Saskia Brunst, then head of the transcription workshop, worked closely with Eva Bischoff and student assistants Sarah Ziehn (MfN) and Sarah Wieland (Trier University) to publish this version of the historic files that had been transcribed by volunteers over several years. As a project, we are grateful to all the volunteers and project leads (Saskia Brunst, Diana Stört, Sandra Miehlbradt) whose continuous work over the years made this publication possible.

For the publication, special care was taken to identify problematic content, tag people and places and provide context to the documents. While the transcriptions are in German, the original document language, they are nonetheless a great resource for international researchers and make the archival material more accessible. The letters contain lists and correspondences between agents in Australia and the institutions in Germany they supplied with material for the museum’s collections.

Image: MfN, HBSB, ZM S II Krefft, p. 49 (pdf) in Transkribus Sites with transcription (screenshot).

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