Digital and Interactive: New Themed Portal at UB
09/02/2025The Würzburg University Library (UB) offers visitors a special experience. You can immerse yourself in the past with the help of travel drawings from the 16th century.
What did towns and villages look like in the 16th century - and what do old town views still tell us about their history today? With the "Ottheinrich" themed portal, the Würzburg University Library (UB) is providing new access to a unique cultural treasure: the travel album of Count Palatine Ottheinrich from 1536/37, the most famous item in the Würzburg University Library's print collection. For the first time, these views of places have been mapped interactively, linked to monument databases and historical sources - and are freely accessible online.
The approximately 50 pen and ink drawings show stations on the three-month journey of Count Palatine Ottheinrich von der Pfalz, who travelled over 2,200 kilometres through southern Germany, Bohemia and Poland with his entourage. The depictions are among the earliest visual evidence of many places and thus document a valuable piece of pre-modern regional history.
Interactive Map Combines Historical Sources with Digital Exploration
The interactive map is the innovation of the themed portal. The places and buildings that still exist today have been localised on current OpenStreetMap maps and combined with historical maps using a Web Map Service (WMS). In this way, visitors to the portal can follow the route of the journey interactively - stage by stage. The individual stations are linked to external image and monument databases via standard data, so that additional information on places, buildings and historical backgrounds can be accessed directly.
"The themed portal is not just an exciting digital tool for history buffs," says Maximilian Stintzing, subject librarian for geography at Würzburg University Library and head of the project. "It is a model for how historical sources can be intelligently accessed, sustainably networked and digitally utilised today."
Journey with Political Calculations
Ottheinrich's journey had a serious background: The heavily indebted principality of Palatinate-Neuburg was hoping to recover old debts. The destination of the gruelling winter journey was Krakow, where Ottheinrich successfully demanded the unpaid dowry of his grandmother, Hedwig of Poland, from the Polish King Sigismund I: 32,000 florins.
The journey took place at a time of massive upheaval - a few years after the German Peasants' War and in the midst of the political upheavals of the Reformation. This elaborate journey was accompanied by a previously unknown artist, who impressively documented the itinerary through eastern Germany, the Czech Republic and parts of Poland for posterity. The large-format album pages are repeatedly made available on loan by the University Library for major international exhibitions, such as in 2023 for the exhibition "The Image of the Golden Age - Renaissance in the Era of the Late Jagiellons" at the Wawel in Krakow or then in autumn 2026 for "Anna Jagiello (1503-1547): Queen on the Eve of a New Era" in the exhibition hall of the Czech National Gallery, the former riding hall of the Waldstein Palace in Prague.
Franconica: Portal to the Treasures of the Würzburg University Library
The thematic portal "Ottheinrich" is part of Franconica, the digital collection portal of the Würzburg University Library. Franconica presents unique manuscripts, rare prints and graphics from the University Library's special collections. The portal is aimed at researchers on the one hand and gives interested parties the opportunity to experience the treasures of the University Library digitally and in this way learn more about the origin and cultural-historical significance of the objects for the Main-Franconia region on the other
