+ Distance learning with Transkribus

The Europäische Hansemuseum Lübeck carried out a project with school pupils where the students worked directly on the original sources of the Hanseatic cities via the Transkribus Webinterface. The history of the Hanseatic cities is part of the curriculum in schools but original sources in teaching are rare. With the Transkribus Webinterface the pupils can browse through the historic material from home and perform tasks on the documents like searching for person’s names and marking them.

We are inspired by this beautiful project: not only will the school students learn about the history of the city they live in, they will also get an idea about how historical scholarship works and where the information in their schoolbooks comes from. Moreover, this is a very practical way to get in touch with digitization in a historical context and to see how writings undecipherable at first sight can be recognised with the help of technical tools. Currently they are working on the document “Aufruf zur Flandernblockade” from 1358, which is the earliest written testament of common actions of Hanseatic merchants and cities under their self-description “Deutsche Hanse”.

In the context of this project an explanatory video for Transkribus has been created, which we don’t want to keep back from you. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/m9SYdKyJcZ0?t=7

More information about the project you can find via this link:  https://www.hansemuseum.eu/educational_offers/hansequellen/

©Europäisches Hansemuseum