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S C HW E R P U N K T 16 BY UTE SCHÖNFELDER Digital Archive Pope Leo X threatened to excommunicate Martin Luther in 1520 if he did not recant his views within 60 days. Luther rejected this demand as we know today from the history books. But what form did such a threat of punishment — the so-called bull of excommunication — actually take? What form did indulgences take and what was Martin Luther’s handwriting like? Scientists and amateur historians can find answers to these questions in the » Digital Archive of the Reformation « (www.refor- mationsportal.de) . With this document, members of the Schmalkaldic League seal the extension of their contract to defend all attacks in matters of faith in 1536. The alliance of Protestant princes and towns founded in 1531 under the leadership of Elector Johann Friedrich I., had to acknowledge defeat, however, against the troops of Emperor Charles V. The document is in the possession of Thuringia’s State Archive – Central State Archive of Weimar – and can be found as one of around 750 documents in the »Digital Archive of the Reformation«: www.reformationsportal.de . The »Digital Archive of the Reformation (DigiRef)« on the In- ternet comprises around 750 written records from the time of the Reformation – from the bull of excommunication against Luther, via personal correspondence from the reformers all the way to the protocols of the inspectors who registered the situation in church communities in the country on behalf of local rulers. Planned in 2012 and implemented from 2013, the digitization of the State archives from Thuringia, Saxony- Anhalt and Hesse has been a joint project. Besides the State Archive of Thuringia – Central State Archive of Weimar, the Thuringian State and University Library (ThULB) is also part of the project consortium and is primarily responsible for the technical implementation of the online portal. The ThULB also uses the multimedia platform UrMEL (Universal Multimedia Electronic Library) to link the Reformation portal to further Reformation-specific sources such as the collection of Luther’s private secretary Georg Rörer. The Reformation portal that is aimed equally at historians, theologians and the general public is divided into two areas. Contemporary witnesses of the events of the Reformation are presented in the exhibition module – the »showcase«. »All documents can be viewed as high-resolution images and the original texts have been transcribed and changed to modern German,« explains Dagmar Blaha, project coordinator from the Central State Archive of Weimar. The second area of the portal contains a research module and is dedicated to the »visitation protocols« at the time of the Reformation (see also interview on p. 17). The protocols for the first visitation after the launch of the Reformation are documented for each territory inspected in the core States of Central Germany. 118 archive records from Central German territories have been selected for this purpose. This database allows a targeted search to be conducted for places and people. Members of the public interested in history, for example, can find out when the Reformation began in their own town and what kind of reaction it provoked.