Pöhlde Annals

The Pöhlde Annals are a comprehensive world chronicle that begins with the creation of the world and, apart from a few later additions, continues up to the year 1182. The work is believed to have originated at the Premonstratensian monastery in Pöhlde, located on the southwestern edge of the Harz Mountains. This monastery traces its roots back to a religious community founded by Queen Matilda, who died in 968. The author of the chronicle remains unknown.

The text survives in a manuscript dating from the late 12th century, which is considered either an autograph or an original copy, and is now housed at Bodleian Library in Oxford.

From the High Middle Ages onward, the increasingly detailed entries focus on the East Frankish-German Empire. These annual reports are structured around the actions of kings and emperors, and collectively, they represent a key source for the history of the empire during the reign of Emperor Lothar III (1125–1137) and Duke Henry the Lion (1139/1142–1180).

The only edition of the Annals, published in 1859, is based on an 18th-century copy of the Oxford manuscript and primarily covers the entries from the 12th century. The aim of the project was to produce the first complete critical edition of this important source based directly on the Oxford codex, to identify the sources used, to annotate the later sections, and to situate the work within the literary history of the period.

The project was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 2010 to 2017 and carried out in cooperation with Prof Dr Frank Rexroth (Department of Medieval and Modern History, University of Göttingen) and the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in Munich.

The project was led by Bernd Schütte.