Rudolf Dekker and Ariane Baggerman

Netherlands

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Historical research on egodocuments in the Netherlands  

Interest in autobiographical writing has been growing among historians in the Netherlands after Jacques Presser invented the word egodocument in the mid 1950's. A further impulse was the project started by Rudolf Dekker, which aimed at a complete inventory of all egodocuments writ­ten by Dutch men and women from 1500 to 1918, both in manuscript and in print. The project was funded by NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) while the ING (Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis) cooperated in the inventory of the period 1814-1918. The results of this project are now available on Internet: www.egodocument.net. Another project which stimulated interest among historians was the research project directed by Arianne Baggerman, Controlling time and shaping the self: education, introspection and practices of writing in the Netherlands 1750-1914, which started in 2000. The project was funded by NWO and located at Eras­mus University Rotterdam. Dutch egodocuments which were disco­vered during these projects were edited in a series of text editions (Egodocumenten) by the publisher Verloren (edi­tors Rudolf Dekker and Gert Jan Johannes), 24 volumes have been published so far. Dutch scholars working with egodocuments are discussing their research and exchanging information at regu­lar meetings of the Workgroup Egodocument/(Auto)biography of the Huizinga Institute. Research School for Cultural History (University of Amsterdam) . International conferen­ces are organized on a regular basis. Since more than a decade information about research in the Netherlands can be found on the website www.egodocument.net. This is the website of the Instituut Egodocument en Geschiedenis (Institute for the Study of Egodocuments and History). In 2009 publisher Brill (Leiden) started a new series Egodocuments and History, edited by Arianne Baggerman, Rudolf Dekker and Michael Mascuch (University of California, Berkeley). Several histori­cal research projects in the Netherlands are centered around egodocuments, including the project of Hugo Roling (University of Amsterdam) about childhood memories in the 19th and 20th centuries, Lotte van de Pol(University of Utrecht. FU Berlin) about egodocuments kept at European courts in the 18th century, and Judith Pollman (University of Leiden) on the 16th and 17th centuries. More information about these and other projects can be found on the website www.egodocument.net.