The Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek Calendar Page: A Brief Daily Glance into History

The Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek publishes a calendar page daily. A wide range of objects tell of social, political and cultural events that took place on a certain day. Short passages on three to ten objects grant insights – sometimes surprising, often amusing – into biographies, historical events and their reverberations in our cultural and intellectual heritage.
 
The objects – certificates and photographs, paintings, scientific works, audio and video files – are virtually asking to be explored. Following semantic links, it is possible to find more objects on the object pages with related themes thereby forging new contexts. This time, the path through the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek holdings does not pass through the search slot.
 
The calendar page for the 15th of December, for example, tells of "two architects whose floating constructions will conquer the world" and of how "an old warrior" achieved "his final victory".

What is this all about? On 15 December 1907, the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer was born. On the same day but in 1832, the French architect Gustave Eiffel (a.k.a. Alexandre Gustave Bönickhausen) was born. Examples of their buildings are shown: For the first Internationale Bauausstellung in Berlin in 1957, Niemeyer designed the eight-storey residential building shown here which stands on V-shaped stilts and is in Altonaer Strasse in Berlin's Hansaviertel. A photograph of Eiffel is shown which was taken during construction of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
 
Surprising: The Eiffel Tower was actually supposed to be torn down again after twenty years as the Certificate of Occupancy had expired, but this was renewed for another 70 years in 1910 because of its strategic significance as a radio-telegraph station. Amusing: Niemeyer's buildings are icons of architectural modernity which are unfortunately often gnawed on by the ravages of time due to the architect's favourite construction material – reinforced concrete. Oh, well!
 
And finally: The "old warrior" refers to Leopold I, who conquered the Saxons and Austrians with his Prussians in the final battle of the Second Silesian War on 15 December 1745. A photograph of the memorial commemorating the Battle of Kesselsdorf is shown.

Incidentally, the favorites list function was used for the calendar pages. "Favorites" can be created by any registered user for administering their own virtual collections, for annotating and even publishing (if desired) on the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek website.
 
The calendar page can be found by navigating here Discover -> Favorites lists.

We are happy to have readers of our calendar page and users of our favorites lists!