Historical Linguistic Analysis of the Records of the Principal Commission of the Perpetual Imperial Diet in Regensburg

The records of the Perpetual Imperial Diet in Regensburg (1663–1806) are not only a major historical source — they are a 144-year laboratory for the evolution of written German. Two complementary doctoral projects use Transkribus to build a searchable corpus from digitised microfiches: one tracing the standardisation of orthography and the emergence of spelling norms, the other analysing multilingualism and its socio-political dimensions in the Diet's administrative language. Together they demonstrate how HTR can unlock longitudinal linguistic research at a scale previously impossible.