Data offering

The Aktienführer data archive contains annual profiles of several thousand listed German stock corporations. The profiles contain the most important key figures such as company headquarters, field of activity, number of employees, shareholdings, shareholders, balance sheets and the profit and loss account. The data is based on the publications “Hoppenstedt Aktienführer” and “Saling's Börsenpapiere”.

Access and use

Use of the database is authorised for academic and teaching purposes. The database is activated for institutions within Germany via the infrastructure of the national licences and for individual users directly via a request to the FDZ. On-site use of the available research data is possible at any user workstation at Mannheim University Library.

The bankruptcy database includes all bankruptcy proceedings conducted in the 15 largest cities in the German Empire – a total of 55,197 bankruptcies in the period from 1879 to 1914. The database provides detailed information on all debtors and bankruptcy administrators. The data records were generated from the digital complete edition of the German Reichsanzeiger and Prussian Staatsanzeiger. The database was created as part of Christoph Kling's legal history dissertation project at the Chair of Civil Law, European Legal History and Rhetoric at the University of Mannheim (holder: Prof Dr Ulrich Falk).

Access and use

The database can be used by anyone under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public Licence. The only condition is that the source is acknowledged.

In a DFG project and several previous projects, Mannheim University Library digitised the newspaper “Deutscher Reichsanzeiger und Preußischer Staatsanzeiger” from the years 1819 to 1945. The publication contains official notices, publications of the central commercial register and a stock exchange supplement. A full-text search is available by processing the scans with OCR.

Access and use

The digitised collections of the FDZ are free to use. Further information can be found here: Public Domain Mark 1.0.

The Statistical Yearbooks of the German Reich, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic contain data on the economy, population, social affairs and health from 1880 to 1990.

Access and use

The digitised holdings of the German Statistical Yearbooks are free to use. Further information can be found under Public Domain Mark 1.0.

In a research project, Mannheim University Library digitised selected German municipal directories from the period between 1880 and 1976. The publication contains historical censuses and population surveys at municipal level from the German Reich, the FRG and the GDR. A full-text search is available by processing the scans with OCR.

LinguaPix is a database for image naming standards that was developed as part of a crowdsourcing megastudy funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. In the megastudy, 1,620 colour photographs of objects from 43 semantic categories were named and rated by a group of German, Dutch, English, Polish and Cantonese speakers. In this way, linguistic standards such as speech onset, conceptual agreement, visual complexity and emotionality could be determined. In addition to photos and linguistic standards, the database also contains audio files, making it one of the largest databases of its kind. Further details can be found in the publication by Krautz and Keuleers (2022).

Access and use
The images in the LinguaPix database may only be used for non-commercial purposes in research, study and teaching. There are two access options. Basic access is possible by registering on this page. For full access, a licence agreement must be signed; please contact the University Library (erwerbungsleitung.ubuni-mannheim.de).

PATSTAT contains bibliographic data and information on legal events for patents from leading industrialized and developing countries. The University Library provides access to PATSTAT Global, which includes more than 100 million patent records from over 90 patent offices and more than 200 million legal status events from over 40 patent offices. The database is provided as a bulk dataset, including historical records, and is updated once or twice a year.

Access and use

Members of the University of Mannheim can obtain access to the data for research projects. To obtain access, please contact the FDZ by email and sign the Terms of Use (pdf, 121 KB and available in German only).

The “Wer Leitet” (WL) knowledge graph contains structured data from the “Wer Leitet?” books. The book pages were scanned, OCRed, structured and semantically enriched at the University Library Mannheim. The graph contains information about people who ran various companies in Germany between 1940 and 1941.

The “Handbuch der Deutschen Aktiengesellschaften” (HbAG) knowledge graph contains structured data from the HbAG books published since 1896. The books have been scanned, OCRed, structured and semantically enriched. The data contains basic information about German companies, including company name, industry and location.

The exhibition “Karibische Literaturen” presents student poster projects that explore the development of Francocaribbean literature from the 20th to the 21st century. The focus is on questions of identity, colonial history, and social change, as well as current issues such as migration, ecology, and democracy. The works on display were created by students from the universities of Mannheim, Heidelberg, Kassel, and Wuppertal as part of a joint conference in April 2026 and accompanying seminars. They demonstrate how literary and artistic voices from the Caribbean respond to political, social, and environmental challenges and open up new perspectives on the region.

Cynisca is an open-access research database that brings together sources on the participation of women and girls in sports in ancient Greece. It offers original Greek and Latin texts with English translations, explanations, and further reading, making them accessible for research, teaching, and the interested public. The database can be used to search for specific sources, explore topics, and systematically examine the role of women in ancient sports.