''Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' (ADB, german: Universal German Biography) is one of the most important and comprehensive biographical reference works in the German language. It was published by the Historical Commission of the

Bavarian Academy of Sciences The Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (german: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften) is an independent public institution, located in Munich. It appoints scholars whose research has contributed considerably to the increase of knowledg ...

between 1875 and 1912 in 56 volumes, printed in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

by Duncker & Humblot. The ADB contains biographies of about 26,500 people who died before 1900 and lived in the German language

Sprachraum In linguistics, a sprachraum (; , "language area", plural sprachräume) is a geographical region where a common first language (mother tongue), with dialect varieties, or group of languages is spoken. Characteristics Many sprachräume are separ ...

of their time, including people from the Netherlands before 1648. Its successor, the '' Neue Deutsche Biographie'', was started in 1953 and is planned to be finished in 2023. The index and full-text articles of ADB and NDB are freely available online via the website ''German Biography'' (''

Deutsche Biographie ''Deutsche Biographie'' ( en, German Biography) is a German-language online biographical dictionary A biographical dictionary is a type of encyclopedic dictionary limited to biographical information. Many attempt to cover the major personali ...

'').

Notes

References

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External links

* ''Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' - full-text articles at German

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.
German Biography
(''Deutsche Biographie'') - complete full-text articles, index and further information German biographical dictionaries 1875 non-fiction books {{bio-dict-stub