Copyright and use of the works

Disclaimer

The Digital Hegel Edition is an independent, non-commercial project. It is not an offering of Felix Meiner Verlag or of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts and is not affiliated with either. “Gesammelte Werke” (GW) is mentioned here solely to designate the textual basis; only Hegel’s public-domain text is reproduced, without the editors’ protected apparatus.

1. Hegel’s works: in the public domain

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel died on 14 November 1831. Under § 64 UrhG (German Copyright Act, Urheberrechtsgesetz), copyright expires 70 years after the author’s death. Hegel’s texts are therefore free of copyright (public domain); under today’s term, protection would have expired at the end of 1901; they were already free in the 19th century.

2. The editorial problem: GW text ≠ Hegel’s original

The texts printed in the Gesammelte Werke (GW) are not mere reproductions of public-domain manuscripts or first printings. They contain the editors’ own scholarly achievements: the choice among variants where there are several textual witnesses, emendation of obvious misprints, normalization decisions, and a critically examined form of the text. Whether such an edited text is protected, beyond the ancillary right, as a personal intellectual creation (persönliche geistige Schöpfung) within the meaning of § 2 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 UrhG depends on the individual case. In the view taken here, editorial decisions bound by method do not as a rule reach this threshold; it is precisely for them that the legislature created, with § 70 UrhG, a separate, time-limited ancillary right. Introductions, notes, and commentaries by the editors, by contrast, are regularly linguistic works (Sprachwerke) in their own right; they are therefore never taken over.

Independently of this, scholarly editions enjoy under § 70 UrhG their own ancillary right for scholarly editions (Leistungsschutzrecht für wissenschaftliche Ausgaben) of 25 years from publication (§ 70 Abs. 3 UrhG), calculated to the end of the calendar year (§ 69 UrhG). This protection also applies to the edited text itself — not only to the apparatus. Anyone who passes on the GW text of a volume published less than 25 years ago without permission therefore risks infringing a protected right, even if they omit the footnotes and apparatus.

3. Which volumes are included: only those whose protection under § 70 UrhG has expired

In order to respect the ancillary right under § 70 UrhG and any copyrights of the editors under § 2 UrhG, this edition publishes only GW volumes first published more than 25 years ago. When this term expires, the § 70 protection lapses completely; the edited text enters the public domain.

The decisive date is the year in which the respective GW volume was first published by Felix Meiner Verlag. More recent volumes are included only once the 25-year term has expired.

After the term has expired, the edited text is free in the view taken here (section 2). Introductions, apparatus, and notes by the editors remain excluded in every case.

Not included in any case:

• Editorial introductions and prefatory remarks by the GW editors
• The critical apparatus (variant readings, variants, textual references, conjectures)
• Explanatory footnotes and commentaries by the editors
• Facsimiles of the printed pages

The page references shown follow the GW numbering and serve to locate passages for scholarly purposes. The siglum (e.g., GW 12) is a bibliographic convention — not a taking of protected components of the GW.

4. Machine capture of the text

The edition is produced in a multistage, machine-based procedure: the text is obtained directly from the scan of each printed page, guided by fixed rules for spelling, emphasis, and structure. There is no separate intermediate OCR step. Only Hegel’s public-domain primary text in its original spelling is captured, stored, and reproduced.

The editors’ historical-critical apparatus — variant readings, editorial notes, commentaries — is not captured. It is not taken over, not stored, and not contained in the data of this edition.

Classification under copyright law

In the view taken here, the procedure does not constitute an adaptation (Bearbeitung) within the meaning of § 23 UrhG: its result is the faithful reproduction of a public-domain text, without changes to the content, modernization, or additions. The fact that the digitization is carried out by machine does not alter this — what matters is the result, the faithful reproduction, not the tool used.

For transcription, the printed pages are processed as image files. These working copies are neither published nor passed on; only Hegel’s public-domain text enters the data of this edition.

The foregoing reflects the legal opinion of the operator and does not constitute legal advice. Rights holders who have concerns regarding individual content are asked to get in touch via the contact details given in the legal notice (Impressum); content objected to will be examined without delay and removed if necessary.

5. Overview of the legal bases

6. Recommended citation

For scholarly work, it is recommended to cite the printed GW edition, to which the page references of this edition refer:

G. W. F. Hegel: Gesammelte Werke, edited by the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts in association with the German Research Foundation (DFG), Hamburg: Felix Meiner 1968 ff.

The GW volume number and page number can be taken from the siglum of this edition (example: GW 12, p. 36 = volume 12, page 36 of the print edition).

7. Reuse of the data: CC BY 4.0

The edition is a static website; its data are openly available and retrievable in machine-readable form, as TEI-XML per volume (assets/tei/GW01.xml to assets/tei/GW21.xml). This is intended. So that it is clear what is permitted, the following applies.

Hegel’s text

In the public domain, as set out above under 1. No rights are claimed in it. Digitization does not create a new copyright in a public-domain work.

Our own contributions

What is our own work — the selection of the pages included, their arrangement, the markup of letter-spaced type, the line numbering, the tables of contents, and the search index — is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Use, redistribution, and adaptation are free, including for commercial purposes, in any format and to any extent. The only condition is attribution:

Giuliano Infantino, Digital Hegel Edition, hegeledition.com, CC BY 4.0

No particular place for the attribution is prescribed — it belongs where sources are customarily cited. Insofar as these contributions are protected — above all the sui generis right of the database maker under §§ 87a ff. UrhG comes into consideration — that protection is released under this license. No right in Hegel’s text follows from this.

Not included

The historical-critical apparatus of the editors of the Gesammelte Werke is protected and not part of this edition. It is not taken over, not abridged, and not paraphrased.

No warranty

The data are provided as is. No liability is accepted for accuracy, completeness, or fitness for a particular purpose. The measured word accuracy of the volumes checked lies between 99.93% and 99.99% — which also means that errors are present.

8. Contact and notices

For copyright questions, notices, or complaints, please contact:
giulianoinfantino[at]icloud.com

Should material protected by copyright be included despite careful review, we ask to be notified without delay. Content subject to a justified objection will be removed promptly.