The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland is an encyclopedia

Encyclopedia

An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....

 on the history of Switzerland

History of Switzerland

Since 1848, the Swiss Confederation has been a federal state of relatively autonomous cantons, some of which have a history of confederacy that goes back more than 700 years, arguably putting them among the world's oldest surviving republics. For the time before 1291, this article summarizes...

 that aims to take into account the results of modern historical research in a manner accessible to a broader audience.

The encyclopedia is published by a foundation

Foundation (charity)

A foundation is a legal categorization of nonprofit organizations that will typically either donate funds and support to other organizations, or provide the source of funding for its own charitable purposes....

 under the patronage of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAGW/ASSH) and the Swiss Historical Society (SGG-SHH) and is financed by national research grants. Besides a staff of 35 at the central offices, the contributors include 100 academic advisors, 2500 historians and 100 translators.

Print edition

The encyclopedia is being edited simultaneously in three national languages of Switzerland: German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 (Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz – HLS), French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 (Dictionnaire Historique de la Suisse – DHS) and Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 (Dizionario Storico della Svizzera – DSS). The first of 13 volumes was published in 2002. An additional volume per year is planned. Two volumes with a selection of articles will be published in Romansh (Lexicon Istoric Retic – LIR).

The 40,000 headings are grouped in:

1. Biographies
2. Articles on families
3. Articles on places (municipalities, cantons, other nation states, fortresses, signories, abbeys, archeological sites)
4. Subject articles (historical phenomena and terms, institutions, events)

Online edition

The online edition has been available since 1998. It makes accessible, for free, all articles ready for publication in print, but no illustrations. It also lists all 40,000 topics that are to be covered.

External links

• DHS/HLS/DSS online edition in German, French, Italian
• Lexicon Istoric Retic (LIR) online edition in Romansh