Exzerpte

Exzerpte are excerpts or extracts from a longer text, selected passages gathered for study, quotation, or reference. In scholarly German usage, the term refers both to individual extracts and to collections of extracts (Exzerpte or Exzerptsammlungen). They can consist of brief quotes, paraphrases, or annotated notes and are often organized by source, author, or topic.

Historically, Exzerpte played an important role in philology, theology, and history, when researchers needed to manage large bodies of material without full-text editions or digital databases. Exzerpte were kept in notebooks, on index cards, or in ledgers, and used to compare readings, trace manuscript variants, or assemble thematic syntheses. The practice supported the development of secondary literature and textual criticism.

Typical forms include compact quotation slips, longer summaries, or annotated extracts with bibliographic references. Exzerpte facilitate citation, argumentation, and cross-text analysis, and they helped scholars maintain an overview of sources and connections across works.

In contemporary research, the concept persists in note-taking and digital clipping, while careful practices emphasize preserving context, provenance, and quotation accuracy. The term is often translated as "extracts" or "excerpts" in English, though the method and its historical context remain characteristic of certain periods of scholarship.

See also: Exzerpt, excerpt, note-taking, textual criticism, quotation.