West Germanic languages. Since the first head of research unit, Prof. Dr. iur. Richard Schröder, held office in Heidelberg, the DRW has been located from the start in the historic city on the river Neckar. Schröder’s successor was Prof. Eberhard Freiherr von Künßberg. Since he was married to a Jewish woman, the family had to emigrate to the United States (see descendants Ekkehard von Kuenssberg and Laura Kuenssberg). These circumstances contributed to the inner and outer turmoil the research unit faced in the wake of Nazi rule and World War II. Arising from the division of Germany and the dissolution of the Prussian academy (hence called German Academy of Sciences at Berlin), the DRW was incorporated into the Heidelberg academy in 1959. Forty years later, the late head of research unit Dr. Heino Speer, initialised the free of charge Internet publication. Modus operandi and sources Every article deals with a certain word, which has been lemmatised into a standard German form. It contains linguistic information, explanations regarding the word’s acceptation(s) and the specific legal context. All meanings and compounds are illustrated by means of historical evidence cited in original language and excerpted from the DRW’s selection of sources. As main sources the DRW used various titles, from which more than two million quotations have been extracted in the research units’ early years. The excerpts were written on paper slides and are retrieved from the paper slide archive to the present day, as the basis of the research work. Owing to clarity, the DRW provides the used titles with scribal abbreviations. The catalogue of these so called Siglen amount to over 8000 titles in total and consist of: over 4300 Monographs over 1900 multipart items and series over 900 journals over 1000 non-independent works The sources used date back from 500 AD to 1835 AD and cover the following languages: vernacular words from early Latin texts (500–800) Old English (600–1100) Old High German (600–1050) Lombardic (650–1000) Old Dutch (700–1200) Old Saxon (800–1200) Old Frisian (800–1500) Middle High German (1050–1350) Middle Dutch (1200–1500/1600) Middle Low German (1200–1650) Early Modern High German (1350–1650) Modern High German (1650–1835) The dictionary's oldest evidence dates back to 479 AD and was excerpted from a Merovingian Charter at the time of Clovis I. The word at issue is "mundburt" (meaning a lord's special protection rights) for which Felix Liebermann's Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen ("mundbyrd", 685/86) provides evidence.