The Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) is a German biographical encyclopedia covering deceased persons related to the history of the church, philosophy and literature, founded by Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz, the first volume of which appeared in 1975..
It features over 20,000 articles, many of which were made freely available online between 1996 and 2011. The online service now operates on a subscription model. Though, courtesy of the Internet Archive, some such entries remain available as archived pages and many of the print volumes are available to read online (with free registration).
Shortly after the Second World War, the pastor Friedrich Bautz developed the idea of writing a biographical lexicon of protestant church figures. His son, Traugott Bautz (1945âÂÂ2020), recalls that his father had originally envisioned writing a two-volume handbook. However, the family's remote and isolated location in the small village of Holtorf (now part of Schnackenburg) on the border with Soviet-occupied Germany, being far from any accessible academic libraries, made such an undertaking impossible at the time. Friedrich Bautz did however make initial steps in this project using his own library of academic texts and by making enquiries to specialist libraries and church archives.
Working on the project from the 1950s, Friedrich Bautz conceived of the work, which had the working title "Ihm zu dienen welch ein Stand" as containing 3,000 short biographies. His father being unable to find an interested publisher, Traugott, an independent bookseller from 1966, founded a publishing house in 1968. From there the work, which had been extended in scope to cover non-Protestant Christians and had developed a greater focus on bibliographic information, was printed and distributed initially in loose-leaf fascicles (instalments). The first two of these were published in 1970.
The first volume, written, researched and edited entirely by Friedrich Bautz was published in 1975.
Traugott Bautz continued the project after his father's death, but had the articles written by experts. From 1996 onwards, the articles were also placed on the Internet. The basic work was completed with Volume 14 in 1998, and from then on supplementary volumes were published at least annually. He was responsible for editing volumes 3 through to 41.
Since the death of Traugott Bautz, the BBKL has been headed by his widow Uta Timpe-Bautz.