The Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH) developed from the „Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde“, founded 1819 by Reichsfreiherr Karl vom Stein in Frankfurt. Since the end of World War II, the MGH registered office is in Munich, where the central reference work on the German history of the Middle Ages is being published. Since 1963 the MGH are a non-profit public corporation and subject to supervision by the Bavarian State Ministry of Education, Science and the Arts.

The institute sees the edition’s most important task in making medieval text sources available to research as well as contributing to the research of German and European history through critical studies. 

The Monumenta cooperate with Academies in the German language area (Berlin, Düsseldorf, Göttingen, Heidelberg, Leipzig, Mainz, Munich, Vienna as well as the Geschichtsforschende Gesellschaft der Schweiz) where they maintain various offices. Furthermore, the MGH operate the Deutsche Institut für Erforschung des Mittelalters as a central institution.

Digital Edition

In a DFG-funded joint venture of MGH and the Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library) in Munich, all edition volumes of the MGH were digitised and made accessible via Open Access within the framework of dMGH. New volumes are included in the MGH after a three-year period of protection („moving wall“). Access to the digitised MGH volumes with full-text search via dMGH.