Paul Heyse’s Deutscher Novellenschatz is not only a collection of texts that calls for quantitative analysis due to its extension. The project itself reflects the problem of dealing with vast quantities of texts and can therefore be considered as a precursor and part of the discursive prehistory of macro-analytical approaches today. As such a quantitative element, the article introduces the interrelation between Heyse’s project and contemporary collections of legal or medical cases. Insofar these
collections address the relation between each single case and the series it is part of they prelude the position that individual novellas take within novella cycles in the 19th century – as well as debates on close vs. distant reading today.

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