Datasets:
Tasks:
Text Generation
Sub-tasks:
language-modeling
Languages:
German
Size:
10M - 100M
ArXiv:
License:
| annotations_creators: | |
| - machine-generated | |
| language_creators: | |
| - found | |
| language: | |
| - de | |
| license: | |
| - odc-by | |
| multilinguality: | |
| - monolingual | |
| size_categories: | |
| - 100B<n | |
| source_datasets: [] | |
| task_categories: | |
| - text-generation | |
| task_ids: | |
| - language-modeling | |
| pretty_name: German Commons | |
| tags: | |
| - german | |
| - commons | |
| - legal | |
| - scientific | |
| - cultural | |
| - political | |
| - web | |
| - news | |
| - economic | |
| configs: | |
| - config_name: default | |
| data_files: subset=*/source=*/*.parquet | |
| default: true | |
| features: | |
| - name: id | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: source | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: subset | |
| dtype: | |
| class_label: | |
| names: | |
| - Cultural | |
| - Economic | |
| - Legal | |
| - News | |
| - Political | |
| - Scientific | |
| - Web | |
| - name: text | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: license | |
| dtype: | |
| sequence: string | |
| - name: num_tokens | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - name: perplexity | |
| dtype: float64 | |
| - name: ocr_score | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| splits: | |
| - name: train | |
| num_examples: 36773579 | |
| - config_name: cultural | |
| data_files: | |
| - split: blbooks | |
| path: subset=Cultural/source=BLBooks/*.parquet | |
| - split: dibilit | |
| path: subset=Cultural/source=DiBiLit/*.parquet | |
| - split: dibiphil | |
| path: subset=Cultural/source=DiBiPhil/*.parquet | |
| - split: germanpd | |
| path: subset=Cultural/source=GermanPD/*.parquet | |
| - split: mosel | |
| path: subset=Cultural/source=MOSEL/*.parquet | |
| - split: sbbfulltexts | |
| path: subset=Cultural/source=SBB Fulltexts/*.parquet | |
| - split: wikisource | |
| path: subset=Cultural/source=Wikisource/*.parquet | |
| - split: wikivoyage | |
| path: subset=Cultural/source=Wikivoyage/*.parquet | |
| - split: wikiquote | |
| path: subset=Cultural/source=Wikiquote/*.parquet | |
| features: | |
| - name: id | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: source | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: subset | |
| dtype: | |
| class_label: | |
| names: | |
| - Cultural | |
| - Economic | |
| - Legal | |
| - News | |
| - Political | |
| - Scientific | |
| - Web | |
| - name: text | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: license | |
| dtype: | |
| sequence: string | |
| - name: num_tokens | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - name: perplexity | |
| dtype: float64 | |
| - name: ocr_score | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - config_name: economic | |
| data_files: | |
| - split: tedeutenders | |
| path: subset=Economic/source=TEDEUTenders/*.parquet | |
| features: | |
| - name: id | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: source | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: subset | |
| dtype: | |
| class_label: | |
| names: | |
| - Cultural | |
| - Economic | |
| - Legal | |
| - News | |
| - Political | |
| - Scientific | |
| - Web | |
| - name: text | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: license | |
| dtype: | |
| sequence: string | |
| - name: num_tokens | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - name: perplexity | |
| dtype: float64 | |
| - name: ocr_score | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - config_name: legal | |
| data_files: | |
| - split: bverfgaes | |
| path: subset=Legal/source=Amtliche Entscheidungssammlung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts/*.parquet | |
| - split: bundesrecht | |
| path: subset=Legal/source=Deutsches Bundesrecht/*.parquet | |
| - split: bag | |
| path: subset=Legal/source=Entscheidungen des Bundesarbeitsgerichts/*.parquet | |
| - split: bfh | |
| path: subset=Legal/source=Entscheidungen des Bundesfinanzhofs/*.parquet | |
| - split: bgh | |
| path: subset=Legal/source=Entscheidungen des Bundesgerichtshofs/*.parquet | |
| - split: bgh20 | |
| path: subset=Legal/source=Entscheidungen des Bundesgerichtshofs in Strafsachen | |
| aus dem 20. Jahrhundert/*.parquet | |
| - split: bpatg | |
| path: subset=Legal/source=Entscheidungen des Bundespatentgerichts/*.parquet | |
| - split: bverfg | |
| path: subset=Legal/source=Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts/*.parquet | |
| - split: bverwg | |
| path: subset=Legal/source=Entscheidungen des Bundesverwaltungsgerichts/*.parquet | |
| - split: eurlex | |
| path: subset=Legal/source=EurLEX/*.parquet | |
| - split: openlegaldata | |
| path: subset=Legal/source=Open Legal Data/*.parquet | |
| features: | |
| - name: id | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: source | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: subset | |
| dtype: | |
| class_label: | |
| names: | |
| - Cultural | |
| - Economic | |
| - Legal | |
| - News | |
| - Political | |
| - Scientific | |
| - Web | |
| - name: text | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: license | |
| dtype: | |
| sequence: string | |
| - name: num_tokens | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - name: perplexity | |
| dtype: float64 | |
| - name: ocr_score | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - config_name: news | |
| data_files: | |
| - split: anno | |
| path: news_anno_*.parquet | |
| - split: zeitungsportal | |
| path: news_deutsches_zeitungsportal_*.parquet | |
| - split: europeana | |
| path: news_europeana_newspapers_*.parquet | |
| - split: wikinews | |
| path: news_wikinews_*.parquet | |
| features: | |
| - name: id | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: source | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: subset | |
| dtype: | |
| class_label: | |
| names: | |
| - Cultural | |
| - Economic | |
| - Legal | |
| - News | |
| - Political | |
| - Scientific | |
| - Web | |
| - name: text | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: license | |
| dtype: | |
| sequence: string | |
| - name: num_tokens | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - name: perplexity | |
| dtype: float64 | |
| - name: ocr_score | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - config_name: political | |
| data_files: | |
| - split: btdrucksachen | |
| path: subset=Political/source=Drucksachen des Bundestages/*.parquet | |
| - split: eurovoc | |
| path: subset=Political/source=EuroVoc/*.parquet | |
| - split: germanpoliticalspeeches | |
| path: subset=Political/source=German Political Speeches/*.parquet | |
| - split: btplenarprotokolle | |
| path: subset=Political/source=Plenarprotokolle des Bundestages/*.parquet | |
| - split: reichtagsprotokolle | |
| path: subset=Political/source=Reichtagsprotokolle/*.parquet | |
| features: | |
| - name: id | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: source | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: subset | |
| dtype: | |
| class_label: | |
| names: | |
| - Cultural | |
| - Economic | |
| - Legal | |
| - News | |
| - Political | |
| - Scientific | |
| - Web | |
| - name: text | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: license | |
| dtype: | |
| sequence: string | |
| - name: num_tokens | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - name: perplexity | |
| dtype: float64 | |
| - name: ocr_score | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - config_name: scientific | |
| data_files: | |
| - split: arxiv | |
| path: subset=Scientific/source=arXiv/*.parquet | |
| - split: doab | |
| path: subset=Scientific/source=Directory of Open Access Books/*.parquet | |
| - split: polyjournal | |
| path: subset=Scientific/source=Polytechnisches Journal/*.parquet | |
| - split: wikibooks | |
| path: subset=Scientific/source=Wikibooks/*.parquet | |
| - split: openalex | |
| path: subset=Scientific/source=OpenAlex/*.parquet | |
| - split: wikiversity | |
| path: subset=Scientific/source=Wikiversity/*.parquet | |
| features: | |
| - name: id | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: source | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: subset | |
| dtype: | |
| class_label: | |
| names: | |
| - Cultural | |
| - Economic | |
| - Legal | |
| - News | |
| - Political | |
| - Scientific | |
| - Web | |
| - name: text | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: license | |
| dtype: | |
| sequence: string | |
| - name: num_tokens | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - name: perplexity | |
| dtype: float64 | |
| - name: ocr_score | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - config_name: web | |
| data_files: | |
| - split: onemillionposts | |
| path: subset=Web/source=One Million Posts/*.parquet | |
| - split: thestack | |
| path: subset=Web/source=The Stack/*.parquet | |
| - split: wikidiscussions | |
| path: subset=Web/source=Wiki Discussions/*.parquet | |
| - split: wikipedia | |
| path: subset=Web/source=Wikipedia/*.parquet | |
| - split: youtubecommons | |
| path: subset=Web/source=Youtube Commons/*.parquet | |
| features: | |
| - name: id | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: source | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: subset | |
| dtype: | |
| class_label: | |
| names: | |
| - Cultural | |
| - Economic | |
| - Legal | |
| - News | |
| - Political | |
| - Scientific | |
| - Web | |
| - name: text | |
| dtype: string | |
| - name: license | |
| dtype: | |
| sequence: string | |
| - name: num_tokens | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| - name: perplexity | |
| dtype: float64 | |
| - name: ocr_score | |
| dtype: int64 | |
| # German Commons - 154 Billion Tokens of Openly Licensed Text for German Language Models | |
| A comprehensive collection of German-language text data under open licenses for training German language models. | |
| - **Datasheet**: [DATASHEET.md](DATASHEET.md). | |
| - **Paper**: [arxiv.org/abs/2510.13996](https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.13996) | |
| - **Code**: [github.com/coral-nlp/llmdata](https://github.com/coral-nlp/llmdata) | |
| - **Bloom Filter** (DOLMA-compatible): [bloom_filter.bin](bloom_filter.bin) | |
| ## Dataset Description | |
| This dataset is aggregated from **41 diverse sources** and contains **154.56 billion tokens** of German text data with **35.78 million documents** spanning **7 thematic domains**: | |
| - 🌐 **Web Commons**: 19.89B tokens source from Wiki projects, online discussions, code repositories, social media posts, YouTube transcripts | |
| - 💬 **Political Commons**: 3.57B tokens sourced from parliamentary documents, speeches, protocols, political vocabulary | |
| - ⚖️ **Legal Commons**: 2.99B tokens sourced from court decisions, federal law, legal databases, EU legal documents | |
| - 📰 **News Commons**: 72.67B tokens sourced from historical and current newspapers archives | |
| - 🏦 **Economics Commons**: 0.11B tokens sourced from EU public tenders | |
| - 📚 **Cultural Commons**: 54.49B tokens sourced from cultural heritage collections | |
| - 🔬 **Scientific Commons**: 0.84B tokens sourced from scholarly papers, books, and technical journals | |
| ## Dataset Features | |
| Each record contains the following fields: | |
| - **id**: Unique identifier string, as per each documents' source dataset | |
| - **source**: Source dataset name | |
| - **subset**: Thematic subset (Cultural, Legal, Political, Scientific, News, Web, Economic) | |
| - **text**: Main text content; deduplicated, quality filtered, with consistent formatting and encoding. Can be split at newlines to obtain paragraph text. | |
| - **license**: List of applicable licenses for each document, given as canonical SPDX license URL. | |
| - **num_tokens**: GPT-2 token count | |
| - **perplexity**: Text perplexity measured with a KenLM model trained on German Wikipedia text | |
| - **ocr_score**: OCR quality score measured using [OCRoscope](https://github.com/Pleias/OCRoscope) | |
| ## Dataset Usage | |
| - Load the entire dataset | |
| ```python | |
| from datasets import load_dataset | |
| ds = load_dataset("coral-nlp/german-commons") | |
| ``` | |
| - Load a thematic subset | |
| ```python | |
| ds = load_dataset("coral-nlp/german-commons", "cultural") | |
| ``` | |
| - Load individual source datasets | |
| ```python | |
| wikipedia = load_dataset("coral-nlp/german-commons", "web", split="wikipedia") | |
| ``` | |
| Supported splits and constituent datasets are: | |
| | Subset | Split Key | Dataset Name | Docs | Tokens | License | Text Type | Source | | |
| |:-------------|:----------------------------|:------------------------------------------------------|----------:|---------------:|:-------------|:---------------------------|:----------------------------------------------------------------- | | |
| | `web` | `wikipedia` | Wikipedia | 2,930,224 | 2,948,751,608 | CC-BY-SA-4.0 | Various | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/14748605) | | |
| | `web` | `wikivoyage` | Wikivoyage | 20,370 | 42,025,478 | CC-BY-SA-4.0 | Travel | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/14748553) | | |
| | `web` | `wikidiscussions` | Wikipedia Discussions | 8,349,076 | 1,218,210,917 | CC-BY-SA-4.0 | Online Discussions | [🔗](https://corpora.ids-mannheim.de/pub/wikipedia-deutsch/2024/) | | |
| | `web` | `youtubecommons` | YouTube Commons | 2,809,714 | 14,478,850,964 | Various | Video Subtitles | [🔗](https://huggingface.co/datasets/PleIAs/YouTube-Commons) | | |
| | `web` | `onemillionposts` | One Million Posts Corpus | 946,082 | 94,872,633 | CC-BY-4.0 | Online Discussions | [🔗](https://ofai.github.io/million-post-corpus/) | | |
| | `web` | `thestack` | The Stack (Markdown and TXT Subsets) | 421,466 | 1,105,173,228 | Various | Various | [🔗](https://huggingface.co/datasets/bigcode/the-stack-dedup) | | |
| | `political` | `reichtagsprotokolle` | Reichtagsprotokolle | 522 | 703,495,637 | CC-BY-SA-4.0 | Parliamentary Protocols | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/10225467) | | |
| | `political` | `germanpoliticalspeeches` | German Political Speeches | 6,678 | 29,409,655 | CC-BY-4.0 | Speech Transcripts | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/3611246) | | |
| | `political` | `btdrucksachen` | Corpus der Drucksachen des Deutschen Bundestages | 3,017 | 528,769,669 | CC0-1.0 | Parliamentary Publications | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/4643066) | | |
| | `political` | `btplenarprotokolle` | Corpus der Plenarprotokolle des Deutschen Bundestages | 1,833 | 316,034,708 | CC0-1.0 | Parliamentary Protocols | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/4542662) | | |
| | `political` | `eurovoc` | EuroVoc | 245,838 | 1,988,111,462 | EUPL | Parliamentary Publications | [🔗](https://huggingface.co/datasets/EuropeanParliament/Eurovoc) | | |
| | `legal` | `bundesrecht` | Corpus des Deutschen Bundesrechts | 3,217 | 1,004,294 | CC0-1.0 | German Federal Laws | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/14592346) | | |
| | `legal` | `openlegaldata` | OpenLegalData | 249,909 | 1,915,956,613 | CC0-1.0 | Court Decisions | [🔗](https://huggingface.co/datasets/schneiderai/openlegaldata) | | |
| | `legal` | `bfh` | Corpus der Entscheidungen des BFH | 10,885 | 67,791,931 | CC0-1.0 | Court Decisions | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/14622341) | | |
| | `legal` | `bgh20` | Entscheidungen des BGH in Strafsachen des 20. Jhd. | 36,062 | 92,873,390 | CC0-1.0 | Court Decisions | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/4540377) | | |
| | `legal` | `bgh` | Corpus der Entscheidungen des BGH | 77,258 | 292,832,709 | CC0-1.0 | Court Decisions | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/12814022) | | |
| | `legal` | `bverfg` | Corpus der Entscheidungen des BVerfG | 8,028 | 39,503,223 | CC0-1.0 | Court Decisions | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/12705674) | | |
| | `legal` | `bpatg` | Corpus der Entscheidungen des BpatG | 30,705 | 185,099,188 | CC0-1.0 | Court Decisions | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/10849977) | | |
| | `legal` | `bverwg` | Corpus der Entscheidungen des BVerwG | 27,185 | 123,487,739 | CC0-1.0 | Court Decisions | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/10809039) | | |
| | `legal` | `bverfgaes` | Corpus der amtl. Entscheidungssammlung des BVerfG | 919 | 24,427,294 | CC0-1.0 | Court Decisions | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/10783177) | | |
| | `legal` | `bag` | Corpus der Entscheidungen des BAG | 5,624 | 48,248,111 | CC0-1.0 | Court Decisions | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/4006645) | | |
| | `legal` | `eurlex` | EurLEX | 64,934 | 201,263,562 | CC-BY-4.0 | European Union Laws | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/record/5363165/) | | |
| | `news` | `zeitungsportal` | Deutsches Zeitungsportal | 8,076,164 | 43,871,094,547 | CC0-1.0 | News Articles | [🔗](https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/newspaper) | | |
| | `news` | `europeana` | Europeana Newspapers | 3,256,341 | 20,684,418,365 | CC0-1.0 | News Articles | [🔗](https://huggingface.co/datasets/biglam/europeana_newspapers) | | |
| | `news` | `anno` | ANNO | 1,910,281 | 8,103,825,248 | CC0-1.0 | News Articles | [🔗](https://labs.onb.ac.at/en/datasets/anno/) | | |
| | `news` | `wikinews` | WikiNews | 23,266 | 14,222,520 | CC-BY-4.0 | News Articles | [🔗](https://de.wikinews.org) | | |
| | `economic` | `tedeutenders` | TEDEUTenders | 57,214 | 110,611,112 | CC0-1.0 | Procurement Notices | [🔗](https://huggingface.co/datasets/PleIAs/TEDEUTenders) | | |
| | `cultural` | `dibilit` | DiBiLit-Korpus | 2,062 | 216,391,448 | CC-BY-SA-4.0 | Literature | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/5786725) | | |
| | `cultural` | `dibiphil` | DiBiPhil-Korpus | 269 | 32,151,997 | CC-BY-SA-4.0 | Literature | [🔗](https://github.com/deutschestextarchiv/DiBiPhil) | | |
| | `cultural` | `wikisource` | Wikisource | 240,689 | 347,770,430 | CC-BY-SA-4.0 | Various | [🔗](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/dewikisource/20250801/) | | |
| | `cultural` | `germanpd` | German-PD | 123,592 | 49,333,198,231 | CC0-1.0 | Literature | [🔗](https://huggingface.co/datasets/PleIAs/German-PD) | | |
| | `cultural` | `blbooks` | BLBooks | 3,714 | 1,012,047,216 | CC0-1.0 | Literature | [🔗](https://huggingface.co/datasets/biglam/blbooks-parquet) | | |
| | `cultural` | `mosel` | MOSEL | 3,127,203 | 3,181,917,752 | CC-BY-4.0 | Speech Transcripts | [🔗](https://huggingface.co/datasets/FBK-MT/mosel) | | |
| | `cultural` | `sbbfulltexts` | SBB Fulltexts | 2,605,569 | 358,514,283 | CC-BY-4.0 | Literature | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/7716098) | | |
| | `cultural` | `wikiquote` | Wikiquote | 8,612 | 6,688,458 | CC-BY-4.0 | Quotes & Proverbs | [🔗](https://de.wikiquote.org) | | |
| | `scientific` | `wikibooks` | Wikibooks | 346 | 180,257,799 | CC-BY-SA-4.0 | Educational Books | [🔗](https://zenodo.org/records/14748586) | | |
| | `scientific` | `polyjournal` | Digitalisierung des Polytechnischen Journals | 27,292 | 50,434,996 | CC-BY-SA-4.0 | Scholarly Papers | [🔗](https://github.com/deutschestextarchiv/dingler) | | |
| | `scientific` | `doab` | Directory of Open Access Books | 1,939 | 166,920,321 | Various | Scholarly Books | [🔗](https://www.doabooks.org) | | |
| | `scientific` | `arxiv` | arXiv | 8 | 103,478 | Various | Scholarly Papers | [🔗](https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/Cornell-University/arxiv) | | |
| | `scientific` | `openalex` | OpenAlex | 47,733 | 413,632,648 | Various | Educational Content | [🔗](https://de.wikiversity.org) | | |
| | `scientific` | `wikiversity` | Wikiversity | 16,371 | 27,802,099 | CC-BY-SA-4.0 | Scholarly Papers | [🔗](https://openalex.org) | | |
| ## Citation | |
| If you use this dataset, please cite the correponding paper: | |
| ```bibtex | |
| @article{gienapp:2025d, | |
| title = {{The German Commons -- 154 Billion Tokens of Openly Licensed Text for German Language Models}}, | |
| author = {Lukas Gienapp and | |
| Christopher Schr\"oder and | |
| Stefan Schweter and | |
| Christopher Akiki and | |
| Ferdinand Schlatt and | |
| Arden Zimmermann and | |
| Phillipe Gen\^et and | |
| Martin Potthast}, | |
| year = 2025, | |
| month = oct, | |
| journal = {CoRR}, | |
| volume = {abs/2510.13996}, | |
| url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.13996} | |
| } | |
| ``` | |
| ## License | |
| This dataset aggregation and metadata is released under ODC-BY license. Individual documents have their own specific licenses - please check the `license` field for each record. |