Today the chronology is considered outdated mainly because of some errors and deficiencies in the part before AD 1000.

For an amateur without access to kept-secret university tree-ring data, the Hollstein data may anyhow be of interest, especially as it contains not only a chronology data set of one data per year, but also a set of overlapping ring width curves which can be converted to a collection of individual samples. Such a collection gives us standard deviations for the chronology which makes crossdating easier and more reliable. The drawback with these curves are that many of them represent mean values from several individual samples. Consequently we have no chance to correct any errors done when the samples were laid together to calculate the mean value series.

Another aspect on this data and on this book is that it gives an interesting survey of historical wood found in various constructions. There are detailed information on many such wood samples and their background.

Each value is given as a "Wuchswert", i.e. as a "growth value".
These values are calculated from ring width values w(1), w(2), w(3) etc as Wuchswert(n) = eLog(w(n)/w(n+1))
This algorithm for normalization of data can be selected within CDendro as the Hollstein normalization.
Though to make the values from the book fully compatible with CDendro, they have to be scaled.

 
-0.003 #1658 
0.007 #1657 
-0.178 #1656 
0.173 #1655 
0.137 #1654 
0.058 #1653 
-0.165 #1652 
-0.136 #1651 

Note: Please note that the content of this data file is my interpretation of the data from the book - By mistake, I may have introduced some errors!

The (vertical) ring width scale is logarithmic, but only a few curves are directly connected to a scale. So ring widths for curves without a connected scale can only be reconstructed as relative ring widths, i.e. as scaled with an unknown factor. As few curves have a connected scale, I decided to make all reconstructed ring width curves relative with all having their smallest ring width set at 0.35 millimetres.

I have measured all the plotted curves with CooRecorder from scanned pages from the book. The CooRecorder coordinate files have then been processed (with a special program, HollsteinCurveToWid) to create a relative ring width file for each curve usually spanning more than one page. The result is a ring width file (a CDendro .wid-file) for each sample.

There were some 27000 points to measure! To make measuring faster, I wrote a pattern recognition mechanism for CooRecorder which tracks curve segments from left to right automatically, though every point had to be checked visually for correctness and misplaced points replaced by hand.

Missing points in curve drawings There are a number of cases where there are not nine small rings on a curve segment between each vertical line as shown in the diagram above. In these cases, I have considered this as a drawing mistake and corrected it by inserting the missing point in the middle of the straight line.
Examples of this is: Steinbach (year 752), Mainz Brand (665), Berlegem (Beerlegem) (537, 548), Forchtenberg (472), Wederath (243), Trier-West (125), Hallstatt (-718, -709, -700, -679).

Note that year 0 does not exist, though it exists within CDendro, to avoid complicated mathematics. This makes Hollstein datings differ from CDendro for times BC.

Hollstein states that some of the curves used by him are not plotted in his book because of space limitations. E.g. in the case of Corvey (1082) only 32 rings are plotted though page 55 of the book states there should be 81 rings available. So somewhere there may be more material available.

Hollstein relative ring width data retrieved from drawn curves:
For your research purposes that file is made available here: HollsteinWID.rwl

Note: This data is my interpretation of the Hollstein curves and their relative positions. I may have made mistakes! So when you analyze this data and find something unexpected, then do check the book. Do notice that the current new version of CDendro can plot curves the same way as Hollstein did, i.e. with old times to the left. (See Settings/Plotting window settings in CDendro.) That feature is great if you want to check and compare the curve shapes of the Hollstein book with the curve shapes displayed in CDendro.