German Surnames with and without umlaut

[Paola]

Hi, new librarian here :-)
I've looked into the manual and into the LIbrarian forum, but I don't think this problem has been dealt with already. There is an author named Rudolf Höss - this can be spelled equivalently as Rudolf Hoess, so at the moment we do have these as two different authors, while it is the same (I have already merged the mis-spelled Rudolf Hoss, no umlaut, into Rudolf Höss, inserting a note). My question is: since both Höss and Hoess are correct ways to spell this name, which should take precendence? Shall Hoess be merged into Höss, or the other way around? Many thanks!

[Paula]

Use the correct spelling with umlaut

edit: if you do a search on umlaut in the Librarian group you will find a number of threads on the issue.

[Paola]

Paula wrote: "Use the correct spelling with umlaut

edit: if you do a search on umlaut in the Librarian group you will find a number of threads on the issue."

Thanks Paula - so I will merge the two keeping the umlaut name as "main".

I have searched for umlaut, but I don't think this particular problem has been addressed, maybe it's me! The issue here is that both Höss and Hoess are correct spelling (so much so that some covers do report "Hoess" as author), so I was not sure I could "kill" one of them (indeed, there is also a Rudolf Höß, where again "ß" is an acceptable spelling for "ss").

[Renske]

Even when there is more than one correct spelling, there should be one primary author profile, to avoid problems with combining books. When necessary a secondary author can be added, which can be done with a English spelling of the name and a non-Latin character language version for example.

[Paola]

many thanks - I've also added some bio notes, hoping it will be of help to people searching with different spellings.

EDIT; guys, you are instantly helpful, that is great :-)