Description of generalized Albanese varieties by curves

Abstract

Let X be a projective variety over an algebraically closed base field, possibly singular. The aim of this paper is to show that the generalized Albanese variety of Esnault-Srinivas-Viehweg can be computed from one general curve C in X, if the base field is of characteristic 0. We illustrate this by an example, which we also use to unravel some mysterious properties of the Albanese of Esnault-Srinivas-Viehweg.