The participants of the Summer Seminar, sponsored by the GHI and the German Department of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, gathered at Koblenz on the Rhine to begin this year's program. As in years past we were the guests of Ursula Kiesheyer at the comfortable and pleasant Hotel Krämer. For the next five mornings the group of nine American graduate students attended an introductory course on German handwriting of past centuries. The instructor was Dr. Walter Rummel of the Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz, the main state archive of Rheinland-Pfalz. The students were shown examples of various kinds of handwriting from different centuries, with the bulk coming from the nineteenth century when German administration expanded tremendously. Afternoons that same week were spent at the Bundesarchiv I on the Karthause, where Dr. Dieter Kreikamp took the students through the paces of using finding aids, introduced the operation of the Bundesarchiv, and discussed the art and science of being a German archivist. The group rounded out the week in Koblenz with a visit to a local Straußwirtschaft where they had the possibility of tasting some of the locally produced wines.
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ANNOUNCEMENT
SUMMER SEMINAR IN PALEOGRAPHY AND ARCHIVAL STUDIES, JUNE 17-30, 2001
The Summer Seminar, co-sponsored by the GHI and the German Department of the
University of Wisconsin at Madison, will introduce students to a variety of
German handwriting styles from previous centuries, familiarize them with selected
German archives and libraries, and help them in planning their upcoming dissertation
research trips. The programs aim to be both practical and theoretical. In practical
terms, participants will be introduced to various German handwriting styles,
particularly nineteenth-century Sütterlin. They also will learn how to
contact archives, use finding aids, identify important reference tools, and
generally become acquainted with German research facilities. In theoretical
terms, participants will be exposed to various approaches that archivists, librarians,
and scholars use to locate source material in an exceedingly complex repository
landscape.
Potential applicants should note that the program is exploratory in nature and
should not be considered a pre-dissertation research grant; participants will
have limited opportunity to do their own research. Moreover, most institutions
that we visit will not have materials specifically related to the topics of
most of the participants. Over the course of the trip, however, we hope that
every participant will have the opportunity to speak to archivists and librarians
about their individual projects. It is hoped that participants will gain an
appreciation for the various kinds of archives and special collections located
in Germany, either for future reference or for their general edification as
future scholars of German culture, history, and society.
Applicants must be enrolled in a Ph.D. program at a North American institution
of higher education. The program seeks qualified applicants interested in historical
studies in a broad range of fields (art history, history, linguistics, literature,
musicology, etc.). Preference will be given to those who have already chosen
a dissertation topic, have already written a dissertation proposal, but have
not yet embarked on actual research. Successful candidates must have a very
good knowledge of written and spoken German. All official parts of the program
will be conducted in German.
A completed application consists of: (1) a cover letter that outlines the need
for participation; (2) a curriculum vitae; (3) a dissertation proposal; and
(4) a letter from the doctoral adviser.
The deadline for submission is December 31, 2000. All applicants
will be notified by February 15, 2001. For more information about the program,
please contact Dr. Daniel S. Mattern, e-mail: dmattern@idt.net. Send applications
to:
German Historical Institute
Summer Seminar
1607 New Hampshire Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20009
Following the Pentecost holiday, the group traveled by train down the Rhine River to Cologne, where we enjoyed the hospitality of the Hotel Casa Colonia and its proprietor Doris Fassbender. Our first official visit was at the Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln, where we received a stimulating introduction to the archive's holdings by Dr. Eberhard Illner. The Cologne city archive is the largest of its kind in Germany, a result of the city's age (over 2,000 years) as well as its size and importance since the Middle Ages. Dr. Illner was assisted by his colleague Dr. Manfred Huiskas. The students also were shown many examples of archival material, from the oldest Urkunden to various property registers to the Heinrich Böll collection. Finally, the group met briefly with Dr. Janis Gibbs, a professor of history at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and a former participant in this summer program in 1990. Dr. Gibbs imparted some of the wisdom she has acquired since setting out on her dissertation research over a decade ago.
The next stop was the Historisches Archiv des Erzbistums Köln, where Dr. Joachim Oepen presented an overview of the archive, its development, and the interplay of religious and secular history in Germany generally and in the Cologne region in particular. The group was given a basic sense of the kinds of documents collected by a church archive over the centuries, how they are preserved, and how integral they are to understanding culture and society in Germany. Dr. Oepen demonstrated his points with examples from the collections. We even learned the value of parchment in the Middle Ages, which speaks to the value of what was written on it, yielding the German idiom for the unbelievable: "Das geht auf keine Kuhhaut!"
The following morning was spent at the Stiftung Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, the main business archive of the Rheinland. The director, Dr. Ulrich Soénius, gave us a succinct sketch of the development of business archives in Germany, their purpose, and what one might find there. His colleagues talked to us about personal papers and artifacts of entrepreneurs deposited in business archives.
The week's second half was spent in the eastern German state of Thuringia. Based in Gotha, at the very accommodating Waldbahnhotel, the group visited the Forschungsbibliothek in Gotha, the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv and the Herzogin-Anna-Amalie-Bibliothek in Weimar, as well as the Bibliotheca Amploniana and the Außenstelle des Bundesbeauftragten für die Stasi-Unterlagen in Erfurt. Our host during our visit to eastern Germany was the University of Erfurt, embodied by Prof. Dr. Ursula Lemkühl, Rupert Schaab, and Cornelia Hopf. Surprisingly, the local newspapers reported on our visit under the headlines "Amerikanische Doktoranden forschen in Gotha" (Gothaer Allgemeine) and "Sommerkurs für Doktoranden aus Amerika in Gotha" (TLZ: Zeitung für Gotha). The group coped with their new-found fame reasonably well.
The first morning in eastern Germany was spent at the Forschungsbibliothek, housed in the seventeenth-century Schloß Friedenstein. The palace is situated on a promontory above the sleepy residence town of Gotha. Led by Frau Hopf the group toured the library, learned about its history, and had the opportunity to see some of its rarities. Next, Herr Schaab presented an overview of the history and organization of German libraries. The participants were eager to learn about how libraries developed in the various German territorial states and about how libraries are organized in the Federal Republic in comparison to those in the United States.
The afternoon was spent at the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv in Weimar, where we heard a concise history of this unique institution from its director, Dr. Jochen Golz. We even had the chance to see one of Friedrich Nietzsche's handwritten journals, currently being transcribed for a new edition of his philosophical works. From there we strolled to the Herzogin-Anna-Amalia-Bibliothek, where we toured this amazing baroque library with the help of Herr Jürgen Weber. Here Goethe once ruled the roost. For some members of the group, the day ended with an evening at the Deutsches Nationaltheater and a performance of Schiller's Kabale und Liebe.
The next day was spent back in Gotha at the Forschungs-bibliothek. Frau Hopf introduced the group to codicology - the study of manuscripts as cultural artifacts for historical purposes. We learned how scholars set about assessing codexes - handwritten books and manuscripts - by looking at the externalities such as paper quality, binding (covers and closures), imprints (decoration), and water marks. Herr Schaab then talked about German paleography, the science of determining the provenance of handwritten manuscripts, that is, figuring out who wrote what, when, and where. This part of the program was particularly illuminating because we discovered that of the great number of medieval texts, only a small percentage (around 10 per-cent) have so far been dated. The group was then treated to a tour of Schloß Friedenstein, where we gained an appreciation for the important role that this small territorial state and its princes played in European politics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
In the afternoon Frau Hopf covered the special collections in the Forschungsbibliothek, particularly personal papers, letters, autographs, and other Gepflogenheiten. Following this, Herr Schaab gave an introduction to the first printed books (incunables), those printed before 1501. We learned that early printed books aimed to imitate handwritten ones, the point being to make books cheaper and quicker because contemporary demand for books simply could not be met with handwritten tomes. In addition, we also traced the emergence of printing technologies and the printed book business before and after 1500. One fascinating detail we picked up was that until around 1850 most books were sold without covers; the purchaser would take the stack of printed folios to a local bookbinder for finishing.
The day concluded with a trip on the Waldbahn to Schepfenthal on the edge of the Thuringian Woods. We visited the grounds of the Salzmann School founded by Christian Gotthilf Salzmann, an early nineteenth-century education reformer and pedagogue. In addition, we walked to the historic sports field (Turnplatz), where J. C. F. GutsMuths directed exercises on traditional gymnastics apparatus. Here, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn studied with GutsMuths in 1809; Jahn then went to Berlin to open his first gymnastics arena in Berlin's Hasenheide. GutsMuths and Jahn were important antecedents of modern German physical education and body culture (Körperkultur).
Our last day in Thuringia was spent in Erfurt, the Landes-hauptstadt. In the morning we visited the Bibliotheca Amploniana, part of the Stadt- und Regionalbibliothek Erfurt. Herr Ekkehard Döbler related the history of this collection, one of the oldest and most impressive personal libraries in existence. The library consists of 979 manuscripts of every sort once belonging to Amplonius Rating de Bercka (1365-1435), a physician and master from Rheinberg. In the afternoon we climbed the Petersberg for a brief introduction to the Außenstelle Erfurt des Bundesbeauftragten für die Stasi-Unterlagen. We learned how to apply to see if you have a Stasi file and then how you go about viewing its contents. We also were given a sense of the current status of the files, who is using the material, and what these files contribute to what we now know about this aspect of GDR history.
The Summer Seminar concluded on a warm summer evening with a geselliges Beisammensein in the garden of one of Erfurt's fine taverns. The GHI is grateful to all institutions and individuals who aided and abetted the program in 2000, especially our co-sponsor, the German Department of the University of Wisconsin. The Summer Seminar will take place again next June. For more information, see the announcement on page 211 in this issue of the Bulletin.
Daniel S. Mattern