Varnhagen library
The library Varnhagen is the book collection of the Berlin writers Rahel and Karl August Varnhagen von Ense . It is kept in the Berlin State Library. It is part of the Varnhagen collection .
It should not be confused with the Varnhagen library , a book collection of the Varnhagen family branch in Iserlohn , which was established in the 16th century.
Origin and inventory
Karl August Varnhagen was born in Düsseldorf in 1785 as the son of an enlightened doctor . After his father's death, he began studying medicine and devoted himself to literary projects. Together with later famous friends such as Adelbert von Chamisso , Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué and Justinus Kerner, he founded the poets' circle of the North Star Alliance . The participants maintained the ownership notices of their books with Latin names and the abbreviated motto of the federal government τ.τ.π.α. (for τò τоῦ πόλου ἄστρον).
After an unsteady wandering life, Varnhagen married the Jewish Salonnière Rahel Levin in 1814 and became Prussia's ambassador to the Baden court in Karlsruhe for a few years before he was recalled in 1819 and the couple settled permanently in Berlin. Rahel Varnhagen died in 1833, and in the following years Varnhagen not only collected his wife's letters and manuscripts, but also her extensive book holdings, which became part of the Varnhagen collection . Rahel's books were usually printed on the flyleaf or title page with a reddish oval adhesive with Rahel imprinted in gold . Mistake. A few years after her death, the widower published facsimiles with the reproduction of Rachel's underlinings in the works of Johannes Scheffler, called Angelus Silesius, and the philosopher Louis Claude de Saint-Martin .
Another main part are the volumes that Varnhagen himself received as a reviewer, translator, editor and literary accomplice from poets such as Heinrich Heine , Bettina von Arnim and Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau . For example, the library also contains numerous books by author friends dedicated to Varnhagen. Varnhagen's own volumes were usually on the flyleaf or title page, and in the case of brochures also on the cover with a handwritten note Varnhagen. Mistake.
After his death in 1858, Karl August Varnhagen's niece Ludmilla Assing had to give up their shared apartment at Mauerstraße 36 . Together with Ferdinand Lassalle, she developed a catalog (see literature) and had around 1,500 volumes auctioned, including numerous works of the Greek and Latin classics, but also - because of the collector's activity as a translator - many rare writings in Russian.
In her will, Ludmilla Assing bequeathed her inheritance under the name of the Varnhagen Collection to the Royal Library of Berlin , where the books and manuscripts arrived in the spring of 1881. Unlike the after Silesia outsourced Berlin properties scoring manuscript collection returned the printed collections of the Varnhagen collection after Marburg had been outsourced, after the Second World War in the western part of Berlin back.
Today there are around 2,900 volumes in the Berlin State Library under the signature library Varnhagen , including many rare and hand-annotated works from the early romantic period . Furthermore, the manuscript collections currently kept in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska (the Jagiellonian University Library ) in Krakow also contain smaller pamphlets and offprints. Further books from Varnhagen's possession can be found in Syracuse, USA (University Library, 7 titles), Stuttgart ( Württembergische Landesbibliothek , 1 title), Yale (University Library, 1 title), Saint Petersburg and Moscow (1 title each).
In 2005 work began on a comprehensive directory of the book holdings.
Facsimile prints from the library in Varnhagen
- Angelus Silesius and Saint-Martin. Excerpts and remarks by Rahel. Edited by K. A. Varnhagen from Ense. Ferd. Dümmler's Buchhandlung, Berlin ³1849
- Night watch. From Bonaventure. Edited from Rahel Varnhagen's copy with an afterword. v. Raimund Steinert, Gustav Kiepenheuer, Weimar 1917
Books with printed dedications to Karl August Varnhagen
- Aaron Bernstein: Philosophy of History
- Moriz Carrière: Achim von Arnim
- Moriz Carrière: The Günderode
- Wilhelm Dorow: Reminiscences
- Heinrich Düntzer: Goethe's Prometheus and Pandora
- Heinrich Karl Albrecht Eichstädt: Opuscula oratoria
- Eduard Gans: Mixed writings
- Gottschalk Eduard Guhrauer: Leibnitz 'German writings
- Heinrich Heine: Atta Troll
- Alexander Jung: The beggar from James' Park
- Carl Ludwig Klose: Hardenberg's Life
- Heinrich König: Williams poems and costumes
- In short: Bettina
- Heinrich Laube: The actress
- Salomon Levinstein: Faust and Hamlet
- Fanny Lewald: Prince Louis Ferdinand
- Theodor Mundt: Dioscuri
- Franz Ernst Pipitz: Mirabeau's Life
- Hermann von Pückler-Muskau: Tutti Frutti
- Michael Sachs: Poetry of the Jews in Spain
- Karl Wagner: Letters from Höpfner
- Feodor Wehl: Hamburg's literary life in the 19th century.
literature
- Directory of the libraries left behind by Mr. K. A. Varnhagen von Ense, as well as by Dr. Ernst Heinr. Friedrich Meyer, which, along with several other book collections, are to be auctioned on October 3rd, 1859 in the TO Weigel'schen Auctions-Lokal in Leipzig ... Weigel, Leipzig 1859.
- Ludwig Stern : The Varnhagen von Ensesche collection in the Royal Library of Berlin. Behrens, Berlin 1911.
- Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage (Ed.): Ex Bibliotheca Regia Berolinensi. Beautiful and rare books from the Historical Prints Department. Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden 2000, ISBN 3-89500-189-9 .
- Eva Ziesche: Directory of the estates and collections of the manuscript department of the State Library in Berlin Prussian cultural property. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 3-447-04535-3 ( catalogs of the manuscript department. Series 2: Legacies 8).
- Werner Schochow : Book fates. The history of relocation of the Prussian State Library. Outsourcing, destruction, alienation, repatriation. Represented from the sources. Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin et al. 2003, ISBN 3-11-017764-1 ( publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin 102).
Individual evidence
- ↑ hbz-nrw.de ( Memento from January 4, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
Web links
- Varnhagen Gesellschaft e. V. to research the holdings
- “Varnhagen Library” in the Berlin State Library