Goethe and Schiller Archives
| Goethe and Schiller Archives | |
|---|---|
 The Goethe and Schiller Archive on the eastern bank of the Ilm
|
|
| founding | 1885 |
| Library type | Literature archive |
| place |
Weimar 
|
| ISIL | DE-2060 |
| operator | Classic Foundation Weimar |
| Website | http://www.klassik-stiftung.de/gsa |
The Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar is the oldest and most traditional literary archive in Germany. At the suggestion of Grand Duchess Sophie, it was initially founded as a Goethe Archive. When the Schiller estate was merged in 1889, it became the Goethe and Schiller Archive.
Grand Duchess Sophie inaugurated the palace-like building, built especially for the Goethe and Schiller Archives, on June 28, 1896. The papers of other scholars and artists followed later. This makes it one of the most important collections in German literary history of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Today the archive is looked after by the Klassik Stiftung Weimar . Goethe's legacy has officially been part of the UNESCO World Document Heritage Fund since 2001 .
Archives holdings
The Goethe and Schiller Archive today owns and manages over 140 personal archive holdings, mainly estates and family archives of writers, scholars, philosophers, composers and visual artists. In addition, the archive houses 11 holdings of institutional origin (associations, publishers, etc.) as well as an extensive autograph collection in which approx. 3000 authors are represented.
The bequests come from, among others, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Friedrich von Schiller , Christoph Martin Wieland , Johann Gottfried Herder , Ludwig Achim von Arnim , Bettina von Arnim , Leopold Schefer , Karl Immermann , Ferdinand Freiligrath , Fritz Reuter , Otto Ludwig , Friedrich Hebbel , Georg Büchner , Gustav Freytag , Karl Ludwig von Knebel , Karl Friedrich Zelter , Gerhard von Keussler , Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer , Johann Heinrich Meyer , Friedrich Justin Bertuch , Franz Liszt and Friedrich Nietzsche .
The original manuscripts of Goethe's “Faust” and Schiller's “Demetrius” are among the most valuable archive items in the house . The archive also looks after the holdings of the Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein , the German Schiller Foundation , the Goethe Society and Insel Verlag Leipzig (until 1950).
Due to its holdings, the archive has the character of a central archive of German-language literature from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Archive building
The archive is housed in a building that was commissioned by Grand Duchess Sophie von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach in 1892 shortly after the death of Goethe's last grandson, Walther Wolfgang von Goethe - who had the Grand Duchess as sole heir in his will of the written Goethe estate. Based on the model of the Petit Trianon , an early classicistic pleasure palace in the park of Versailles Palace , the archive building was built between 1893 and 1896 in a park-like area near the Ilm, based on designs by the architect Otto Minckert (1845–1900). The Grand Duchess paid the estimated construction costs of 400,000 marks mainly from her private assets. As a purely functional building in a mixture of literary archive and museum, it should accommodate the irreplaceable unique items of the great poets and thinkers. The storage space was limited because a coal storage facility was planned in the basement and a caretaker's apartment was set up on the ground floor. The archive building was inaugurated on June 28, 1896.
After almost 120 years without any major changes to the original structure, the archive was reopened in July 2012 after a four-year renovation. An extension has created new warehouse and office space, and workshops for restoration and digitization have been set up on the upper floor. A new entrance area, new reading rooms and a conference and lecture room have been created. The main usable area was expanded by approx. 600 m². At the end of the construction work, this corresponded to a space reserve of around 30 percent for future expansion of the portfolio. In the course of the renovation, the area of the first floor has moved significantly closer to the original version in terms of color, shape and design. In the middle hall of the bel étage, exhibitions are shown again.
Directors
- 1885–1887 Erich Schmidt
- 1887–1910 Bernhard Suphan
- probably 1911–1917 Max Hecker
- 1917–1920 Rudolf Schlösser
- 1921–1928 Julius Wahle
- 1928–1946 Hans Wahl
- 1957–1986 Karl-Heinz Hahn
- 2007–2020 Bernhard Fischer
- since 2020 Marcel Lepper
Varia
- From 1890 to 1897 Rudolf Steiner worked for the archive.
- At the beginning of 2016, the former Hans-Wahl-Straße was renamed "Above the Kegeltor ". The street was named after the literary historian in 1949. According to recent research, however, Hans Wahl was an anti-democrat and anti-Semite, which subsequently led to discussions.
literature
- Bernhard Fischer and Gabriele Klunkert / Klassik-Stiftung Weimar (eds.): Goethe and Schiller Archives . Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-7443-0153-4
- Karin Ellermann: Weimar the privilege of securing ... - From the history of the Goethe and Schiller Archives from 1885 to 1945. Erfurt 2011, ISBN 978-3-86680-843-0
- Verena Wißmann / Klassik Stiftung Weimar (ed.): Treasure house of German literature. The Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar . 96 pages (A4 format), Weimar 2010, without ISBN
- Thüringer Archivarverband (Ed.): Lebensbilder Thüringer Archivare , Rudolstadt 2001 ISBN 3-00-007914-9
- Carel ter Haar: Grand Duchess Sophie, a Dutch king's daughter, manages Goethe's inheritance. Published by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Bonn 1993 (from the series Neighbors , No. 37, 36 pages), without ISBN
- Biographical sketches of Grand Duchess Sophie , Bernhard Suphan, Rudolf Steiner and Max Hecker with many references to the Goethe and Schiller Archives in: Jutta Hecker : Wunder des Worts - Leben im Banne Goethe . Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-373-00322-9
Individual evidence
- ↑ Contemporary biography of Grand Duchess Sophie
- ↑ Roman Bucheli: A summer pants for Fritzchen. In Weimar, the Goethe and Schiller Archive has been reopened after extensive renovation and expansion work . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . No. 163 . Zurich July 16, 2012, p. 29 .
- ↑ Jutta Hecker: Miracle of the Word. Life under the spell of Goethe . Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-373-00322-9 .
- ↑ Thüringer Allgemeine from January 29, 2016, http://weimar.thueringer-allgemeine.de/web/weimar/startseite/detail/-/specific/Die-Hans-Wahl-Strasse-heisst-kuenftig-Ueber-dem-Kegeltore -1156506191
- ↑ DNB 1046602306
- ↑ DNB 1011069881
- ↑ The publication can be purchased directly when visiting the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv - as happened by the author of this supplement on May 30, 2014
Web links
- Goethe and Schiller Archives
- Link to the archive database
- Friends of the Goethe and Schiller Archives
- Table of contents of the book by Karin Ellermann: Weimar the privilege to secure ... - From the history of the Goethe and Schiller archive from 1885 to 1945. Erfurt 2011, ISBN 978-3-86680-843-0
Edison rolls of the Berlin Phonogram Archive (1999) | Beethoven's 9th Symphony (2001) | Goethe's literary estate (2001) | Gutenberg Bible (2001) | Metropolis (2001) | Reichenauer Manuscripts (2003) | Bibliotheca Corviniana (2005) | Children's and Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm (2005) | Waldseemüller map from 1507 (2005) | Correspondence from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2007) | Song of the Nibelungs (2009) | Benz patent from 1886 (2011) | Documents on the construction and fall of the Berlin Wall and the Two-Plus-Four Treaty (2011) | Golden Bull (2013) | Nebra Sky Disc (2013) | Lorscher Pharmacopoeia (2013) | Writings of Karl Marx ( Manifesto of the Communist Party , Das Kapital. Volume One ) (2013) | Autograph of the B minor Mass by Johann Sebastian Bach (2015) | Digital collections on linguistic diversity (2015) | Early Writings of the Reformation Movement (2015) | Golden Letter (2015) | Kitab al-Masalik wa-l-mamalik (2015) | Constitutio Antoniniana (2017) | Documents from the first Auschwitz trial (2017)