Kurt Koester

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Kurt Köster (born November 14, 1912 in Wiesbaden , † July 17, 1986 in Munich ) was a German librarian and historian .

Live and act

Köster was the son of the Swiss sword Daniel Köster and his wife Emilie, née Loev. In 1930 he graduated from the Wiesbaden high school at Zietenring and then attended the Pedagogical Academy in Frankfurt am Main. Kurt Köster then worked as a primary school teacher from 1932 to 1939. For political reasons he left the school service and then studied history, historical auxiliary sciences, German and musicology in Frankfurt and Munich. On September 9, 1942, he was drafted into military service. Nevertheless, he received his doctorate on February 12, 1944 in Frankfurt on the subject of "The Kolmar historical sources of the thirteenth century". At the end of the war he was taken prisoner of war, from which he was released in June 1945. Köster completed his habilitation in 1947 at the University of Frankfurt am Main with a continuation of his doctoral thesis and has since worked there as a private lecturer for historical auxiliary sciences . In addition to his other activities, he remained an adjunct professor in Frankfurt until 1955 and was an honorary professor there from 1971. As a part-time job, he compiled an inventory of the local medieval bells on behalf of the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau . From this later a book about Master Tilman von Hachenburg grew .

In 1948 he married Ursula Fey. The marriage produced a daughter and a son.

From 1946 to 1948 Köster worked on the editorial staff of the Europa-Archiv magazine . From 1948 to the end of 1949 he headed the editorial team of the humanities literary magazine Erasmus . In 1950 Köster became an employee and in the following year deputy director of the German Library, which was founded in 1946 . From 1959 to 1975 he headed this institution (as the successor to Hanns Wilhelm Eppelsheimer ), which during his tenure was expanded into an important German-language library and a national bibliographic center. One of the central tasks was the introduction of electronic data processing in library operations, with the German Bibliography (DB) being the first national bibliography in the world to have been produced entirely using a computer system since 1966 ; See Meyers Lexikon, 9th edition, Volume 6, p. 494 . - Köster was also responsible for the internationally acclaimed exhibition on exile literature 1933–1945 in 1965. On September 30, 1975, he retired.

Scientifically, Köster made a contribution to researching the signs of pilgrims; the large collection of pilgrim signs in the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg goes back to him as a collector and researcher. With editions and his own monograph, he also campaigned intensively to communicate the work of his teacher, the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga , in Germany and made a name for himself as a Gutenberg researcher. In addition, he was active in regional history with several publications in the association for Nassau antiquity and historical research. He joined the club in 1941. On May 4, 1948, he was elected to the Historical Commission for Nassau . From 1965 he was a member of the board.

Köster was also chairman of the commission for official printed matter in the Association of German Librarians , the culture committee and the specialist committee for documentation, libraries, archives, copyright and statistics of the German UNESCO commission. As a member, he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation , the "Historical Database" working group of the German Research Foundation and the board of trustees of the microfilm archive of the German-language press .

Works

  • The historiography of the Colmar Dominicans of the 13th century (= Alsace-Lorraine Yearbook. Volume 12). Diesterweg, Frankfurt am Main 1945, DNB 481676279 ( dissertation , University of Frankfurt am Main 1946).
  • Johan Huizinga 1872-1945. With a bibliography (= a bibliographical series of the Europa-Archiv . Volume 1). European Archives, Oberursel (Taunus) 1947, DNB 452506344 .
  • The district names of Langschied and Hof Schönberg . Hallway history in the mirror of the field names, Hessisches Landesvermessungsamt, Wiesbaden 1948.
  • Master Tilman von Hachenburg. Studies of the work of a bell-founder from the Middle Rhine in the 15th century with special consideration of the medieval pilgrimage and pilgrimage signs used as bells. In: Yearbook of the Hessian Church History Association. Volume 8, 1957, pp. 1-206.
  • New studies on Master Tilman von Hachenburg and his bells. In: Yearbook of the Hessian Church History Association. Volume 10, 1959, pp. 77-91.
  • Pilgrimage Studies. New contributions to the knowledge of a mediaeval mass article and its forms of transmission. In: Bibliotheca docet. Ceremony for Carl Wehmer. Amsterdam 1963, pp. 77-100.
  • Pilgrim signs and pilgrim shells. In: Sankt Elisabeth: Princess, servant, saint. Articles, documentations, catalog (of the exhibition on the 750th anniversary of the death of St. Elisabeth, Marburg). Sigmaringen 1981, pp. 452-459.
  • as editor: Die Deutsche Bibliothek 1945–1965. Festival ceremony for Hanns Wilhelm Eppelsheimer . Frankfurt am Main 1965.
  • The use of computers in the production of national bibliographies, illustrated using the example of the German Bibliography . Paper given on September 15, 1966 in Scheveningen at the 32nd session of the IFLA General Council, Section of National and University Libraries, Frankfurt am Main, around 1966.
  • as editor: Exil-Literatur 1933–1945. An exhibition from the holdings of the German Library. German Library, Frankfurt am Main 1965.
  • Gutenberg in Strasbourg . The Aachenspiegel company and the unknown “afentur und kunst”, Gutenberg Society, Mainz 1973.
  • Books that aren't. About book alienation, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries. In: Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel , Frankfurt am Main 1979, pp. B 177 - B 256, DNB 1030649812 .

literature

  • Philippe Cordez: The game and seriousness of 'book alienation'. Kurt Köster, the German Library and the objects in book form. In: Philippe Cordez, Julia Saviello (ed.): Fifty objects in book form. From reliquary to laptop bag , Imorde, Emsdetten 2020, pp. 10–15.
  • Günther Pflug (Ed.): Library, book, history. Kurt Köster on his 65th birthday (= special publications of the German Library. Number 5). Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-465-01283-6 .
  • Jörg Poettgen: European pilgrimage research . The Central Pilgrim Sign Index (PZK) Kurt Kösters († 1986) in Nuremberg and the state of research after 1986. In: Yearbook for bell customers. Volume 7/8, 1995/96, (published 1997), pp. 195-206.
  • Hartmut Kühne, Lothar Lambacher, Konrad Vanja (eds.): The symbol on the hat in the Middle Ages. European travel markings. Symposium in memoriam Kurt Köster (1912–1986) and catalog of the pilgrim signs in the Kunstgewerbemuseum and in the Museum of Byzantine Art of the State Museums in Berlin (= European pilgrimage studies. Volume 4 / = Series of publications Museum European Cultures. Volume 5). Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-631-57408-9 (including Wolfgang Brückner, “Kurt Köster and the pilgrim sign research”, pp. 19-29).
  • Wolf-Heino Struck : Nekrolog: Kurt Köster . In: Nassauische Annalen , Volume 98, 1987. P. 499f.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Koster, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German librarian and historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Wiesbaden
DATE OF DEATH July 17, 1986
Place of death Munich