Collection Dr. Fritz Kauffmann

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The Dr. Fritz Kauffmann is a collection of manuscripts and memorabilia related to the German poet Eduard Mörike and other people from the history of music. It was passed on in the family of Mörike's contemporary Ernst Friedrich Kauffmann for generations until it was publicly exhibited under his name by the Baden-Württemberg Ministerialrat Fritz Kauffmann , with the addition of Eduard Mörike and his friends . Today the collection remains with the German Literature Archive in Marbach , where it was broken down into its components.

Origin and scope

The origin of the collection goes back to Mörike's exchange with his friend, the mathematician, musician and composer Ernst Friedrich Kauffmann. The two friends remained in good contact throughout their lives. The memorabilia resulting from this friendship were kept and expanded in the Kauffmann family for generations because the families stayed connected. Fritz Kauffmann himself also acquired artifacts from and about Mörike. The largest private collection of memorabilia from Eduard Mörike thus contained over a hundred objects: manuscripts (poems, prose, correspondence, compositions), documentary, autobiographical and a variety of items from Mörike's possession, including a pendulum clock with a striking mechanism, a sewing table , a lock of hair from Clara Mörike, a silver spoon with "EM" engraved on it.

In addition to memorabilia on Mörike, the Fritz Kauffmann collection contained other pieces from the wider circle of the poet and the Kauffmann family: The collection also included the musical works of Karl Emil Kauffmann and Hugo Wolf , as well as extensive family correspondence , for example with Adolf Hölzel , whose career was Fritz Kauffmann pursued early on. Fritz Kauffmann's collection also inspired his son Hans Joachim Kauffmann to create his own compositions in the period up to 1965.

Permanent exhibition and current whereabouts

Poster for the former permanent exhibition of the collection in Stuttgart

Fritz Kauffmann made the collection available to the city of Stuttgart so that it could be accessed by the public with free admission. With the permanent exhibition of a selection from the collection under the motto "Eduard Mörike and his friends: An exhibition from the Mörike collection Dr. Fritz Kauffmann ”in the Wilhelmspalais from 1965, the city of Stuttgart complied with the commitment it had made. The permanent collection in the Wilhelmspalais filled twenty-four table showcases and several cabinet showcases. After Fritz Kauffmann's death in 1971, the inheritance fell to his wife Charlotte Kauffmann, who made no changes to the furnishings of the public exhibition until she also died.

The collection and the rights to it then passed to the son as an inheritance. In the end, he did not pursue the family tradition any further and sold the collection, the size of Walter Scheffler's inventory, to the highest bidder in 1991 for DM 985,000 , a few years after Charlotte Kauffmann's death; but kept some representative objects (including the pendulum clock with striking mechanism and the sewing table). The so-called font base sheets of Adolf Hölzel were sold to the art collector Hermann-Josef Bunte . In order to keep the cultural property related to Mörike in Germany and to be able to preserve it for posterity in the German Literature Archive in Marbach, the Stiftung Kulturgut Baden-Württemberg, the Kulturstiftung der Länder and the private Fritz Thyssen Foundation came together as donors for the purchase . According to his own admission, this filled a large gap in the collections of Swabian literature of the 19th century.

The part of the Kauffmann Collection kept in the German Literature Archive in Marbach includes writings by Eduard Mörike, preferably poetry manuscripts and letters, sheet music manuscripts with compositions for his verses and original illustrations for his works. There are also documents that go back to friends and contemporaries of the poet or the Mörike family, as well as autographs by people who determined intellectual life in the 19th and 20th centuries. Parts of the collection in the literature archive can be seen in the Schiller National Museum in Marbach in the permanent exhibition, in particular the manuscript for He's . The lack of the retained items from the collection became apparent when Kauffmann's widow offered them to the museum for sale in 2016. The objects have now been added to the inventory.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stuttgart city archive (ed.): Eduard Mörike and his friends. Exhibition and catalog: Dr. Fritz Kauffmann. 1965, foreword (5)
  2. ↑ a b c d Walter Scheffler: The Dr. Fritz Kauffmann. Eduard Mörike and his group. General autograph collection. Complete directory. Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 1967. Pages 3–7
  3. ↑ Ulrich Ott: The Dr. Fritz Kauffmann. Eduard Mörike and his circle. In: Kulturstiftung der Länder - PATRIMONIA 33 (1992), ISSN  0941-7036
  4. ^ The written bundles are archived in the German Literature Archive under the signature A: Kauffmann, Fritz .
  5. ^ Ulrich Hauff: Yearbook of the German Schiller Society - Volume 61 / Annual Report of the German Schiller Society / 1.2.1.5 Memorabilia. DE GRUYTER, 2017 p. 503.