Varnhagen collection

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The collection Varnhagen ( Varnhagen of Ensesche collection ) is the reduction of Ludmilla Assing , the more literary addition to its own papers and artwork discounts and that of her uncle Karl August Varnhagen von Ense -scale autograph collection contains. The collection ranges from the Early Enlightenment , Sturm und Drang , Classical and Romanticism to the revolution of 1848/49 , the era of reaction and the beginning labor movement ; In addition to documents from the German-speaking area, it contains documents on French, English, Italian, Russian and American literary and cultural history.

Box from the Varnhagen collection

History of origin

Karl August Varnhagen von Ense 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. Even as a student he was interested in autographs and kept a record book "which was like the ark of a masters 'guild full of poets' manuscripts". With later famous friends like Adelbert von Chamisso , Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué and Justinus Kerner , who were among the poets of the North Star Alliance, he exchanged letters in tiny pearl script.

The Jewish salonière Rahel Levin in Berlin , whom he married in 1814 after a six-year engagement, also had a large network of international pen pals . Around 6,000 letters from her, which Varnhagen began to collect from her correspondence partners before her death, have been preserved in the collection with corresponding letters of reply. The resulting works Rahel. A book of remembrance for her friends (1833/1834) and a gallery of portraits from Rahel's interactions and correspondence as well as his own biographical writings recommended Varnhagen as the editor of the works of the deceased (he was originally supposed to edit Lessing's works, which Karl Lachmann then did in his place took over); not infrequently whole estates were given to him for selection. As a diplomat , author and critic , Varnhagen corresponded with Goethe , Alexander von Humboldt , Heine and Prince Pückler, among others .

The expansion into a comprehensive collection of testimonials (partly also without personal reference to the Varnhagen couple and from previous epochs) began in July 1841. Since then, the collector has been sending wish lists of coveted autographs all over the world. For example, in September 1856 Varnhagen received "a thousand handwritten sheets of paper" from Bettina von Arnim . Otherwise he exchanged treasures with collectors who were friends, such as Richard Zeune and Heinrich von der Tann; Only rarely did he acquire letters through purchases, such as Rachel's correspondence with Pauline Wiesel from the recipient or private notes of Rahel's friend Friedrich von Gentz from his son Joseph Gentz. It is also characteristic of this autograph collection that it not only contains the manuscripts of prominent personalities, but also, for example, those of little-known Jewish friends of Rahels or of the servant couple Karl and Wilhelmine Ganzmann. Collectors were interested in such diverse groups as the enlightened nobility and liberal Judaism , the Prussian generals and the Young German opposition.

With his niece Ludmilla Assing, the estate of their parents Rosa Maria , geb. Varnhagen and David Assing , who had a large group of poets, went to Berlin. While Ludmilla was trained in dealing with the archive and, for example, made copies of gifts for the donors, her sister Ottilie immigrated to the USA and contributed autographs from there. After Varnhagen's death on October 10, 1858, Assing made the first editions from unprinted collections. The letters from Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense (1860), which also autographs Gifts Alexander were printed von Humboldt, experienced five editions in a few weeks. They sparked a political scandal and were banned for a short time; likewise the 14-volume diaries from the estate of K. A. Varnhagen von Ense (1861–1870), which brought the editor into detailed persecution and exile. From Florence she continued editing and collecting, published numerous correspondence from her aunt Rahel and was able to add several donations and bequests to the archive, for example that of Prince Pückler.

In her will of July 15, 1876, Ludmilla Assing decreed the donation of the Varnhagen Collection to the Royal Library of Berlin, today the State Library of Berlin, on the condition that it be kept together under the name of Varnhagens, placed in a special room and made available to the public .

Scope and structure

The Varnhagen collection contains

  • Books: around 2900 rare, often handwritten annotated works in the so-called Varnhagen library (not to be confused with the Varnhagen library , which the family branch had kept in Iserlohn since the 16th century). They are today under the special signature “Bibl. Varnhagen ”in the State Library .
  • Works of art: an oil painting, approx. Thirty portraits in tempera and pastel, portraits of Rahel by Peter Friedel , Moritz Daffinger and Wilhelm Hensel , among others , several medallions in bronze and plaster, including the relief portrait of Rachel by Friedrich Tieck from 1796, renewed in 1836; a marble bust KA Varnhagen by Elisabeth Ney (1857), pencil drawings, album sheets, including those by the painter Alwina Frommann , silhouettes in colored and black paper , daguerreotypes and portraits printed as wood or steel engravings.
  • Manuscripts: notes and records, including Varnhagens daily records: the daily observations (1819-1830) and daily newspapers (1834-1858), numerous other manuscripts of various authors, letters to and from 9,000 persons in the amount of hundreds of thousands of sheets.

The autographs were marked with Varnhagen's ownership note in the upper right corner and often with a reference to the provenance. They were filed in alphabetical order and in person; these bundles often contain other pamphlets or newspaper clippings. In many cases, notes are enclosed with life data and characteristic anecdotes of the respective writer.

The daily papers from 1834 to 1858, Varnhagen's daily records (up to now only about a third have been printed as diaries ) contain additional handwritten and printed material as supplements, for example barricade plans and leaflets from the revolution of 1848. To the material from and about For the Varnhagen and Assing families , the collection contains extensive or partial bequests from Bettina von Arnim, Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, Appollonius von Maltitz , Ludwig Robert and Johannes Schulze .

In addition to life testimonies from German-speaking countries, there are also documents on the French Revolution , on the abolitionism movement in the USA and on the Italian Risorgimento as well as Hebrew manuscripts. Individual manuscripts from Southeast Asia and India found their way into the collection as gifts from British correspondents.

Locations

Although the Varnhagen room requested by Ludmilla Assing was furnished by Wilhelm Grützmacher in 1892 in 1892, in the years after 1881 the royal Prussian librarians prevented public access to the Varnhagen collection, which was considered to be scandalous, for more than two decades. The descendants of Bettina von Arnim and Clemens Brentano , represented by Bettine's son-in-law Herman Grimm , made use of all legal means to either secrete Brentano letters from his unhappy love and marriage relationship with Auguste Bußmann and Sophie Mereau or to remove them from the context of the collection accused Varnhagen von Ense of illegally withholding and mutilating borrowed documents, an accusation that has never been substantiated and that Hannah Arendt repeats and further adorns in her biography Rahel Varnhagen . Lujo Brentano finally offered the drama manuscript Aloys und Imelde by Clemens Brentano for exchange and in 1911 managed to sort out sheets and letters from his bundle that he found questionable. The Germanist Heinrich Hubert Houben , who compiled registers for Varnhagen's diaries and the journals of Young Germany , also complained about difficulties in using it .

In 1942 autographs, rare books and special collections of the State Library were relocated; with it also the autograph treasures of the Varnhagen collection, which survived the war on the gallery in the Grüssau monastery . After the expulsion of the German monks, military trucks picked up these Berlin holdings ( Berlinka in Polish ), which had been considered a war loss for forty years and were inaccessible in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska (the library of the Jagiellonian University ) in Krakow . Then there was the division of Germany: around 1980 it became known that the collection still existed. The books in the Varnhagen library had been relocated to Marburg and were in the western part of Berlin after the war ; Newspaper clippings and works of art in East Berlin . Today the autographs in Cracow are presented exclusively to scientifically proven users; Their use is made difficult by the lack of encyclopedias, city maps and the other half of the collection: everything printed, including the Varnhagen library, newspaper clippings and works of art is in Berlin . However, some non-inventoried holdings of the collection, such as the theater ticket collection, have now been lost, others such as the globe were probably integrated into the corresponding collections of the Berlin State Library, which has since been reunited.

An agreement in the German-Polish state treaties of 1991 on the mutual repatriation of cultural goods relocated during the war is still pending.

Development

An inventory of the collection made by Hermann Brassert and Salvatore Battaglia in Florence in the summer of 1880 has been lost; The collection was last inventoried by Ludwig Stern , director of the manuscript collection of the Royal Library in Berlin , a work that he finished three days before his death on October 6, 1911. Stern's directory became a model for the autograph catalogs of the Royal Library and appeared in bookshops in 1911 as a volume of almost a thousand pages.

However, this directory is now out of date in many respects and urgently needs a thorough revision. A continuously revised, supplemented and corrected list of names is provided by Varnhagen Gesellschaft e. V. available on their website since August 2020; Lists of names of the recipients of letters and the visual artists whose works are listed by Ludwig Stern should follow.

The Romanist Jens Häseler viewed and inventoried the letters from the estate of the secretary of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Jean Henri Samuel Formey , which were mostly addressed to him. his comprehensive index of the Formey correspondence, which also existed in many other European archives, was published in 2003.

Since 2015, with the support of the Polish National Center for Science ( Narodowe Centrum Nauki ), the literary estate of the married couple Rosa Maria and David Assur Assing has been cataloged editorially and digitally by the Germanist Paweł Zarychta from the German Department of the Jagiellonian University .

Since the spring of 2020, the Bauhaus University in Weimar has been working in collaboration with the Jagiellonian University in Krakow in a project funded by the German Research Foundation and the National Center for Science to index the life testimonies of female authors in the collection.

Quotes

“My collection of autographs relates first of all to Rahel's and my circle of life, our circumstances and acquaintances; The people who are important to us and who are named by us therefore belong in the series, even if there may be no other oddity associated with their names. (…) The main thing is that the collection be preserved and grow old. In such things the value grows with the years. Suffice it, these literary-political testimonies should remain with one another, not be separated from Rahel's and my written estate. They are highly recommended to the future owner or custodian! "

- Karl August Varnhagen von Ense : order of March 27, 1842, Varnhagen collection, box 250

“My care for everything literary is really just indifference to this; for it is only valid for me as the preserving shell of a core of life lying in it, and wherever one of these shines at me, I would like to put that shell around it protectively! So much is necessarily lost, let's try to save some! let's plant trees that give shade! "

- Karl August Varnhagen von Ense : Diaries . FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1861, vol. 2, p. 351 f. ( Digitized version )

“Varnhagen, the most tireless note collector in the world, has put together traits of their biographical material etc. in an alphabetical register for almost all, somewhat better-known people. He finally has it about all such people, of whom he had autographs, as appendix to this collection. "

- Ferdinand Lassalle : Letter to Karl Marx , April 16, 1860. In: Gustav Mayer (Ed.): The exchange of letters between Lassalle and Marx. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart / Berlin 1922, p. 297 ( digitized version )

“Varnhagen has always had the habit of writing down the most important and most interesting events of the day, communications of all kinds, conversations with important people on small quarto sheets of strong gray paper. These notes were carefully collected by him, arranged and kept in black cardboard boxes, which he locked in the large wall cupboard. There was a treasure trove of letters and rare autographs by the most famous men and women of his time in alphabetical order. (...) In the course of the conversation, if he had forgotten a name, a date or a person, he would open the cupboard and pull out his cartons. But the order in these papers was so great that he always found what he wanted. "

- Max Ring : Varnhagen von Ense, his salon and his diaries. In: Die Gartenlaube 1862, No. 13, p. 201 ( digitized version )

“I would make it a condition that all of the above-mentioned items remain combined and are given the name of the Varnhagen von Ense collection forever. I would be delighted if, if the space permitted, they were given a special room. The great importance that this collection has in historical, patriotic and literary relation should probably justify it to such a distinction. Furthermore, I would make it a condition that all of the above-mentioned items are left for general use as far as possible. "

- Ludmilla Assing : Letter to the Royal Library of Berlin (concept), July 5, 1872, Varnhagen Collection, Box 19

literature

  • Ludwig Stern : The Varnhagen von Ensesche collection in the Royal Library of Berlin. Behrens, Berlin 1911 (is given to members of the Varnhagen Gesellschaft e.V. at cost price) ( digitized version ).
  • Erich Biehahn: works of art of the German state library. Henschelverlag, Berlin (GDR) 1961.
  • Deborah Hertz : The Varnhagen Collection Is in Krakow. In: The American Archivist. 44, 3, 1981, pp. 223-228.
  • Nikolaus Gatter: "Poison, downright poison for the ignorant public". The diaristic estate of Karl August Varnhagen von Ense and the polemic against Ludmilla Assing's editions (1860 - 1880) . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 1996, ISBN 3-89528-149-2 (also: Bonn, Univ., Diss., 1995).
  • Nikolaus Gatter: "It is above all mine". The Varnhagen Collection until it was cataloged. Appendix: The Varnhagen Collection in wills and dispositions. In: ders. (Ed.): When the story goes around a corner. Berlin-Verlag Spitz, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-8305-0025-4 , pp. 239-271 ( Almanac of the Varnhagen Society Hagen-Berlin eV 1).
  • La Correspondance de Jean Henri Samuel Formey (1711–1797). Inventaire alphabétique. Établi sous la direction de Jens Häseler. Avec la Bibliographie des écrits de Jean Henri Samuel Formey établie par Rolf Geissler. Honoré Champion, Paris 2003 (Vie des Huguenots, vol. 29), ISBN 2-7453-0781-9 .
  • Werner Schochow : Book fates. The history of relocation of the Prussian State Library. Outsourcing, destruction, alienation, repatriation. Represented from the sources. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-020475-9 .
  • Monika Jaglarz / Katarzyna Jaśtal (ed.): Holdings of the former Prussian State Library in Berlin in the Jagiellonian Library. Research status and perspectives. Peter Lang, Berlin 2018 (History - Memory - Politics, Vol. 23), ISBN 978-3-631-76581-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A. v. Arnim to C. Brentano, July 1, 1806. Friendship Letters Ed. Hartwig Schultz , Vol. 1, Frankfurt a. M. 1998, p. 408
  2. ^ Karl August Varnhagen von Ense to Alexander von Humboldt, September 13, 1856. In: Letters from Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1860, p. 319 ( digitized version )
  3. ↑ Peter Friedel: Portrait of Rahel Varnhagen von Ense (around 1800), Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage ( digitized version )
  4. ^ Moritz Daffinger: Portrait of Rahel Varnhagens von Ense , Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage (1818) ( digitized version )
  5. ^ Wilhelm Hensel: Portrait of Rahel Varnhagen (1822), Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage ( digitized version )
  6. ↑ Friedrich Tieck: Rahel 1796 (1836), Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage ( digitized version )
  7. ↑ forografie the Varnhagen bust of Elisabeth Ney (2000), Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage ( Digtialisat )
  8. ↑ See Friedrich Wilhelm Halffter : Daguerreotype by Karl August Varnhagen von Ense (1853), Berlin State Library - Prussian cultural property ( digitized version ); a second version, in which the sitter is wearing his glasses, is in the estate of Gottfried Keller in the Zurich Central Library
  9. ↑ See the lithograph by Julius Kuhr based on a portrait of Karl August Varnhagen by Johann Joseph Schmeller , Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Prussischer Kulturbesitz ( digitized version )
  10. ↑ Cf. the envelope labeled by Ludmilla Assing: “Hair souvenirs from my beloved uncle Varnhagen von Ense ”. Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage ( 0003 & DMDID = DMDLOG 0001 digitized version )
  11. ↑ Cf. Nikolaus Gatter: Where my compatriots can easily travel at any time: Ludmilla Assing's legacy - the Varnhagen collection. In: Monika Jaglarz / Katarzyna Jaśtal (ed.): Holdings of the former Prussian State Library in Berlin in the Jagiellonian Library. Research status and perspectives. Peter Lang, Berlin 2018 (History - Memory - Politics, Vol. 23), pp. 313–327
  12. ↑ Acta, regarding gifts and bequests ... Secret State Archives Berlin-Dahlem, Rep. 72-Vc Selt. 2 Tit XXIII Litt B No. 44, Vol. 2
  13. ^ Library of Varnhagen. In: Berlin State Library . Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation , accessed on August 29, 2020 .
  14. ↑ On Ludmilla Assing's estate administrator, cf. Luigi Sanfilippo: Salvatore Battaglia a 170 anni dalla nascita . In: Incontri. La Sicilia e l'altrove 1 (2013), no. 4 (July-September), pp. 15–20 ( digitized version )
  15. ↑ See Emil Jacobs : Ludwig Stern † . In: Central Journal for Libraries . Vol. 29, issue 1. Otto Harrassowitz, Leipzig 1912, p. 26–31 , here p. 31 ( digitized version [accessed August 30, 2020]).
  16. ↑ See Ludwig Stern: The Varnhagen von Ensesche collection in the Royal Library in Berlin. Behrens, Berlin 1911
  17. ↑ See Paweł Zarychta: On the estate of Rosa Maria and David Assings in Cracow or: Why the Varnhagen Collection should be re-cataloged. In: International Yearbook of the Bettina von Arnim Society 28/29 (2016/2017), Saint Albin, Berlin, pp. 31–50; Nikolaus Gatter: We are revising Ludwig Stern's Varnhagen catalog. In: gazzettino. Communications from Varnhagen Gesellschaft e. V. year 2020, No. 45 ( digitized version )
  18. ↑ See life testimonies in the Varnhagen collection. List of names of Nikolaus Gatter ( digitized version )
  19. ↑ See La Correspondance de Jean Henri Samuel Formey (1711–1797). Inventaire alphabétique. Établi sous la direction de Jens Häseler. Avec la Bibliographie des écrits de Jean Henri Samuel Formey établie par Rolf Geissler. Honoré Champion, Paris 2003 (Vie des Huguenots, vol. 29)
  20. ↑ See Paweł Zarychta: “Cult of Memory and Artistic Sociability.” The estate of Rosa Maria and David Assings in the Varnhagen Collection: A preliminary project report. In: Monika Jaglarz / Katarzyna Jaśtal (ed.): Holdings of the former Prussian State Library in Berlin in the Jagiellonian Library. Research status and perspectives. Peter Lang, Berlin 2018 (History - Memory - Politk, Vol. 23), p. 293.
  21. ^ See announcement on the Bauhaus University website.