Bloch theater collection

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Theater ticket from the Bloch collection
Theater ticket from the Bloch collection

The Theater Collection Bloch is a private collection of stage manuscripts and prints, mostly from the 19th century. It belongs to the holdings of the Berlin State Library .

Historical development

The Jewish bookseller Eduard Bloch (1831–1895) took over the Lassar'sche bookstore in Berlin on July 1, 1857 . He had previously worked there as an assistant. A few weeks later, he founded the publishing house for theater literature "Leopold Lassar's bookstore." The publishing program essentially comprised small dramas and pieces of music, as well as literature on dance art and choreographies . At the same time, the publisher began to put together an extensive private collection of stage manuscripts and prints, today's “Bloch Theater Collection”. In addition, he wrote jokes and antics himself and provided arrangements of French and Italian plays for German theaters. His son Ludwig (1859–1939) had been running the publishing house since 1887. He continued building up the collection and stipulated that no items from it could be sold. Ludwig Bloch also wrote undemanding stage plays, with titles such as “Am Stammtisch ” and “Am Wickeltisch”. The publisher was named "Eduard Bloch" in 1887, was later called "Felix Bloch Erben" and was converted in 1941 by order of the Reichsschrifttumskammer into "Die Drehbühne Wilhelm Wreede OHG, Publishing and Distribution for Stage, Film and Funk, Berlin".

The collection

The collection initially comprised the numerous results of its own publishing work, but also stage manuscripts from other German and foreign sources. In addition to a few serious texts, it mainly contains light, mostly German-language theater literature - antics with or without singing, pranks, operettas , fairy tales and crime grotesques. The narrow text booklets were of no interest to libraries at the time of their creation and have therefore only survived in small numbers. French vaudeville literature is strongly represented , with over 200 titles from the work of Eugène Scribes alone. There are also translations from Spanish and English as well as Italian, Spanish and Scandinavian original manuscripts.

In 1940 the collection was transferred to the Prussian State Library for a total of 5,500 Reichsmarks . At that time it was estimated to be 20,000 plays and 300 scores . Unlike other collections that were outsourced during the war, it survived the Second World War . The 300 scores went to the music department of the library, duplicates were given to the theater studies department of the Humboldt University . After extensive internal processing - a total of 10154 signatures were assigned under the basic signature 20 ZZ - the collection is now listed in the StaBiKat online catalog and can also be ordered electronically .

literature

  • Annette Wehmeyer: Bloch theater collection. In: Das Keyword 27 (1983), p. 61.

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