Commission for everyday culture research for Westphalia
The Commission for Everyday Culture Research for Westphalia (until March 2020: Folklore Commission for Westphalia ) is a scientific body of the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe (LWL). Along with the Historical Commission for Westphalia , the Antiquities Commission for Westphalia , the Geographical Commission for Westphalia , the Commission for Dialect and Name Research in Westphalia and the Literature Commission for Westphalia, it is one of the LWL's six scientific commissions for regional studies.
tasks
The commission promotes and supports folklore work in Westphalia . It promotes documentation on topics of cultural history, organizes conferences and publishes numerous publications. The more than 60 full and corresponding members work on a voluntary basis on the various projects of the commission. An office on the premises of the University of Münster promotes and coordinates the work.
The task of the commission founded in 1928 by the Provincial Association of the Province of Westphalia was initially to substantiate the assumed cultural special position of Westphalia through scientific studies. Accordingly, spatial geographic issues and cultural trends were researched. The functionalist method and sociological approach of the first commission chairman Julius Schwietering were decisive for this . The commission contributed to the Atlas of German Folklore , the Westphalian Dictionary and continued the Westphalian Folk Song Archive. She participated in the Münster working group for house research, in research on traditional costumes , in work on religious folklore, folk tale research and field name research . The linguistic-historical focus was given in 1972 to the newly founded commission for dialect and name research in Westphalia .
After 1945, building up a collection of material culture in Westphalia was a focus of the commission's work. The documentation, collection and scientific processing of the historical material assets were later left to the museums that had been created in the meantime, in particular the Westphalian Open-Air Museum in Detmold , which was founded in 1960 . Since then, the focus of activity has been non-material folk culture. Until 1984, written reports on topics of everyday culture around 1900 were collected, which, along with many other written sources, almost 10,000 folk songs and over 150,000 photographs, are made available to the public in an archive, which can also be researched online. A special regional library with over 35,000 volumes, which is accessible via the catalog of the University and State Library of Münster, completes the offer.
renaming
In November 2019, the members' meeting of the commission decided to replace the name “Folklore Commission for Westphalia” with “Commission for everyday culture research for Westphalia”. It thus followed a development in university research, museums and public cultural work, in which the term “folklore” is considered out of date and is hardly used any more. The renaming should better describe the work of the commission and also be better understood by laypeople. The name was changed on March 20, 2020.
Chairperson
- Julius Schwietering (1928–1933)
- Jost Trier (1933–1943)
- Martha Bringemeier (1943–1946, executive)
- William Foerste (1946–1951)
- Bruno Schier (1951–1971)
- Günter Wiegelmann (1971–1993)
- Ruth Mohrmann (1993-2014)
- Elisabeth Timm (since 2014)
Series of publications
The Folklore Commission is the publisher of several series of publications, including articles on folk culture in northwest Germany , everyday history in pictures and retrospect . The Rhenish-Westphalian Journal for Folklore , which has been published regularly since 1954, is published by the Folklore Commission for Westphalia in cooperation with the LVR Institute for Regional Studies and Regional History .
literature
- Dietmar Sauermann : Folklore research in Westphalia 1770-1970 . History of the Folklore Commission and its predecessors, Volume 1: Historical development (= contributions to folk culture in Northwest Germany . Volume 16 / I ). F. Coppenrath Verlag, Münster 1986, ISBN 3-88547-302-X .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Folklore Archive
- ^ Proposed resolution for the renaming to "Commission for everyday culture research for Westphalia" , accessed on April 24, 2020.
- ↑ Folklore Commission is now called the Commission for Everyday Culture Research from March 31, 2020 in the blog Everyday Culture , accessed on April 24, 2020.